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I first heard of Tauriq Moosa from a repost of a piece of his writing at Butterflies and Wheels about a year-and-a-half ago. Mr. Moosa writing on the importance of secularism in Europe, his defense of Johann Hari, and his philosophical writings have appealed to me greatly over the last year. His background can be read here. You can read him at his blog and at Factonista.
Skepoet: What got you involved with skeptical activism?
Tauriq Moosa: My first understanding of reasoning resulted in observing where such reasoning failed. Mistakes are usually first identified with ourselves, criticising and wondering where we went wrong, then extrapolating that on to other people. Like many, my journey into fulfilling myself spiritually meant leaping into a mire of nonsense first then wading to a clear stream of reason later. Once I could see where I stood, even as these thoughts floated beneath me, the dredges of my past would drift down later.
I could see them for what they were. I believed I could read people’s minds and “souls” from pieces of wood; I thought that their palms held deep-seated secrets of their past and future. All this I did in an attempt to help my fellow people, a finding which has confirmed only two things for me: everyone needs a therapist, no matter how normal you think you are and secondly how easily people are fooled on both sides of the fraudster-fence. The first people duped into thinking they have psychic powers are those who practise it. I found confirmation of my abilities wherever I went – being paid to indulge in the private lives of complete strangers. I was able to bring people to tears in moments.
I later learnt from studying psychology that this was nothing but cold-reading. And I had a talent for it. This haunted me and most of what I do is an extended apology to those I duped. I began at this same time to shift my interest in speculative nonsense about spirits, souls, demons and magic and focus on something more wondrous: the Western philosophical position and science. Whilst I was on holiday, some time just before beginning my degree in psychology, I happened to take a book out my library called Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder. I was introduced to Plato, Aristotle, Russell, Kant, Wittgenstein. It was incredible. I read it four times, taking notes and rehearsing the various phrases: the myth of the cave, Russell’s paradox, the beauty of Spinoza’s depiction of “god”, etc.
Whilst all this had happened, I was a good Muslim child. I constantly worried about my delving into “satanic” endeavours, like Tarot cards and minds that were not Allah’s. I studied more Islam than proper school for most of childhood, going to numerous Islamic schools. The abuse and sadness of those times were physical but mostly mental. Islam, like all religions, is spectacularly inhibiting to a child’s mind and indeed children often see religion for the farce it is. Questions are met with straight and rehashed answers. Today the most shocking thing is realising that children are learning in a language they do not know – indeed, most Muslims are not Arab speaking. So, we have children learning off by heart that they must “slay the pagans wherever ye may find them” (Quran 9:005).
When I first began reading philosophy books and articles, I found all “sacred” knowledge as given by Islam constantly undermined. Not only was Plato more beautiful but had more universal appeal. Socrates once said that the unconsidered life was not worth living and to me, Islam constantly pleaded guilty to something worse than an unconsidered life: it was a life of submission. Islam literally means “submission” and it simply went against my natural instincts to give up my critical faculties, my reasoning, my creativity for the auspices of an arbitrary 7th century book. Islam to this day has offered no answers I can see that aids humanity or furthers thought in a beneficial way. My final turning away was the Rushdie affair, as Rushdie became one of my favourite authors (and still is).
This was on a basic level. When it finally dawned on me, quite late, how dangerous ideas lead dangerous people to do dangerous things and justify it with the same god I worshiped, I finally shed myself of this skin of delusion.
It is a very long story but eventually I met more and more people who thought religious ideas banal and boring. I had been writing since I was six. I have not stopped since. I realised that one way I could aid my species would be to use writing to further ideas about thinking, reasoning, human rights and a good basis of philosophical inquiry. Thus I found people silly enough to like my work and began posting them online. I began being introduced to more and more people in the sceptical community, a few times being asked to write or contribute. Thus I found myself being published in America in Skeptic – the first time I received an email from Michael Shermer I remember thinking: “This is what I want to do with my life.” I was in tears.
Living in South Africa is a very lonely and isolated experience in terms of philosophy, reasoning and anti-religious activism. But it has started with better writers than myself. People who are actual thinkers and highly talented and intelligent. Jacques Rousseau, a philosopher and a sometime friend, is one. South Africa is a beautiful wonderful country and my desire to connect with people in Europe and America is to spread the notion that the message of a unified species is not lost. Indeed it has come back home to the continent from which we all came.
Skepoet:Do you think philosophy plays a crucial role in the skeptical mindset?
Tauriq Moosa: Without a doubt (even though philosophy begins with doubt!). But what we must be careful of what we mean by philosophy. As Anthony Gottlieb has said in his book on the history of subject, The Dream of Reason, the last thing he expected to find in his decade long inquiry was that there was no such thing as philosophy. Or at least nothing particularly unifying about the great men he investigated. But what I understand firstly about how philosophy aids a sceptical mindset is learning its history. Surprisingly, as Roger Scruton has pointed out, the history of philosophy is quite a recent addition to the analytic canon of philosophy taught in Western universities. Philosophy, as an academic discipline is very difficult, but its interest in its general form, its beauty and just plain wonder is appealing to everyone. Everyone asks “why am I here?”, “why does the world exist?” and so on. I recall Isaiah Berlin saying that philosophers are those who lay bare the roots of everyday thinking – he beautifully mentions that every man commits patricide, not necessarily killing the father, but the ideas of the father. Philosophy is a mirror, but a broken one: its refracted image sheds light on the concerned subject from different angles.
Bertrand Russell, who would be my hero if I had heroes, is the first person (aside from Salman Rushdie) who I truly consider incapable of writing a boring sentence. I was in awe of someone of his stature writing about everything we all wonder about: meaning, truth, beauty, love, marriage, god. Here was the co-author of infamous Principia Mathematica writing about who should use lipstick, about why traditional marriage is rubbish, and how love and creativity need to overshadow the capitalist mindset. This was what the world needed, more people thinking like a philosopher about everyday matters (indeed, philosophers themselves need to do this more!). It seems that if people retained a sense of epistemic duty, they would be ready to scrutinise their own beliefs, be ready to admit uncertainty and doubt. But we do not like doubt and uncertainty, preferring as Hitchens says “the conspiracy theory to no theory at all.”
With regard to scepticism itself, I assume we are talking about the scepticism as exemplified by such people as Michael Shermer, Martin Gardner, Richard Dawkins and Carl Sagan – not the scepticism of Pyrrho and Sextus Empiricus. In such cases, philosophical inquiry starts with Descartes questions about what is possible to know beyond all doubt. This tiny bit of philosophy can, with one tiny notch, forever distort most ideas people have, not least the arrogation of power from a celestial mind.
