701. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #118236 by Cartomancer on January 30, 2008 at 1:55 pm

Anyway, what's wrong with being neurotic, combative and antisocial? I like my neuroses, belligerence and sociophobia thank you very much, and I'd take them any day over being drippy, semi-comatose and needlessly, shallowly gregarious all the time.

How you like that false dichotomy eh?

702. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #118224 by Cartomancer on January 30, 2008 at 1:45 pm

Well well, the ugly old bag has finally said something approaching the sensible (is that neurotic, combative and antisocial enough for you? I do apologise for my uncharacteristic lapse into courtesy).

I too would agree that most overtly theistic societies are, on average, Rawlesian veil of ignorance taken into account etc, more pleasant to live in than the places where rabidly anticlerical, totalitarian regimes are in power. I repeat at this juncture, for it is the crux of the matter, that anticlericalism has no logical connection at all with atheism. But your false dichotomy of Medieval Christendom versus Stalin's Russia is so narrowly appositional in its horizons that it is not a valid comparison at all.

Modern Britain, most of Western Europe, Japan and to some extent the US are secular, pluralistic societies with hardly any theistic content to their governments at all. They also happen to be the places where levels of happiness, prosperity and well-being are at their highest. Look to the theistic nightmares of Iran, North Korea and Saudi Arabia for the true comparison.

Similarly, at risk of blowing my own homosexual agenda trumpet once more, I might point out that while the majority of people might do moderately well out of strongly theistic regimes, the oppressed minorities generally do far, far worse. Maybe the Rawlesian analysis falls down here too...

703. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #118210 by Cartomancer on January 30, 2008 at 1:33 pm

Could you find me a reference to the works of any of these three thinkers where this is stated in the pathetic reductionistic manner you have stated it?

Professor Dawkins simply says that there are logical paths from believing certain things about the universe, which many theists do believe, to beleiving that genocide is justified. He nowhere says that all theists are genocidal, indeed he is always careful to qualify his statements on fundamentalists by saying that they refer only to the lunatic fringe. He also gives credit to political, social and technological factors as contributors toward genocidal actions.

Hitchens argues similarly, though he is more concerned to expose examples where theistic beleif actually does lead to disaster. I have not read Harris yet, but seeing as how Dawkins agrees with most things he says I would be very surprised to find such bald, gcse-level thinking as you espouse on his part.

Try again...

704. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #118206 by Cartomancer on January 30, 2008 at 1:26 pm

If we are unable to to trust anything we see, hear or otherwise perceive then we have absolutely no premises on which to base our arguments. None at all. If the fact that absolute certainty is impossible in any matter whatsoever is a good reason to abandon empirical reasoning, it is just as good a reason to abandon all other kinds of reasoning. How do you know your own private hermetically-sealed thoughts on the matter are true? How do you know that your supposedly disembodied logic works?

In fact, empirical reasoning and looking to the outside world is the only way we can impose any sort of consistency on our internal world and check the provisional veracity of our reasoning. Without evidence and observation we can get nowhere.

705. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #118200 by Cartomancer on January 30, 2008 at 1:18 pm

Anticlericalism, not Atheism. They're completely different things. Quite aside from the fact that reducing the complexities of historical causation to trite, ill-conceived equations is either a staggeringly inane act of wilful mendacity or the result of a childishly simplistic mind.

706. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #118196 by Cartomancer on January 30, 2008 at 1:11 pm

Oh, and do leave off on the absolute epistemological uncertainty line - it is most unbecoming and scuppers your arguments just as well as it does ours.

707. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #118191 by Cartomancer on January 30, 2008 at 1:07 pm

The generation of fractal patterns from mathematical formulas is not an act of conscious design - it is the deterministic application of algebraic processes. Similarly, if the patterns can be reduced to a simple formula, they aren't actually very complex at all.

Try again...

708. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #118174 by Cartomancer on January 30, 2008 at 12:47 pm

Nurse! Nurse! Puerile Existentialist Bullshit outbreak in the Vox Dei thread! Repeat we have a PEB in here, Dr. Zara to Vox Dei Ward stat - your patient is in critical condition!

709. What should a scientist think about religion?

Comment #118124 by Cartomancer on January 30, 2008 at 11:21 am

Bravo PZ, Bravo!

Though I would add that this applies not just to scientists as commonly defined, but to all people who engage in evidence-based rational thinking.

710. MySpace: No place for Atheists?

Comment #118103 by Cartomancer on January 30, 2008 at 10:49 am

Ugh! Christian bully-boy tactics like this are disgraceful. Apathy on the part of the company who runs MySpace is similarly reprehensible. I am glad I never got into that one.

Facebook is the way forward I think. I currently define my religious beliefs as "Utter disdain for all such ridiculous nonsense", though I have yet to add the OUT application or join the "Richard Dawkins is cooler than Jesus" group. Though he is, no question about it.

711. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #117919 by Cartomancer on January 30, 2008 at 1:42 am

I guess that, as a consummate poet with a profound understanding of medieval Latin, our dearly beloved Mr. Beale will be able fully to appreciate this little tribute to his overweening narcissistic arrogance that I came up with:



Pulex pravus librum scripsit,

In quo nichil novum dixit,

Donat nobis, iners vates,

Sophismas, non veritates.

Credit sese redarguisse,

Argumenta ei missa,

Sed agitur actus reus,

In fatuitate eius:

Eius liber est in finem,

Nugatoris ad hominem,

Odit nimis Dawkins nostri,

Immemor rationis claustri.

Cur sic cogitet non scio,

Nisi fertur delusio -

Virus virulens in mente,

Eum faciens repente,

Arrogantiam sumere,

Dum caput impletur aere.



