301. Religion as a Force for Good

Comment #74911 by Russell Blackford on October 1, 2007 at 5:23 am

V.: I have to travel interstate a bit between now and Christmas, but at the moment it looks like I'll be here in Melbourne on that date, and probably free all day. Let's check again closer to the time, but I'd be pleased to meet you for a drink.

302. Religion as a Force for Good

Comment #74903 by Russell Blackford on October 1, 2007 at 4:32 am

brainsys, good comment, but I don't think anyone is denying that religious organisations sometimes do good. The point is that there has been a taboo, until recently, on pointing out the evils that they tend to perpetrate if given power. And when you look at specifically religious morality - as opposed to moral ideas that can also be embraced from a secular viewpoint - it's usually something unpleasant.

V., re your last comment, I don't know about that, but thank you for the kind words. I'm awed by all the good work I see you do for the cause of secularism.

303. MORE GOOD NEWS for US taxpayers

Comment #74901 by Russell Blackford on October 1, 2007 at 4:19 am

Hopefully, there will be some action down the track not only in Canada (as Bookman says above) but also Australia.

304. Religion as a Force for Good

Comment #74890 by Russell Blackford on October 1, 2007 at 2:26 am

As for whether the lack of belief in the Christian deity might lead someone to abandon Christian morality, that would surely be a good thing.

Take a look at what Christian morality has really been, historically. Look what has been done in its name. Consider the elaborate torture devices, built to create unimaginable extremes of pain, all to break the spirits of heretics. Think of the supposed witches and heretics burnt at the stake; the general distrust of science and reason; the relentless opposition to every humane advance in technology. Look at the miserable attitude to sexuality and sexual pleasure, which have been seen, historically, as instrinsically degrading and "animalistic" unless for procreation. Consider the unjust treatment of women, homosexuals, Jews, and indigenous peoples. Consider the irrationality, obscurantism, and cruelty that the Christian churches have shown for many hundreds of years, whenever they have actual power or influence, and then tell me that it would be bad to lose Christian morality. If the morality of the Christian churches is currently on the cultural skids, then the sooner it slides away forever into limbo-land, the happier I'll be.

We can do so much better than that.

305. Religion as a Force for Good

Comment #74874 by Russell Blackford on October 1, 2007 at 1:06 am

The problem is that religion is so often not a force for good. In particular, it tends to preserve an unenlightened morality that it is homophobic, misogynist, puritanical in numerous ways, solicitous about all the wrong things (such as the supposed rights of embryos), and not as concerned about actual suffering as it holds itself out to be. Worse, it often seeks to impose its morality as a public morality by lobbying governments to enact repressive laws.

If not for this, I wouldn't care that religion's truth claims are actually incorrect. If it were an innocuous or beneficial illusion - like the all the other illusions that most people have which are well-documented by social psychologists - then I'd say that there was no great urgency about exposing and challenging it.

Does it sometimes do good? No doubt. Does the good it does outweigh the harm? Well, someone might make that claim, but I doubt it. It's certainly not true in Western societies, where it is almost always on the attack against freedom, reason, and science. In any event, it doesn't have to be destroyed entirely. I'm happy for it to be put under pressure to reform itself, keeping whatever good stuff it has to offer.

Maybe religion will become something worth preserving if it is put under enough pressure for enough generations. I'm already prepared to think that way about some of its genuinely moderate manifestations (those nice Anglican bishops who keep getting mentioned) - but I don't include the whole range of what are sometimes called "moderates". Many of those "moderates" are not moderate at all, but stuck with a medieval worldview and a morality of misery.

Anyway, until religion transforms itself completely, let's continue with the relentless sceptical scrutiny.

There's no urgency about dragging out the good that religion sometimes does, since no one doubts this. There's a lot of urgency in pointing out to a whole range of audiences how much harm it also does, how it distorts rational morality, and how intellectually dubious the whole scam is.

306. AAI Convention webcam

Comment #74849 by Russell Blackford on September 30, 2007 at 10:53 pm

bayareadude, I'm sorry to hear you had a bad time at the conference. I have no idea what Dawkins is like in person, but let me just say the following.

Not everyone is happy and extroverted in such artificial social situations, and if someone seems aloof or whatever it doesn't necessarily mean anything bad about them.

I can think of people who seem incredibly warm and charming in such situations, but whom I know well enough not to trust an inch. I have also met famous people who are warm and charming, and really are nice people as far as I can tell. I have nothing to lose by praising people, so I'll name AC Grayling and Neil Gaiman as two in the latter category.

I also know people with a bit of fame who feel shy, or anxious, or unsettled and prickly, in such situations, and come across badly - but at least some of those people are kind and well-meaning when you get to know them. Way, way, way down the food chain of importance, I probably seem aloof myself whenever thrust into the limelight, since I'm inclined to be shy and anxious in such situations.

As I say, I have no idea with Dawkins, but you can't judge much from this kind of encounter.

You may already understand all this, but it took me quite a long time to ... so I offer it for what it's worth.

307. AAI Convention webcam

Comment #74695 by Russell Blackford on September 30, 2007 at 2:23 am

All fine with me, V.. CAPAC!!!

I seem to recall that you mentioned you're planning to be in Melbourne in early November. I should be here at that time, so feel free to get in touch.