SkepoetHow do you think skepticism relates to secular governance?
Tauriq Moosa: A very good question. AC Grayling, who has reprised the role of the public philosopher from Russell, has said that a “measure of a good society is whether its individual members have the autonomy to do as they choose in respects that principally concern only them.” In this respect he was talking about the legalisation of drugs – a fact that not many people consider. The fact that heroin is illegal whilst nicotine is not, the fact that drinking is legal, whilst cocaine is not, is one hallmark of an uncritical populace. A society that respects its citizens enough to allow them the choices of drugs or tee-totalling is a respectable one; one which imposes laws from conservative moralists, who claim to know better than others on how these other people should live, is one we should be suspicious of.
I do not think scepticism so much as critical thinking would aid us in maintaining free, liberal and good governance. Critical thinking and good reasoning is a constant endeavour. Getting a whole society to constantly engage in this way is difficult and most likely futile. However, if we do not get the whole society, we can at least get many more and also allow them to be critical. Most do not realise the importance in checking up on your government: making sure their policies are correct, realising that government represents the people not the other way around, and so on. These are ideals, of course, but they are enshrined in many society’s constitutions. John Stuart Mill wrote in his essay on this matter that it requires the active participation of all men. I think that by giving people the power to decide for themselves – by legalising drugs, prostitution, abortion and so on – we can inherently make people more mature in their thinking. They can realise that paternalism is a horrid function of any regime.
Consider book banning, which occurred in my country recently, with regards to Sherry Jones’ The Jewel of Medina. Who is deciding for me that I can not read this book? Who is taking it upon themselves to read for the whole society? This is a disgusting affront to the autonomy of individuals. People must be grown up enough to decide that they will either read or not read a work of fiction. People give into to these impositions on their liberty without question – and that above all is the most terrifying part. People do not even defend their liberties which have been so long in their fruition.
But I think our most important goal, in terms of active defense of liberties and promotion of maturity in our societies, is the emancipation of women. We are nowhere near completing this goal. I am ashamed not only to be a human but a male when confronted with this most horrid affront to sensibilities, of one half of the world denigrating the other. It will start first with understanding and setting women’s feet on a platform called humanity, that precarious piece of wood we all struggle to balance. Being human it seems is similar to doing a pirouette on a tight-rope. But by seeing everyone, including women, as equal we can make our whole planet a much better one. This is after all the only one, the only home, we will ever have.
Skepoet: Your story is actually quite similar to many ex-Fundamentalists Skeptics I’ve met. Do you think being involved with such religiousideas as a child gives your skepticism a sense of urgency?
Tauriq Moosa: First-hand experience always gives one’s mission a full-throated cry. Primo Levi’s “sense of urgency” as you call it is strengthened by his own experience in Auschwitz; if someone wrote it, never having been there, it seems to lose all colour. Anyone can do the outlines but the picture needs to be filled in. And this means that there can be many armchair activists who are excellent at creating the outlines of criticism or an idea, like Richard Dawkins, but it would take many who have experienced it to fill in the blanks and colour in the spaces.
I also think that there are not enough English-speaking ex-Muslim anti-theists. I do not consider myself a humanist, or an atheist – since labels are silly – but if forced, I call myself an anti-theist. Especially coming from a Muslim background, this adds a sense of urgency, since those criticising Islam are often ignored because they have not been Muslim, no nothing about it as a faith, are white, etc. etc. All quite pseudo-racist responses, to be sure, but one that finds nodding heads even amongst your average person. I do hope to write a book about leaving Islam, how important it was replacing all its answers with the beautiful questions of philosophy, its problems with modern conceptions of human rights, and why we need to be active in defending liberty and so on. Its been done before, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Ibn Warraq for example – both brilliant books – but there needs to be more people speaking out against Islam.
I am tired of hearing the boring rehashed arguments of “moderate” Muslims, like Irshad Manji and Reza Aslan, where excuses for Islamists are made. These are highly intelligent people retaining a bizarre ritual practise that actively endorses the denigration of women. Their reasons for retaining Islam is most likely a sense of cultural identity – as this is how they are making a name and money for themselves. Manji of course is excellent but I am saddened that she still considers herself Muslim. This petty waffling must stop and the emperor’s nudity must be brought into the harsh light of reality. Islam is silly, petty, parochial and there are better ways to identify oneself and live a good life. All of Islamic thinking can easily be wiped out by a good dose of Epicurus.
I do want to write such a book but the sense of arrogance and egotism involved has always prevented me. Who would want to read about me, a complete unknown person who is barely in his mid-twenties? Why is my life so interesting (it is not) that it needs to be put in print? It was my realisation that I can identify with the average person, in that I have a loving family, a comfortable existence and so on, that I can highlight how Islam completely undermines such a life. It is as though there is an underground world into which you step from your everyday happy existence to talk of killing unbelievers, beating women and destroying the minds of children. You spoke of a sense of urgency – this is mine.
Whether I write it or not, however, depends on whether I can overcome such feelings of arrogance and egotism.
Skepoet: Is there anything that frustrates you with the English-speaking peoples various relationships to the so-called “Islamic world”? I know that question is worded a little strangely, but I don’t think the civilizations involved are monolithic.
Tauriq Moosa: Any divisions frustrate me: men and women, black and white, good and bad. I function under the banner of universal application of freedom, that is: freedom and liberty for all, within the framework of rescinded harm. But in the context of the so-called “Islamic world” (I don’t know what that is in reality but I know it is one the most horrid ideals), there are many. Firstly, nearly all those previous examples I have mentioned find fruition in Islamic societies. The burka-clad women, buried up to her chest in sand about to be stoned to death is a familiar image. Or the hatred between Muslims and non-Muslims, as seen in their banners and violence, against free-speech. The fact is, within an Islamic context, there are conceptual hues which make for complications. It’s not easy to simply say all Muslims are evil – that is false. What frustrates me in talks of division is highlighting the humans who embrace the idea, rather than criticising the idea itself. For example, we can be as rude, mean and mock any ideas; but people deserve respect.
From this, you can see I agree that the civilisations are not monothilic. Kenan Malik, in his latest book about the Rushdie affair, says that there are failings with the “clash of civilisations” view as well as equating Islam with peace. What frustrates more than anything is the lack of attacking ideas because we are afraid of the very people who embrace those ideas. If I want to criticise an Islamic doctrine, for example the undermining of women, that is acceptable. In retaliation, Muslims should not wish for my death but should, if their ideas are truly from Allah, point out why my idea is wrong, using civil discourse. What frustrates me is the operation on two different planes: that of discourse which operates in the realm of ideas, and those which grasp the sword and reap blood. That is the relationship of fear.
