The Marx of the Beast

Until yesterday I had been under the possibly naïve impression that music journalism was happily free from the ethnocentric identity politics embodied by certain strains of Marxist and postcolonialist cultural studies. That was when I came by a record review in Dusted Magazine in which these hermeneutical tools are used to test Animal Collective’s seemingly innocuous Water Curses for traces of racism. I’ll spoil the ending for you: We find out that it’s positively seething with the stuff. Yes, the band are thoroughly racist, classist and colonialist all right, and capitalist hegemony might be preventing them from realising it.

It should be noted, however, that the aforementioned hermeneutical tools are analogous to a Geiger Counter with a lump of enriched uranium jammed in its spout. They’re faulty, in short, prone to false positives. So this particular off-the-scale reading scarcely comes as a great surprise. We’d likely have seen the same results had the subject been a patch of bracken or a thunder cloud.

In any event, music is only ostensibly the subject at issue. In reality the writer seems to have had two key ulterior aims: Firstly to pass an only tenuously related third-party article through the filter of his own Marxist class-struggle politics, and secondly to somehow crowbar the whole bloody abortion into a record review.

The third-party article in question – linked in the review – is the quasi-postcolonialist “Race, Rock and the New Weird America” by Kandia Crazy Horse. It attacks as racist the New Weird America movement as a whole and Devandra Banhart specifically; Animal Collective are scarcely mentioned. Further, if her piece is anything to go by, then this Ms. Horse is not only demented but also a race crank. The reviewer describes her language as “a bit purple”. But as far as I could tell, her spectrum is limited to only two colours. By all means read it, if you’re unemployed.

In actuality, the reviewer could have seized upon practically any faintly sentimental “white” folk record, and by any band. Poor old Animal Collective were merely in the wrong place at the wrong time, and ended up serving as the unfortunate catalysts for his accusatory theorising. It’s all rather unpleasant actually.

There is a tendency in a number of these musicians, Animal Collective being at the forefront, to fetishize nature in the way that, say, Devandra Banhart fetishizes Karen Dalton, saying of her, as Crazy Horse quotes, “…she’s got the most far-out, fucked up, amazing soul. She’s the most soulful singer in the universe.” In other words, her music and the way she sings cannot just be a natural function of her life or her cultural or historic context, but somehow surpasses that, takes on a mystical quality, becomes unnatural and in doing so, transgresses the boundaries, becomes something strange or alien, wholly Other. In doing this, Dalton is fetishized for who she is, and the agency for creating her art is taken away from her, replaced instead with this “far-out, fucked up” quality.

So, Animal Collective fetishise nature; and Devandra Banhart, someone with no direct connection to Animal Collective, fetishises Karen Dalton. How do we know? Well, he described her music as “far-out” and “fucked-up”. The possibility that he could have been either indulging in hyperbole or using the terms in a prosaic sense – simply to mean “extraordinary”, “eccentric”, “disturbed”, etc. – seems to have either been arbitrarily dismissed or simply never realised. No, Banhart must have had a nefarious motive. He must have meant that she “transgresses the boundaries” and so cannot be the creative force behind her own work.

It bears highlighting that Karen Dalton was half white. So presumably her “white half” must also have been the victim of this same injustice. But that might not be the way it works. I can’t tell for sure. Identity politics can quickly get confusing – confusing and fucking daft.

Further, it’s worth taking a look at the original interview for additional context: “She is one of the most amazing musicians in the universe. Forget about the amount of soul she’s got — she’s got the most far-out, fucked up, amazing soul. She’s the most soulful singer in the universe. But the technicalities, her timing and her phrasing is perfect. It’s beyond perfect. You can’t even try to imitate it because it’s like beyond, it’s brilliant. She’s also an incredible song interpreter… She makes every one of the songs that she covers her songs.” Marginally numinous though the terminology might be, it’s fairly clear that simple praise of style and technical ability is at its core.

In any event, Animal Collective supposedly fetishise nature – a concept – in the same way that someone else entirely, Banhart, supposedly fetishises Dalton – a person. Thus, Animal Collective are tacit racists. This, incidentally, was supposed to have been the “deeper” of two criticisms.

More generally, the reviewer liberally attempts to intellectually intimidate the reader into submission instead of persuading them with a compelling argument – a tactic seemingly common amongst elements of the theory set.

