Dover’s dominoes-5: A Dover domino falls in California

(See part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4.)

The first domino to fall as a result of the Dover verdict was in California where a teacher had decided to create a new optional philosophy class that would promote IDC ideas. This decision was interesting because the people behind it had seemed to draw the lesson from the Dover ruling that while it was problematic to teach IDC ideas in science classes, that it was acceptable to teach it in philosophy courses. As the LA Times reports (link to original article no longer working):

At a special meeting of the El Tejon Unified School District on Jan. 1 [2006], at which the board approved the new course, “Philosophy of Design,” school Supt. John W. Wight said that he had consulted the school district’s attorneys and that they “had told him that as long as the course was called ‘philosophy,’ ” it could pass legal muster, according to the lawsuit.

[Read more…]

Dover’s dominos-4: How IDC lost in the Dover case

(See part 1, part 2, part 3.)

The stage was thus set in Dover, PA for what turned out to be an unequal contest in the courtroom of US District Judge John E. Jones III. Matthew Chapman, a great-great-grandson of Charles Darwin, attended the trial and provides an amusing description of its proceedings, the personalities involved, and of the events in the town of Dover leading up to the trial. In his account God or Gorilla: A Darwin descendant at the Dover monkey trial in the February 2006 issue of Harper’s Magazine, he describes how the plaintiffs team of lawyers, headed by the ACLU seemed to have the resources and materials at their fingertips while the Thomas More lawyers looked inadequately prepared and with few resources, even having to borrow the expert audio-visual services available to the plaintiffs.
[Read more…]

Dover’s dominos-3: The Dover school board battles the Discovery Institute

(See part 1, part 2 here.)

The Dover school board members were encouraged to adopt their policy by the offer, when they encountered the inevitable legal challenge, of legal representation by the Thomas More Law Center, based in Michigan, and which was “created in 1999 by Thomas Monaghan, founder of Dominos Pizza and a philanthropist for conservative Catholic causes.” The center supports all kinds of religion-based social policies, and was eager to take on the teaching of evolution theory in schools. To give you some idea of how extreme this group’s views are, the president and chief counsel of the center Richard Thompson believes that:

Christianity is under siege from all quarters, but especially from the federal courts, the American Civil Liberties Union, and what Thompson calls the “homosexual lobby.”

The ACLU and the courts are “basically cleansing America of religion and particularly Christianity,” Thompson said. “It’s almost like a genocide. It’s a sophisticated genocide.”

So it is clear that Thompson is a charter member (along with Bill O’Reilly) of the crazy cult that believes that it is Christians who are persecuted in the US. Anyone who uses the word “genocide” to describe the situation of Christians in the US clearly needs to lie down and take a nap until the fever passes.

The Thomas More center and the Dover school board were itching for a fight with those they saw as secular Darwinists. “Bring it on!” seemed to be their cry. Needless to say, the somewhat more sophisticated strategists at the Seattle-based Discovery Institute were not happy with their erstwhile allies in Dover shouting loudly about their blatantly religious motives. They could see their cautious, delicately-balanced, and expensive long-range plan, which depended upon carefully avoiding any mention of religion, falling apart because of the clumsy blundering of the Dover board, aided and even egged on by the Thomas More lawyers.

But once that die was cast and the Dover policy adopted, the Discovery Institute was placed in a quandary. The Thomas More center did not have the legal resources to mount the kind of sophisticated arguments necessary in such a case. Should the Discovery Institute completely disassociate themselves from the Dover school board actions and distance themselves from the case as it went down to likely defeat? Or should they throw themselves also into the fray, provide their own expert witnesses, pour all their considerable financial and legal resources into the case, and hope to secure victory from the jaws of an otherwise almost certain defeat?

In the end they waffled, initially agreeing to be part of the case, and then backing out when the Thomas More Law Center did not want the Discovery Institute’s own lawyers representing their clients. This caused bad feelings on both sides which spilled out into the open, as The Toledo Blade reported on March 30, 2006:

In fact, when Mr. Thompson decided to defend the Dover intelligent design policy, he angered the group most associated with intelligent design: the Discovery Institute, a conservative think-tank based in Seattle.

