Important news!
Daylight Saving TIme begins at 2am on Sunday, 8 March. Remember to set your clocks ahead one hour.
You better set those clocks correctly so you can catch Atheists Talk radio at 9am. This week, it’s interviews with some of the bigwigs of American Atheists.
Yeah, it’s my birthday on Sunday. I’ll be of the age that means I have three 17 year olds yammering at each other in my cranium, and I’m going to celebrate it with a quiet day spent getting some writing done.
In a special election and against long odds, Bill Foster has been elected to the house of representatives from Illinois. Not only is it another addition to the coming Democratic conquest of Washington DC, but the guy is a physicist. We need more scientists stepping into political leadership!
Several people have asked me to dig into this and post something on Pharyngula, but I really don’t want to — the more I look at it, the more I recoil in baffled disgust. Cedarville University, one of those bizarre Christian colleges that just makes me want to gag in the first place, has terminated the contracts of two tenured faculty, David Hoffeditz and David Mappes, in their biblical studies department. Right away, I oppose the action of the university on general principles: short of engaging in some kind of criminal behavior, it’s a key part of academic freedom that tenure means the freedom to explore any intellectual path, no matter how weird. I even support Michael Behe’s tenure at Lehigh, and you all know how looney I think he is.
So what did Hoffeditz and Mappes do to earn revocation of tenure? Rob a bank, seduce a student, make death threats to Howard Stern? None of the above: they chose sides in an extremely abstract and utterly useless theological debate.
A theological impasse dividing Cedarville’s campus has also played a role in the controversy. Known as the “truth and certainty debate,” the dispute involves a somewhat rarefied but hotly contested question of faith: Can Christians enjoy certainty of Biblical truth, or do they merely have the assurance of their faith that the Bible is factual?
It is a question that folds into a still larger debate over how much Christianity should reconcile with the intellectual context of postmodernity. Those who hold to a belief in certainty, Mr. Hoffeditz and Mr. Mappes among them, tend to consider themselves more theologically conservative.
Those theological themes figured prominently in the open letter written this January to the faculty, administration, and trustees of Cedarville by a group of 14 current and emeritus Cedarville faculty members–a group calling itself the “Coalition of the Concerned.”
That letter refers to Mr. Mappes and Mr. Hoffeditz–and also to three other professors who either resigned or were denied tenure in the 2006-7 academic year–as “theologically conservative” members of the Bible department. “There is fear that other theologically conservative members within the department and the general faculty may be terminated,” the letter says.
It’s like watching two groups of clowns arguing over the brand of cream pie filling they should use, only less substantial. It just confirms my opinion that any parent who sends a child to Cedarville is doing them a criminal disservice — please send them to a real college, OK?
However, it also looks like Cedarville doesn’t really have academic freedom — the point of academic freedom is that you don’t get to fire professors for holding views that you find objectionable, and that’s exactly what is going on here. On top of all that, the American Association of University Professors is investigating the case, and they’ve said flat out that it’s problematic because church-related institutions have “explicit limitations on academic freedom” … which is to my mind grounds for denying them the privilege of being called an institution of higher education in the first place.
I’ve been seeing all the ads for this new movie, 10,000 BC, but I haven’t even been tempted to want to think about going to see it. Come on, people: One Million Years B.C., while even more grossly inaccurate, at least had Raquel Welch in that adorable bikini, and Quest for Fire had the invention of the missionary position. This movie has nothing but nicely modeled woolly mammoths, and I don’t see any teenagers stampeding the head shops for that poster to hang on their bedroom walls.
Anyway, here’s a review of the latest dreck from Emmerich. That’s as close as I’m getting to it.
It’s quite clear what the purpose of Ben Stein’s Expelled movie is — notice what they’ve been doing with it. They’ve been shopping it around at screenings that are filtered to keep knowledgeable people out; they’re planning to pay students to attend; they’re relying on the Big Lie to promote the movie; and of course, they had to misrepresent themselves to get interviews.