The second horrid relationship seems to me one of placating the big and loudest child in a classroom. Instead of correcting his incorrect and rude methods with the other children, we tell the other children to just take it. Or we delude ourselves and say he is actually a child of peace. Or worse still, say we brought this on ourselves. All those who say that I find make the most pathetic arguments.
They need to read the Quran, they should read the history of Islam. They should learn about Muhammad. Don’t ask Muslims about their faith – most don’t know what it is. They regurgitate the words of their Imam. (I recall a finding in Britain last year or so which found that so-called “moderate and liberal” mosques had Imams preaching about the “horrid” notions of liberty, human rights, equality, because they were man-made.) Islam like all religions I think belongs our past. I have yet to find a single instance in areas like philosophy and science where religious or ordained knowledge can aid it, or take it forward. By its definition, religions can not. Perhaps a certain religious person can, but certainly not from their sacred texts. What frustrates me are those who make excuses for those who wish death, but immediately blame those who criticise Islam. For example, Salman Rushdie was often blamed for his received death-threats by fellow non-Muslims. How bizarre is the mentality when people criticise the person issued with a death-threat, rather than to say it goes against peace, liberty and human-freedom to issue death-threats, burn and band books and so on in the first place. Where was reason but in exile when the hankering shadow of Islam fell into civil discourse in a Western democracy?
Skepoet:Do you think a public intellectual has a duty to promote things like Enlightenment values and/or a scientific approach to possibility of truth?
Tauriq Moosa: The very existence of a public intellectual precludes being silent on these values. If one considers oneself a public intellectual, we should be focusing on the universal application of basic human rights: freedom, justice, equality, and the pursuit of happiness. Some people who are considered public intellectuals do not promote this, for example the puppet of pettiness, Slavoj Žižek. Also, consider Prospect magazine’s number one public intellectual from last year, Fethullah Gülen, who is a Tukish Sufi cleric. Regardless, it seems to me that being in a position where one has access to a large audience, willing to listen to your opinions on the “big questions”, it is a matter of utility that we do our best to help them in the best way possible. Now I am no public intellectual, but certainly that is what I expect from those who I hold in high-esteem. These are the men and women who have replaced the all-important Grecian philosopher, people who are wiser, more eloquent than ourselves.
Enlightenment values have one very important aspect: they inspire a universal utility, from which everyone can benefit if they are given voice and fertile ground. Autonomy remains number two, because at the top is freedom to express that autonomy. This is the first thing that should unite public intellectuals, but of course many would disagree for whatever reason. It seems though that even those who do not outwardly state their position on defending or promoting Enlightenment values, do so as soon as they contend to speak of equality for all, justice and liberty. If we hold people in high-esteem who believe in marginalising society based on race, creed, political position, sex, or eye-colour (all five are as bizarre as the next), we should be worried – certainly about those who think this, but more about those many who would support those views.
Science needs more eloquent expositors like Sagan and Dawkins. Many don’t realise that Dawkins is not a professor of biology, but was Professor for the Public Understanding of Science. I think that this position, now endowed to the mathematician Marcus du Sautoy, is more important than most academic positions. But I have huge issues with current tertiary institutions. To put it bluntly, I think the humanities is full of bullshit and many undergraduates are learning beautiful-sounding horse-shit, from men and women who should be teaching them new ways of thinking not relativistic, post-modern nonsense. But that is another point. The major point even here is that a scientific mindset could undermine this. I don’t see a conflict between art and science, since I see the latter as beautiful as the former. Sure, those who sit for hours pricking the legs off fruit-flies might seem pointless to people like Sarah Palin and, that sprouter of all things idiotic, Jeremy Clarkson, but their intense, jargon-ignited thoughts and papers could save your life later. We need people who can straddle the lines of the doing and the telling: Sagan was a gift to our world, as was Darwin and Huxley. By showing society how beautiful, interesting and – most importantly – fun science is, we can have a world that doesn’t flinch when we talk about genetically modified food, or stem-cells. This could lead to faster advances for all and therefore better lives lived.
Skepoet:Your answer to last question brings to mind some recent controversy about the role of scientists as communicators that was sparked by Sheril Kirshenbaum and Chris Mooney. Kirshenbaum and Mooney seem to contrast Dawkins and Sagan as sort of antipodes. I don’t always agree with everything Dawkins says about the United States and I sometimes think people misunderstand his tone. So what do you think is the ideal “tone” for a public intellectual to take? Or do you think this is sort of a useless question in the first place?
Tauriq Moosa: Well I would be the first to be worried if you agreed with everything a certain person said! The first thing we must realise about these people we hold in high-esteem is that they have reproductive organs and orifices. They are not perfect. So, of course Dawkins is wrong on some areas (I can only think of factual errors more than general ones, like dates and names he gets wrong in The God Delusion.), that’s obvious enough. But his power and eloquence are not diminished, hence his importance.
The tone is a difficult one but it needs to be said with eloquence, lucidity, clarity and aiming for the minimum. By minimum I do mean just the number of words or syllables, but to compact an entire image quickly. A brilliant example is from Plato in his dialogue Timaeus. Here we have the a depiction of a vanished and horrible land called Atlantis, which Plato described so brilliantly that people instead made it into a utopia. It was that vivid! Now, the importance here is not really that people got it wrong but that people remembered the impact of such a place. That is what is important: creating an impact with one’s ideas. And when we think of impact, we think of hammer blows. Some might say “fundamentalist atheists” (a bizarre term) are blunt and forceful in their approach. But this attitude is forgotten when taken to the realm of art criticism, literature, politics and so on. I think Dawkins could at least alter his tone somewhat in certain circumstances, but I find no problem with it.
As to whether this suits some ideal “tone” that a public intellectual should have, I do not think so. Daniel Dennett for example is soft spoken and appears apologetic in his approach to religious matters. In a lecture he gave, he set out a disclaimer apologising – then said: “Now I can offend whoever I want”, and proceeded to brilliantly do that. There is no reason to be harsh to people but we can, as I said, be harsh toward their ideas. It seems that if ideas are steadfast, strong and retain a sense of truth, they will gleam from the oncoming fire of criticism. Their mettle and metal will be tested, whether it’s found to bend and break, or twist and curl. What remains after the fire-blast determines that idea’s utility. This is quite a Popperian way of looking at it, in that ideas are not “true” but useful to the extent that we use them until a new, better or different idea arises. How we communicate ideas rests I think with the individual public intellectual, but I think primarily their communication and discussion of ideas should be: interesting, lucid, clear, eloquent and obvious in their position on the idea. I loathe people’s writing where they waffle in their positions, so, for example, we never know if the argument is for or against religious belief (Eagleton and Midgley are horrible examples of this).