“We were incredibly frustrated by arrogance and bad legal judgment of goading the [Dover] school district to keep a policy that the main organization supporting intelligent design was opposed to,” says John West, the associate director of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture.

The Thomas More Center acted “in the face of opposition from the group that actually represents most of the scientists who work on intelligent design.’’
. . .
In fact, these two prominent supporters of intelligent design couldn’t be much more at odds.

Mr. Thompson says the Discovery Institute bailed out on the Dover Board of Education when three of its experts refused to testify at the last minute, after the deadline for recruiting witnesses had passed.

But Mr. West says the whole thing was the More Center’s fault. Mr. Thompson wouldn’t let Discovery Institute fellows have separate legal representation.

The Discovery Institute has never advocated the teaching of intelligent design, and told the Dover board to drop its policy, Mr. West says. It participated in the trial only reluctantly.

“We were in a bind,” Mr. West says. “Our ideals were on trial even though it was a policy we didn’t support.”

Richard Thompson countercharges that the Discovery Institute people are essentially wimps, people who just talk a tough game but don’t put their beliefs on the line when it counts:

Mr. Thompson says the Discovery Institute’s strategy is to dodge a fight as soon as one appears imminent.

“The moment there’s a conflict they will back away . . .they come up with some sort of compromise.” But in Dover “they got some school board members that didn’t want compromise.”

This intramural battle between two groups supposedly on the same pro-IDC side did not augur well for the trial that was scheduled when some Dover parents led by Tammy Kitzmiller challenged the constitutionality of the school board’s decision.

The stage was now set for the courtroom confrontation.

Next in this series: Why the Dover school board lost the case.

Dover’s dominos-2: The Dover school board undermines the Wedge strategy

(See part 1 here.)

The reason that Judge Jones’ verdict in the Dover trial is likely to be so influential is because of the exhaustive nature of the testimony that he heard and the depth and comprehensiveness and scope of his ruling. In essence, the trial provided a place for IDC ideas to get a close examination under controlled conditions.

Prior to the trial, the case for and against IDC had been waged in the media, in legislative hearings, and in debates. As someone who has participated in many such things, I know that such forums can be a place where key ideas get examined and focused. But this happens only if the participants want them to. Otherwise skilled practitioners in those forums can evade tricky questions by diverting attention elsewhere and turn them into public relations exercises and question-begging.
[Read more…]

Dover’s dominos-1: Why Intelligent Design Creationism will lose

The Scottish poet Robert Burns in his poem To a Mouse cautioned those who place too much faith in detailed plans for the future. He said:

The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men, 

Gang aft agley.

When historians of the future write about the demise of Intelligent Design Creationism (IDC), they will likely point to the Dover, PA court decision as when the carefully thought-out plans and strategy of the IDC movement ganged agley in a big way.

If you recall, US District Judge John E. Jones III ruled on December 20, 2005 (Kitzmiller v. Dover) that the then Dover school board had acted unconstitutionally in its attempts to undermine the credibility of evolutionary theory in its biology class and in its attempt to promote IDC as a viable alternative. (See here for a previous posting giving the background to this topic.)

That case raised many fascinating issues and the final ruling clarified and put in perspective many of the issues clouding the role of intelligent design, science, religion, schools, and the US constitution. This series of posts that begins today will analyze that decision and the ripples it has caused throughout the country. I had been meaning to analyze the decision and its broader implications in depth for some time but kept getting deferred by other issues.
[Read more…]

Precision in language

Some time ago, a commenter to this blog sent me a private email expressing this view:

Have you ever noticed people say “Do you believe in evolution?” just as you would ask “Do you believe in God?” as if both schools of thought have equal footing? I respect others’ religious beliefs as I realize I cannot disprove God just as anyone cannot prove His existence, but given the amount of evidence for evolution, shouldn’t we insist on asking “Do you accept evolution?”

It may just be semantics, but I feel that the latter wording carries an implied affirmation just as “Do you accept that 2+2=4?” carries a different meaning than “Do you believe 2+2=4?”