But now they’ve really done it: they are going to give Florida legislators, sponsored by a representative who has filed one of those bogus “academic freedom” bills, a special, private screening of the movie. None of the critics know what is in it, so this amounts to presenting a slick, prepackaged collection of lies to legislators while denying anyone any opportunity to rebut. Ben Stein should be ashamed of himself; can you think of any similar plan to generate public and political action against a group by spreading blatant lies that they were conspiring to commit horrible acts? Protocols of the Elders of Zion, anyone?
If the producers of Expelled are so confident that they can make a strong case of conspiracy against scientists, then before they start showing this to uninformed politicians, they ought to screen it before scientists and historians and philosophers of science, who will be able to judge it on its merits. Let’s see them show it to a group picked by NCSE, for instance, who would then be able to fairly argue against it. As it is, the cowards of Expelled are doing their best to keep critics in the dark about its content.
There’s another revelation in this sordid Florida affair. Who else is sponsoring this screening of the movie? An organization called the Challenger Learning Center of Tallahassee. The place looks wonderful on the web: it’s a hands-on science museum with children’s programs, an IMAX theater, a planetarium, etc., with a focus on engineering and aerospace, and it’s an arm of Florida State University and Florida A&M. Here’s their mission statement:
The Center is the K-12 outreach facility of the Florida A&M University – Florida State University College of Engineering and uses aerospace as a theme to foster long-term interest in math, science and technology; create positive learning experiences; and motivate students to pursue careers in these fields.
Sounds nice…but Mike O’Risal dug deeper. After all, why is an overtly pro-physical science organization like this assisting in an attack on the life sciences? It seems that none of the staff at the Challenger Center actually has any kind of degree in the sciences — the head of the planetarium has a P.E. degree, which brings to mind that common public school tactic of letting the football coach teach the science classes. These are people who are grossly unqualified to assess the merits of the movie, and at the very least they have allowed venal interests to override their mission of providing quality science education to the public.
Mike has a collection of email addresses associated with this debacle, including people at FSU, who are going to get tarred with this mess. Write to them! Let them know that an institution that is supposed to represent the university and is supposed to encourage more citizens to get a science education is being misused to do the opposite.
I’ve sent off email. One compromise I’ve suggested: if the screening goes ahead, they should insist that a group of university faculty be allowed to attend, and that those faculty should then be given equal time in a hearing with those same legislators to discuss any misrepresentations in the movie. They have to understand that Expelled is being used as a dishonest propaganda tool to foist a mislabeled “academic freedom” bill on them, one which will attempt to dictate the allowed views of university faculty on politics and evolution.
We have a couple of more eye-witnesses to the start of Dawkins’ lecture tour in Arizona, Jim Lippard and John Wilkins. Lippard gives an interesting account, while Wilkins…well, I guess Dawkins interrupted his lecture to walk up the aisle, smack John with a truncheon a few times, rifle his wallet, and as he was stalking away from the poor guy crumpled in his seat, hissed that he was the atheist pope and he could do anything he wanted. At least, that’s what I imagine must have happened, and John hadn’t quite recovered from his concussion before he started writing his complaints.
First of all, he makes a dreadful tactical error, and he should know better — it’s a game we encountered all the time on talk.origins. While accusing Dawkins of irrationally demonizing religion, the running them of his critique, the great dirty word that he uses to bludgeon Dawkins in reply, is to claim with flashing eye and a sneer and a spit that he’s practicing atheism as one of those filthy religions. You can’t piously grant religion the great latitude to believe whatever doesn’t harm others, and defend it as exempt from the kind of criticism Dawkins delivers, while simultaneously damning atheism because you think it is a religion. It’s inconsistent and verging on hypocrisy.