So whilst the initial question might be useless, I think there are certain aims rather than attitudes to the public intellectual tone.
I have not read Kirshenbaum and Mooney’s book, Unscientific America, I must admit. But I have read plenty about it, by the authors themselves and others. From what I’ve read, it seems petty, childish, uninformative and boring. I’d rather not waste my precious reading time on them. In fact my ideas come from the authors’ defence against the criticisms (especially from PZ Myers, Jerry Coyne, and my some time editor Ophelia Benson). I do not think they have reasoned the book well and I have read better authors and social commentators on these matters. I recall a brilliant essay by Bertrand Russell where he says something worth quoting in full:
“The same love of adventure which takes men to the South Pole, the same passion for a conclusive trial of strength which leads some men to welcome war, can find in creative thought an outlet which is neither wasteful nor cruel, but increases the dignity of man by incarnating in life some of that shining splendour which the human spirit is bringing down out of the the unknown. To give this joy, in a greater or less measure, to all who are capable of it, is the supreme end for which the education of the mind is to be valued.”
I think education really should be teaching kids how to and not what to think. But anyway, this seems to me something that could solve many problems of scientific illiteracy. Yet that domain must be made amicable to the tastes of the average person, so, as I said, we just need those who straddle both communication and participation to be doing that more. Apparently this is also their solution. I do not see why they had to write a whole book about it – but you have read the book. But I am refraining of judging it as a whole and referring only to the points the authors have made themselves.
Skepoet:Who do you see as picking up the useful threads of the Enlightenment right now?
Tauriq Moosa: If you mean one thinker, it’s A.C. Grayling. There is no doubt. Not only does he write beautifully, but his arguments are water-tight and he is unafraid to give his views. He is also a professor of philosophy, which makes him all the more respectable in my books. Not only has he written about the history of Enlightenment ideals (Toward the Light), but also a recent defence of them (Liberty in the Age of Terror). If there is anyone I would never want to debate, it would be AC Grayling.
Hitchens also is a steadfast Enlightenment fighter, despite what many say. He too writes beautifully. His love of literature, his activism against capital punishment, his highlighting of horrors around the world – all mark him as someone attempting to defend and promote Enlightenment values.
In terms of groups, I see the recent fruition of thought in this new generation forced to face ideal patricide. Never before has it been okay to criticise god on such a global scale. The gap of god is filled with human freedom, a smiling face of dignity and respect for the stable diet of placated humanity. The watershed of superstition finds the face of stars reflected in its quivering. Wonder is everywhere and their hands are up, ready to meet it where before their parents’ hands were up, ready to worship it. This generation, my goodness, they are brave, beautiful and so intelligent! I find myself constantly intimidated by them. I am 23 years old and many are younger than me – but nearly all of them are more brilliant, better qualified and more literate than I could ever hope to be. I remember after having dinner with the president of the Swedish Humanist Association, he said something which I now say to all those who are fighting for women’s rights, equality, justice, compassion, respect and against religion, in their blogs, on Facebook, in forums – “If the world has you as the next generation, maybe things are not so bad after all.” They really are quite amazing and not given enough credit. They are the true Enlightenment defenders, the major champions of reason. And there are so goddamn many, too, it makes me smile and sweat at the same time. You and your blog for example would be one of these. It’s a bit intimidating just being interviewed by you, since my knowledge is unimpressive in these matters and I am not an expert on anything. I am always nervous when I have to speak mostly for this reason. I would be more confident speaking before an older generation of Nobel laureates, than the new generation of bloggers and student activists.
I recently saw you published a review in the Ameican magazine, Skeptic, and this got me to thinking: Why do you think that the European–particularly the UK and the Northern European countries–rationalist/anti-theist and the American Skeptic community overlap so much even if the politics of the parties involved are sometimes greatly different?
Naturally, their entwined history has made the flower of their unified thought blossom between their connected vines. Most of the patriotic ideals of America are genius (it’s patriotic to defend the second amendment, or the separation of church and state. Those who fight for “god” in American politics are unpatriotic, actually). It was devised by great men like Washington and Paine. Indeed, Paine was English but also truly American (he is said to be the first to use the term “the United States of America”). Aside from their histories, language is an important identifier. Both countries during their epochs had English as their main language. With language comes culture and thought and so on. Even if you want to ignore history and language as factors (the former beautifully discussed by Hitchens in Blood, Class & Empire), then it seems that it must rest simply with the spread of ideas. I am not very well versed in politics – it seems too difficult for me to understand what the different positions are. I am not at the point where I could tell you how a Leftist is different to a Social Democrat and so on.
But I think the major reason is the rescinding of authority and paternalism, and the decline in religion. I think faith is dying, with this new attitude to grasp life with both hands and shake it vigorously until it coughs up something useful.
Some European countries are still suffering. My colleagues in Poland, who sometimes translate my work, often tell me how the Catholic church denies, hides or lies about the growing number of atheists there. It distorts all the statistics and adds to the delusion for the gullible faithful.
Also, these are the countries targeted by Islamists – which in way is good thing. It means we are promoting ideas which are incorrigible with Islamists. That means we are doing a good thing. Its a nasty way to look at it, but we should at least find some ray of sunlight in the gloom, even if its filled with dust.
Skepoet: Anything you’d like to say in closing?
Tauriq Moosa: Yes, I love your blog. Keep it up. And thank you for interviewing me. It has been a pleasure.
According to a recent study, global warming will go faster than previously thought in the next five years.
I am a fan of the evolutionary neurology and psychology, but I have been highly critical of “just so” stories about our current development and the nostalgia for a paleolithic past found in many people who abuse evolutionary psychology to come up with primitivist theories. Greg Downey at Neuroanthropology wrote a very enlightening post on an article by Prof. Marlene Zuk who wrote an article for NY times on the fantasies of the Paleo-diet.
I am going to quote from both Downey and Zuk to get why I think this is important. Downey comments:
Zuk draws on Leslie Aiello’s concept of ‘paleofantasies,’ stories about our past spun from thin evidence, to label the nostalgia some people seem to express for prehistoric conditions that they see as somehow healthier. In my research on sports and masculinity, I frequently see paleofantasies come up around fight sports, the idea that, before civilization hemmed us in and blunted our instincts, we would just punch each other if we got angry, and somehow this was healthier, freer and more natural (the problems with this view being so many that I refuse to even begin to enumerate them). It’s an odd inversion on the usual Myth of Progress, the idea that things always get better and better; instead, paleofantasies are a kind of long range projection of Grumpy Old Man Syndrome (’Things were so much better in MY day…’), spinning fantasies of ‘life before’ everything we have built up around us.