One particularly objectionable example, which serves as one of the review’s underlying premises, is the assumption that the band are either much too ignorant to realise their own racism or are merely insufficiently courageous to do anything about it; as a corollary, so are we, if we can’t spot it either. (In a dazzling a non sequitur, Noam Chomsky is quoted to bolster this claim.) The reviewer, of course, has precisely the erudition and “moral heroism” needed to speak out.

If that’s the most egregious example, then the most laughable comes near the end where we learn that part of Animal Collective’s “problem” stems from the fact that they live in an area designed by Frederick Law Olmsted – a man who also built parks (building parks is depraved, apparently). The reviewer’s implied mastery of Hegel is then presented as a forged intellectual passport under which he tries to smuggle this gibberish past the reader.

In summary, the review constitutes an ugly and unwarranted smear, and so the magazine should really issue an apology. It might well be that there’s nothing in the writer’s academic environment to alert him to the inappropriateness of his accusations. But as both Noam Chomsky and Panda Bear say, coolness is having courage, courage to do what’s right.

Cop Out

It is a fact of studying ethics that you are always dealing with hypothetical baby torturers, genocide, or drowning children. These examples are of course used because they jar so strongly with our intuitions. The original “drowning child” example was used by Peter Singer as a prelude to arguing for our duty to the poor of the world, but it is very rare that these situations actually occur. This is why I was struck by this article, and the response of the agents involved. The situation can be reduced to a few basic points:

• Young boy attempts to save younger sister from drowning (not necessarily morally relevant, but indicative of what we would consider good moral conduct).
• Two anglers jump into the water and manage to save her, but the boy has become submerged.
• Two Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) arrive on the scene quickly but do not attempt to rescue the boy, instead they call for trained officers to help.
• The boy dies as a result of the time he spends submerged.

Now, the reason the drowning child example is used in ethics is that it is generally assumed that there is a prima facie duty to help those in need if it is possible to do so. The example emphasizes this point as a child is generally considered less capable of helping themselves and there is very little weighing against the action. In other words, nothing of significance is going to be lost by saving the child. In such a situation there is a strong moral obligation on us to attempt a rescue.

As such the only reason why such a duty would change in nature – with the exception of an overriding obligation to attend to something on land – is that attempting such a rescue would put the attempter in danger themselves. Given the cost of the death of a child, we can assume that this risk of danger must be high in order to alter the duty; either that the rescuer is unable to swim, or perhaps that there is a strong and dangerous current in the water. In the case referred to in the article the water was still, it was a standing body, and there is no reason to believe that both the PCSOs were non-swimmers. Furthermore, given the fact that the anglers attempted and succeeded in rescuing the young girl, it seems unlikely that the water was overly treacherous. Thus it seems that the PCSOs have committed a serious moral wrong by not attempting the rescue.

The response of the police was:

PCSOs are not trained to deal with major incidents such as this. Both ourselves and the fire brigade regularly warn the public of the dangers of going into unknown stretches of water so it would have been inappropriate for PCSOs, who are not trained in water rescue, to enter the pond.

The reply gives two justifications for the action. Firstly, that PCSOs are not trained to deal with this situation, and secondly that it would, in some way, contradict their general advice if the PCSOs had acted.

As training is not a necessary condition of the action needed, as we can see from the anglers, this justification is clearly invalid. The second reason is ludicrous. The rule that the police and fire brigade advise surely does not apply here. If it did, it would imply either that those working for the police have lesser moral duties than the public as a whole, or that nobody has a duty to rescue a drowning child if the “stretch of water” is unknown.

This seems to be a very unfortunate example of how rule-following can undermine virtuous moral agency.

Fisking Fisk

It’s perhaps something of a clichéd observation, but whenever someone clears their throat by appending “I’m not a racist, but…” to the start of their sentence, you can be all but sure that a racist remark of some kind or another will follow. In a similar vein, Robert Fisk claims that he’s “not a conspiracy theorist” in today’s Independent, and then goes on to perform a flawless impersonation of one. In my experience (and that of many rationalists), conspiracy theorists have a habit of claiming that they’re “just asking questions”; this term is then abbreviated, by said rationalists, to “JAQ” and further corrupted to form its own neologism: “JAQing off”. This undeniably pejorative colouration is due to the fact that the questions the conspiracy theorists are “just asking” are usually of the “Have you stopped beating your wife?” variety. Fisk’s are no different.

If it is true, for example, that kerosene burns at 820C under optimum conditions, how come the steel beams of the twin towers – whose melting point is supposed to be about 1,480C – would snap through at the same time?