And what is the basis of accusing Dawkins of fomenting vile religion? That he encourages “Us’nThemism” and “derogation of the Other.” Let’s grant Wilkins that this were true (I disagree, however)—this is the defining character of a religion, that it encourages a group to hate another group? This is what religion is? Dawkins is definitely harsh on religion, as am I, but neither of us have apparently achieved the depth of contempt and the simplicity of reduction that Wilkins has…but then, he trained as a theologian, so I guess he would know better.
But of course, the foundation of his accusation is simply not true. There will be no atheist religion. Dawkins’ tour has none of the trappings of the last visit of the pope; he does not set himself up as a moral authority; there will be no Atheist Crusade; we do not have rituals, a sacrament, a dogma. Wilkins’ sloppy flinging of the ‘religion’ insult does more damage to religion than it does to atheism.
But in one respect, he is right. I think the New Atheism is trying to adopt some of the ordinary and worthy human impulses that have been hijacked by religion for so long. To name one specifically, community. I think it is an indictment of the pernicious influence of religion that it has so thoroughly undermined the whole notion of a social community that when secular people with purely secular motives engage in community building, normally rational people gasp in horror, point, and shriek, “He’s creating a cult!” It’s an attitude the religious love to encourage, because it can be used to short-circuit any competition. We can always trust people to use religion as an epithet against any non-religious community, while somehow, conveniently, always neglecting to apply it in the same way to the one class of organization that really deserves it, religion itself.
As for the charge that these New Atheists are unable to tolerate a harmless religion, and that their goal is the elimination of the enemy, that’s complete nonsense. We want to eliminate them in the same sense that we want to eliminate illiteracy; we will educate, we will talk, we will stand up for our ideas. Further, my standard reply to questions about what I want to happen to religion in the future is this: I want it to be like bowling. It’s a hobby, something some people will enjoy, that has some virtues to it, that will have its own institutions and its traditions and its own television programming, and that families will enjoy together. It’s not something I want to ban or that should affect hiring and firing decisions, or that interferes with public policy. It will be perfectly harmless as long as we don’t elect our politicians on the basis of their bowling score, or go to war with people who play nine-pin instead of ten-pin, or use folklore about backspin to make decrees about how biology works.
I get the impression that John believes religion has already achieved the innocuous status of bowling. Maybe for you, John, but not for most of the rest of the world.
My last column in Seed is now online for you cheapskates (OK, you’re forgiven already) who don’t subscribe. It’s called “Eyeing the Evolutionary Past,” and discusses a familiar topic around these parts — the evolution of eyes.
Richard Dawkins’ tour of the US has begun — you can read an account of his talk in Arizona. Next stops are Berkeley and Stanford, then Madison (I think my boy Connlann is going to try to see that one), then Columbia and NYU, and UT Austin … then it’s up my way to Minneapolis for the American Atheists conference.
If you’re planning to go to one of his talks, though, don’t go just for Dawkins — I hope everyone turns to their neighbors and introduces themselves, and that everyone realizes that there are many of us here, and that we can build a community of reason that will last long after the lecture is over.
Religion is colliding with the law all over the place.
A Malaysian woman was jailed for worshipping a teapot. It was a very large teapot, two stories high; does that help? There’s also a wonderful Catch-22 in the story — Malaysia allows freedom of worship, but under Sharia law, apostasy is a criminal offense, so she can be arrested for violating Muslim law.
In a sensible contrast, Britain has voted to take blasphemy off the law books. Good news, you English — blaspheme all you want! I expect a chorus of “goddamns” in the comments now.
The US isn’t quite so rational, since we’ve got loons pushing a religious agenda everywhere. Look in Idaho, where a public school is teaching creationism because atheism is immoral (nice chain of non sequiturs in that), or Mississippi, which offers public school assemblies to indoctrinate kids in Christianity. That’s two places where I think the law needs to step in.
Texas is contemplating the theological necessity of goats. Can we please get to the point where everyone realizes that theological necessity is no necessity at all? Oh, and Santeria is just as wacky as Christianity.