While I am a huge promoter of Enlightenment values, there are two meta-narratives–two myths if you don’t want me sounding post-structuralists–that come out of the Enlightenment philosophy that I find myself arguing against: the teleological myths of inevitable progress (which is different than advocating technologically progressive policies) and the myth of the noble primitive. The romantic imperative.
This romantic imperative has shown up in many people who should know better to abuse evolutionary development theories as justifications of nostaglia about the deep and pre-historical past. Zuk really gets into how this is a myth narrative read into evolutionary biology:
As an evolutionary biologist, I was filled with enthusiasm at first over the idea of a modern mismatch between everyday life and our evolutionary past. But a closer look reveals that not all evolutionary ideas are created equal; even for Darwinians, the devil is in the details. The notion that there was a time of perfect adaptation, from which we’ve now deviated, is a caricature of the way evolution works.
First, when exactly was this age of harmony, and what was it like? Scavenging, or eating the carcasses of dead animals left by (or stolen from) predators like lions, was probably replaced by active hunting and accumulation of wild plants about 55,000 years ago, and agriculture seems to have begun a mere 10,000 years ago. We did a lot of different things during each of these times.
How much of the diet during our idyllic hunter-gatherer past was meat, and what kind of plants and animals were used, varied widely in time and space. Inuits had different diets from Australian aboriginals or Neotropical forest dwellers. And we know little about the details of early family structure and other aspects of behavior. So the argument that we are “meant” to eat a certain proportion of meat, say, is highly questionable. Which of our human ancestors are we using as models?
But the difficulty with using our hunter-gatherer selves as icons of well-being goes much deeper. It is not as if we finally achieved harmony with our environment during the Pleistocene, heaved a sigh of relief and stopped.
As Downey says,
In fact, the idea that our bodies were perfectly suited to a particular environment is an adaptationist fantasy. Processes of evolution, including variation and natural selection, niche creation and co-evolution, even catastrophe and fluctuating rates of evolutionary change, suggest that adaptation is usually imperfect, with abundant glitches that, as long as they don’t constitute abject failures, usually continue to exist unless selection and variation conspire to find a way to get rid of them.
So what does this have to do with the paleo-diet? As Downey says,
I think the biological evidence points to the fact that both of these impressions is incorrect, as Zuk suggests: we are neither so perfectly well adapted to foraging (or scavenging or living in trees or whichever stage we develop paleonostalgia for) nor are we so ill-suited for our own environment (in spite of our health problems, we actually live a long time compared to our ancestors, for example).
So before we start waxing nostalgic about all the health benefits of a Pleistocene diet, perhaps we should remember that our ancestors’ food often came in this nasty packaging which tended to run away, attack them, or just go missing entirely when they were really hungry
One commenter attacked the article for being “fuzzy” while the Paleo-diet was “clear and logical.” But our knowledge of the past is fuzzy, particularly when making claims about longevity caused by a diet in an age would violent death killed most people just out of adolescence.
This gets me to a crucial point: reason, by that I mean formal logic, is necessary, but if not grounded in sound empirical facts is still subject to all sorts of mythic thinking. Something can sounds clear and logical, be perfectly logically argued, but its premises could be founded on any number of biases or unconfirmed narratives.
Jennifer Ouellette writes a fascinating piece on how science may out pace science fiction. Ouellette article at the Washington Post. For either positive or negative implications of technology aside, it has grown faster than many people can contextualize.
It,however, is not faster than anyone can imagine, and this gets to my hope: if science beats out science fiction, I hope science fiction can catch up to inspire those dreams that lead us to reason. Human innovation is tied to material circumstances as all things are, but lots hope imagination keeps that innovation up.
Another thanks to George D. for introducing me to Jamais Cascio. This is valid point about geo-engineering and why it may be useful. Here’s the link:
You know, as a science and science education advocate thoroughly in the humanities end of pool, I often find the fights between different sides of the debate about how best to advocate science and secularism to be interesting, enlightening, and sometimes painfully petty. The fights seem to be largely and bitterly over elements that have a lot more to do with style than substance, or about the flash points of religious belief.
Case in point: I was planning on buying Unscientific America by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum anyway, but as what appeared to be a review war, with linked flame wars, starting on Facebook, Sciblogs, and the Science Blogs at Discover Magazine, I realized that I had to read it. The debate between PZ Myers on one end and Mooney/Kirshenbaum on the other made me read the book in an hour and a half this afternoon.
I need to disclose somethings: First, I deeply respect and partially agree with both sides of this debate. Despite the fact that PZ Myers can spin an insult like no one else and whose writing is abrupt to the point of being misread, I love his blog. I don’t, however, love the cheer leading and sycophancy I see amongst some of the commenters on his blog, but that is largely beside the point. I also really like Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum’s blog. Chris understands how those of us in the humanities have been isolated by attacks on our fields due to a few stupid remarks by particular post-structuralists whose influence was largely hyperbolic and whose critique was never intended to be used the way it was used by conservatives and relativists.
Furthermore, people I respect have come down on both sides on both sites in this debate: Ophelia Benson with Myers, John Kwok with Mooney/Kirshenbuam, Tauriq Moosa with Myers, and so on. Forgive me for name dropping, but these are all people I have read, quoted, and respected. See a theme developing?
I also tire of this debate at some point: it feels like a rehash of so much I have seen in the past two decades. Carl Sagan being extremely critical of religion, but always watching his tone. Gould, who I deeply respect as a writer, making what appear to be solely political concessions to religion through NOMA argument. Dawkins who is a wonderful science writer, but uses tone as a weapon, and does not hide his contempt for most–if not all–forms of religion. I can list people on both sides going all the way back to the middle of the 19th century, perhaps even further back.
While scientific knowledge has progressed, the debate over science’s place in culture seems to be a loop that constantly replays slight variations of the same arguments echoing down from William Cliffords’s literary debate with William James on the morality of belief without evidence to P.Z. Myers and Kenneth Miller having strong disagreements.
I honestly don’t expect this to get resolved today, tonight, or maybe ever.
Those are my caveats, let’s get to the merits of the arguments involved. Let’s start by looking at P.Z. Myer’s second paragraph in response to Mooney:
That was before I got to chapters 8 and 9, however, which open with very direct and personal attacks on me and on Pharyngula, atheists in general, and anyone who fails to offer religion its proper modicum of respect. “Oh, that’s why they warned me,” I realized, “it’s like asking the victim of a hatchet job to hold still for a moment so they can get in a good whack.” They definitely did need to request my forbearance, so I wouldn’t just toss their hypocritical and ignorant paean to mealy-mouthedness in the trash right away, which was one perceptive moment on their part. And yes, I freely admit that my opinion of the book is colored by the palpable contempt they hold for me.
