101. What's the evolutionary advantage of offering your place to an old woman on a bus?

Comment #83141 by IanG on October 29, 2007 at 4:05 am

It seems to me that the answer lies in the long-term consequences of local, point variations occurring in a system that works by descent through heredity with modification.

For no reason other than chance variation, there came into existence one day, an ancestor of ours who just had an inclination or tendency to take care of the elderly in his or her group. This had the entirely unplanned and unintended consequence of prolonging the lifespan of the elderly in the group. This in turn meant that the elderly were more available to care for the young. Incidentally these elderly have more experience at raising young: they've done it before, so they can both do it more cost-effectively in term of energy and time, and they can train new parents, by example. This latter is a heritable meme. This meant both that the young were better looked after, and that the younger adults, the parents, were able to spend more time hunting, gathering, defending or whatever else was their main contribution to the local group, whatever that group may have been.

Over eons of time, this group has, in consequence, a slightly greater, and increasing, tendency to survive and prosper, in comparison with others that do not have this tendency. So this behaviour just happens to happen more and more in the population of this species, in preference to others who don't have the tendency and who now have a tendency towards a niche or extinction.

Then, eons later, we get language and self-reflective capabilities and we wonder about this. Then we get philosophers who invent all sorts of explanations, some quite convincing, based on some supposed, cognitive process of moral and ethical deliberation, that our ancestors went through to work all this out. Alternatively, another bunch says, "God did it." Which explains and answers precisely nothing and just shoves the question one step further down an infinite regress.

The fact is that these are both post-hoc rationalisations.

Once inculcated into our genes, this protectiveness toward the elderly will tend to express itself in any way that is available, including seats on buses.

The same process can be posited for the protection and aiding of the injured or ill, and may be a related behaviour.

Well, that's my take on it anyway!

102. War in Heaven: Hitchens Meets D'Souza on Home Turf

Comment #81071 by IanG on October 24, 2007 at 2:25 am

Meredith Bryan's summary is messy to the point of being incoherent and its style suggests no real atttempt to write something balanced, perceptive and informative.

The thing's a surprisingly amateurish hotch-potch from a paper of some repute.

The caricatures of the protagonists are so toe-curling as to cast doubt upon the writer rather than light upon the issues.

I thik I'll wait until I can see the source material.

103. God's honest truth?

Comment #79806 by IanG on October 18, 2007 at 3:13 pm

Interesting and encouraging. The Swedish government is to be congratulated.

I strongly suspect that, if this issue were to be raised in the UK, the government here would say that it was impossible because their hands were tied by EU law on human rights that would prohibit such action.

Unfortunately our government does seem to take a perverse pleasure in justifying any position it takes these days by claiming bizarre interpretations of EU law as matters of inarguable fact.

Tony Blair's response to Muslim complaints of harrassment and discrimination in the wake of terror attacks and inflammatory Islamic rhetoric was to assure everyone that he kept the Koran by his bedside and read it regularly.

When challenged on the subject of teaching Creationism in schools he said that diversity in the curriculum and good results against government targets were what we should be looking at.

The BBC has reported within the last few weeks that teachers in the UK are now nervous about teaching Darwin and Evolution because they are being warned that such teaching may risk being taken as offensive to Muslim school children and as being an infringement of their human rights.

How easy is it to move to Sweden?

104. Richard Dawkins receives the Deschner Prize

Comment #78824 by IanG on October 15, 2007 at 2:42 am

Sorry, I should have been clearer; I meant another Dawkins Prize, not a renaming of the current one!

105. Richard Dawkins receives the Deschner Prize

Comment #78816 by IanG on October 15, 2007 at 2:21 am

Congratulations Richard, on a well-merited award and on a beautiful speech. I fumbled for a while for the right adjective there and "beautiful" is intentional and considered. The overall impact was moving; it conveyed, for me at least, an impression of personal humanity, compassion and a love of the natural world, providing a context for honesty, passion and resolve.

Your comments on the hijackers as people were magnificent and your parallels of the mind of the child with the design of computers, which I hadn't heard before, (or had heard and not retained), were another tool to add to the armamentarium!

Maybe we should have a Dawkins prize whose value is stated as always being greater than that of the Templeton Prize!

Perhaps we could define it as the "Wisdom not Witchcraft" Prize.

Shall we start the Fund now?

106. Muslims tell Christians: 'Make peace with us or survival of world is at stake'

Comment #78187 by IanG on October 12, 2007 at 4:48 am

To those who have made some vaguely hopeful comments that this is a positive thing just think on this: why weren't the Jews included? Where is their letter?

This could, potentially, become a never-ending list of various faiths etc. However, I do believe that you are right. This is a most obvious omission, particularly given the shared Abrahamic God concept. So this says something important about the model of the world which these scholars are using to give context to their thinking.

Perhaps the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury will include this matter in their response.

If not, that will give us an insight into the context of their own thinking.

I think it also underlines the point that this conversation needs to take place between faith and secularity. Interfaith dialogue may have some utility despite the intellectual incompatibility which defines different faiths - these guys have no problem inventing reasons for anything they want to do so just give a Jesuit five minutes and they'll have a basis to proceed.

The main message should be that they can talk amongst themselves as much as they want, and we hope it might improve things, but there is no special status for religion in a secular society and they must start accepting that this special status has gone on for too long.

Judgments and decisions must be based on the foundations of reason and best available evidence, and upon individual rights of freedom and self-expression.

Life is a never-ending work-in-progress of finding better answers day-by-day, to the problems and puzzles that face us; it is not a journey towards any sort of utopian "End of History" state of perfection, whether this be Communism or Christianity.