308. AAI Convention webcam

Comment #74666 by Russell Blackford on September 29, 2007 at 10:40 pm

The thing is, this isn't a place where we can settle whether anyone's specific grievance against the RRS for how they were treated on some occasion. Maybe some of those grievances have merit, maybe not. That's a level of detail that outsiders are not going to want to get bogged down in - it'll have to be settled somewhere else or the parties will have to move on, maybe learning something from the experience.

As for the more general criticisms, it's a bit ... um ... unwise criticising people for wearing T-shirts. More generally still, there's no master plan for the cause of freedom, reason, and science. Different people will do things in different ways. Sometimes what X is doing, e.g. being an aggressive atheist, will cut across Y's brilliant strategy, e.g. demonstrating that all atheists are sweet and kind and never aggressive. No one would be wise to adopt a strategy that will work only if everyone else conforms to it.

Much has to be done by many people in many contexts. Many audiences have to be addressed, ways have to be found to gain the trust of all those audiences, no one can be totally across what everyone else is doing.

Once again, there's plenty of room for both the RRS and the Coffeehouse Philosopher Atheists' Club ("CPAC"), and for everything else in between. For Zeus's sake everyone, just cut your allies some slack. If you expect all your allies to act in ways that are perfect for your own masterplan, of course you will be disappointed; you'll also probably end up harming the effectiveness of your allies, and perhaps damaging your own opportunities to influence things.

I don't just have reactions to the RRS in mind. Much of the own-side opposition to Dawkins fits here, too.

309. Teacher: I was fired, said Bible isn't literal

Comment #74616 by Russell Blackford on September 29, 2007 at 5:39 pm

I'm a philosophical naturalist, but philosophical naturalism is not a starting point. It's an inference from the whole history of rational inquiry into the nature of the universe. It may be a premise for some arguments, but I wouldn't use it as a fundamental premise to argue against the existence of God, which would be question-begging.

If anyone can give me good evidence for the activities of ghosts, ancestor spirits, fairies, anthropomorphic gods, etc., I'll revise my opinion that they don't exist. So far, the evidence is all running the other way (Earth is billions of years old, no sign of Noah's flood, though plenty of signs of smaller floods, no powerful anthropomorphic beings discovered on Mt Olympus, no small Julia Roberts lookalikes spied flying around my garden, etc., etc.). But if that changes, I'll be prepared to accept that such things might or (depending on the strength of the evidence) do exist. Meanwhile, I draw the conclusion that beings like those are not features of the universe.

If someone gives me a good argument for the elephant-in-the-fridge god, or shows me how its existence could be tested in some way, I'll take it seriously for the purpose of how I live my life. However, if they do that against the background that I've already concluded that in-universe gods and spirits don't exist, then they'll need to explain why it helps to posit an out-of-universe, timeless, eternally non-interactive thing of a kind that doesn't exist in-universe. In particular, how is it more than an ad hoc move to keep open the possibility that their religion has a grain of metaphorical truth?

310. Teacher: I was fired, said Bible isn't literal

Comment #74505 by Russell Blackford on September 29, 2007 at 7:34 am

I've been writing over on my own blog something like the following.

If what were said about the orthodox god were sufficiently specific, maybe science could corroborate it. It might conceivably have turned out, after all, that modern dating methods show an age for the Earth which closely matches what one would expect from tracing back the genealogies in the Bible, that there are geological formations very like those that would have been caused by a giant flood a few thousand years ago, that the Ptolemaic picture of the Universe matches up to astronomical observations with no anomalies, that incontrovertible miracles take place (such as severed limbs growing back in answer to prayer), etc., etc. I actually find it very easy to imagine what the findings of science would have been like by now if the canonical holy books gave a literal description of God and His modus operandi. If the scientific findings and other observations had turned out a certain way, the existence of the god described in the Hebrew Bible would not even be controversial. Of course, that's not how it happened, which is the cause of the crisis that has faced theistic belief in the last few centuries.

Now that obviously doesn't prove the non-existence of a deity whose actions and so on are recorded in a symbolic or metaphorical way, and whose attributes cannot be understood literally, but only analogically. The God of the orthodox Abrahamic theologians can be rendered so abstract, and its properties so elusive and open to redefinition, that there is no way of falsifying the claim that it exists (but not much prospect of corroborating it, either). And of course, the dispute about whether this being exists has proven to be intractable, for practical purposes, precisely, in part, because there is no way of decisively falsifying the claim or dramatically corroborating it ... and no prospect of finding a way to do so.

That's because of the nature of the particular claim, not because science cannot investigate any "supernatural" claim. If the claim were about some less abstract, metaphysical being that interacts with the world in certain specific ways, we might well be able to treat it as a testable hypothesis. In fact, I think we can already rule out ghosts, ancestor spirits, anthropomorphic deities, and so on quite confidently.

At the moment, we live in a universe where specific in-universe beings with anomalous (godlike or magical or "supernatural") powers don't seem to exist. I'm pretty sure that if we encounter any powerful aliens they will be as bound by the ordinary laws of physics as we are, and will not be capable of anything like magic. I'm also pretty sure that there is nothing around like Zeus, Poseidon, Aphrodite, Thor, Cthulhu, Baal, the Rainbow Serpent, the Midgard Serpent, the cunning serpent that tempted Eve, or any other kind of supernatural serpent ... or like, if it comes to that, the anthropomorphic wrathful being depicted in the Old Testament - if we read the Old Testament pretty literally.