I guess the point I’m trying to make is that by stating something as a belief, it opens the debate to the possibility that something is untrue. While this may fine for discussions of religion, shouldn’t the scientific community be more insistent that a theory well supported by physical evidence, such as evolution, is not up for debate?

It’s a good point. To be fair, scientists themselves are partly responsible for this confusion because we also say that we “believe” in this or that scientific theory, and one cannot blame the general public from picking up on that terminology. What is important to realize, though, is that the word ‘believe’ is being used by scientists in a different sense from the way it is used in religion.

The late and deeply lamented Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, who called himself a “radical atheist” puts it nicely (thanks to onegoodmove):

First of all I do not believe-that-there-is-not-a-god. I don’t see what belief has got to do with it. I believe or don’t believe my four-year old daughter when she tells me that she didn’t make that mess on the floor. I believe in justice and fair play (though I don’t know exactly how we achieve them, other than by continually trying against all possible odds of success). I also believe that England should enter the European Monetary Union. I am not remotely enough of an economist to argue the issue vigorously with someone who is, but what little I do know, reinforced with a hefty dollop of gut feeling, strongly suggests to me that it’s the right course. I could very easily turn out to be wrong, and I know that. These seem to me to be legitimate uses for the word believe. As a carapace for the protection of irrational notions from legitimate questions, however, I think that the word has a lot of mischief to answer for. So, I do not believe-that-there-is-no-god. I am, however, convinced that there is no god, which is a totally different stance. . .

There is such a thing as the burden of proof, and in the case of god, as in the case of the composition of the moon, this has shifted radically. God used to be the best explanation we’d got, and we’ve now got vastly better ones. God is no longer an explanation of anything, but has instead become something that would itself need an insurmountable amount of explaining…

Well, in history, even though the understanding of events, of cause and effect, is a matter of interpretation, and even though interpretation is in many ways a matter of opinion, nevertheless those opinions and interpretations are honed to within an inch of their lives in the withering crossfire of argument and counterargument, and those that are still standing are then subjected to a whole new round of challenges of fact and logic from the next generation of historians – and so on. All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others.

When someone says that they believe in god, they mean that they believe something in the absence of, or even counter to, the evidence, and even to reason and logic. When scientists say they believe a particular theory, they mean that they believe that theory because of the evidence and reason and logic, and the more evidence there is, and the better the reasoning behind it, the more strongly they believe it. Scientists use the word ‘belief’ the way Adams says, as a kind of synonym for ‘convinced,’ because we know that no scientific theory can be proven with 100% certainty and so we have to accept things even in the face of this remaining doubt. But the word ‘believe’ definitely does not carry the same meaning in the two contexts.

This can lead to the generation of confusion as warned by the commenter but what can we do about it? One option is, as was suggested, to use different words, with scientists avoiding use of the word ‘believe.’ I would have agreed with this some years ago but I am becoming increasingly doubtful that we can control the way that words are used.

For example, there was a time when I used to be on a crusade against the erroneous use of the word ‘unique’. The Oxford English Dictionary is pretty clear about what this word means:

  • Of which there is only one; one and no other; single, sole, solitary.
  • That is or forms the only one of its kind; having no like or equal; standing alone in comparison with others, freq. by reason of superior excellence; unequalled, unparalleled, unrivalled.
  • Formed or consisting of one or a single thing
  • A thing of which there is only one example, copy, or specimen; esp., in early use, a coin or medal of this class.
  • A thing, fact, or circumstance which by reason of exceptional or special qualities stands alone and is without equal or parallel in its kind.

It means, in short, one of a kind, so something is either unique or it is not. There are no in-betweens. And yet, you often find people saying things like “quite unique” or “very unique” or “almost unique.” I used to try and correct this but have given up. Clearly, people in general think that unique means something like “rare” and I don’t know that we can ever change this even if we all become annoying pedants, correcting people all the time, avoided at parties because of our pursuit of linguistic purity.

Some battles, such as with the word unique are, I believe, lost for good and I expect the OED to add the new meaning of ‘rare’ some time in the near future. It is a pity because then we would then be left with no word with the unique meaning of ‘unique’, but there we are. We would have to say something like ‘absolutely unique’ to convey the meaning once reserved for just ‘unique.’