107. Why Christians should take Richard Dawkins seriously

Comment #78170 by IanG on October 12, 2007 at 3:13 am

I think you are all being mean and horrible.

This is a lovely article on the arcane subject of Faireology.

Please, please, please, all say, "I believe in Fairies", right now, or Tinkerbell, .... whoops, I mean Richard Skinner, will fade away and die!

Sob, sob!

108. Muslims tell Christians: 'Make peace with us or survival of world is at stake'

Comment #78159 by IanG on October 12, 2007 at 2:55 am

Thank you Richard Morgan! :)

I may be though.

It's my impression that diplomacy sometimes does involve an element of stating the unavoidable bits.

Maybe: ".......praise it too highly,.........but feel that to place the burden of responsibility on a faith-based group and faith-based dialogue, for seeking solutions that critically involve the secular community, is unreasonable, unfair and would be inevitably doomed to failure."

109. Muslims tell Christians: 'Make peace with us or survival of world is at stake'

Comment #78149 by IanG on October 12, 2007 at 2:08 am

I think that our general instinct that this could carry some risks could be right, but I think we need to consider why. And it also offers hope.

Not all Muslims eat new-born babies for breakfast.

We should be prepared to accept that many if not most of these signatories desire peaceful, civilised co-existence. However, some at least will not have thought through what that means.

I believe that the fundamental issue here is that, a bit like Sam Harris's recent commentary about allowing one's thinking framework to be defined by others, we are missing the fact that this is a message being sent primarily from one religious group to another, despite the fact that Western society is organised by country not faith. We are a secular society.

The first response to this should be from Western Heads of Government and it should be explicitly secular. Fat chance, I know, given that George Bush has already intimated that the solution to Islamic Fundamentalism is a good dose of Christian fundamentalism. He seeks to reduce the radicalisation of Islam by increasing the radicalism of Christianity. Not smart.

However, I would like to see a response from all the key Western leaders that goes something like this:

"We cannot welcome this courageous initiative too much or praise it too highly. We thank the signatories who took the time to make a plea for something that moves us all: a deep desire for lessened conflict and misery and increased shared humanity.

In order to move this forward it is crucial that we each understand and articulate our underlying principles. Let us clarify the social and political foundations of our liberal democratic societies.

We are secular societies. If you do not understand that, the barriers to making progress are insurmountable. Many of the addressees of your plea are religious leaders. You have to understand that the proper recipients of your proposals are us, the elected governments of our citizens, and the citizens themselves.

By all means write to your fellow believers of faith but understand that, in our society, the Pope, for example, has no special status on moral issues. In fact many of our citizens regard his statements as of lesser value because they are founded on intrinsically unjustifiable faith and belief rather than on reason, evidence and basic considerations of morality. Note that the cultural equivalent of this last statement would not even be permissible in an Islamic society.

In our societies freedom of expression of the individual is fundamental: the State is subordinate to the individual and exists primarily to provide a secure space within which people can pursue their own desires, subject to not harming others. Support and protection of the disadvantaged are amongst other benefits that flow from this system.

So it is with you in our societies: people are free hold whatever beliefs they want, and this includes Muslims. You are free to practise your faith provided you don't interfere with the freedoms of others.

Now we reach the crux: Islam is an explicitly political system as well as a theology. This is incompatible with liberal democracy. We do not say this to foster discord. We say it because it is the century-long sweeping of this issue under the carpet that has led us to where we are today. And we are to blame as much as you. In the interests of respect for intellectual freedom, we have allowed you to become accustomed to the idea that it may perhaps be possible, peacefully for you to eventually seek conversion of our civilisation into a part of a world-wide Islamic state.

This idea is wrong; it is a false hope that contradicts the very foundations of our society.

So, let us be clear on a first point of principle. Interfaith dialogue to increase understanding amongst yourselves is admirable; you have our fervent wishes for the success of your efforts. Go to it! However, understand that your conversation is a subtext to the real dialogue which is with us, the elected heads of government.

Our second issue is with the risks of groups purporting to speak for wider constituencies. We do not claim perfection here, but our system is explicitly designed to give us as the elected leaders a practical and moral mandate to speak and act with authority on half of others. You don't have that. Again, it is a part of your system that there is no one formal leader.

In western societies we are currently exploring the implications of small active groups existing within larger, more passive organisations of people. Specifically we believe that the reluctance of many Christians to speak out against the more obvious excesses of some of their fellow-faithful means that decent people give cover to bigots and murderers.

It is our perception that this problem is enormously greater in the Islamic community.

Our conclusion here is that no amount of inter-faith dialogue will ever fully resolve this matter. More to the point, making such a dialogue the central plank of the hope for a new, more peaceful world is just conceptually ill-founded and self-deluding.

Members of faiths need to work together as far as they are able, but the real dialogue is that between faith and the secular society.

So, we have a question for religious leaders and representatives of all faiths.

Do you have the courage and belief in our shared humanity to begin that conversation?

Do you care enough?

We look forward to your reply and thank you once again for you willingness to reach out.

Yours,

Gordon Brown

George Bush

John Howard

Nicolas Sarkozy

etc.

110. Sam Harris seems like a nice fellow, but very confused

Comment #77528 by IanG on October 9, 2007 at 2:17 pm

Paul Kurtz of the Council for Secular Humanism has just issued considered comments that seek to offer a refutation of key parts of Sam Harris's argument.

A nice contribution from a man of unquestioned integrity and relevant background who is tough on the argument and courteous towards the person. No ad hominem nonsense here.