I have seen insults and invective that good since 17th century. Oh Thomas Paine and Jonathan Swift where art thou? (I know they’re dead, so bugger off), but like with Paine and Swift, we don’t know if this even can be a cogent argument. Did Mooney and Kirshenbaum attack Myers in chapters eight and nine? Yes. Was the attack personal? I actually have a hard time dealing because of the language here is slick. In Unscientific America(Basic Books, 2009), Mooney and Kirshenbaum say:
It is no accident, then, that PZ Myer’s Pharyngula is such a popular science blog, though its content is hardly limited science. Meyers currently receives more than 1.5 million unique visits each month and approaches 3 million page views, with nearly 2 million unique visits during the month that he posted an image of his desecration of a communion wafer. This may have been the single biggest opportunity yet for science content to break out of the science corner of the blogosphere, but it was likely also the most alienating one. (114)
There is nothing untrue or libelous in that statement, but the entire chapter is contrasting Meyers with an global warming denial site which beat Myers in a blog contest in 2008. One can read the implication seems to be either: crackergate is related to that lose or PZ Myers is only barely better than a global warming crank. I understand Mooney and Kirshenbuam’s point, but even if we admit that Crackergate was alienating for many… Meyers couldn’t have gotten that many hits without the controversy.
Mooney and Kirshenbaum did comment on this:
Myers claims that our book contains “very direct and personal attacks on me and on Pharyngula, atheists in general, and anyone who fails to offer religion its proper modicum of respect.”
It is hard to know precisely what he means by “very direct and personal attacks,” as he doesn’t back up the charge with any evidence. Certainly we do directly mention Myers. We describe the infamous desecration of the communion wafer, which we criticize. Later, we also talk critically about Myers in the context of discussing the face of science on the Internet.
Even if these constituted “personal attacks”–and we don’t see how–they still wouldn’t be attacks on “atheists in general, and anyone who fails to offer religion its proper modicum of respect.” Chris is an atheist. We’re quite sure he did not attack himself in the book.
As for Myers, he is a very public figure, and never was he more public than in what he refers to as “Crackergate.” Does he not expect to be criticized when he puts a desecrated communion wafer on the Internet? Was everyone who criticized him on that occasion attacking him personally?
On this, I am equally confused. In a way, this debate is summed up by Crackergate, but Crackergate is ultimately not of singular relevance to Myer’s overall message. During “Crackergate” I was actually watching many people’s response and outside of the atheist/skeptic community, many people were horrified at the public relations nightmare that it could become. I have many agnostic and pagan friends aghast at the tone, but I saw Myer’s point myself: a communion wafer is not literally transubstantiated in G-d’s flesh unless G-d’s flesh is very much like flat bread. Still, I can agree with Myer’s point and think the whole thing was a problematic as a public relations stunt.
So was this an unjustified personal attack or not? Honestly, I don’t think it was meant to be, but I sure see how it can be viewed as such.
Let’s more on to the next point that Myer’s made:
How, exactly, are we to accomplish it [popularizing science and making it soundly accepted in the culture] without challenging anti-scientific attitudes? Like the Pluto incident, what Mooney and Kirshenbaum seem to want is that science conform itself to that common culture, that somehow science will accommodate itself to the popular will, and everyone will be happy. They lack the realization that what they’re actually proposing is a rather radical change in cultural values, and that that will not come without some pain and conflict.
Valid point if that’s what what Mooney and Kirshenbaum meant. Mooney and Kirshenbaum respond:
Myers doesn’t appear to grasp this point; he seems to think we’re saying science should have been decided by referendum in the Pluto instance. “Are there other scientific matters that should be decided by popular vote?” he asks. Of course not. The results of science should never be subject to popular vote. But that’s a red herring, since the whole point is that unlike, say, whether an atom is larger than an electron, whether Pluto is a “planet” is not purely a scientific matter. It is, to a very large degree, a matter of semantics. Moreover, it also involves history (Pluto had been a “planet” since 1930) and culture–which the scientists involved in Pluto’s demotion were pretty insensitive to.
Is Pluto’s planetary status purely an issue of semantics? Partially, but it was semantics influenced by scientific observation. If the definition of planet is to continue to have meaning, it had to refined and many other heavenly bodies would have be reclassified as planets. While there is cultural weight to most changes in the meanings of words, and generally these changes are organic and occur over a span of decades, sometimes jargon and nomenclature within a field must be changed to reflect new findings. Was this decision without detractors even within the scientific community? No, Alan Stern did not approve of the situation and thought that actually many of the inner planets wouldn’t meet standards by the criterion set out by IAU. Also, the public was not really privy to all the information involved mainly because of poor science journalism.
You can see the complications.
So let’s get to what I see as the crux of the disagreement between Myers, Mooney, and Kirshenbaum:
In chapter eight, Mooney and Kirshenbaum say,
The American scientific community gains nothing from the condescending rhetoric of the New Atheists—and neither does the stature of science in our culture. We should instead adopt a stance of respect towards those who would hold their faith dear, and a sense of humility based on the knowledge that although science can explain a great deal about the way our world functions, the question of God’s existence lies outside its expertise. (105)
Myers respond is what I would expect:
Science and reason give us antibiotics, microwave ovens, sanitation, lasers, and rocketships to the moon. What has religion done for us lately? We have become accustomed to objective measures of success, where we can explicitly see that a particular strategy for decision-making and the generation of knowledge has concrete results.
To appeal to pragmatic epistemology that Myers makes here is sound, but the its also question begging. What has religion done for us lately? It’s hard to say, religion a a concept is EXTREMELY vague. The bulk of charity in the US is religious based, but then again, the tax code makes that possible and even likely. The civil rights movement was inspired in the Black churches, but there were secular members from the earliest parts of that movement.
These sorts of monolithic claims are school-yard philosophy. I could ask “what has string theory given us lately” and equally stacked the deck. If Myer’s stopped there, I would have to give him a harder time, but he doesn’t:
Now, now, I can hear the defenders of religion begin to grumble, there’s more to life than merely material products like microwave ovens — there’s contentment and contemplation and a sort of subjective psychology of ritual and community and all that sort of thing. Sure. Fine. Then stick to it, and stop pretending that religion ought to be a determinant of public policy, that it can inform us about the nature of our existence, or that it provides a good guide to public morality. Get it out of our schools and courthouses and workplaces and governments, take it to your homes and your churches, and use it appropriately as your personal consoling mind-game. And stop pretending that it is universal and necessary, because there are a thousand different religions that all claim the same properties with wildly different details, and there are millions of us with no religion at all who get along just fine without your hallowed quirks.