But a conclusion like that may not be of much use in discussing a highly abstract creator/designer that has only ever been described metaphorically or symbolically or by analogy, so it's difficult to rule one way or the other on the claim that such a thing exists. The most that can be said against it, when the claim is at such a level of abstraction, is that there doesn't seem to be any rational motivation to believe in the existence of such a thing, and to the extent that the idea seems to be psychologically attractive to a lot of human beings that might require a psychological explanation rather than a metaphysical one.

I certainly can't see any reason to think that this thing does exist, and I'd be betting massively against its existence if it were described in any particular non-metaphorical, non-analogical detail. But as things stand, the nature of the claim is such that there's no prospect of bringing evidence that would be decisive in falsifying it.

I think that's a problem for theists rather than for atheists.

And let me add that it's a problem very like the one faced by people who want to argue about an invisible, metaphorical, analogical, eternally elusive and non-interactive elephant in my fridge.

311. AAI Convention webcam

Comment #74464 by Russell Blackford on September 29, 2007 at 2:12 am

Corylus:

I would go for that Russell. Must say though, that I like to do some of my philosophising in pubs as well.

312. AAI Convention webcam

Comment #74419 by Russell Blackford on September 28, 2007 at 5:44 pm

I think there's room for the RRS, and you won't see me criticising them. I also think there's room for refined, gentle COFFEE HOUSE PHILOSOPHER ATHEISTS, like me and anyone else who posts here and meets the description (maybe we should form a club). I certainly hope there is. It doesn't have to be one thing or the other.

There's also room for criticism of both groups - criticism is healthy - but, as I see things, there's no room to turn it into an internal war.

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

Comment #74357 by Russell Blackford on September 28, 2007 at 8:18 am

Hmmm, one gets the gist of Hitchens' meaning but I'm not clear whether in those passages he means "canonical" where he writes "synoptic" or whether in one case he does actually mean "gnostic". Of course, it's not an error that's fatal to the book's overall argument or even to the main point he's making here.

It's only human to make a few slips like this, and they should normally be picked up in the editorial process. I was horrified by the mistake that I cited from Wertheim, though. It really is quite extraordinary that she not only made the mistake (and another passage shows she said what she did deliberately), but that something which goes against what I'd consider common knowledge among literary people was never picked up in editing.

Oh, and thanks V. :)

314. AAI Convention webcam

Comment #74340 by Russell Blackford on September 28, 2007 at 7:33 am

Hey, I'd wear that T-shirt:

COFFEE HOUSE PHILOSOPHER ATHEIST

315. Teacher: I was fired, said Bible isn't literal

Comment #74330 by Russell Blackford on September 28, 2007 at 6:44 am

epeeist:

Have you read any of Imre Lakatos' works? I think he gets closer on this.

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

Comment #74267 by Russell Blackford on September 28, 2007 at 2:22 am

I agree that Hitchens gets the business about the synoptic gospels garbled (though maybe be just used the wrong word - "canonical", perhaps? - I can't recall whether it's that simple an error). He also slightly garbles Kant's response to the ontological argument. I don't think anything turns on either error, because in both cases he is trying to make a point that's essentially right, but it is annoying. I'm also conscious that if it were someone putting a view that I was biased against I'd probably pounce on it ... we all have biases and it's difficult to be totally evenhanded. While I often feel tempted to let people like Hitchens off the hook, I really jumped down Margaret Wertheim's throat a few years back when she claimed that the first verse of the Bible commences "In the beginning was the Word":

http://www.users.bigpond.com/russellblackford/wertheim.htm

This is, of course, the opening of St John's gospel, so not even the first verse of the NT.

Mind you, it's a more egregious error than any that I've seen from any of the New Atheists.

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

Comment #74263 by Russell Blackford on September 28, 2007 at 2:09 am

No, I haven't yet read Eifelheim - though I will, as it was one of this year's Hugo nominated novels. To my shame, the only one I've caught up with so far is Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End. I was thinking of Egan and Gibson because of particular post-Christian sensibilities in their work (though only Egan is explicitly anti-religious); however, it's also true that science fiction has engaged more directly with religion, sometimes sympathetically. A Canticle for Leibowitz is a good example, of many.

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

Comment #74250 by Russell Blackford on September 28, 2007 at 1:28 am

On reflection, I can see that my suggestions wouldn't work for this course, particularly after seeing CHeard's new post. I was thinking that such a course should introduce some "post-Christian" worldviews, but that would raise issues that could overshadow the rest of the entire course (and I've just been thinking of the all the other worldviews that would have to get a look-in, like Marxism, post-structuralism, etc.).

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

Comment #74242 by Russell Blackford on September 27, 2007 at 11:24 pm

Complaints, complaints. I can't see anything. *angel smiley*

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

Comment #74237 by Russell Blackford on September 27, 2007 at 11:16 pm

CHeard, I actually think that Letter to a Christian Nation is a better book than The End of Faith. Perhaps it is less rich, but it is also more focused and less confusing - people all too often seem to be distracted by what Harris has to say about Buddhism, utilitarianism, and so on, and I think he is partly responsible for this. While these discussions are interesting and lucid, they are rather inconclusive and tend to eat up the main argument.