I don't know how to point towards the link, which I received because I'm on the Council's mailing List.

Maybe Admin can help?

111. Sam Harris seems like a nice fellow, but very confused

Comment #77441 by IanG on October 9, 2007 at 10:10 am

Having just returned to the building, as they say, I can see that I've at least managed to strike some sort of chord.

Thank you to those who have made kind comments. I'm glad to have helped to make someone's day better!

I don't post that often for a number of reasons but one of them is that my contributions often contain some repeated material and I don't see the point in contributing if I haven't got something additional to say. Particularly as I don't have the same level of interest in all the subjects that come up.

The stuff that I contribute on is what I feel passionate about and where I feel I can offer something additional of conceptual interest or utility.

By the way I took Richard Morgan's post as being complimentary. I read it as wryly appreciative, but maybe I just missed the point. In which case I guess I'm just not "bright" enough!

:)

112. Sam Harris seems like a nice fellow, but very confused

Comment #77335 by IanG on October 9, 2007 at 4:44 am

Oddly enough I find all this very encouraging.

As I've commented before, I think we show all the signs of having developed into a force to be reckoned with, both seen as, and aware of, possessing real and increasing political power.

This means two things: firstly that our opponents will become increasingly ruthless in how they attack us and will use all the tricks, dirty and otherwise, that we see in mainstream politics whether it be party-political or issue-driven like feminism and racism. Secondly we'll increasingly do the same and this will include a lot more internal debate that may begin to shade into rather more testy exchanges of the sort that are now emerging.

Objecting to this is would be as daft as complaining about gravity: it is a fact and it has positive and negative consequences.

For us I guess one of the issues is whether we can manage these internal stresses and strains by recognising the strength that comes from diversity and selection of a range of the best, without becoming more obsessed with self-destructive internal scrapping. In short, can we resist the temptation to descend into internal theological back-stabbing? Will we fall victim to schism or will we establish a broad church?

The latter option looks infinitely preferable. Schism seems to me to be the social equivalent of a form of speciation. As we know, the end result of that is that we end up eating one another, which, as Peter Singer observes, is not without significant practical and moral consequences.

If we can manage our internal variation in a robust, argument-based manner we will vastly increase our chances of occupying more than just a niche in the environment. That's not to say that some sub-groups might not go extinct or end up occupying limited territory.

The parallels are there to see. The British Labour Party spent years wrangling between hard-left, soft-left, Marxists, Trotskyites, etc, until one day they decided that the issue was about making a difference in the outside world. If we don't learn from history we shall relive it. (Please note that you should infer nothing about my politics from my choice of example!).

Sam Harris was offering an argument, an idea; a model of the world. He was giving a talk, not presenting a scientific paper. It was a piece of measured rhetoric. He was under no obligation to do the whole "one the one hand – on the other hand" thing, and to take twice the time. He presented his chosen views, with some supporting argument about choices and consequences.

I think the ensuing debate is the usual process of challenge and testing. What disturbs me is that some of the initial salvoes come a lot closer to qualifying as intellectually content-free ad hominem rudeness than intellectually rigorous ad rem refutation. Misrepresenting your opponent's views is good political sport and effective points scoring, but a point-by-point unpicking and refutation of Sam's ideas would have been more useful. Relentless clarification and challenge of our ideas is crucial to our success.

In the end, a variety of approaches is also crucial because different arguments and ideas appeal to different people, both the religious and the rest of us. Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett don't necessarily agree on certain issues for the same reasons: each may find something different that is particularly attractive or convincing about a concept.

For myself I believe Sam is making a crucial point if we are to think strategically about what we are trying to achieve. I've tried in the past to voice some concerns about some of the ways we approach issues, (the use of the term "Brights", for example), and Sam has captured, clarified and articulated what I've been struggling with in my own muddled way.

I do not argue that we make the use of the word "bright" a heresy: variation is important; different approaches suit different personalities and mindsets. However, I do ask again that we look at what this terminology implies for us as much as what impact it might have on those of faith.

Self-styling oneself as a "bright" carries a message. It says "I am clever, you are retarded." This is not just unpardonable arrogance: it is daft. There are plenty of really behaviourally and intellectually limited or maladapted people out there, who don't cleave to supernatural explanations of natural events and phenomena. They still manifest woefully inadequate models of reality. On the other hand there are plenty of self-evidently highly intelligent and compassionate folk who also believe in a version of Superman. Intelligence is not one-dimensional. Are racist atheists "brights", whilst people who campaign against the mistreatment of children and who happen to be Christian are to be seen by default as being in the opposite camp? Even if the latter take care, during their public duties, to keep their religious beliefs completely to themselves, which is entirely possible in Europe? Morality carries a consideration of consequences.

This "Bright" terminology certainly has some effect on our opponents, but is it the desired one? Does it move our cause forward? That's the strategic aim. Equally important, what does such thinking do to us? Richard Dawkins has talked about the religious labelling of children as being a form of child abuse. What are the moral implications of bringing up your own children in the context of domestic language that encompasses the self-classification of the family members as "Brights"?

Given that we humans seem to have developed a capacity for pattern-recognition and inference of cause and effect that is so refined as to appear a likely cause for its selection during our descent to the present day, shouldn't we be setting some realistic objectives relating to how we can encourage people to attach these behavioural preferences to better targets? Everyone sometimes feels the daft temptation to believe in that stuff: it's in our genes. It's just that as a group, we tend to exercise a conscious effort to unplug it or to abort the program before it gets too far into its stride. And have you never fallen? Do we have no compassion or understanding whatsoever for those who succumb to that temptation sometimes? Something about casting the first stone I think. Let's get our strategy and priorities right.