This particular question serves as a classic example. Firstly, note the internal confusion over whether the steel is supposed to have melted or snapped: He begins by talking about the temperatures of the fires and the melting point of steel and finishes by asking how the “steel beams” (I think he means columns) could “snap through at the same time”. However, the two don’t appear to have any obvious and necessary connection. Secondly, he misleadingly places undue significance on the role of the kerosene itself: While kerosene-like Jet A-1 fuel undoubtedly accelerated the fires in the towers, it was not the only substance fuelling them; once they had taken hold, they had an abundance of office contents and aircraft wreckage available to work on. Thirdly, the question serves to straw man the position it purports to interrogate: No one is claiming that all of the columns snapped at the same time. Nor are they claiming that any of the steel melted. The following is from the National Institute of Standards and Technology FAQ on the collapse:

In no instance did NIST report that steel in the WTC towers melted due to the fires. The melting point of steel is about 1,500 degrees Celsius (2,800 degrees Fahrenheit). Normal building fires and hydrocarbon (e.g., jet fuel) fires generate temperatures up to about 1,100 degrees Celsius (2,000 degrees Fahrenheit). NIST reported maximum upper layer air temperatures of about 1,000 degrees Celsius (1,800 degrees Fahrenheit) in the WTC towers (for example, see NCSTAR 1, Figure 6-36).

However, when bare steel reaches temperatures of 1,000 degrees Celsius, it softens and its strength reduces to roughly 10 percent of its room temperature value. Steel that is unprotected (e.g., if the fireproofing is dislodged) can reach the air temperature within the time period that the fires burned within the towers. Thus, yielding and buckling of the steel members (floor trusses, beams, and both core and exterior columns) with missing fireproofing were expected under the fire intensity and duration determined by NIST for the WTC towers.

One might be excused for thinking that Fisk should have made at least a passing attempt to familiarise himself with the basics of the subject matter – perhaps by having actually read the above – before putting pen to paper.

They collapsed in 8.1 and 10 seconds.

This claim is particularly odd. The following is again from the National Institute of Standards and Technology FAQ:

NIST estimated the elapsed times for the first exterior panels to strike the ground after the collapse initiated in each of the towers to be approximately 11 seconds for WTC 1 and approximately 9 seconds for WTC 2.

It seems that Fisk (or the conspiracy theorist who deceived him) has taken these figures and deducted a second from each for good effect. In doing so, however, he’s caused himself something of a problem. Even in a vacuum (in other words, unimpeded even by air-resistance), the time it would have taken for an object to fall from the roofs of the towers to the ground is 9.22 seconds. So, we can see from the off that Fisk’s lower figure of 8.1 seconds is simply physically impossible. Further, it’s important to note the wording of the NIST quotation. The figures they cite are the “elapsed times for the first exterior panels to strike the ground after the collapse initiated”; they are not the total times for the collapses of the entire structures.

What about the third tower – the so-called World Trade Centre Building 7 (or the Salmon Brothers Building) – which collapsed in 6.6 seconds in its own footprint at 5.20pm on 11 September?

World Trade Centre 7 did not collapse in 6.6 seconds. Conspiracy theorists arrive at this figure by timing only the collapse of the visible exterior (the façades, etc.) of the building.  They ignore the fact that the collapse had initiated some eight seconds prior when the east mechanical penthouse began to sink into the main superstructure. Further, the building did not fall into its own footprint: The collapse caused significant damage to surrounding structures such as 30 West Broadway and The Verizon Building, and minor damage to several others.

Incidentally, World Trade Centre 7 was also known as The Salomon Brothers Building. Personally, I’ve never heard of “The Salmon Brothers Building”. Perhaps it’s a Fish ‘n’ Grill.

Why did it so neatly fall to the ground when no aircraft had hit it?

Indeed, World Trade Centre 7 was not hit by an aircraft. It was hit, however, by a collapsing 110-storey skyscraper. It then suffered approximately eight hours of widespread fires. It’s rather odd that Fisk simply failed to mention those rather important contributory factors.

The American National Institute of Standards and Technology was instructed to analyse the cause of the destruction of all three buildings. They have not yet reported on WTC7.

Well, I suppose that Fisk must have applied his structural engineering expertise to the interim report on the collapse and concluded that it’s not really a report at all. Further, the final version of this report is due for release later this year. The investigators are indeed taking their time over it, but I imagine this is because they are dedicated professionals who actually care about getting things right.

Journalistically, there were many odd things about 9/11. Initial reports of reporters that they heard “explosions” in the towers – which could well have been the beams cracking – are easy to dismiss. Less so the report that the body of a female air crew member was found in a Manhattan street with her hands bound.