If I were going to recommend something to provide a secular alternative, I'd probably choose one of the books by Peter Singer - not necessarily Practical Ethics, maybe one of the more specifically-focused books. Or for something completely different, Richard Garner's Beyond Morality.

It would be good to see the contemporary cyber-sensibility reflected in such a course. Maybe some Greg Egan stories or William Gibson's Pattern Recognition.

321. Polygamist Leader Convicted in Utah

Comment #74230 by Russell Blackford on September 27, 2007 at 9:14 pm

BAEOZ, I don't know very much about Deakin's philosophy program - I suspect that it may be more mixed up with interdisciplinary stuff than you'd find in a more traditional philosophy department, and would probably have an emphasis on Continental philosophy.

There's an argument that Freud is really of more interest to philosophers (and literary theorists) than to psychologists these days ... but no, he's not someone whose writings you'd encounter much in a place like Monash's Philosophy Department, which is very much in the analytic philosophy tradition.

Freud might bob up in a specialised course from time to time, but I can't actually think of anywhere at all on the undergraduate curriculum where much would be said about him. There's another organisational unit in the Faculty of Arts, though, the Centre for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies (it's a very interesting place, actually). The guys and gals there do a lot of Continental philosophy, and they might give Freud more of a run.

322. Teacher: I was fired, said Bible isn't literal

Comment #74219 by Russell Blackford on September 27, 2007 at 6:31 pm

This thread has certainly taken a turn for the better. Interesting discussion guys.

There may be theoretical problems with Popper's work, but it's interesting to me to see how intuitive scientists find it. When I talk to working scientists about how they understand what they are doing, they tend to come out with Popperian-sounding falsificationist language. It's the philosophical theory about science that real scientists often seem to think "gets it".

Looking at science from outside, I don't think that everything they do is really like this, and I do think that science proves things all the time. I use words like "proof" in an everyday sense, or maybe in a lawyer's sense (which still has to be everyday enough to be understood by juries). Proving a fact doesn't necessarily mean showing that it is deductively entailed from incontrovertible premises, like a sound argument in deductive logic; it just means providing convincing evidence (to some standard of satisfaction, such as beyond reasonable doubt, or on the balance of probabilities). By this point, science has provided convincing evidence of many things. E.g. we have convincing evidence that the Earth revolves around the Sun and rotates on its axis, that the Solar System is billions of years old, that Pluto exists, that life has evolved over hundreds of millions of years, and so on. [Edit: I now see that roberts has already made a comment contrasting the legal and mathemetical concepts of proof.]

But all that said, Popper obviously had a huge part of the story of science right, judging by the reactions of working scientists, such as that of oxytocin above. Scientists really do seem to find that it comes naturally to think hypothetico-inductively and to be modest about what they are achieving - thinking of it as eliminating conjectures. Popper's work deserves to have more prestige outside of science faculties.

323. Why are we Muslims so self-destructive?

Comment #73988 by Russell Blackford on September 27, 2007 at 3:12 am

Reading Ms Alibhai-Brown's article again, what is most moving about it, for me, is the picture she presents of herself as someone who is at the end of her tether and has actually given up hope. I didn't like that other piece she wrote that was republished here, but the world needs people like this - moderate, educated, "refined" (as she puts it) Muslims - to have hope and enthusiasm, and to be working away at transforming their culture into something more at home with modernity.

324. Polygamist Leader Convicted in Utah

Comment #73942 by Russell Blackford on September 26, 2007 at 5:32 pm

walk, in some Western sub-cultures (science fiction fandom being the one that I'm familiar with) various kinds of polyamorous arrangements are well-accepted and, if not exactly the norm, at least quite common. Do these arrangements work out in the long term? Well, I'll just say that the one that works out permanently always seems to be one that you hear about second or third hand. :)

But lots of conventional couples don't stay together for the long term, either. Serial monogamy has become the social norm. It would be good to have some data, but my anecdotal observation is that people who get into more "exotic" arrangements would be ill-advised to think it will work permanently; but they would be well-advised to think that it might work out as well as many good conventional relationships do ... i.e., if you judge "good" on the basis of "lasts for awhile (like years rather than weeks or months)", "gives people happiness at the time", and "doesn't leave too much of a trainwreck behind". So, I'm all for more social and political acceptance of unconventional relationships tailored to the needs of the people involved ... and one of the obstacles to these relationships working out long term is that they usually have to be masked somewhat outside the immediate social sub-culture where the people hang out - e.g. employers are not going to want to know. My point is that they work in a way that is totally different from institutionalised polygamy which really is a bad thing, pretty much unequivocally as far as I can see.

I'm not sure why I keep blathering about all this, except that I'm teaching a philosophy of sex course this semester and it's kind of on my mind - hopefully, my students are all capable of blathering in this way by now, having been reading their Hrdy and so on.

And of course, journalists will make this court case sound as if it was about polygamy, as with the headline: "Polygamist Leader Convicted in Utah". In fact, it wasn't about polygamy at all, but about the repeated rape of a very young, vulnerable person, and about said religious leader being an accomplice in that rape. This should really be the focus.