Vale, pulex, vir inanis,

Liber tuus valde vanis!

712. Richard Dawkins on The Big Debate

Comment #117896 by Cartomancer on January 29, 2008 at 11:49 pm

I generally ignore the short ones myself, but then again I always was an obtuse sort...

713. Richard Dawkins on The Big Debate

Comment #117887 by Cartomancer on January 29, 2008 at 11:13 pm

I find the style rather well suited to the message myself, but your point has been taken and noted. I have never been conceited enough to think that my appreciation of literary style is universally shared - certainly not to the extent I can go around ignoring other people's preferences on the matter...

714. Richard Dawkins on The Big Questions

Comment #117880 by Cartomancer on January 29, 2008 at 10:40 pm

Hah! King Alfred did it so it must have been right! Priceless, absolutely priceless...

715. Richard Dawkins on The Big Debate

Comment #117875 by Cartomancer on January 29, 2008 at 10:27 pm

MPhil -

Well of course I don't, a priori, exclude the possibility that objections might occur in the future. If they do occur then we will have to rethink our opinions and policies. The point is that they have not occured yet, and until they do we must tailor our political policies to the state of our current knowledge. I myself would have thought this is such an obvious point that it can go unsaid, but there you go...

Styrer -

I have read and noted your preference for conciseness. I do wonder quite how repeating my entire post achieves this end in your own case, but that thought need not detain me further. I am sorry that my preference for thoroughness, my desire to illustrate my somewhat abstract point with concrete examples and my tendency toward high-blown rhetoric are not to your tastes. De gustibus non disputandum est I suppose...

716. Richard Dawkins on The Big Debate

Comment #117870 by Cartomancer on January 29, 2008 at 9:46 pm

Ugh! Nobody seems to have made the crucial point about the whole gay rights / women's rights / abortion issue.

The religious apologists seem quite content with their position: "well we teach our faith's views on gay rights / abortion / the treatment of women, and we also teach the views of all the other faiths on the same matter. Then we have a big debate and the children can decide for themselves which view they subscribe to". I shall assume, charitably, that this statement implicitly includes teaching about rational, secular, scientific, non-religious views (though in reality I have severe doubts about that). Given this, what is so wrong with letting the children have their debate and decided for themselves what to believe?

It's precisely the same as Professor Dawkins's argument as to why creationism should not be taught in school science classes. Creationism is not a valid part of science. Likewise, religious dogma is not a valid part of moral and ethical inquiry. What this approach is actually doing is setting up irrational, superstitious and unevidenced religious views as both valid standpoints to take and equally worthy of consideration alongside proper, secular, discussions of morality. This is bound to skew the subsequent "debate", and is of a particularly sinister character given a) the sensitivity of the issues involved, b) the fact that, implicitly, a faith school will be promoting one of the invalid viewpoints as its preferred communal viewpoint, and c) the rational debating skills of most children are not especially sophisticated. To the last objection it might be put that school is precisely about developing sophisticated debating skills, which is true, but it is still grossly unfair to sharpen these developing skills on the important issues they are to be used to fathom. Surely they should be let loose to make up their own minds once they have learned how to look at the evidence properly, rather than confused by muddying up the issue while their analytic toolkit is still incomplete, and bits of half-remembered poor argument can make a huge impact?

What does this look like in practice? Well, let's take gay rights, an issue close to my heart, and see how this method would teach it. A class of impressionable sixteen year olds in a Catholic school is told

"Right then, well, Catholics beleive that homosexual acts are sinful, objectively disordered and against nature. Some think they might be punished by eternal torment, others are more moderate and just think they should be avoided for the common good. Other Christian sects are broadly similar, though with a few liberal ones seeing no problems in it at all. Muslims all believe it is grossly sinful and punishable by death. Jews think it is an abomination. Eastern religions are divided, with as many tolerant of it as there are which shun it. Oh, and modern secular humanism says it's fine, natural, normal and nothing to worry about.

Right children, those are the positions you could take, which one appeals to you? Bear in mind that if you don't like a religion's stance then you have to go some way to abandoning that religion (and of course you have all been told that you are catholics in a catholic school, so implicitly you really are supposed to pick that one)."

What message is this sending out to people? Nothing less than the message that there are valid arguments for considering homosexuality wrong, that homophobic attitudes are perfectly justified by religious faith, that choosing to be a homophobic bigot is OK, and even implicitly supported by an institution of which you are, even though you have not chosen it, a part. It is nothing less than the state-sanctioned promulgation of homophobic attitudes.

What a burden to place on the shoulders of a confused gay sixteen year old! All his heterosexual counterparts won't have this problem. Nobody is saying to them "well, a load of people on this planet, and we technically count you among their number, think that your natural biological urges are wrong and abhorrent, and those people are deserving of respect for this". Even if nobody tells the boy outright that what he feels is wrong, the mere suggestion that it might be, and the assertion that the issue is still up for debate, will do tremendous damage to his confidence. Subtle suggestions and unseen biases are powerful, very powerful - unspoken claims of parity really are taken very seriously by children of all ages. This happened to me when I was this age, and I didn't even go to a faith school - I shudder to think what that kind of implicit labelling must do to exacerbate the problem.

What he really needs at this vulnerable stage in his life is reassurance that what he feels is normal and perfectly fine. Yes, he can engage in the study of comparative religion and learn that there are noisome, bigoted people out there who think differently to the way he does, but he must do so from a position of confidence in himself just as his peers do. Making this sort of debate over what is actually a rather minor point in the history of ideas into the cornerstone of modern ethical teaching runs entirely counter to the secular, liberal, inclusive values of British society. It is actively harmful and destroys the confidence of affected minority groups. It is standing up for the right of minority groups (e.g. catholics and muslims) to make the minorities within them (e.g. homosexuals and women) feel oppressed, worthless and discriminated against. It is state-sanctioned psychological torture in the truest sense.