I have to admit to being somewhat unsure of the point Fisk is trying to make. Presumably, we’re to conclude that the idea that the terrorists might have handcuffed a flight attendant is absurd – so absurd that the existence of a massive conspiracy is at least comparably likely. (Let’s not forget that said terrorists are believed to have murdered individual passengers and crew while initiating the hijackings.)

OK, so let’s claim that was just hearsay reporting at the time, just as the CIA’s list of Arab suicide-hijackers, which included three men who were – and still are – very much alive and living in the Middle East, was an initial intelligence error.

This is a tactic Fisk applies liberally throughout the article; it’s the rhetorical equivalent of humming the theme music from The X-Files: He raises and then superficially dismisses a number of supposed anomalies in the official narrative – presumably with the intention of fostering further suspicion without actually having to commit himself to the fallacious claim in question. One might call this the passive aggressive school of conspiracy theory.

I suppose it could be considered poetically appropriate that the “Some of the terrorists are still alive” canard just won’t die. The claim generally stems from this BBC article, which has since been superseded; the uncertainty in question seems to have originated from cases of mistaken identity. From a more recent article:

The story, written in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, was about confusion at the time surrounding the names and identities of some of the hijackers. This confusion was widely reported and was also acknowledged by the FBI.

The story has been cited ever since by some as evidence that the 9/11 attacks were part of a US government conspiracy.
We later reported on the list of hijackers, thereby superseding the earlier report. In the intervening years we have also reported in detail on the investigation into the attacks, the 9/11 commission and its report.

We’ve carried the full report, executive summary and main findings and, as part of the recent fifth anniversary coverage, a detailed guide to what’s known about what happened on the day. But conspiracy theories have persisted. The confusion over names and identities we reported back in 2001 may have arisen because these were common Arabic and Islamic names.

Fisk then goes on to cast suspicion on lead hijacker Mohammed Atta’s final religious writings; we’re informed that Fisk’s Middle-Eastern Muslim acquaintances are mystified by them. Well, that doesn’t seem all that suspicious to me. I suspect that Atta’s religious justifications for murdering three-thousand innocent people might leave them scratching their heads, as well. To be frank, I’d be rather concerned if his final thoughts didn’t confound a Muslim or two.

Now that the specifics are out of the way, allow me to indulge in some conspiratorial thinking of my own: According to one Robert J. Hanlon, one should “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity”. Wise words though they are, Hanlon’s Razor, as it is known, only goes so far. It just doesn’t seem particularly feasible, for instance, to think that an experienced journalist like Fisk could have written such a straightforwardly error-ridden and innuendo-laden article due to incompetence alone. Further, he’s also reasonably well known for both fostering and manifesting a Westerner’s self-loathing of the most wretched kind. So, it seems at least possible that Fisk wrote this piece for purely ideological reasons: To spread misinformation and doubt about the core premise for some of the United States’ least popular actions – to groundlessly and cynically call 9/11 itself into question.

Offence Trumps Reality, Again

From Drama over Casualty plot as BBC bans terror script in today’s Guardian:

The BBC has abandoned plans to screen a fictional terrorist attack by Muslim suicide bombers in the primetime drama Casualty after internal clashes over whether the highly sensitive subject matter would cause offence.

BBC drama executives were keen to push the storyline and may even have started filming, a source close to the production told The Observer. But they were overruled by the corporation’s editorial guidelines department, which ordered that the episode be changed so that the Muslim characters were replaced by animal rights extremists

Well, what a good idea. The BBC should be doing everything it can to shield religious people from potential offence – even if that means shielding them (and, as a corollary, the rest of us) from reality. The decision, of course, is a pathetically snivelling one, but it’s also flatly insulting for two reasons: Firstly, it’s insufferably patronising towards the large section of moderate British Muslims who acknowledge that Islamic terrorism both exists and is an undeniable part of the current zeitgeist. Secondly, it serves to scapegoat animal right activists as the indiscriminate bombers of public transport. However, these are small concessions to make if they go some way to appeasing rage boy and his ilk, I suppose.

Update:

According to this article in the Guardian, it turns out that the decision to replace the Islamic terrorists with animal right activists was actually made by the writer. So, my apologies to the BBC!

[T]he series editor of BBC1’s Casualty, commenting on newspaper reports that the editorial policy unit had insisted that two Islamist terrorists in a script were changed to animal rights activists, insisted that the switch had been made by the writer, who apparently feared inviting a reaction from extremists.