325. The Saudi connection that belittles Britain

Comment #73779 by Russell Blackford on September 26, 2007 at 6:41 am

Damien White:

The sooner we move to solar power and electric/hydrogen cars, and therefore the sooner money stops flowing into the Middle East, the better off we'll all be.

326. Polygamist Leader Convicted in Utah

Comment #73777 by Russell Blackford on September 26, 2007 at 6:36 am

Peacebuponme, I totally agree, although I do think that institutionalised polgyny tends not to be good for women, children, or low status men. There seems to be some evidence for the first two and the first and third stand to reason in any event.

What particular groups of individuals do by choice in a liberal society is another matter - for a particular threesome, or whatever, it might be best, and it should be their decision if they are all old enough to know what they are doing. I'm not in favour of monogamous values being enforced on everyone by the law regardless of the quirky feelings of individuals.

But once you turn polygamy into the norm rather than an unusual option from a liberal society's sexual cafetaria (with polyandry being just as accepted, as an option, as polygyny), you do create problems, among them that, as shaunfletcher says the relationships are likely to become unchosen and exploitative. With instutionalised polygyny, you also get extreme and dehumanising public puritanism and even misogyny because women are in relationships that are not to their benefit, and must be constrained to stay in them, e.g. by banning public sexual display or anything that can be construed as such (hide those pretty faces, ladies, hide that hair ... that body shape!), preventing social relations with men outside the family, etc.

So, I'm all for flexibility: from personal observation, lots of people can find ourselves in love with two people at once, and the more rational of them often find creative ways to work through it without too much moralising (though with varied degrees of success). But institutionalised polygynous social norms are something quite different and are bad news.

However, the bottom line in this case is that the rights and wrongs of non-monogamous arrangements didn't have to be settled. The case was about non-consensual sex - inflicted on someone who was little more than a child - not some nice, consensual poly thing.

327. Polygamist Leader Convicted in Utah

Comment #73772 by Russell Blackford on September 26, 2007 at 6:08 am

^There's a fair bit of evidence that we are not attracted to people with whom we grew up as young children - seems to be innate. That's a reasonable proxy for not being sexually attracted to siblings ... hence we tend to find the idea of sex with our siblings repulsive or off-putting, even if we haven't been specifically taught to, and no matter how attractive they may be.

I gather that this theory is not completely uncontroversial, so don't take what I've said as ... erm ... gospel. But it seems plausible to me. It seems to fit the facts, including the universality of moralised distaste for sibling incest, and any psychological mechanism that cut down on sibling incest would have had advantages for reproductive fitness back in the EEA.

328. Why are we Muslims so self-destructive?

Comment #73737 by Russell Blackford on September 26, 2007 at 3:25 am

I think it's only "au revoir", not "adieu" ... at least I hope it is. RM, you do have a valued part to play here, even if this thread went a bit haywire.

As for the pseudonym issue, I've made a personal decision to comment under my own name, but I probably wouldn't have done so if my personal circumstances had been much different. Unlike many, I don't have too much to fear from prospective employers and the like. Even if I ever say anything so outrageous that it makes me unemployable, I have my own projects and enough "screw you" money to survive. I also have no reason to keep up too respectable a front to the world. Many others have good reason to be anonymous and to enjoy the frankness that it enables. Still others may simply prefer anonymity for their own reasons. It's all good.

329. Why are we Muslims so self-destructive?

Comment #73661 by Russell Blackford on September 25, 2007 at 6:46 pm

I fear that I contributed to what happened above with my comment that she was brave for saying what she did ... although it's true, and she does have my respect for it. (Doesn't mean I agree with any of her other views, of course.)

330. Teacher: I was fired, said Bible isn't literal

Comment #73660 by Russell Blackford on September 25, 2007 at 6:41 pm

Clearly he was within his rights to say that the Genesis myth is not to be interpreted literally. If he was sacked just for saying that, it's outrageous.

I suggest, though, that we be a bit cautious about this. Often, with these sorts of cases, it turns out that there's more dirt that we don't know about. E.g., what if it turned out that he had a track record not just of expressing his views on various things but also of being abusive to students with different views from his, or whatever, and this complaint was the last straw?

Employers are usually unwilling to drag out the dirt in public and have to worry about possible issues of libel or contempt, so what's in the media reports is not the same as what will come out in court proceedings if the issue ever goes that far. Of course, most cases settle out of court so often the truth is never revealed to the public. Indeed, settlement documents often constrain the parties not to say anything about it.

I'm emphatically not saying that this guy did in fact do anything wrong (I have no idea); I'm just reminding us all of the unfortunate, messy facts of life with unfair dismissal cases. When they are conducted through the media, we often get a very misleading impression of the facts. (I've practised in this area of law, and have represented both employers and employees, so I'm not just making this stuff up.)

331. Root and Branch

Comment #73648 by Russell Blackford on September 25, 2007 at 5:45 pm

Corylus, Hacking is right that it was a genuine research program. However, it ran out of steam in the 19th century and has produced nothing positive since. The Kitcher book describes this in some detail, and very lucidly.