So HOW DARE these people stand up and say that their faith school ethics lessons are fair, balanced and helpful. They are an utter disgrace to the educational profession and those who teach in this way should feel utterly ashamed. What we need is a standardised, compulsory modern ethics curriculum that focuses on tolerance, fairness, inclusivity and building up the confidence of vulnerable people in our society - a curriculum that admits not one whiff of religious input and is entirely secular in character. This curriculum should be taught in all schools, irrespective of location, constituency or funding staus. Faith schools should be banned utterly.

Schools are vital to the propagation of communal values in modern society, especially given the corrective they provide to indoctrination at home. There really is no more important issue to our society than this.

717. Dawkins is third most prolific internet Briton

Comment #117672 by Cartomancer on January 29, 2008 at 11:06 am

Why have I not heard of nearly a third of these people before? Imogen Heap? Lily Allen? Danny Jones? Steve O? Do they get their internet infamy simply from people like me googling their names to find out who in the seven circles of hades itself they are? Well I'm not going to do it! I don't care if I'm so out of touch with modern youth it hurts!

I'm sure there must be a sociologist on hand to explain what this means. I would guess it's something about the individual's preferred media communications strategy, which would explain why musicians, who use the internet a lot for promotion, are generally ahead of actors, politicians and the like who don't. This puts Dawkins in a very unusual place indeed, which reinforces all the more why we treasure him so and need people like him so desperately. Still, it may catch on - I very much look forward to a time when you can't move on the internet for debonair sexagenarian academics with something worthwhile and uplifting to say...

Though I do have to make excited little whooping noises to myself that the sexiest man alive got in at number 35...

718. A Letter From Hell

Comment #117665 by Cartomancer on January 29, 2008 at 10:41 am

The honours list eh? Well, I guess there's only room for one old queen with a title at Buck House after all...

719. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #117648 by Cartomancer on January 29, 2008 at 9:38 am

Actually, since someone mentioned Much Ado about Nothing, and the subject of the vacuum came up in another current thread, my favourite academic book title of all time simply has to be Edward Grant's "Much Ado about nothing - theories of the vacuum in the middle ages"

720. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #117643 by Cartomancer on January 29, 2008 at 9:35 am

I've got a horrible feeling that he actually does think the earth is still at the centre of the universe...

721. A Letter From Hell

Comment #117638 by Cartomancer on January 29, 2008 at 9:24 am

Al-Rawandi,

"Civil Partnerships" in the UK are essentially marriages in all but name. They extend all the family, inheritance and other rights allowed to married heterosexual couples to their participants.

Calling them "Civil Partnerships" rather than marriage is just a patronising sop to the religious lobby in the House of Lords, although one that was perhaps necessary in order to get the bill through in the first place (would we permit it if women were allowed "civil vehicle operation licenses" rather than driving licences, or if left-handed people were to have "civil offspring" rather than children?). This is why the gay community generally prefers to use the word marriage in an attempt to publicise this blatant discrimination.

The only real hitches here are judicial ones rather than statutary ones. Basically if a company or institution witholds rights on the grounds that a civil partnership is not a marriage then it will have to go through the courts as a new kind of test case. Similarly, the situation regarding international recognition of various states' gay marriage policies is a complete mess at the moment.

But essentially we have it in all but name. Well, I say "we" - the chances of me ever getting to try the situation on for size look about as good as the chances I will become the next pope...

722. A Letter From Hell

Comment #117616 by Cartomancer on January 29, 2008 at 8:34 am

Oooh! Look at the sweet little semi-theist with his ball of philosophical mess! he's soooo adorable! who's an adorable little semi-theist then? yes you is, yes you is! Go on, push the ball to Cartomancer, that's it. Wheeee!

723. A Letter From Hell

Comment #117613 by Cartomancer on January 29, 2008 at 8:29 am

Oh come on, Omega is only trying to be civil! Stop being such frightful meanies to the poor dear.

He's such a sweet, fluffy little thing that I think I want one of my own! I'd put it in a cage and feed it biscuits and listen to Radio 4 with it on thursdays. Maybe I could get it some adorable little friends too, and they could all frolic and gambol happily across my lawn in their pen, beneath jolly, smiley summer sunshine. Then, when evening comes, they would all come inside and curl up beside the fire in their basket for a lovely bedtime story...

724. Math Religion Trouble

Comment #117606 by Cartomancer on January 29, 2008 at 8:17 am

MPhil,

I'm not entirely sure where your account of the objective, axiomatic underpinnings of reality contradicts anything I have said. Though I will admit that perhaps I wasn't entirely clear. Of course I believe that there actually are rules of logic and would never think to extend the concept of relativism from cultural studies into epistemology - that way, surely, madness lies.

All I was getting at is the fact that, with our imperfect knowledge of past societies, we must necessarily fill the gaps to the best of our ability - both in terms of facts and of posited causal processes. These processes are several stages of complexity up from basic logical axioms and must be reached through empirical rather than purely deductive reasoning. It's bad enough that our objective evidence is open to so many different interpretations and readings, but our cultural understandings of the processes which give rise to complex historical phenomena are also temporary, somewhat skewed, and subject to revision with the arrival of fresh evidence. It certainly behoves us not to bring in further obstacles to understanding by deliberately approaching the whole phenomenon with arbitrary criteria of "progress" or suchlike and awarding points based on what we ourselves find amenable. Perhaps this problem is a lot less prominent in modern philosophy, but it is not absent altogether and certainly was not absent from philosophy throughout its history.