I’ve learned my lesson, so I won’t try to speculate over whether “inviting a reaction” were the Guardian’s words or those of the writer, but they’re rather depressing either way.

Thanks to Matthew in the comments section for the update.

Davis Talks a Load of Guff

There’s a piece in the Guardian today about how drugs experts think the current UK drugs classification system is total nonsense. No doubt they’ll be ignored just like numberless others have been ignored before them. It’s good to see it in the media anyway even if it is, by now, a case study in “the bleeding obvious”. But then there’s blustering Tory David Davis with some of his mindless but perhaps entirely predictable comments:

[T]he shadow home secretary, David Davis, rejected any changes that would confuse the public. “Drugs wreck lives, destroy communities and fuel other sorts of crime – especially gun and knife crime. Thanks to the government’s chaotic and confused approach to drugs policy, young people increasingly think it is OK to take drugs,” he said, adding that he was against downgrading of ecstasy. “It is vital nothing else leads young people to believe drugs are OK.”

Yes, drugs, currently, cause crime – because they’re illegal. And they’re illegal because they’ve been arbitrarily and unscientifically classified. Seemingly, Davis thinks it’s “vital nothing else leads young people to believe drugs are OK” even if the “thing” that might lead them to believe drugs are OK is the truth or drugs policy actually based on facts and evidence instead of conservative prejudice and dogma or, as a result, their legality. Confused approach to drugs policy indeed.

Chomsky’s Razor

Noam Chomsky’s in the Guardian today. He employs his trademark political and epistemological principle: “Anything that in the realms of possibility could be attributable to the insidious and omnipresent forces of Western imperialism is attributable to the insidious and omnipresent forces of Western imperialism.” For example:

Meanwhile Washington may be seeking to destabilise Iran from within. The ethnic mix in Iran is complex; much of the population isn’t Persian. There are secessionist tendencies and it is likely that Washington is trying to stir them up – in Khuzestan on the Gulf, for example, where Iran’s oil is concentrated, a region that is largely Arab, not Persian.

But flippancy aside, he could have a point with this:

In the west, any wild statement by President Ahmadinejad is circulated in headlines, dubiously translated. But Ahmadinejad has no control over foreign policy, which is in the hands of his superior, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The US media tend to ignore Khamenei’s statements, especially if they are conciliatory. It’s widely reported when Ahmadinejad says Israel shouldn’t exist – but there is silence when Khamenei says that Iran supports the Arab League position on Israel-Palestine, calling for normalisation of relations with Israel if it accepts the international consensus of a two-state settlement.

More to the point, Ahmadinejad has said that Israel “must be wiped off the map.” A statement that might include the sentiment that it “shouldn’t exist,” but means something manifestly different. And Al-Jazeera are hardly an arm of the Western propaganda machine. But either way, the western media could indeed be overlooking Khamenei’s more moderate (if you can call them that – he still firmly supports Hezbollah) views in favour of Ahmadinejad’s apocalyptic nonsense.

International Women’s Day 2007

Well, it’s International Women’s Day 2007 today, so here’s human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell with a piece on “Tehran’s Heroic Women” and how they’re being largely ignored by the media.

The liberal western media – including The Guardian – has mostly failed to report these women’s protests and their bloody suppression. The left, too, ignores the heroic struggle of the women of Iran. Misogyny and police brutality are not okay in Britain, but apparently acceptable in Tehran. Why the double standards?

Seal-Hunt Dishonesty

Here’s a short article about a forthcoming seal-hunt documentary and how it apparently creates a dishonest impression of members of The Humane Society. The piece contains a reasonably flagrant attempt at distraction from the seemingly pro-hunt film-maker.

Animal-rights activists are considering legal action to block a controversial documentary on Canada’s commercial seal hunt on RDI, the CBC’s French-language news network.

Phoques, le film, (Seals, the movie), produced by Quebec filmmaker Raoul Jomphe, has ruffled feathers at the Humane Society of the United States, because of a scene showing members of the group watching a dying seal for more than an hour as they filmed a promotional video of the hunt on ice floes in Atlantic Canada.

But Rebecca Aldworth, the director of Canadian wildlife issues for the Humane Society, said the scene was edited in a way that distorts what happened, and their lawyer has sent a letter to CBC asking it to take a look at the complete footage to ensure the documentary is balanced before it is scheduled to be broadcast on March 29.