332. Why are we Muslims so self-destructive?

Comment #73439 by Russell Blackford on September 25, 2007 at 2:20 am

The worst thing that's happened to me so far from taking a stand on controversial issues in internet forums - using my real name - is the occasional odd email, such as someone I don't know sending me this link today:
http://www.FrankHatchiii.com

I thought it was a parody at first, but I now think it is meant to be a real (crackpottish) warning of the fate that awaits me in the next life. It's hard, sometimes, to know how to take these things.

333. The Saudi connection that belittles Britain

Comment #73376 by Russell Blackford on September 24, 2007 at 10:21 pm

You'd think the police in a liberal democracy like the UK would have better things to do than try to suppress freedom of speech - but what do I know?

334. Why are we Muslims so self-destructive?

Comment #73373 by Russell Blackford on September 24, 2007 at 10:16 pm

It's not reasonable to expect someone like this to slough off her entire acculturation like a snake shedding its skin. She's eloguent and brave. Good for her.

335. Root and Branch

Comment #73363 by Russell Blackford on September 24, 2007 at 9:46 pm

I like this article, and defended it to some extent over at Jason Rosenhouse's blog. But I could have done without the reflex, almost ritual, anti-Dawkins comments. The comments about Harris and Hitchens bother me, too, though those two writers are far less gentle than Dawkins and perhaps can't complain too much if somebody finds their approaches to the debate about religion "arrogant". For myself, I dislike that word, as applied to them ... and more generally I think it's seldom a very useful description in the many contexts in which it gets thrown around as a bit of ad hominem biffo.

Other than that, I think that Hacking's article is a rich and useful piece of writing.

The title, "Root and Branch", might not be optimal, though, when your surname is "Hacking".

336. Talking Action Figure Jesus

Comment #73341 by Russell Blackford on September 24, 2007 at 7:34 pm

Oh dear.

Actually, Cartomancer, I have an action figure of Einstein sitting on top of my computer to inspire me - given to me by one of my dearest friends.

There's also a silver Gandalf-like figure from another treasured friend. I think that Jesus would make it the wrong sort of trinity.

337. Is 'Do Unto Others' Written Into Our Genes?

Comment #73112 by Russell Blackford on September 24, 2007 at 6:32 am

I'm now half way through The Happiness Hypothesis. The full theory lies ahead, but I must say that I'm enjoying Haidt's debunking of both the Hollywood mythology that surrounds romantic love and the irrational prejudice against sexuality, sexual love, and the body that has been such a feature of the Western tradition, especially under the tyranny of Christian thought. He makes some nice snippy comments about how sexual passion subverts authority and parental moralism, and runs counter to religionist assurances that we are not really animals but immortal spirits of some kind. Nice. And plausible ... whether or not this is the full story of why religious authority is so hostile to sex.

Regardless of what I am going to end up thinking of the total theory, there's a lot of good stuff to think about in this book.

338. Taking exception to Jake

Comment #73083 by Russell Blackford on September 24, 2007 at 4:14 am

For those of you who might be able to put aside a little bit of time, have library access, and don't mind reading something just a bit technical in places, Yon Fishman's new article in the journal Science and Education (which he refers to above on this thread) is great. I've just read it, and I take off my proverbial hat to him.

In addition to the merit of its main argument, the article provides some of the best discussion of The God Delusion that I've seen to date.

339. Religion advances despite science (and thanks to Dawkins)

Comment #73019 by Russell Blackford on September 23, 2007 at 8:44 pm

^Exactly. I know it's been before, but there's this double standard: you can subject whatever real or fancied evils you like to the most robust criticism you like ... unless it's religion that's your target. The double standard has to change.

340. Crisis of faith in first secular school

Comment #72834 by Russell Blackford on September 23, 2007 at 5:43 am

No worries, Richard.

I'm not going to write to the British govt all the way from Australia (I can't see it doing much good if people from other countries stick their noses in), but I'm glad to have an understanding of the problem and the government's response. They do sound like a right bunch of little tin theocrats, don't they?

341. Crisis of faith in first secular school

Comment #72806 by Russell Blackford on September 23, 2007 at 2:43 am

^Thank you. :)

342. Crisis of faith in first secular school

Comment #72802 by Russell Blackford on September 23, 2007 at 2:23 am

Richard Morgan, I take it, then, that the article was totally clear to you, though not to me. So, what exactly is the government requirement that Kelley wants to be exempted from? It seems like a reasonable request for information. I don't see what the brevity or otherwise of my posts has to do with it.

343. Crisis of faith in first secular school

Comment #72790 by Russell Blackford on September 23, 2007 at 1:42 am

I'm sympathetic to Kelley's aims of course, and to what you're all saying. But my main response is irritation at the article.

As is so often the case, it's not at all clear precisely what the rules are. I can try to draw inferences, but a concise and accurate summary would be better. Knight's comments seem completely at a skew to the rest of the article; if it turned out that every school merely has to provide secular education about different religions, that would be fine, but Kelley says he is prepared to do that - so what, exactly is the sticking point?

Sometimes I really hate journalists. I want precise information and instead get these waffly stories written in the ghastly "inverted pyramid" style that they are taught to use in order to pander to the short attention spans of cretins.

344. Row Brews Over DUP Call for Schools to Teach Creationism

Comment #72596 by Russell Blackford on September 21, 2007 at 8:14 pm

The scariest part of this is the statement by the spokesperson for the Department of Education. What is the point of having government regulation of education if it is going to allow schools to teach pseudoscience or just plain bad science? Surely there should be standards on this. It's the last thing anybody should want to deregulate.