725. The Science behind the Large Hadron Collider

Comment #117596 by Cartomancer on January 29, 2008 at 7:55 am

Yes, this is all very interesting, but what we really all want to know is when the cool sci-fi style hand-held antimatter blasters and particle disingtegrators will be on the market?

726. New atheists or new anti-dogmatists?

Comment #117592 by Cartomancer on January 29, 2008 at 7:34 am

Thanks for the kind words everyone! Though I do have to credit a certain Professor Dawkins for stating with reasoned conviction the assertion that there is no logical link between atheism and genocide - the rest is just fleshing out the point. And thanks to Al-Rawandi and others for helping to flesh it out even further.

Of course, the chances of any eye-rollingly crazy theist apologist buying this line of argument are slim - but we kind of knew that anyway...

727. Math Religion Trouble

Comment #117444 by Cartomancer on January 28, 2008 at 8:32 pm

Well, sure, I never said the Middle Ages were perfect! I sure as hell wouldn't want to live there...

It's an interesting counterfactual speculation as to what a different Middle Ages might be like in a parallel universe, but, as I have said before, counterfactual history generally gets us nowhere since we can't run history again with different starting premises. My job would be a damn sight easier if we could! I'd definitely be interested in swapping Socrates, Plato and Aristotle for Aquinas, Scotus and Ockham then seeing what they come up with in each others' oevre. Then we could swap round with Spinoza, Kant and Leibniz, then a play-off against Dawkins, AC Grayling and Bertrand Russel, then...

I'm not entirely keen on saying that the Middle Ages were illiberal when compared with classical antiquity - the example of Socrates does stand out rather, and the intellectual elites of both societies are similarly tiny and privileged - though I certainly admit that they were shockingly illiberal compared to what most of us have now. The caveat does of course apply that both "Middle Ages" and "Classical Antiquity" are exceedingly broad terms and admit of a huge degree of internal variety, both temporal and geographical.

I am also something of a standard bearer for the idea that the unifying, societal focus of medieval european thought, centred as it was around a church with an ethic of discovering one absolute truth, prevented such fragmentation of the intellectual elite into the rival schools that we see during late antiquity. That's something of a different argument however, and probably deserves a lot more time and dedication than it can be given here.

As far as casting ideas in their historical context versus rational examination of them from the position of present understanding, I think we're basically just approaching it from different sides. Religious people claim something is relevant for all time, and while you would disprove it from a modern standpoint, I prefer to point out that it has a very specific underpinning in a particular period of history, the basic premises of whose thought even they themselves do not accept anymore. As an historian perhaps I am more resigned to the fact that my thoughts are largely a product of the society I find myself in. Ah, c'est la vie...

728. Scientists want rewrite of Earth's time line

Comment #117397 by Cartomancer on January 28, 2008 at 6:24 pm

Columbus was Genoese, not Spanish...

729. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #117392 by Cartomancer on January 28, 2008 at 6:16 pm

Yawn... I think I preferred John on Radio Leeds. At least he seemed vaguely surprised to have his deep ignorance pointed out to him. When you theists have a decent champion to put forward against us, do give me a call...

"In America the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience." - Oscar Wilde

730. Math Religion Trouble

Comment #117381 by Cartomancer on January 28, 2008 at 5:49 pm

Aww... thanks. I shall remember that tomorrow while my supervisor excoriates me for having done nothing of practical value toward said thesis in the last two months...

731. Math Religion Trouble

Comment #117377 by Cartomancer on January 28, 2008 at 5:36 pm

I might also like to point out that the medievals really had no way of knowing just how irrational and unfounded their trust in scripture and revelation really was. To them the God Hypothesis was pretty much the only explanation for the existence of the world around them, and whatever they thought of the ontological argument or the first causes arguments, the argument from design remained a fairly compelling one to pretty much everybody until well into the eighteenth century. If you believe that there is a god who has all power over the universe, and that he has revealed himself in the bible (which, given the state of biblical textual scholarship, not to mention ignorance of other world religions, was also much easier to do back then), then you really have no choice but to take revelation as scientific data and fit it into your scientific worldview.

732. Math Religion Trouble

Comment #117376 by Cartomancer on January 28, 2008 at 5:26 pm

I guess this is simply the difference between what a philosopher does and what an historian of philosophy, or indeed any kind of historian does. Alas, from my perspective, it is all too often the former whose discipline reaches the public eye, rather than the latter.

Of course people need their narratives, even their five line potted history narratives of this sort, to make sense of the past. It just irks me that the narratives they alight upon are so shot through with anti-medieval bias and the facts are barely known outside the realm of the specialist. What the man in the street gets is "oh, so everybody was stupid, the evil church ruthlessly suppressed dissenting opinion and nothing even remotely interesting happened". I guess I should just write this too off as a product of historical circumstance and the lingering influence of post-renaissance self definition in european culture...

It's times like this that really make me wish I could drink alcohol!

733. Math Religion Trouble

Comment #117368 by Cartomancer on January 28, 2008 at 4:38 pm

Well, the specific comment about the angels on the head of a pin was meant as a joke - it is an enlightenment caricature of medieval scholasticism in itself and given the circumstances seemed appropriate to comment on. Nevertheless, my substantial point is valid - it IS a caricature, but most laymen think it did actually happen that way, and miss the underlying story.