And this is why breaking this debate down in parts so difficult: in substance, Myers seems to be arguing that there is nothing positive to “religion” (again without really defining it), but there are some criteria in which it is separate and subjectively rated it may hold up. At least, when its away from public policy and away from spreading.
I think I agree with him on the explicit public policy part of the argument, but even if you did accept that science needs to be 180 degree outside of that debate, values and public policy are entirely mixed together. The fact that even atheist scientists and philosophers have a HUGE variety of political ideologies means that there is no ONE answer to these questions: religion involved or not. So while explicit public policy should not involve churches on constitutional grounds, I don’t think ANY values philosophy can avoid having policy implications.
But Myer’s epistemological take of the New Atheists stance is sound:
There is no philosophical or metaphysical certainty on the part of us “New Atheists”, and we have no problem admitting it. Dawkins wrote it down forthrightly in his book when he scores himself as a 6 on a 7-point scale of atheism: “6. Very low probability, but short of zero. De facto atheist. ‘I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there.’” It’s genuinely remarkable how many people say they’ve read his book, and then walk away to claim that Dawkins says science “entirely precludes God’s existence.”
I agree entirely with Dawkins’ sentiment. I also turn it around to use an agnostic sentiment on religious interlocuters: “I don’t know for sure, and you don’t either, so why are you being so high-handedly specific in your claims that god was a Jewish carpenter, or his prophet was a polygamist with a flying horse, or that Ragnarok is imminent? Give me a method for evaluating your claims, tell me what rational reason you have to believe that, show me the evidence!” And then they don’t. I’m just supposed to have faith.
He’s right, on a scale of probability I believe we can make judgments of likelihood. On the question of God, particularly of the interventionist variety, the evidence is not there. It is true that there are forms of theism and Deism that are completely outside of testable knowledge because they involve either non-contradictory deities, or deities that exist entirely outside the natural world. There is no reason to posit such deities necessarily, but there is also no reason not to. However, these theological formations of G-d are not the personal G-d spoken about by most believers.
Honestly, in this argument I am reminded of Neil DeGrasse Tyson comments to Richard Dawkins at the Beyond Belief conference in 2006 where Tyson said he primarily agreed with Dawkins, but he felt his words as much as heard them. Does that change the argument? While tone does matter, it doesn’t really change any of the arguments involved.
How do Mooney and Kirshenbaum feel about this element of the debate? I’ll quote Sheril Kirshenbuam:
As I just wrote at The Intersection:
Science and religion are not mutually exclusive and must not continue to be portrayed as such. Though some very vocal voices in the science community disagree, I assure you they are not representative of the whole. I continue to work day to day with scientists who hold a very broad array of beliefs across fields from molecular biology to physiology to conservation. And when it comes to issues like climate change and ocean acidification, everyone must be be engaged if we’re to get anywhere. The new atheist movement takes an adversarial approach, but only succeeds in alienating the majority of the planet away from science. When it comes to enacting sound policies on what really matters, this will always be a losing strategy.
I’ll end this discussion with an expanded version of what I replied to her with on one of her articles:
I think we agree more than we disagree–trust me, I been tarred as an accommodationalist before myself because I think even if we do have a naturalistic stance on the world, we have to admit that there are some things that different religions are speaking to in people that hit a core, otherwise I don’t think religious ideas would exist. I have also been accused of being rabidly anti-religious because I think there is much that can be empirically falsified about most religious claims and because I think many religious concepts are so philosophically incoherent they can’t addressed.
That said, I don’t think science can be reconcile with every type of faith and we must insist on methodological naturalism. When there are faith claims made that can be tested empirically and within normal experimental grounds, they should be. I do think, however, that there are some things we can’t back down on and no amount of media savvy is going to change how the dominant culture responds to that at moment. I may over a long period of time, and if that’s the case, we need both a soft approach (Gould, David Sloan Wilson, Chris Mooney and Yourself), a hard approach (all the “new” atheists, Coyne, Myers, etc) and everything in between from Degrasse Tyson to E. O. Wilson even to Collins.
I still believe those comments. Now, I am not going all the sniping and griping between the two camps–I think some parts of Myer’s reviews were hyperbolic bordering on vitriolic and some of the replies by Chris Mooney seemed to miss the point. I don’t like to engage in exercises in missing the point.
I also will say that I am not done commenting on Unscientific America. I think it is worth reading despite the way I feel about some of the framing in Chapters Eight and Nine. I have some things to say about its length, literary style, and to comment on some of the other mixed reviews of the book. I honestly wish Mooney and Kirshenbaum had written MUCH more about the humanities issues and the relationship between science and Hollywood.
Dear Readers:
Sometimes being a teacher is very draining, particularly in a time of fairly massive forced resignations and lay-offs. This is my day job, however, and so I try to be both stoic and optimistic about it as well as skeptical of a lot of the claims made for and about education.
SO in that spirit, I am offering you some blog clippings and saying some interviews for clear date. This is a good one on the re-branding of ideas from Bridging Differences:
In brief, I maintained that the movement for “21st Century skills” sounds similar—if not identical—to earlier movements over the past century. Its calls to teach critical thinking skills, creativity, problem-solving, and cooperative group skills are not at all “21st Century.” Certainly for the past generation, these goals have been virtual mantras in our schools of education. If there is anything that teachers have been taught over the years, it is the importance of pursuing these goals, which are certainly laudable in themselves.
Earlier manifestations of the movement to teach outcomes directly was referred to as “life adjustment education,” or “outcome-based education,” or most recently in the 1990s, “SCANS skills.” In every manifestation, the movement says that we should teach students how to think and teach them real-life skills but downplay academic subjects because students can always look up “bits of information.”
E.D. Hirsch and Dan Willingham were brilliant as they argued that skills and knowledge are inseparable. People do not think in the abstract; they need knowledge—ideas, facts, concepts—to think about. Dan Willingham showed in his presentation that the mind does not compartmentalize into skills and knowledge. Problems cannot be solved without having the relevant knowledge to think with. Students can learn creativity, flexibility, problem-solving, and critical thinking as they learn about science, history, mathematics, and so on. To prioritize skills over knowledge, the panel argued, made no sense.
Ken Kay responded by saying that the “21st Century skills” movement gave equal weight to skills and knowledge and that he was sure there was common ground. He spoke of the many education organizations and technology companies that had endorsed the movement.