Hey, maybe some schools should explore alternative ideas about chemistry such as phlogiston theory, with all its charms, or alternatives to modern accounts of reproduction such as the delightful preformationist theory (in which tiny people already exist inside women with tinier people inside of them, or at least the female ones, and so on, like Russian dolls back to infinity), or alternatives to modern astronomy such as the ingenious conjectures of Ptolemy and Tycho Brahe.

345. Taking exception to Jake

Comment #72580 by Russell Blackford on September 21, 2007 at 7:00 pm

GoneGolfing, I'll have to read Yon's article, but a couple of quick points of my own about why methodological naturalism is not strictly required. First, many scientists have historically proposed hypotheses that don't conform in any strict sense to a requirement of methodological naturalism - hypotheses that seem to require supernatural interventions from time to time or one-off. Some early theories of reproduction seem like this, as do theories that explain the geological strata in terms of Noah's flood, and we could probably think of other examples. I'd rather not say they were doing something other than science. Such an approach has not been fruitful, but it seems to me that it was a kind of science.

Second, science can indeed examine some of these hypotheses to see whether the evidence favours them, which is just as well. After all, we'd like to know whether these theories are actually likely to be correct without just ruling them out.

As an understatement, the Noah's flood theory of geological strata and fossils seems not to be correct. Even without our modern knowledge of how geology actually works, you can see how it doesn't do the job it was supposed to do. It gives some sort of explanation as to why fish first occur lower in the strata than flying animals such as birds, for example, but it should predict that flightless birds will appear lower in the strata than ordinary birds. Likewise, bats should be at the top of the strata, higher than primates. (Actually, this is very simplified, why should animals that like water, like fish, die in the flood before birds? The animals at the bottom should be whatever are most vulnerable to being killed by flooding. Flying birds should, however, be among the last to go, as they can easily get to higher ground and even fly above the waters until they eventually fall from starvation or exhaustion ... so, you get the idea.)

Similarly, we can test such things as the power of intercessory prayer (as Tom Clark's piece that Yon linked to says), the efficacy of claimed supernatural powers, and so on. As long as those theories give systematic accounts of how things should happen, it's possible in principle to test whether the evidence favours those accounts.

I'd say that the use of supernatural explanations has not been fruitful, and that these explanations should not be preferred as they are often ad hoc, fail the test of consilience, and so on, but they are not rejected a priori. They can be science, but so far they have been shown to be very bad science. Intelligent design is arguably not science at all, because it is not able to postulate any system by which its seemingly supernatural "intelligence" works, but in principle there could be a version of ID that is more scientific. The trouble is that no one has any clue what it would be like - the idea made some sense in the 19th century, but it now appears to be a dead end, and we know that the efforts to promote ID are motivated by religious piety rather than by genuine efforts to augment science with new kinds of systematic explanation.

One kind of theory that science can never test in any systematic way is the self-insulating "deceptive creator" theory: e.g., the omphalos theory that God created the Earth 6000 years ago, complete with all the signs, such as fossils, of a much longer history. However, scientists, like anyone else, are entitled to dismiss this kind of theory as implausible and ad hoc rather than ruling it out merely because it posits something supernatural.

I should add that if we accept that all the above is correct, only to say that anything science can postulate is "natural" by definition, we are making methodological naturalism trivially true. The point is that we want to be able to test, rather than rule out a priori a whole lot of claims about interventions by deities, anomalous powers, and so on. If these are supernatural, then testing the evidence for supernatural hypotheses is part of science. If they are considered part of the natural, should they turn out to be real, then naturalism of either kind is a doctrine with no content.

However you analyse it, neither philosophical naturalism nor methodological naturalism appears to be necessary for science. One is a meta-inference, and therefore part of philosophy rather than science, while the other is more a summary of the idea that supernaturalist hypotheses tend to be bad science.

346. Is 'Do Unto Others' Written Into Our Genes?

Comment #72401 by Russell Blackford on September 21, 2007 at 1:50 am

All good comments, folks. Part of the problem, though, is that many of us do not have the same moral compass as the typical religionist, and certainly not the same moral compass as the typical Vatican apparatchik.

I'll speak for myself. Sure, I am as likely to be kind and considerate as most. But at the drop of my philosophical naturalist hat I'll support stem cell research, defend therapeutic cloning (and even reproductive cloning if we can ever get a workable technology), encourage condom use and contraception in general, smile benignly at polyamorous relationships, campaign for gay rights, oppose almost all forms of censorship, demand the repeal of laws against most or all recreational drugs, and on and on.

It seems to me that religionists, some more than others, have an irrational distorted morality that is largely a relic of more barbaric times, a morality of guilt and misery that I'd like to see erased from the face of the Earth; to them, many of my moral views are sinful and repugnant ... and are surely leading me along a path to the great lake of fire described in the Book of Revelation.

I don't think it's a matter that we all have the same moral commitments. Many of the religionists' moral commitments make no sense outside of their overall deluded worldview, and I can't reassure them otherwise. Indeed, this exactly why I want their worldview to go away, or at least morph into something very different.