Attacking the unbelievable lunacy, unspeakable immorality and defiant stupidity of the worst bits of religious beliefs seems more likely to move our cause forward. If we were to start banging on, today, about lumping all religious stuff together as being of the same ilk and saying that the Religious Army will be faced by the Atheist Army and if you are not with us you are against us we would be about as smart as the way George Bush has approached the War on Terror and as likely to succeed as a campaign for the abolition of Gravity. I'm not representing anyone as saying exactly that, just that we seem to risk drifting in that direction.

All choices have advantages and disadvantages. And people will make their own choices as to how they want to define themselves. But brief definitions are also categorisations. I have moved from calling myself an atheist to saying I am a secular humanist and Sam's arguments incline me now to eschew the lazy temptation of these one or two word definitions. I will experiment with responding in terms of reason, evidence and scepticism, a disinclination to claim that I know things that I don't, and a morality substantially founded upon an evaluation of consequences, which precludes the possibility of my concluding that HIV/Aids and the procreational enslavement of women in Africa are bad but that condoms are worse.

Whilst I could also join in the quibbling over some of the detail of some bits of Sam's presentation such as going under the radar for the whole of our lives, I think his contribution is courageous, well-founded and critical to our strategic thinking.

He's making a simple point: we are just folks who take life as it self-evidently is: a natural world with natural explanations that should be experienced, explored and enjoyed via reason and evidence.

Defining ourselves as atheists or indeed as anything specific is to use the thought model of the world that our opponents use. It is a model that has imprisoned our minds since the dawn of history and it offers a hostage to fortune in the battle ahead. Sam says that Atheism is not a philosophy or a worldview. That's hard to disagree with. So, applying Occam's Razor, why are we adding something that is unnecessary to an evaluation of the issue?

The terms atheism and atheist will obviously continue in broad usage. To some, identification with these terms and their implications is part of what engages them.

Nevertheless, the use of these terms is a valid point for serious thought: important enough to debate with unrelenting rigour; too important to fight over.

By the way, I thought Sam's exploration of the issue of self-reflection and meditation was stunning and uplifting.

113. Do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in them?

Comment #70830 by IanG on September 17, 2007 at 3:27 am

Religion, as he sums it up, "simply isn't about facts."

What a succinct and unambigious statement. This makes my day too!

This is going to go into my archive of truly memorable witlessness along with the regularly repeated quote in the wonderful Point of Inquiry podcasts: "These stories sum up the immense challenge facing those of us who defend rational thinking, science and secular values. What one advisor to the Bush administration dismissed as the 'reality-based community'. Who could have imagined that reality would need defenders?"

114. Interview with Richard Dawkins and John Cornwell

Comment #68355 by IanG on September 7, 2007 at 1:22 am

I agree with Atticus_of_Amber.

Picking up on Dr Benway's observations about the problematic nature of short interviews, I think that RD's handling of this interview was pitch-perfect. He was at all times calm and good-natured whilst being firm on the issues. He didn't get diverted into spending too much time on any one issue – his comments were admirably terse and focused. The air of patience and bemusement with the incomprehensible workings of the minds of some people was so much better than getting testy, defensive or over-didactic.

Given the pitfalls of these interviews, (we've heard some experienced politicians fail to get it right), I came to the end of the interview feeling that Cornwell had found each of his points answered clearly and firmly and that it had really been no contest. RD didn't really need to get out of second gear.

An added pleasure was the delightfully gentle way that RD managed to highlight the doubts that any intelligent sceptic might reasonably hold as to Cornwell's intellect and trustworthiness, without ever crossing the line into rudeness.

115. What do these atheists understand of religion?

Comment #67404 by IanG on September 3, 2007 at 10:20 am

I don't believe he does. My understanding is that he describes the labelling of children with religions as a form of abuse, not the upbringing.

steve99, You are correct. Dawkins emphasizes that the labeling of children as being full fledged members of a religion before they can decide for themselves is child abuse, not the teaching to children the religion of their parents.

Thank you both for this clarification. Now that you articulate it this way it rings a bell. I seem to recall RD making this distinction.

So is this another example of Alibhai-Brown attributing something to RD that he didn't say and then attacking it, in the hope that we won't notice the sleight-of-hand?

However, isn't it a bit Jesuitic to say that it's OK for parents to bring up their kids in a religion that may include the belief that flying planes into buildings is a good thing, but that calling them "Muslim" kids is the real abuse?

I have to say that I am still not sure that the distinction persuades me that likening this to child abuse is useful. The danger is that the term child abuse simply becomes devalued to the point of uselessness, in the same way that Catharine Mackinnon and Andrea Dworkin ended up assuring us that the words "man" and "rapist" were really just synonyms.

Unless you really believe that calling a child a "Christian" child is as bad as sexually abusing the child.

And if you do believe that, then I have to repeat that I don't see how you can hold back from demanding its criminalisation.

I think Marcus Brigstocke's use of satire and lampoon is better: "A child is no more a Christian child that it is a member of the Postal Workers' Union."

Having said all that, Alibhai-Brown's article is pretty much intellectually content-free as well as being ethically bankrupt.

116. What do these atheists understand of religion?

Comment #67382 by IanG on September 3, 2007 at 7:09 am

I think the kindest thing that one can say about Ms. Alibhai-Brown is that she's commenting on something that she hasn't taken the trouble to read or inform herself about. The alternative is to conclude that she is guilty of the most unpleasant and calculating misrepresentation.

Most of what she says is in contradiction to what RD and others have said about the possibilities of spiritual experience, the value of the Arts and the appreciation of beauty and wonder.