The thing about medieval philosophy, indeed any kind of historical philosophy, is that it should be taken on its own merits, rather than viewed from the standpoint of modern critics and modern values. It's all very well to laugh at people like Aquinas and John Duns Scotus because they embroiled themselves in mind-numbingly complicated arguments about the precise way their aristotelian metaphysics applied to the data of religious theory, but this is taking their age entirely out of context and ignoring the contribution it made to later thought. Purely inductive logical reasoning in the Aristotelian mould was eventually and rightly abandoned toward the end of the Middle Ages, but this is because it proved insufficient for the tasks to which it was put rather than because society changed markedly. The picture painted by renaissance humanists of a sudden, brilliant shift from logic-chopping medieval misery to shining renaissance rationalism is grossly exaggerated. In reality the scholastic project evolved and changed in response to the increasing difficulty of explaining reality from purely inductive arguments. It is also a gross misnomer to assume that scholastic thought was either monolithic or reductible solely to inductive aristotelianism. It was neither of these things, but caricatured few-sentence histories of the period tend to obscure the subtleties, of which there were many.

It is the equivalent of saying that there was no political philosophy written between Hobbes and the late twentieth century simply because the theories of fascism and marxism have been demonstrated to be unworkable and misleading. We only know just how misleading they are because they have been tried out and found wanting - should we really be blaming the medievals for giving their all to trying out what looked like a good idea only to abandon it because it was wrong? We would not have an Ockham without a Scotus for him to criticise. We would not have a Dante without the ideas of Aquinas and Simon of Tournai for him to transform. We would not have a Kepler without the optical work of Alhacen, Roger Bacon, Witelo and John Pecham - not to mention the translation of Euclid and Ptolemy into Latin which occurred in the mid twelfth century. To use an evolutionary metaphor, it would be like claiming that there was no change in the sophistication of the eye between the development of light-sensitive cells and the formation of the lens simply because what happened later was far more sophisticated and impressive. The groundwork needs to be done before a significant departure can be made, and to assume otherwise is grossly unhistorical - Just because it is a part of the story that might be overlooked by those with certain personal critera for the definition of progress does not mean it is not an integral part of the story at all.

I would, of course, expect a modern philosopher to criticise the medieval contribution to his own discipline because it has been superceded. As an historian I would criticise Herodotus, Thucydides, Froissart and Roger of Hoveden on their methodology, but as a historiographer I know that their thought is a product of their circumstances. As an historian of philosophy you should do the same - the world's most intelligent people actually struggled with these problems for generations, that is all the value they need to tell us something about the society and its priorities.

The explosion in the quantity and variety of post-medieval thought that we notice can be put down to a large extent to the invention of printing and the strong, established position of the early modern University as a centre of learning - both which arose from medieval roots. Printing was a crane which enabled knowledge to flourish and travel far more widely, enabled peer review and comparison of findings on a wider scale. It also allowed individual scholars to read far more widely than before. With it intellectual progress quickened - it did not begin again ab initio.

734. New atheists or new anti-dogmatists?

Comment #117357 by Cartomancer on January 28, 2008 at 4:04 pm

Oh, I'm not actually suggesting that we really do use religious indoctrination to keep dangerous individuals from hurting other people, I just like the way that suggestion undermines the religious claim that without god we would all be murdering and eating each other.

735. A Letter From Hell

Comment #117355 by Cartomancer on January 28, 2008 at 3:54 pm

Hmm... maybe it's just growing up in Glastonbury that has inured me to the silliness of the new agers. I can sort of see what motivates them though, and it is a lack of rationality for the most part. A lot of them really are trying to escape from a world which they find frightening or stifling or just in too sharp a focus for their comfort. Wooly thinking is a survival strategy for these people - they simply don't think hard about the problems of the world because the conclusions they would reach are painful and confusing. I find this tragic and pitiful rather than infuriating. I can remember my schooldays vividly, when I saw every lunchtime that the streets of Glastonbury were awash with thin, addled, unhealthy-looking people darting from crystal healing shop to witchcraft emporium and pendant vendor to magic wand crafter. The look in their eyes told me a lot about the nature of these people - they struck me as the sort who had given up on reality and could only cope by packing their heads full of sparkling crystals, pseudo-celtic mumbo-jumbo and the feel-good trappings of a counter-cultural alternative lifestyle.

They are rarely ever arrogant and confronational, because to be arrogant they would need the conviction of their beliefs, and that would entail thinking hard about them and perhaps upsetting their happy little comfort bubble. I have rather more sympathy for someone who is in this condition of desperately trying to ignore reason than for someone who is arrogantly claiming that it supports his point when it clearly does not. I guess arrogance is a coping mechanism too, but it's a far less edifying one in my opinion.

I think a useful distinction must be made in this case, although it applies to the religious too, between the gullible and the advantage-takers. Gullibility is not a crime, but living off the gulibility of others is very distasteful to most.

Actually, I'm probably just talking about the ones who are really far gone down the road of new age drippiness. I suspect that our friend Omega has not yet reached the end, or even made much progress from the beginning of this path, and probably never will. I am still rather reticent to deny even sane people their small irrational comforts however - for they speak of personal insecurities and problems perhaps best dealt with in a more sympathetic manner by a trained counsellor.

736. New atheists or new anti-dogmatists?

Comment #117343 by Cartomancer on January 28, 2008 at 3:28 pm

Actually, come to think of it (and here's me being a good little scientist, trying to disprove my own argument), there is another and simpler way to use "no gods" as a premise for genocide. We have all heard the old canard that without gods there is nothing to stop us murdering, raping and killing to our hearts' content. We all know that for the majority of human beings this is not true, thanks to secular, inborn morality etc. But there are one or two individuals for whom it might actually be the case. We call them psychopaths.