I must say, and I mean no disrespect for Mr. Kay, that I was struck by this thought (maybe I was just exercising my critical thinking skills). I have often written about education controversies, and in every case, one group of educators argues with another group of educators. In this instance, a panel of educators (me, Hirsch, Willingham) was debating a public relations executive. This seemed odd to me, and made me wonder about the movement itself.
Is it an effort on the part of the technology companies to sell more high-tech hardware and software to schools? Is it an effort to throw a wrench into the effort to develop meaningful and reasonable academic standards by replacing them with vague and pleasing-sounding goals?
And for something completely different:
An article on how there are actual brain differences between believers and non-believers according to a recent study:
Compared to non-believers, the religious participants showed significantly less activity in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a portion of the brain that helps modify behavior by signaling when attention and control are needed, usually as a result of some anxiety-producing event like making a mistake. The stronger their religious zeal and the more they believed in God, the less their ACC fired in response to their own errors, and the fewer errors they made.
So confirmation bias is hardwired? Or is this a cause of neuro-plasticity? Or is this a valid piece of research? Only more time and experiments will tell.
Dr. Pascal Boyer, whose name has always seemed like a slightly ironic reference to a certain French Jensenist, wrote Religion Explained which really got to my views on the development of religion. I have always thought that limiting religion to claims about theology was both sort of Abrahamic-religion centric and misleading. I also thought that religion is a flaw in logic as sort of misleading too: myths often rationalist origins, but are no longer empirically sound. Rituals and sympathetic magic seem to come from seperate deep psychological needs.
I have also found debating anyone but apologists to be sort of a lost cause. I don’t know that people just cognitively choose their beliefs off of rational arguments. Rational arguments come MUCH later. Here’s what Dr. Boyer has to say on the subject for the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry:
Taking all this into account, it would seem that the “sleep of reason” interpretation of religion is less than compelling. It is quite clear that explicit religious belief requires a suspension of the sound rules according to which most scientists evaluate evidence. But so does most ordinary thinking, of the kind that sustains our commonsense intuitions about the surrounding environment. More surprising, religious notions are not at all a separate realm of cognitive activity. They are firmly rooted in the deepest principles of cognitive functioning. First, religious concepts would not be salient if they did not violate some of our most entrenched intuitions (e.g., that agents have a position in space, that live beings grow old and die, etc.). Second, religious concepts would not subsist if they did not confirm many intuitive principles. Third, most religious norms and emotions are parasitic upon systems that create very similar norms (e.g., moral intuitions) and emotions (e.g., a fear of invisible contaminants) in non-religious contexts.
In this sense, religion is vastly more “natural” than the “sleep of reason” argument would suggest. People do not adhere to concepts of invisible ghosts or ancestors or spirits because they suspend ordinary cognitive resources, but rather because they use these cognitive resources in a context for which they were not designed in the first place. However, the “tweaking” of ordinary cognition that is required to sustain religious thought is so small that one should not be surprised if religious concepts are so widespread and so resistant to argument. To some extent, the situation is similar to domains where science has clearly demonstrated the limits or falsity of our common intuitions. We now know that solid objects are largely made up of empty space, that our minds are only billions of neurons firing in ordered ways, that some physical processes can go backwards in time, that species do not have an eternal essence, that gravitation is a curvature of space-time. Yet even scientists go through their daily lives with an intuitive commitment to solid objects being full of matter, to people having non-physical minds, to time being irreversible, to cats being essentially different from dogs, and to objects falling down because they are heavy.
In a sense, the cognitive study of religion ends up justifying a common intuition, best expressed by Jonathan Swift’s dictum that “you do not reason a man out of something he was not reasoned into.” The point of studying this scientifically is to show to what extent we can expect religious notions to be stable and salient in human cultures, not just now but for a long time to come.
To me the implications here are clear, arguing the logical points of theism will only convince those theism who were deeply committed to the logic of their positions. In fact, as both Sam Harris and Dr. Boyer have discussed, it is easier to make people adopt rationalist and empirical positions OR even HUMANIST positions by attacking individual points of belief or misconception than by attacking their theological framework directly.
That is why I use the term ignostic to deal with theology. It is not that I just doubt G-ds or am a metaphysical rationalist. I don’t think most concepts of G-d are rationally defined enough to even formally reject. You are often talking about people’s undefined emotional and cultural baggage when you talk about theology. Apologists are the exception to this rule, but we all know that their attempts are pretty much post hoc and ad hoc rationalizations. I have known SEVERAL religious people who said as much and returned to a Fideist position.
So who are the creationists, while Gene Expressions has been doing statistical disaggregation in the blogosphere for a quite a little bit of time, he has gotten particularly interesting lately. His recent post plots out which groups are more likely to reject evolution and there are some surprises:
Not surprisingly, Catholics, Hindus, Buddhists, and Jews are above fifty percent in the evolution acceptance with Buddhist and Hindus having higher percentage than general population in some European countries such as the UK. I, however, was surprised that a slim majority of Orthodox Christians do. I couldn’t gather that from their rhetoric on the matter.
However, who rejects evolution is more surprising. There is an uptick in Mormon rejection of evolution. In fact, Razlib points out that this number has increased by 81% since Mormons have moved to be more identified with conservative Christian Protestants.
Another surprise: Evangelical and traditionally Black churches reject evolution MORE than American Muslims do.
I did notice, however, that Pagans were not included in this survey from Pew.
Ed Brayton reports on Cobb county settling its equal access case:
Last week I noted a lawsuit against Cobb County schools over their disparate treatment of a religious group using school facilities. As expected, the school quickly gave in and settled the suit, as they should have. The law is crystal clear on this issue. I really don’t understand why so many schools seem to have a difficult time following the law.
Meanwhile, yet another school can’t seem to figure out the Equal Access Act. The Alliance Defense Fund has filed suit against a New York school district that refuses to recognize a student Bible club.
And he reports on Florida’s new EXPLICIT ID bill which goes further than most ID bills prior:
Right. And if you don’t teach geocentrism along with heliocentrism, you don’t have “critical thinking.” Or Christian Science beliefs along with the germ theory of disease. Or the Hindu cosmology along with the big bang theory.
Wise said that if the Legislature passes the bill, he wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a legal challenge. “You just never know. They use the courts all the time. I guess if they have enough money they can get it in the courts,” he said. “Someplace along the line you’ve got to be able to make a value judgment of what it is you think is the appropriate thing.”
It doesn’t have anything to do with having enough money. The state of Florida has far more money to defend their policies in court than the ACLU or Americans United could ever have to challenge it. Go ahead, pass the policy. And you’ll lose in court again. As you should.
So here we go again.