She uses the well-established political trick of attributing what she wants to attack, to her victim, rather than dealing with what he actually says and believes. Then she attacks it in the hope that the audience will forget that the ideas that she is attacking came from her mind, not his, and the words that she is attacking came from her mouth, not his.

Nevertheless, as I have remarked before, I think all this is rather encouraging. We are now being taken seriously and our opponents will find it increasingly worth their while to politicise and misrepresent whenever they can. The cat is out of the bag. The model has changed and this new debate is not stoppable. They now see us as a real threat. We are dangerous to their current model of the world, which includes the obligation that we will observe the taboo of not drawing attention to the spouting of ridiculous nonsense. The spell that they have cast for so long is breaking.

However, I happen to believe Alibhai-Brown is correct in her criticism of RD for going so far as to liken religious upbringing to child abuse. I understand where he's coming from and I still think he's wrong to go this far.

Actions have consequences. RD has chosen to take the action of drawing this parallel. Either he believes it or he got carried away.

If he believes it then it has to follow that the State should make religious education a criminal offence and that offenders should be imprisoned and their children taken into care and adopted.

Before you say I'm overstating this and that I'm extrapolating outside reasonable bounds, remember that it is RD who has said this is as bad as child abuse, not me. If it really is that bad then it has to be criminalised and stopped. Now. Possibly along with anyone who tells their children to believe in horoscopes etc.

The thought of the State intervening in this manner chills me to the core.

117. Atheists and believers have got religion wrong

Comment #63808 by IanG on August 16, 2007 at 1:17 am

Well-said, NakedCelt!!

118. Atheists and believers have got religion wrong

Comment #63731 by IanG on August 15, 2007 at 3:06 pm

Or even a Turing machine!

119. Atheists and believers have got religion wrong

Comment #63702 by IanG on August 15, 2007 at 1:09 pm

Dr. Benway,

Yes, I do see your point that maybe he does just mean us.

I think ideologies as pursued by people do show tendencies to go for newcomers, but I guess we need to watch what happens. History suggests that it can get pretty personal.

Regardless of this, freedom of thought and expression, applied to generating the greatest diversity of possible fact-, and evidence-, based ideas seems a good start to gaining an adaptive edge and I do think we may have some significant advantage over the opposition in this respect!

120. Atheists and believers have got religion wrong

Comment #63688 by IanG on August 15, 2007 at 11:30 am

I am worried about the frequent attacks upon the style or personality of atheists - the accusations of being smug, superior, elitist, fundamentalist, narrow minded, and so on.

I'm most worried by how these comments trivialize the arguments put forward now by atheists. It's a fact of human psychology, that you can ignore a message once you've shot the messenger.

I agree. It's certainly a growing issue, Dr Benway.

I've got a rather different take on this article from that of many others, but I don't need to flog it to death.

However, as regards human psychology, when it comes to public reaction and messengers etc. I am personally more optimistic with every day that passes.

Social studies show that group behaviour generally acts very strongly to sustain the status quo. If one or more group members starts to manifest behaviour that is new for them personally, the group moves quickly to squash it and to return the individuals' behaviour to the previous pattern.

It's one of the reasons why off-the-job behavioural training is generally not that successful on its own. Once the retrained person returns to the group and starts to behave, in the group's view, in a new way, the group will tend to put a stop to it quite quickly and without any specific insight as to why it is doing it.

We can speculate on possible evolutionary reasons for this.

The behaviour need not be new to the group, just new to the particular individual. It is about the expected role of the person within the group.

We're getting attention from the broader group of our society because we are behaving differently and in noticeable numbers. It isn't accepted as our role to question, challenge or undermine faith-based beliefs openly. We are supposed to smile, to show understanding and respect, even to defer. However moderate we are, any attempt that we make to play out a new role will be seen as disturbing and to be stopped.

I think we should be heartened. I think the reactions we are getting are intended to stuff us back into our previous role. The increasing strength of the reaction is probably a good surrogate marker for the increasing threat that we are perceived to pose.

We are being paid the compliment of being taken seriously.

The snowball is already too big to stop, but the ride may get rather bumpier in the short-term.

There's a couplet in the song, "Biko":

"You can blow out a candle but you can't blow out a fire;
Once the flame begins to catch, a wind will blow it higher."

As I said at the start I don't need to do the interpretation of the article to death, but isn't Steel saying that there appear to be some fundamentalist atheists emerging? If so, are we really saying that there is no evidence or other good reason for thinking that may be true? Snotty, bigoted people occupy all walks of life. If they exist we should speak out rather than give them cover.

I do agree that there will be those who think we're all the same, just as there are those who believe all Muslims want us dead but, by and large, I'm quite enjoying the fact that, thanks to Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, Stenger et al, we are now seriously on the radar!

As a partially relevant aside, rather than your own comments, the suggestion that this is a contest between us as the Brights and the others as the Faith-heads may go pretty much unremarked upon, apart from amongst the cognoscenti, right now, but it may prove a hostage to fortune in the future, as the profile both of this debate and of its protagonists gets higher.

For the sake of peace, ideas based upon faith must be subject to our collective need for corroborative evidence.

Very well put!

121. Atheists and believers have got religion wrong

Comment #63628 by IanG on August 15, 2007 at 6:11 am

I enjoyed this.

It seems to me that we can structure our societies according either to how we feel humans really are, or to how we feel they ought to be.