A psychopath who does not care about human authority might very well consider the logical extension of "no gods" - i.e. "no superhuman agency to catch me out or punish me" to be a factor in mandating his killing sprees. Admittedly this does require the additional premises "no human authority can catch me" and "killing makes me feel good" and "nobody else's rights matter" etc. but it's not quite the same as my first two ideas.

Therein lies the one use I can think of for religion - the pacifying of dangerous mentally ill people.

737. New atheists or new anti-dogmatists?

Comment #117334 by Cartomancer on January 28, 2008 at 3:09 pm

Natura vacuum abhorret? Still quoting Aristotle I see! Nice to know your science is so up to date!

And I think we really kind of have seen the effects of the expulsion of gods from public life. Secularism isn't all that new you know - you can go back as far as Hobbes in the seventeenth century to see it in a fairly well developed form, and even further to witness its origins!

and Goldy, yes, in Stalin's case I do think it was largely to do with power. That's pretty much what totalitarianism means! I did try to suggest that there might be other roads to armageddon however, such as my first "homeland security" type argument. Let us hope this be not realised in the coming years...

738. New atheists or new anti-dogmatists?

Comment #117331 by Cartomancer on January 28, 2008 at 3:05 pm

I guess you could call the additional factors "attitude" if you want, though I'm not sure such a broad generalisation is all that helpful. I prefer "additional premises", which can be picked up from all sorts of places. In Stalin's case I thoroughly suspect he got most of them from his days in the seminary and his reading of Marx, but I am no expert on the man.

739. New atheists or new anti-dogmatists?

Comment #117325 by Cartomancer on January 28, 2008 at 2:59 pm

There is a crucial distinction to be drawn in the case of Stalin, and it is the distinction between atheism, which is a philosophical conclusion about the nature of reality, and anticlericalism, which is a political ideology based on depriving the established religious hierarchy of its power base.

Stalin was, as far as we can tell, both an atheist and an anticlericalist. But it was his anticlericalism and not his atheism which led him to enact his savage pogroms and genocidal attacks on the religious communities of the Soviet Union. The simple belief that there are no gods does not have sufficient inspirational power to make any human being commit acts of genocide - there is no logical path whatsoever from the premise "no gods" on its own to the conclusion "I must kill all those who believe otherwise". In order to reach this conclusion one needs additional beliefs alongside their atheism, generally along the lines of either -

a) believing in gods is so incredibly harmful to the believer and the society in which he lives that the mere presence of beleivers is a tremendous risk to societal stability.
b) belief in gods is so difficult to eradicate or render harmless with rational argument and peaceful means that the only way to neutralise the threat it poses is through terminal violence.
c) the rights of the individual are less important than the rights of the society to which he belongs.

or

a) Religious belief is a powerful psychological tool for building in-group loyalty and creating power bases from which to challenge the ruling power.
b) My political and ideological leanings are accurate, correct, superior to all others, beyond doubt and must be put into practice irrespective of whether any evidence turns up to the contrary.
c) The enaction of my political ideology is hindered by the presence of religious power bases promoting alternative ideologies.
d) The value to society of enacting my political ideology is greater than the cost in lives and suffering of removing any obstacles to its enaction.

Stalin was very much of the latter type. The important point is that none of these additional factors logically stem from simple non-belief in deities. Belief in the right kind of deities on the other hand can give you a direct line to any or all of them. Unless all the above premises, or equivalent premises, are present, genocidal pogroms simply do not occur.

One might say "yes, but Stalin's anticlericalism stems directly from his atheism". This is not the case - atheism is not even a precondition for anticlericalism. Calvin and Luther were extremely anticlerical, but neither was an atheist. Henry VIII and Mohammed were fiercely anticlerical, but neither was an atheist. All four of these men simply wanted to replace the established power structures with their own power structures, and to stifle the growth of alternative power structures that might topple their authority in turn - it's a matter of political expediency. 80% of the population of Sweden and similar numbers of the Japanese are atheists, but both countries are extremely respectful of their ancient religious power structures. There is simply no correlation whatsoever between atheism and anticlericalism, and no logical link from one to the other.

So when Stalin tortured and killed religious believers he did so primarily because they were potential supporters for rival political factions - doubly so given the sacral nature of the Tzars and the religious character of the old regime which promised a nostalgic return to the good old days.

740. Math Religion Trouble

Comment #117297 by Cartomancer on January 28, 2008 at 2:25 pm

Gaaah! Angels on the head of a pin! Again with the Enlightenment misrepresentations of Medieval thought! (slides into silent but fuming apoplectic rage)...

741. A Letter From Hell

Comment #117276 by Cartomancer on January 28, 2008 at 1:28 pm

I must say that if I was forced to choose one type of religious person to fill the world with then it would certainly be one very like our friend Omega here. If all of them were nice, kind, fluffy little things like him then our work would be pretty much complete.

Much less sport in this sort though. The frothing loonies are far more entertaining. Wake me up when a worthy target for my scorn rears his head will you?

742. Math Religion Trouble

Comment #117118 by Cartomancer on January 28, 2008 at 9:40 am

Duff, Comment #24,

That's precisely the sort of thing I am on about. Russell, great thinker though he undoubtedly was, grew up steeped in Victorian anti-medieval attitudes. Serious study of medieval intellectual history didn't really begin in the English-speaking world until the early twentieth century (Germany was only slightly quicker off the mark). Ignorance of medieval history is a self-perpetuating meme: if people think nothing worthwhile happened for a thousand years then they won't go and find out what actually did happen. The meme is spread at the most basic level by journalists of this sort, though they are perhaps not culpable since they carry the meme themselves. Atheists in particular are too keen to write everything off as coming under the aegises of the church and thus irrelevant, when medieval thought is just as much a foundation for modern philosophy as classical and renaissance thought, indeed, were it not for what happened during the medieval centuries there would be no classical thought for Renaissance thinkers to work with.