In science too we often use words with precise operational meanings while the same words are used in everyday language with much looser meanings. For example, in physics the word ‘velocity’ is defined operationally by the situation when you have an object moving along a ruler and, at two points along its motion, you take ruler readings and clock readings, where the clocks are located at the points where the ruler readings are taken, and have been previously synchronized. Then the velocity of the moving object is the number you get when you take the difference between the two ruler readings and divide by the difference between the two clock readings.

Most people (especially sports commentators) have no idea of this precise meaning when they use the word velocity in everyday language, and often use the word synonymously with speed or, even worse, acceleration, although those concepts have different operational meanings. Even students who have taken physics courses find it hard to use the word in its strict operational sense.

Take, for another example, the word ‘theory’. By now, as a result of the intelligent design creationism (IDC) controversy, everyone should be aware that the way this word is used by scientists is quite different from its everyday use. In science, a theory is a powerful explanatory construct. Science depends crucially on its theories because they are the things that give it is predictive power. “There is nothing so practical as a good theory” as Kurt Lewin famously said. But in everyday language, the word theory is used as meaning ‘not factual,’ something that can be false or ignored.

I don’t think that we can solve this problem by putting constraints on how words can be used. English is a wonderful language precisely because it grows and evolves and trying to fix the meanings of words too rigidly would perhaps be stultifying. I now think that we need to change our tactics.

I think that once the meanings of words enter mainstream consciousness we will not be successful in trying to restrict their meanings beyond their generally accepted usage. What we can do is to make people aware that all words have varying meanings depending on the context, and that scientific and other academic contexts tend to require very precise meanings in order to minimize ambiguity.

Heidi Cool has a nice entry where she talks about the importance of being aware of when you are using specialized vocabulary, and the need to know your audience when speaking or writing, so that some of the pitfalls arising from the imprecise use of words can be avoided.

We have to realize though that despite our best efforts, we can never be sure that the meaning that we intend to convey by our words is the same as the meaning constructed in the minds of the reader or listener. Words always contain an inherent ambiguity that allows the ideas expressed by them to be interpreted differently.

I used to be surprised when people read the stuff I wrote and got a different meaning than I had intended. No longer. I now realize that there is always some residual ambiguity in words that cannot be overcome. While we can and should strive for maximum precision, we can never be totally unambiguous.

I agree with philosopher Karl Popper when he said, “It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood.” The best we can hope for is to have some sort or negotiated consensus on the meanings of ideas.

Is god punishing Kansas?

The last year has seen too many examples of the devastating power that nature can unleash. The Asian tsunami, hurricane Katrina, and the earthquake in Pakistan all caused massive destruction and loss of life, leaving hundreds of thousands of people homeless and impoverished and grieving for lost loved ones.

From time immemorial, people have looked on such events as indicators of god’s feelings towards humans. Of course, some despicable people have tried to use this natural tendency to seek signs of god’s power to actually wish for some calamity to strike some community as a sign of god’s righteous anger. Pat Robertson is just one of those despicable people who seems to think that what makes him angry must also be what makes god angry.

Recall that he was upset with the citizens of Dover for the way they voted out the school board that had adopted the pro-IDC (intelligent design creationism) statement in biology classes. He said: “I’d like to say to the good citizens of Dover. If there is a disaster in your area, don’t turn to God, you just rejected Him from your city. And don’t wonder why He hasn’t helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I’m not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that’s the case, don’t ask for His help because he might not be there.” (See here for the video.)

But unfortunately for Robertson, God’s anger seemed to have been directed not at the rebellious people of Dover, but at the state of Kansas, which was recently hit by a series of over 100 deadly tornadoes that raced through the midwest, causing widespread destruction, most of it in Kansas.

The irony here is that Kansas is, according to Robertson’s measures, perhaps the most pro-god state in the nation, inserting IDC-friendly language into its science standards and even going so far as to rewrite the definition of science, so that it is no longer limited to the search for natural explanations of phenomena.