Although Jomphe criticized the animal-rights group for not euthanizing the seal, Aldworth said that would have meant breaking the law.

“What he (Jomphe) doesn’t tell you is that it would have been illegal for us to do so,” she said Monday.

“Under the marine mammal regulations, only people with sealing licences can kill seals. But more importantly, we didn’t have the means or the equipment or the expertise to do that in a way that would not simply increase that animal’s suffering.”

Aldworth said she initially decided not to rescue the seal, because she believed it wouldn’t survive a helicopter ride to a veterinary hospital. More than an hour later, she said she realized it could be treated.

“Just as we were making arrangements to fly this seal back, the sealers came back and clubbed a lot of live seals in the area, including this one, and stabbed it through the skull with a metal spike,” she said. “We go up there to protect these animals and to try and stop this hunt, because this is something that happens so frequently in the course of this slaughter … and to have somebody edit a sequence of events to suggest that we would ever prolong the suffering of an animal to get video footage is obscene.”

But, it’s OK, apparently:

Jomphe said he doesn’t think anything needs to be changed in the movie, which was presented at a special screening for employees of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans last week in Ottawa.

“The images speak for themselves,” he said, pointing out that he included Aldworth’s explanation about wanting to transport the seal to a hospital.

But not that euthanizing it would have been illegal?

“When they take images of hunters, they do editing, and that’s what we see … and suddenly she’s all offended that she’s being filmed in that way.”

It’s not editing itself that anyone is taking issue with. It’s dishonest editing. Editing that intentionally creates a false impression of events and seeks to indict people for intentionally and needlessly prolonging suffering they are, in reality, powerless to stop. Of course, Jomphe already knows that, but needs to cause this sort of false tu quoque distraction to avoid addressing the dishonesty itself.

Special Privilege for Religious Values

There’s a feature on religion by Stuart Jeffries in the Guardian today. It’s positively riddled with things that piss me off.

“We are witnessing a social phenomenon that is about fundamentalism,” says Colin Slee, the Dean of Southwark. “Atheists like the Richard Dawkins of this world are just as fundamentalist as the people setting off bombs on the tube, the hardline settlers on the West Bank and the anti-gay bigots of the Church of England. Most of them would regard each other as destined to fry in hell.

Is it appropriate to describe Dawkins as a fundamentalist? I suppose it depends entirely on how you’re defining the term. Well, whatever, for the sake or argument let’s assume it is. But there’s fundamentalism and there’s fundamentalism. There are some things it’s not quite so bad to be an extremist about as it is others. For instance, being absolutely adamant about needing evidence for belief is very different from being absolutely adamant about needing to kill everyone who doesn’t worship the right God. Even if Dawkins is as much of a fundamentalist as the bigots and the jihadis, then he’s certainly not fundamentalist about the same sorts of things or in the same ways as they are. That’s quite an important distinction. It’s precisely the reason you don’t see people like Dawkins and Harris committing mass murder in the name of their beliefs. Slee looks to be evoking a variation of the epistemological equivalence tack that Jim posted on. It’s a crock. But there’s more of it from John Gray:

Gray, professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics, whose book Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia will be published later this year, detects parallels between dogmatic believers and dogmatic unbelievers such as Hitchens and Dawkins. “It is not just in the rigidity of their unbelief that atheists mimic dogmatic believers. It is in their fixation on belief itself.”

As far as I’m aware both Hitchens and Dawkins are unbelievers because, in short, they have seen no evidence to warrant belief. Their unbelief is not fixed; it’s evidence dependent. So, unless they’ve been exposed to decisive evidence for the existence of God and yet they stubbornly refuse to believe, it’s hard to see how they’re epistemologically equivalent to believers.

Neuberger is to take on Hitchens, Dawkins and Grayling when she speaks at a debate against the motion We’d Be Better Off Without Religion next month. The debate has been moved to a bigger venue. “What I find really distasteful is not just the tone of their rhetoric, but their lack of doubt,” she says. “No scientific method says that there is no doubt. If you don’t accept there’s doubt in all things, you’re being intellectually dishonest.” This is a thought taken up by Azzim Tamimi, director of the Institute of Islamic Political Thought. “I refer to secular fundamentalism. The problem is that these people believe that they have the absolute truth. That means you have no room to talk to others so you end up having a physical fight. They want to close the door and ignore religion, but this will provoke a violent religiosity. If someone seeks to deny my existence, I will fight to assert it.”

So, “if you don’t accept there’s doubt in all things, you’re being intellectually dishonest.” