Guest post: The Myth of the Consistent Skeptic

Originally a comment by Blanche Quizno on Another bad model.

Let’s not fall into the trap sometimes described as the “Myth of the Consistent Skeptic.” Albert Einstein was an huge and outspoken admirer of the Soviet Union’s government system, holding onto his positive view even as negative information poured in:

Einstein held a wide range of beliefs beyond his contributions to science and outside his area of expertise. For example, in 1933, Einstein (we believe correctly) voiced his opinion about political liberty in Germany, “As long as I have any choice, I will only stay in a country where political liberty, toleration, and equality of all citizens before the law are the rule. Political liberty implies liberty to express one’s political views orally and in writing, toleration, respect for any and every individual. These conditions do not obtain in Germany at the present time” (Einstein 1949, p. 81). Einstein openly criticized Nazism and the brutalities that occurred under that government. [Read more…]

Another bad model

So Heidegger was even worse than everyone thought. They thought he was a little anti-Semitic, yes, but not…you know…all the way anti-Semitic.

This week’s publication of the “black notebooks” (a kind of philosophical diary that Heidegger asked to be held back until the end of his complete work), challenges this view. In France the revelations have been debated vigorously since passages were leaked to the media last December, with some Heidegger scholars even trying to stop the notebooks’ publication. [Read more…]

The prior consolidation of a decent politics

Michael Ignatieff has a fascinating review-article in The New Republic taking off from the book Countrymen by Bo Lidegaard, the editor of the Danish newspaper Politiken. The book is about the fact that the Danes did not co-operate with the Nazis in rounding up and killing all the Jews during World War 2. Ignatieff – who would be the Canadian PM now if Stephen Harper hadn’t won that election – makes a striking point:

The Danes knew long before the war that their army could not resist a German invasion. Instead of overtly criticizing Hitler, the Social Democratic governments of the 1930s sought to inoculate their populations against the racist ideology next door. It was in those ominous years that the shared identity of all Danes as democratic citizens was drummed into the political culture, just in time to render most Danes deeply resistant to the Nazi claim that there existed a “Jewish problem” in Denmark. Lidegaard’s central insight is that human solidarity in crisis depended on the prior consolidation of a decent politics, on the creation of a shared political imagination. [Read more…]

Skeptics should be willing

Seen on Twitter:

What a joke #UpForDebate is. Skeptics should be willing to revise any and all of their beliefs given sufficient reason, argument, evidence.

Really? All? Are we sure? Our beliefs that genocide is wrong? Our beliefs that Hitler should not have tried to kill all the Jews? Our beliefs that it’s wrong to beat small children? Our beliefs that torture is not permissible? Our beliefs that murder is wrong? Our beliefs that assault is wrong?

So we’re just back to #UpForDebate again.

No, really. We don’t have to put everything on the table. It’s ok to see some things – in fact many things – as moral progress, and a ratchet, and to treat them as settled.

Some self-styled skeptics really don’t get this. (Others do get it, and accept that skepticism isn’t the only or best tool for analyzing morality anyway.) Some self-styled skeptics think being skeptical of homeopathy and being skeptical of basic human rights are exactly the same thing. They are mistaken.

How can anyone possibly not want a baby?

Amanda Marcotte did an eloquent post on the isue of “secular” anti-abortion arguments yesterday. No, she doesn’t buy it either.

So, the atheist/skeptic community is in an uproar on the subject of abortion, and since that’s kind of my jam, I figured I should weigh in. The question isn’t whether or not legal abortion is moral—outside a few kooks, nearly all non-believers are pro-choice—but whether or not those anti-abortion kooks should be indulged and given the privilege of having everyone treat their shit arguments like they have value in free-wheeling discourse, or if they should be shunned on the grounds of being shit arguments the same way anti-gay or overtly racist arguments are shunned. [Read more…]

Now Friends on Facebook

Let’s take a look at Kelsey Hazzard, the founder and president of Secular Pro-Life. (She and Hemant are now Friends on Facebook. You can say that in a James Earl Jones voice if you want to.)

Kelsey Hazzard is the founder and president of Secular Pro-Life. She is a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law and a legal fellow at Americans United for Life. She is also the author of the pro-life novella “Cultivating Weeds.”

Ok then let’s take a look at Americans United for Life.

Americans United for Life, the nation’s premier pro-life legal team, works through the law and legislative process to one end: Achieving comprehensive legal protection for human life from conception to natural death. [Read more…]

Pro-babies

I’m trawling through Secular Pro-Life’s Facebook page. Look, if they’re going to be the boss of us now, we need to know a little more about them.

They want us to know they like baaaaaybeeeeeeeeez. They want us to know that so that we’ll feel guilty for being such baby-hating bad heartless evil people. So they let us know they donate diapers, and they show us photos of baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaybeeeeeeeeeeeeez.

babiesNow, don’t you feel rotten?