The state of Kansas did not rest on these laurels, but in addition overwhelmingly passed (with 71% of the vote) a constitutional amendment banning same-sex couples from marrying or entering into civil unions. There was already an unchallenged law on the books that did the same thing but the people of Kansas wanted to send an even stronger signal to god of their devoted opposition to gay rights.

As Rep. Steve Huebert said “It is the right thing to do, based on the truth that was spoken (in the Bible).”

Kansas is even the home of Reverend Fred Phelps and his merry flock of gay-hating funeral disrupters.

How much more can a state do to please the almighty? So if any state felt entitled to special favors from god, it was Kansas. Getting hit in return with a series of tornados seems like a pretty ungrateful act on the deity’s part.

So what will Robertson say about Kansas, and not Dover, being the target of tornados? Perhaps he will say that the people of Kansas must be harboring some secret sins that made them deserving of this.

Or maybe god was aiming the tornados at Dover but they veered unexpectedly away, thus making Kansas the victim of friendly fire, so to speak. (Coriolis forces are tricky to account for when you are dealing with fast flowing wind currents, and have caused many a seasoned meteorologist to err in their predictions of where and when a storm will hit.)

Or maybe the good people of Kansas, and Pat Robertson, may consider the possibility that this evidence suggests that god is sending a message that he or she is actually strongly pro-gay and anti-IDC.

Or maybe, just maybe, these kinds of things are called ‘natural disasters’ for a reason, not just because they involve nature, but because they have no supernatural cause.

POST SCRIPT: Peter Singer lecture today

Peter Singer, the well-known ethicist, will give a lecture today on “Our Changing Ethics of Life and Death” at 4:00 p.m., Ford Auditorium, Allen Memorial Medical Library, 11000 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland

The talk is free and open to the public. No reservations required.

For more details, see here.

Opium of the people

Most people, when they think of the Karl Marx’s attitudes towards religion, remember the quote where he refers to it as “the opium of the people.” This sounds quite dismissive. When I first heard it, I thought he meant that religion was a hallucination, similar to that caused by drugs.

But when you read the full passage that leads up to this quote, the impression shifts slightly, but in an important way. The passage is in his “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right” (February 1844) and and goes as follows:

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

This is a much more poetic and sympathetic view of religion than that given by just the last sentence. It speaks of religion as the solace of a suffering people, a mechanism for them to obtain relief from the forces that oppress them, to endure suffering, and something that enables them to extract some happiness from life.

(Note that when Marx wrote this, it was soon after the end of the first Opium War in China (1839-1842), where Britain put down a Chinese rebellion that was trying to end imports by British traders of opium into China, which was causing widespread addiction in that nation. He must have been aware of the fact that having the people drugged on opium enabled the relatively small British presence in China to control that vast country and its peoples. So it was a very timely metaphor.)

Of course, Marx was opposed to religion because although he saw that it met a short-term need, it hindered the ability of people to achieve a more enduring happiness. It was clear that he was not against religion just for the sake of it, but because he wanted to get rid of the terrible conditions that tempted people want to find refuge and solace in it, rather than seeking to change those very conditions. He went on:

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

As Amanda Udis-Kessler writes in this commentary on Marx’s comment:

Opium, of course, provides only temporary relief for suffering, and does so by blunting the senses. In making suffering bearable, Marx argues, opium (and religion) actually can be said to be contributing to human suffering by removing the impetus to do whatever is necessary to overcome it – which, for Marx, is to relinquish religion and turn to revolutionary politics. Hamilton (1995: 82-3) points out the ultimate practical outcome of religion’s palliative function, from a Marxian perspective: “Religion offers compensation for the hardships of this life in some future life, but it makes such compensation conditional upon acceptance of the injustices of this life.”

In other words, religion serves the social function of keeping people from becoming restive about their condition and is thus conducive to maintaining social order in the face of even massive injustice.

Marx’s views on religion came to my mind when I was thinking about how the neoconservatives aligned themselves with religious Christian fundamentalists in order to achieve their political goals. The neoconservatives are grateful that religion is like opium, keeping people in a drugged, unperceptive state. It is this very feature that is attractive to those who benefit from that state of injustice.