In the former group we have western-style liberal democracies that are broadly based on the ideas of people like John Stuart Mill, Adam Smith and others. These societies follow a thought process that is something like, "Given human nature and its context, if we want to maximise the possibility of living happy, fulfilling lives, then we need the following sorts of principles to guide how we treat one another. Then we will have established a robust process to cope with the reality of perpetual change."

In the latter we have theocracies, some of which are secular. Fascism, Communism, The Holy Roman Empire and the Islamic State are all theocracies. These societies follow a thought process something like, "Given the known utopian state of existence, and the obstruction posed to its attainment by current human imperfection, if we want to achieve this utopian state, then we need the following sorts of rules and controls to eradicate bad human thinking and behaviour. Then we will have achieved the end of History and we shall have unchanging perfection, (Heaven), on Earth."

Mark Steel is simply reminding us that we, as individuals, can decide which of the two societies above we want to sound in support of, when we engage our mouths and pens.

He is correct when he suggests that sometimes, some secular humanists speak with a scorn for other people that sounds like, "Our views are clearly so right and tolerant that it's about time everyone had the right to be made to believe what we do or to be seen as brainless idiots, who only warrant contempt."

All movements will have a range of adherents and supporters. Steel is just reminding us how it looks from a different viewpoint.

It's not just religion.

Think back to earlier years of feminism, (a movement which I support). Extreme feminists said things about men, including boy children and even new-born boy babies, that rivalled the Old Testament and would have got anyone else put in prison. The more extreme they were, the more they were praised by parts of the movement.

Where have we heard that before?

We need to take our cause seriously but we really need to beware of taking ourselves too seriously.

122. Amnesty to defy Catholic church over rape victims' abortion rights

Comment #63085 by IanG on August 13, 2007 at 4:48 am

Oh my god. I apologise to Russell, IanG, Northern Lights and others on this thread. I cannot even call Benedict a pope. He's a Rat!!

Hi Veronique. I'm with Russell and Northern Lights on this one. Apologising is what we do when we decide to accept that we have either been careless or cruel in our dealings with other people. It is absolutely not necessary when we have had the courage to let people see how deeply we feel about something.

Also, in a society that holds freedom of speech as one of its fundamental pillars, saying things that other people might choose to take offence over is an essential part of participating in the debate.

Self-censorship is one of the devices that our opponents try to use on us all the time. That's why we get all this stuff about being rude when we've done no such thing. It's the same game as accusing of racism anyone who raises the most considered, rational and moderate question about, for example, immigration.

The aim is to get us to censor ourselves: to shut us up and to divert us away from our point, so that it gets lost in the smoke. We should just stay focused and let the other stuff blow through us, rather than press upon us.

If you're being guided by my response to Northern Lights about being called a vicar, that was just light-hearted fun…..and a good excuse for a few pints!

I'm a member of Amnesty and the issue of Women's Rights has recently been a key issue for the organisation. Amnesty is having to decide what its primary role is. There is the danger that it could get drawn into trying to decide on lots of issues that are ethically down to the citizens of a country to decide for themselves. Which is a bit too close to someone deciding that they are going to give democracy to Iraq.

The path to individual freedoms is through the establishment of principles of human rights, natural justice and the rule of law.

It is the absence of these principles that leads to anarchic savagery or totalitarian tyranny, and the consequent horror and misery of unrestrained cruelty and abuse.

It is the progressive establishment of these principles in human communities throughout the world that is Amnesty's campaign, rather than the general official endorsement of particular stances, however tempting this may be.

Having said that, the stance they are taking on this issue looks like the right one to me.

Interesting point to finish with: look at the wording of the heading.

Why not, "Amnesty questions the Catholic Church's stated intention to defy all standards of morality, human decency and ethical conduct"?

We hold the moral high ground, not the Church, despite their increasingly desperate claims to the contrary.

Let's remember that!

123. Richard Dawkins, TV evangelist

Comment #62944 by IanG on August 12, 2007 at 12:41 pm

Vicar???????????

Aaarrrgggghhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Northern Bright - how could you do that?

Anything but that.

I'm going to drown myself.

In the Pub.

As someone else once said, "I may be some time"

Have a good evening.

:-)))

124. Richard Dawkins, TV evangelist

Comment #62938 by IanG on August 12, 2007 at 12:06 pm

And it's no good a "Thinking" person like Dawkins trying to adopt the persona of a "Feeling" person like Kitcher for this purpose. There are two different constituencies, and a different approach is required for both.

I completely agree, Northern Bright. We need a full range of talents and preferred styles to be effective on the broadest front. My hunch it that as a group we may be somewhat skewed towards some styles rather than others. This is a strength in really dealing with stuff with intellectual rigour and with an instinct for implications and consequences, but it means there's a risk that we will just completely miss a load of stuff that is equally relevant to people who sympathise with our cause but experience the world differently.

I think we do also have to be on the lookout for faux complaints about our aggression and ferocity - since these can so easily be deployed by someone who prefers not to engage with us on the grounds of the logic of our arguments for the simple reason that they know they can't.

This is a bit more problematic. Clearly we can't just ignore misrepresentation, but I'm not sure we need to deal with it every time. We should be selective and choose what's important. By responding to the accusation of aggression every time, all we are doing is telling our accusers that this is what we notice most. It isn't, or it shouldn't be. Reacting just encourages them to prod more in order to get the response.

It is difficult. Remember that old maxim, "When you are up to your behind in alligators, it can be really hard to keep your mind on the fact that your objective was to drain the swamp." We need to remember that verbal alligators aren't the same as real ones and that our aim is to drain the swamp so that the alligators go extinct or go somewhere else.