743. Banks are helping sharia make a back-door entrance

Comment #116947 by Cartomancer on January 27, 2008 at 9:20 pm

Don't worry, the tarot tells me that it's going to happen, so I know in advance! Or failing that, as a Mammonite, I could just flip a coin...

744. Blind Faiths

Comment #116944 by Cartomancer on January 27, 2008 at 9:06 pm

Yes, indeed you are correct - "Organon" is the Greek original and "Organum" is the medieval Latin rendering. The use of the Greek declensions had all but died out in the Latin west by the fifth century, so in order to fit it into the inflections of Latin the word Organon had to be altered to the closest alternative - I think this one was coined by Boethius, but it was almost certainly Cicero if not. Of course, the musical device and the set of logical principles use exactly the same word, since the literal meaning of Organon/Organum is simply "instrument" (hence the "organs" of the body are its instruments for effecting various functions). Thus the Latins did use "Organum" to refer to Aristotle's works (and similar works on logical theory, hence Francis Bacon's Novum Organum). But I can see where the confusion resulted.

You might have noticed that my subconscious preference is for the medieval Latin rendering of a word rather than the Greek or Arabic original. This is why I call the great Muslim occasionalist Algazel rather than Al-Ghazzali, and the others Avicenna, Averroes and Rhazes rather than Ibn Sina, Ibn Rushd and Al-Rhazi. I guess it comes from dealing with the Latin versions day in day out. Forgive my lack of cultural sympathy - in the context of Hirsi Ali's comments on how this can be a problem in the modern world it seems rather apposite!

(maybe I should come up with my own latinised rendering of her name too, just to be consistent? Hirsialia maybe? yes, I like that... "queritur utrum religio saracenum nociva sit rebuspublicis occidentalibus. Ut sic a Hirsialia ostenditur in liber eius De Infidele...")

745. Math Religion Trouble

Comment #116940 by Cartomancer on January 27, 2008 at 8:47 pm

Medieval Historian Hobby Horse Alert, skip it if you like...

He went straight from Pythagoras to Spinoza! Bah! This sort of thing REALLY rubs me up the wrong way. You have no idea how irksome these little illustrative histories in collected anecdote form are to me. They're almost always the same - choose the most famous classical proponent of a genre because they're the only one anyone is likely to have heard of, congratulate him on making a jolly good start to it all, then skip straight over the rest of antiquity and the entire middle ages to land slap bang in the early modern period where enightened renaissance humanists pick up the torch. Then carry on with a selection of the famous names from the last five centuries until we reach the present day.

I'll leave it to Goldy and Al-rawandi to point out how eurocentric this view generally is, but even if it is only a history of western civilization we are suggesting (which can be just about justified in narrative terms) there really is no excuse to simply excise anything that happened for the two millennia between the fourth century BC and the sixteenth century AD.

Taking this mathematics and religion example, we've got more than enough material to go on. How about the Neoplatonic schools with their weird emanationist ideas about the purity of number? What about the Venerable Bede's musings on the nature of time and number? What about Gerbert of Aurillac, the medieval mathematician who later became Pope Sylvester I but gained a reputation for dabbling in dangerous saracen magic because of his studies? What about Thierry of Chartres who tried to explain the Trinity with the analogy of the formula 1x1=1 (with the father and the son being the two 1s and the holy spirit, properly filioque compatible, being the act multiplication). What about Adelard of Bath's translation of Euclid? What about deacon Robert of Chester's translation of the Algebra and Almucabola of the Muslim Al-Khwarizmi (and, if he is the same as Robert of Ketton, of the Koran as well)? What about Robert Grosseteste's commentary on the third book of Aristotle's Physics where he theorises about the possibility of multiple infinities in the mind of God a good 700 years before Cantor? What about Roger Bacon's praise of mathematics as the root of all science and knowledge, both human and divine?

This is yet another flagrant example of the unspoken anti-medieval concensus that modern society still has not broken away from. It gives the mendacious impression that nothing happened during the Middle Ages as far as the transmission of ideas goes, and reinforces the stereotype that they were backward and sterile, when in fact the successes of the Quattrocento Renaissance and beyond were build on solid foundations and cultural experiments laid down in the medieval centuries. People do not add the five- or six- sentence potted histories to the beginning of their articles because they are legitimately trying to outline the broad sweep of historical change - that would be a valid endeavour - no, they do it primarily to lend an air of sampled erudition to their writing. It's a rhetorical trick, simple as that. It's saying "look at me, I can command a dizzying array of facts from across the span of human history about this subject, I must know what I'm talking about". And yet the layman takes it as a carefully researched list of highlights and perpetuates the myth.

Ooooh it makes me so angry!

746. The Science behind the Large Hadron Collider

Comment #116931 by Cartomancer on January 27, 2008 at 8:13 pm

Deep beneath the ground in Missouri, thousands of priests from all over the world are working together to build the biggest, least complicated machine in the world. It's part of the least ambitious religious experiment of all time: The Divine Creation Explainer (DCE) at Ken Ham's Creation Museum. These films reveal the religious questions at the heart of the experiment and what the priests hope to achieve once the machine is switched on later this year.

It's basically a gigantic neon sign which bears the words "god did it" in three hundred foot high letters.