Ronald Bailey, writing in Reason magazine argues that neoconservatives are cynically exploiting the palliative nature of religious beliefs. And to serve this end, they are even going so far as to align themselves with those religious people who are attacking Darwin. “These otherwise largely secular intellectuals may well have turned on Darwin because they have concluded that his theory of evolution undermines religious faith in society at large. . . Ironically, today many modern conservatives fervently agree with Karl Marx that religion is “the opium of the people”; they add a heartfelt, “Thank God!” “

There is reason to think that at least some of the neoconservatives are themselves not religious, but see in religion a useful tool that keeps people in line, like sheep. Their fear of what might happen if there is widespread existential angst leads them to a cynical support for the Christian fundamentalist view.

Bailey goes on:

[Neoconservative Irving] Kristol has been quite candid about his belief that religion is essential for inculcating and sustaining morality in culture. He wrote in a 1991 essay, “If there is one indisputable fact about the human condition it is that no community can survive if it is persuaded–or even if it suspects–that its members are leading meaningless lives in a meaningless universe.”
. . .
Kristol has acknowledged his intellectual debt to [Neoconservative ideologue Leo] Strauss in a recent autobiographical essay. “What made him so controversial within the academic community was his disbelief in the Enlightenment dogma that ‘the truth will make men free.’ ” Kristol adds that “Strauss was an intellectual aristocrat who thought that the truth could make some [emphasis Kristol’s] minds free, but he was convinced that there was an inherent conflict between philosophic truth and political order, and that the popularization and vulgarization of these truths might import unease, turmoil and the release of popular passions hitherto held in check by tradition and religion with utterly unpredictable, but mostly negative, consequences.”

Kristol agrees with this view. “There are different kinds of truths for different kinds of people,” he says in an interview. “There are truths appropriate for children; truths that are appropriate for students; truths that are appropriate for educated adults; and truths that are appropriate for highly educated adults, and the notion that there should be one set of truths available to everyone is a modern democratic fallacy. It doesn’t work.”
. . .
A year ago, I asked Kristol after a lecture whether he believed in God or not. He got a twinkle in his eye and responded, “I don’t believe in God, I have faith in God.” Well, faith, as it says in Hebrews 11:1, “is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

But at the recent AEI lecture, journalist Ben Wattenberg asked him the same thing. Kristol responded that “that is a stupid question,” and crisply restated his belief that religion 
is essential for maintaining social discipline. A much younger (and perhaps less circumspect) Kristol asserted in a 1949 essay that in order to prevent the 
social disarray that would occur if ordinary people lost their religious faith, “it would indeed become the duty of the wise publicly to defend and support religion.”

William Pfaff, writing on “The Long Reach of Leo Strauss” in the International Herald Tribune, traces the influence of neoconservative thinking, outlining the broader ideological framework under which religious belief is promoted by the neoconservatives:

They have a political philosophy, and the arrogance and intolerance of their actions reflect their conviction that they possess a realism and truth others lack.

They include Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz; Abram Shulsky of the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans, Richard Perle of the Pentagon advisory board, Elliott Abrams of the National Security Council, and the writers Robert Kagan and William Kristol.

The main intellectual influence on the neoconservatives has been the philosopher Leo Strauss, who left Germany in 1938 and taught for many years at the University of Chicago. Several of the neoconservatives studied under him. Wolfowitz and Shulsky took doctorates under him.

Something of a cult developed around Strauss during his later years at Chicago, and he and some admirers figure in the Saul Bellow novel, “Ravelstein.” The cult is appropriate because Strauss believed that the essential truths about human society and history should be held by an elite, and withheld from others who lack the fortitude to deal with truth. Society, Strauss thought, needs consoling lies.
. . .
He also argued that Platonic truth is too hard for people to bear, and that the classical appeal to “virtue” as the object of human endeavor is unattainable. Hence it has been necessary to tell lies to people about the nature of political reality. An elite recognizes the truth, however, and keeps it to itself. This gives it insight, and implicitly power that others do not possess. This obviously is an important element in Strauss’s appeal to America’s neoconservatives.