Let's work on being responsive not reactive: we don't need to bite every time someone says we're rude and horrible, or worse. These formulaic and hackneyed accusations are probably primarily projections onto us of our tormentors' own deepest tendencies, given the track record of religion when it comes to aggression and nastiness. My concern is that fighting back against this means that we become distracted from our main objective of increasing the number of people who think that we and our ideas are worth listening to. We're wasting valuable time and energy. Worse still, it means that a newcomer or visitor to the arena becomes aware very quickly that the question of our behaviour and its defence seems to be a major issue. It's a short step from there to people forming the assumption that there must be something in the accusation.

If we really want to irritate our tormentors in return and also put them on the spot, then I suggest we just ignore any such accusations and stick to remorseless examination and questioning of the substantive content of what they say. Eventually our failure to respond to being prodded with the stick will make them really nervous, as we cease to manifest the behaviour that they expect and predict. Because that would mean that we aren't what they thought we were. Then they won't quite know what to do.

I suggest we largely ignore it and focus on the real swamp rather than the verbal alligators.

Sam Harris dealt with this issue beautifully and completely up-front. He began by saying, (and here I paraphrase rather than referring back to the video), "I want to tell you that some of you may be offended by what I have to say today. And I want to tell you that isn't the point. My purpose is absolutely not to offend you. It's simply that I have very deep concerns about where faith-based thinking leads people, what it induces them to think and to do to other people, and I want to talk about those concerns."

It's been said that two people with very different styles, who engage in discussing a topic, will each become convinced, a) that the other person really is from different planet and, b) that they are saying things to be deliberately provocative, rather than because that's what they really think. Neither of those beliefs need be true.

This is why we need people of all styles to formulate our message in different ways for different people. I wouldn't attempt to guess how someone very different from me would see something. If I couldn't ask them direct, I'd ask someone whom I knew to have a similar personality.

And, of course, thinking versus feeling doesn't mean tough versus soft! It's just using different frameworks for evaluation.

And this means that a large chunk of the population, including those who are sympathetic to our views, have not formed their views primarily through what we would describe as logic!

And their views are still valid and powerful. It's just that we might not be able to see how they got there. Even if they told us.

125. Richard Dawkins, TV evangelist

Comment #62925 by IanG on August 12, 2007 at 10:33 am

Hang on a minute folks. We're in danger of scoring an own goal in our enthusiasm for sharing with like-minded people. I do rather think that magetoo has a point.

We have a choice: we do have the option to see Lynch's comments just as feedback; just market data for us to evaluate; that's all.

Or, by being reactive rather than responsive, we can risk allowing our behaviour to change until we become more and more like what he sees us to be and doesn't like.

No, I haven't suddenly gone all New Age and mystic: we all know that, if someone starts off with the deep conviction that everyone doesn't like them, he/she will tend to conduct him/herself according to that belief, and the behaviour of others will adapt over time, in response. It will then tend to become true that, by and large, folks will end up with not much liking for this person.

Lynch is telling us what the likely reaction of some of the broader population might be to a particular way of presenting our case. He's inarguably correct. One choice is for us to say that we just don't care, so there! 'Cos silly people like him don't count with us clever people who know a brainless idiot when we see one. Dangerous line to start along. I prefer to believe that we need to generate the utmost variety in ways of expressing what we think. Natural selection will do the rest.

There are indeed some who do find RD to be a bit "snarky" sometimes (thanks for that new word!!). RD shouldn't stop doing it but we should know that it will alienate some of our intended interlocutors, who will consequently develop a more strongly developed barrier or set of filters that will be more difficult to get through. We need both Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris. By the way, picking up on joel-T, the Sam Harris video on "Believing the unbelievable" is exemplary in how to project warmth, reason, compassion and humanity whilst really nailing the issues. I recommend it.

So, let's just step back and take a breath, folks. We know what we think and why. It frustrates the hell out of us that there are people out there who really do base their lives on ideas for which there is no evidence or any other good reason to believe in. And that they want us to give their views equal or greater weight than our own.

We need to communicate. Like Kelloggs or Mercedes. (Cornflakes will never be the same again, Northern Bright).

Given the option, do we say:

"We really wish that these idiot faith-heads would just get a life and a brain, grow up and start dealing with the real world and stop telling us that we shouldn't do something, or that homosexuals should be ostracised or slaughtered, because the Tooth Fairy says so."

Or do we say:

"We have deep concerns about the general acceptance of the idea that it's OK, or even to be lauded, that people should submit to teachings on and accept claims about, reality on the basis of blind faith, when scepticism would be more rational and where there is ample opportunity to test these claims with hypotheses that contain the seeds of their own destruction. Deliberately fostering the idea that ignorance is to be glorified and that "mystery" is to be revelled in, also paves the way for deception, charlatanry and abuse, and creates a culture of cupidity within which a whole hotchpotch of other similarly fanciful and superstitious ideas, such as astrology and homeopathy, can flourish. The claims that such unsubstantiated wishful thinking and special pleading should play a special role in finding better answers to the problems that face us in a twenty-first century society, cannot be justified within any conceivable moral framework."

I guess we actually need both approaches. Thank God, (just kidding), for Richard Dawkins AND Christopher Hitchens AND Sam Harris, AND all the others.

Gordon Lynch's article is a great bit of free market research feedback. Let's consider how best each of us can make use of it in our separate conversations with other people on this issue that is so dear to all of our hearts.

Let's not choose to use Lynch's article as a way of changing ourselves into that which he suggests we may already be.

We are better than that.

Let's choose to use it in a way that makes us smarter, more savvy, more effective and more reasonable and likeable to those who don't much like us at present, without compromising on our principles.