347. Is 'Do Unto Others' Written Into Our Genes?

Comment #72387 by Russell Blackford on September 21, 2007 at 12:17 am

I find Haidt's work very interesting and am looking forward to finding some time to read his book. I do think that he seems confused on some of the meta-ethical issues, but that doesn't make his research less useful. It just means that we may have to draw some of our own conclusions from it, rather than relying on those that he attempts to draw.

348. Philip Kitcher - Living with Darwin

Comment #72385 by Russell Blackford on September 20, 2007 at 11:36 pm

I've just now finished reading Living with Darwin, so I'll comment in case anyone else has read it and wants to reprise any of the above in the light of what Kitcher actually says in his book.

1. IMNSHO this is an excellent book. Kitcher has a great gift for explaining why scientific inferences about unobservable things such as events in the remote past are nonetheless overwhelmingly favoured by the evidence. His explanation of why the Darwinian picture was accepted in the 19th century, and should still be accepted, are as good as anything of the kind that I have read. From reading Kitcher's earlier work, I had high expectations for this aspect ... and was not disappointed.

2. Kitcher puts the argument against providential religion and supernaturalism very well. His views have hardened over the years, and he could almost be counted as one of the New Atheists. Although he's conciliatory to what he calls "spiritual religion" and to the emotional needs of religionists in general, his tone is not that far different from Daniel Dennett's, and he is uncompromising in his atheism. He is as strong as any of the New Atheists in his view that science is incompatible with providential, supernatural religion, and in his acceptance that this is the most common kind.

3. He mentions Richard Dawkins three times. Two of the mentions are complimentary. The third contains some criticism - he thinks that Dawkins is essentially correct but doesn't fully understand the emotional needs of those religionists for whom providential religion is their source of comfort while leading a tough, insecure life without much going for it in terms of opportunities for creativity and the like. His belief that Dawkins doesn't understand this is not supported, although the point itself is worth making.

4. He disagrees, or thinks he does, about two things: (1) we cannot categorically deny that we will ever find something that matches the claims of the transcendent, and (2) there is a possibility of "spiritual religion" (which sounds a bit like the "Einsteinian" kind) that treats the Christian (say) teachings symbolically and rejects supernatural elements. I'm puzzled as to why this is supposed to be a disagreement, because Dawkins does not seem to me to deny either of those things - in fact my impression is that he has said them himself. I suppose it could be interpreted charitably as a difference of emphasis, but Kitcher makes it out to be more than that.

5. He is possibly correct that social change will be needed in the US before it can be as comfortable with secularism, or with the watered down kind of spiritual religion, as Europe (and by implication, countries like Australia). While that's a point worth making, and is not presented in the book in a way that is harshly critical of Dawkins or anyone else, it is unfair to expect anyone else in particular to make this point when it is not the subject of their own books and in any event their own books were not aimed primarily at the situation in the US.

6. I don't think that Kitcher "gets" the urgency of the need to criticise religion even in countries such as the UK, continental Europe, and Australia, where the kind of religion involved is more benign. I suppose it's not his focus, but even in those countries we see religionists, including, often, the so-called "moderate" ones, trying to get their morality of misery and guilt into public policy. If Kitcher had a real feel for that, I don't think he'd be quite so soft. As we've been discussing on the thread, religion exercises too much political influence everywhere, and we need to challenge it. We can't wait for the US to introduce a better social safety net and for that to have an impact on its social milieu, important though that may be.

All that said, the interview goes beyond the book - at least in its balance - in being critical of people like Dawkins, and what criticism there is in the book can be read, at least with some strain, as just the exploration of another aspect of the problem. It's a pity that Kitcher feels, for whatever reason, that he has to go to such lengths in the interview to distance himself from people who are essentially allies in the Enlightenment project.

I still have to give the book high marks and recommend it to the same people who would buy The God Delusion or Breaking the Spell (but not necessarily to fans of Christopher Hitchens or Michel Onfray, who would think Kitcher far too conciliatory to religion). It's a good addition to the armoury of anyone who wants to defend evolution and explain just why any traditional kind of religion sits badly with the image of the world emerging from science.

349. Why Christians should take Richard Dawkins seriously

Comment #72363 by Russell Blackford on September 20, 2007 at 8:35 pm

If the God that TGD doesn't demolish is outside the University and not interested in telling us how to run our lives then who cares!

350. Why Christians should take Richard Dawkins seriously

Comment #72338 by Russell Blackford on September 20, 2007 at 7:03 pm

Funny, when I read some of these nice moderates like Richard Skinner, my main response isn't that I think they are correct (I don't think that) but that I warm to them. I'd probably enjoy talking to Skinner over a beer.

Whatever its faults, this piece is more thoughtful and insightful than a lot of the material we've seen from politically-correct non-believers. Again, whatever their faults, people like this are not our enemies, and there would have been no urgent need for books like The God Delusion if they were typical of what religionists are like.

Apart from the more subtle issues, though, I don't believe that Richard uses the term "faith-head" for religious believers. My impression was that he used the term only twice in his book, and reserved it for those dogmatic believers who are immune to rational argument. It's a synonym for "dogmatist", not for "believer". I prefer not to use the term, because it lends itself to becoming a term of abuse for any religionist, but that's not what I thought Richard was originally doing with it. He was applying it only to that sub-set of believers who deserve it.