The ostensibly hidden truth is that expediency works; there is no certain God to punish wrongdoing; and virtue is unattainable by most people. Machiavelli was right. There is a natural hierarchy of humans, and rulers must restrict free inquiry and exploit the mediocrity and vice of ordinary people so as to keep society in order.

There is something repulsive to me in the idea that there are some ideas that have to be shielded from people because they are unable to handle it. It is a dangerous and paternalistic attitude and profoundly undemocratic. But it is clear that the neoconservatives believe it. For them, the truth is not an unqualified good. Rather it is something that only a select few, who alone are wise enough to really understand it and use it, should know and those people get to decide what the general public should know, even if it is false.

To argue that one should present different truths for different people is wrong. One has an obligation to not deceive people. Of course, one may present what one perceives to be the truth to different audiences in different ways. It is like teaching the basics of mathematics or science. How I teach it to elementary school students and to doctoral students will be quite different but the ideas I try to convey should be the same.

Since the listener always interprets new knowledge in the light of his or her own experiences, we will each construct our own version of the truth.

But that is quite different from deliberately constructing different “truths” to present to different people in order to get them to conform to your will. Such things are no longer truths. They are simply manipulative lies. They are the modern-day opium of the people.

Hot buttons and the people who push them-2

Continuing yesterday’s posting, what I find most difficult to sympathize with are the other newspapers that later reprinted the Jyllands-Posten cartoons that have inflamed some Muslim sensitivities. Far from being free speech champions, they seemed to simply want to provoke anger in the Muslim world. They were not defending free speech rights because, as far as I can tell, those were not in any danger. It is true that some who opposed the publication of the cartoons were asking the government of Denmark to take action against Jyllands-Posten but there was no indication that this was a serious request or that there was any chance of the Danish government was doing so. And even if it made moves towards doing that, there are other ways to defend the rights of that paper.
[Read more…]

Hot buttons and the people who push them

Like most people, I have been dismayed by the demonstrations, the arson, the boycott threats, etc. caused by the publication in Denmark of twelve cartoons that were seen as disrespectful to Islam. I have resisted commenting on it because there was so much coverage that anything I would say would seem superfluous.

But it seems some important aspects of the story are not being told. The coverage has settled into a familiar storyline: The countries of the Islamic world do not understand western concepts of free speech, not to mention western humor in which no sacred cow is immune from skewering. Furthermore those countries are full of irrational religious fanatics who respond with violence to things that offend them, rather than peaceful dialogue.

Flemming Rose, the cultural editor of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten and the person who decided to publish the cartoons issued a statement that reinforces this view.

“This is about standing for fundamental values that have been the (foundation) for the development of Western democracies over several hundred years, and we are now in a situation where those values are being challenged,” he said.

“I think some of the Muslims who have reacted very strongly to these cartoons are being driven by totalitarian and authoritarian impulses, and the nature of these impulses is that if you give in once they will just put forward new requirements.”

Once the media finds a storyline that is congenial to its readers (and this one definitely reinforces a positive self-image of the west combined with a stereotype of Muslims who currently regarded with suspicion and hostility) it usually tends not to delve too deeply into more subtle issues. But in this case, when you do so, you find that the story is more complex than has been portrayed.

For instance, consider the timeline of this story that is presented. The cartoons were first published on September 30, 2005.

Approximately two weeks later, nearly 3,500 people demonstrated peacefully in Copenhagen. In November, several European newspapers re-published the images, triggering more protests.”
…
On January 10, 2006, the cartoons were reprinted in the small Norwegian Christian newspaper Magazinet (circulation: 5.000).

On January 30, the Carsten Juste, the editor of Jyllands-Posten apologizes, saying “In our opinion, the 12 drawings were sober. They were not intended to be offensive, nor were they at variance with Danish law, but they have indisputably offended many Muslims for which we apologize.”

So far, this story seems reasonable. A newspaper publishes something edgy, some people get upset and protest, and the newspaper apologizes for unwittingly causing offense but defends its rights to free speech. This kind of thing happens routinely.

But apparently some other newspapers saw this apology as some kind of free speech violation, and the Danish newspaper’s apology as capitulation. In order to assert the right to free speech, on February 1, the cartoons were reprinted in the French daily France Soir, and many other European newspapers. And this is what has led to the big demonstrations that we see going on now, with some Muslim communities seeing this as a deliberate insult to their religion.