126. Why Richard Dawkins is right on alternative medicine - but not when it comes to religion

Comment #62600 by IanG on August 10, 2007 at 9:06 am

And it seems such a tragic waste to me that all those religious people out there who truly believe that "God is the answer" and promptly stop asking the questions are missing out on so much. And they accuse us of having a negative world view!

Nice one, Northern Bright!

Have you noticed how often this "negative" card gets played? I have come to the conclusion that it invariably presages a stream of intellectually content-free ad-hominem posing that is actually unpardonable rudeness masquerading as unimpeachable refutation.

As in, "I believe in God/The Tooth Fairy/The Loch Ness Monster/Astrology, but you don't. How negative you are. What a bleak life you must lead."

These days I generally reply that I see their point but that we Virgos just don't believe in that sort of stuff.

Usually works.

127. Why Richard Dawkins is right on alternative medicine - but not when it comes to religion

Comment #62596 by IanG on August 10, 2007 at 8:29 am

It is almost a paraphrase of McGrath in "The Twilight of Atheism", so you may be mistaken.

Many thanks. I'll look it up.

On reflection, my parenthetical aside in my first paragraph may have been confusing. I'm not saying that Lawson misses the point by referring to RD as worshipping another god. He misses the point by confusing the fact that religious believers sometimes do good things for religious reasons, with the question of whether it can ever really be a good idea to hold the view that making decisions on the basis of something called "faith", is the best option that's available, particularly when this requires blinding oneself to the best currently available facts, hypotheses and evidence. Maybe that's what "blind" faith means!

128. Why Richard Dawkins is right on alternative medicine - but not when it comes to religion

Comment #62584 by IanG on August 10, 2007 at 7:33 am

I will take the charitable interpretation that, in suggesting that Richard Dawkins "worships" at the "shrine" of scientific method, Dominic Lawson is using stylistic allusion rather than repeating the mischievous nonsense born of cultural relativism that being guided by rationalism, naturalism and science is merely to be a disciple of another faith.

Striving admirably as he does, to be fair-minded and balanced, Lawson still misses the point.

The inner thoughts, beliefs and principles that people use for conducting their lives are their own affair. However, their consequential actions are not their own affair if they intrude upon and harm others. The issue is not that many religious people lead good and honourable lives based on their various faiths; it is that the previous taboo on challenging the foundations of their views gives cover to others, who are not so nice, to get away with murder. Thanks to RD, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and others for bringing this particular shibboleth tumbling down.

Although I am personally underwhelmed by all manner of faith-based social artefacts and ideas, my fundamental concern as regards the balance of benefit and harm arising from religion is not based, per se, on the peddling of Hell or on the preference of the Twenty-first Century Faithful for Iron Age philosophy and its attendant seminal books. There are many of us in the community of rationalism and naturalism who simply have a strong sense of the existential dangers posed by ignorance and its sanctification, whether this be coerced or elective. We have deep concerns about the general acceptance of the idea that it's OK, or even to be lauded, that people should submit to, and accept claims about, reality on the basis of blind faith, when scepticism would be more rational and where there is ample opportunity to test these claims with hypotheses that contain the seeds of their own destruction. We also would like to see an end to the current widespread cultural convention that people can be incredibly and intentionally rude about anything in the world, except for religion, where even the most measured questioning that gets to the key issues is labelled as unconscionably offensive and is classified as unacceptable behaviour.

Religion may well give some people a personal reason for doing good things, but religious belief is not a necessary condition for such actions. Anandamide is right to say that it doesn't take religion to make good people do bad things. However, religion does give good people special reasons for doing nasty things and feeling justified about it. Atheists who do bad things don't do them in the cause of atheism. Stalin, Mao Zedong and Pol Pot didn't kill all those people in the name of atheism. However, people do fly planes into buildings, mutilate the genitals of their women and children, and tell us that, in Africa, HIV is bad, but condoms are worse, all in the name of God. They also want to ban stem-cell research, not for argued reasons of any sort, but again, in the name of God, in protection of a posited supernatural essence for which there is no evidence and in which there is no other good reason to believe.

Far from achieving immunity, religion's retreat to the high ground of ethics is simply drawing increasing attention to the fact that, once all the more florid supernatural claims are out of the way, the only claim that religion can make is the impertinence that, without God, we would all be cheerfully indulging in theft, rape, murder and so on, without a pang of conscience, through being unaware that all this was wrong.

So, this is the last "gap" for God to occupy?

Religion's last, glorious and uplifting claim is that we human beings are so intrinsically degenerate that we can't possibly have worked out decent ways of treating one another for ourselves?

That's the moral high ground?

Now I understand why people say "God help us."

To put it another way: religion simply gives people bad reasons for doing good things. We don't need to treat one another well because some supernatural being tells us to and threatens to hurt us if we don't. Compassion, care, community and self-sacrifice long predate the creation of the God of Abraham and are to be seen throughout the animal kingdom, not just in Humankind.

We should not demean ourselves by giving credit to some supernatural being for qualities, attributes and social structures that are the products of evolution and our own efforts.

The idea of God diminishes both us and the incredible beauty and wonder of the natural world and the greater Universe beyond. We are better than that and we should say so with pride, rather than with the apologetic guilt that is inevitably expected of us by those for whom faith and guilt are a ruling duopoly, whose reign is based on submission, obedience and ignorance rather than challenge, enquiry and understanding.

It may take some time, but we're turning a corner.

The Emperor's "New" Clothes are………………disappearing.

Well, they've been around a while.

And they are getting a bit old-fashioned and ill-suited to the current climate.