747. Banks are helping sharia make a back-door entrance

Comment #116926 by Cartomancer on January 27, 2008 at 7:57 pm

As a devout worshipper of the Great Lord Mammon I am deeply offended by these banks which refuse to call interest payments by their true and holy name - they are pandering to the heretic and should be excommunicated from the global community of worthy Mammonites. The divine favours to their chairmen must be removed posthaste and a severe anathema placed on them forbidding participation in the midwinter festival of capitalist gift exchange...

How dare they take the name of the Profit in vain!

748. Loneliness Breeds Belief in Supernatural

Comment #116229 by Cartomancer on January 25, 2008 at 10:40 pm

The findings of the study seem to be fairly in line with common sense it would seem. But it is good to have studies actually showing this, especially with the religious making all they can of the argument that religion makes you happier - it's not because it's true but because it conjures feelings of social belonging, and those can be replicated just as easily by getting a cat!

I do think the title "loneliness breeds belief in the supernatural" is a bit misleading though - after all, there is nothing necessarily supernatural about imagined social relationships.

I must say, however, that on a personal level my deep loneliness has had related effects. In fact it is probably the main reason I frequent this site so often. As a postgraduate student in the humanities I am very lonely indeed most of the time - my work is entirely solitary now I am no longer teaching. I am sat in libraries on my own in silence most of the day, and when I have finished for the evening I live alone and go back to an empty house every night. I have few friends, and those I do have I see maybe once a week for a few hours at most. I am socially awkward and do not make friends easily, have never had a boyfriend, and to make matters worse being apart from my twin brother and the people I grew up with is very painful for me.

Has this made me more religious? Not in the traditional sense no, but I do tend to think an awful lot more about the cruelties of fate and circumstance in quite vivid and not entirely scientific terms. I talk to myself a lot, in the first, second and third person. I read novels and such and find myself identifying with the characters in a fairly intimate way, who I will then think about long after the book is finished. It would not be unrealistic to say that I live in my own fantasy world much of the time. And of course there are the ubiquitous social networking websites, online dating sites and internet-based oases of clear thinking where I can let off steam by tearing chunks out of any godbotherers unfortunate enough to get in my way.

I'm sure my counsellor and my psychiatrist would agree with these findings at any rate!

749. A Letter From Hell

Comment #116228 by Cartomancer on January 25, 2008 at 10:17 pm

Double Bass Atheist, comment #207-

Good advice is always more difficult to give than ridicule, and though my talents more than encompass the latter I am not so sure they are great enough to encompass the former. Nevertheless, I shall endeavour to help, for what my comments are worth.

I can see your dilemma. I am not sure that confronting the parents is likely to achieve anything if they are similarly skewed in their beliefs, but unless they are really extreme and might retaliate in some way against you or your children I cannot see what harm a firm but polite word would do. They might even be unaware that their child is doing this and perhaps even mortified that he is being so invasive, intolerant and impolite to others - a lot of religious families are nice people who consider this sort of proselytizing extremely distasteful. It really depends on what the parents are like.

What you might want to do is have a word with his teachers though. I'm guessing schools over there like to maintain a mutually supportive learning environment and would find this somewhat upsetting. 11-16 is a very difficult age to teach in my opinion, and I doubt my experiences with teaching older teenagers are worth much here, but were I informed that this was going on I would certainly have raised the issue in class and tried to explain the situation and the need for politeness and mutual respect (which, given my ardent disdain for religious nonsense in all its forms would be something of a trial for me. I can but hope that the teachers there are more stable and balanced). I suspect there are probably school counsellors or some such available if this has affected other students negatively. Again it all depends on the ethics and atmosphere of the school and its community of students.

It seems to be going against the grain to say this, but what is the view of the local church on these matters? If it does support the message of the propaganda then the situation is a bit trickier, but if they are genuinely respectful people and this sort of thing makes them uneasy then having a word in the right ear might make some difference. I hate having to go through religious power structures too, but until the churches are finally torn down or turned into museums it's probably a necessary evil.

Ultimately though, from your point of view, I guess the main thing is that your own child has not been adversely affected and is now aware that these sorts of people are out there. I wonder whether his friends are similarly resilient, since peer pressure is such a concern at that age and if this meme spreads too far he might find himself in the minority. To be honest I would imagine that unless there is some serious indoctrination going on behind the scenes to support the belief that aggressive proselytizing is a good thing then this will burn out like most playground fads.

750. Heath Ledger Death: Baptist Group To Protest At Memorial

Comment #116216 by Cartomancer on January 25, 2008 at 9:41 pm

Righton, comment #186

Isaiah 11:12
12 And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the FOUR CORNERS OF THE EARTH.

Revelation 7:1
1 And after these things I saw four angels standing on FOUR CORNERS OF THE EARTH, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree.

Job 38:13
13 That it might take hold of the ENDS OF THE EARTH, that the wicked might be shaken out of it?

Jeremiah 16:19
19 O LORD, my strength, and my fortress, and my refuge in the day of affliction, the Gentiles shall come unto thee from the ENDS OF THE EARTH, and shall say, Surely our fathers have inherited lies, vanity, and things wherein there is no profit.

Daniel 4:11
11 The tree grew, and was strong, and the height thereof reached unto heaven, and the sight thereof to the ENDS OF ALL THE EARTH

Matthew 4:8
8 Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them

(all from the King James Version, which everybody knows is the real and true version of the bible and how everybody really did speak back then).

Oh, and Shuggy, comment #184 -

I really liked Knight's Tale, but if you thought that was bad acting then you should have seen an eighteen year old Heath starring in late nineties straight-to-tv fantasy drama Roar!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118451/

(the fact I fancied the pants off him back then is entirely immaterial to this post, and any comments to that end shall be pointedly ignored)