The main issue of rights seem to be fairly clear. The Danish newspaper had every right to publish the cartoons. People who find the cartoons offensive have every right to protest in non-violent forms, such as holding demonstrations, and even organizing boycotts and breaking off diplomatic relations.

In apologizing, the newspaper was not being censored by governments, it was just saying it was sorry for causing offense. Newspapers depend on advertisers and routinely avoid printing some things to avoid losing readers.

That is the standard storyline. But when you look underneath it, the division between right and wrong, good and bad, start getting blurry, and the motives of the people who published the cartoons become increasingly suspect.

For one thing, the cartoons about Prophet Mohammed were actually solicited by the cultural editor of the newspaper not for their humor but in order to test Muslim sensitivities. Flemming Rose is supposed to have done so because he had heard that cartoonists “were too afraid of Muslim militants to illustrate a new children’s biography of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad,” since depictions of Muhammad are forbidden in Islam, as they are considered idolatrous.

Furthermore, the very same Danish newspaper had rejected cartoons three years earlier that made fun of Christianity because they feared they would cause offense.

Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that first published the cartoons of the prophet Muhammad that have caused a storm of protest throughout the Islamic world, refused to run drawings lampooning Jesus Christ, it has emerged today.

The Danish daily turned down the cartoons of Christ three years ago, on the grounds that they could be offensive to readers and were not funny.

In April 2003, Danish illustrator Christoffer Zieler submitted a series of unsolicited cartoons dealing with the resurrection of Christ to Jyllands-Posten.

Zieler received an email back from the paper’s Sunday editor, Jens Kaiser, which said: “I don’t think Jyllands-Posten’s readers will enjoy the drawings. As a matter of fact, I think that they will provoke an outcry. Therefore, I will not use them.”

What this demonstrates is a certain level of hypocrisy because the editor felt that the sensitivities of Muslims were not worth considering but that of Christian were.

The story gets even murkier. Justin Raimondo points out that Flemming Rose seems to be an admirer of those in the US like Daniel Pipes who are “fanatically hostile to Islam.” So the whole story of a somewhat naïve editor who innocently publishes cartoons that caused a surprising amount of offense starts becoming unraveled and becomes more and more like a case of deliberate provocation aimed at Muslims.

And it gets worse. More on this tomorrow. . .

POST SCRIPT: Mainstream Churches Fight Back

It looks like mainstream churches are getting fed up with fundamentalist attacks on evolution. Commenter Cathie points out this notice for “Evolution Sunday” organized by them (now past, unfortunately). But it is a good sign. Here is the introduction to their website. You can check if your own church is here, or encourage them to join for next year.

On 12 February 2006 hundreds of Christian churches from all portions of the country and a host of denominations will come together to discuss the compatibility of religion and science. For far too long, strident voices, in the name of Christianity, have been claiming that people must choose between religion and modern science. More than 10,000 Christian clergy have already signed The Clergy Letter demonstrating that this is a false dichotomy. Now, on the 197th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, many of these leaders will bring this message to their congregations through sermons and/or discussion groups. Together, participating religious leaders will be making the statement that religion and science are not adversaries. And, together, they will be elevating the quality of the national debate on this topic.

The New York Times reports that “more than 10,000 ministers from around the country had signed [An Open Letter Concerning Religion and Science], which states, in part, that the theory of evolution is “a foundational scientific truth.” To reject it, the letter continues, “is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance and transmit such ignorance to our children.”

On the 197th birthday of Charles Darwin, ministers at several hundred churches around the country preached yesterday against recent efforts to undermine the theory of evolution, asserting that the opposition many Christians say exists between science and faith is false.

At St. Dunstan’s Episcopal Church, a small contemporary structure among the pricey homes of north Atlanta, the Rev. Patricia Templeton told the 85 worshipers gathered yesterday, “A faith that requires you to close your mind in order to believe is not much of a faith at all.”

And don’t forget, Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species both occur in 2009. Mark your calendars now for the big party that is sure to happen on February 12th of that year.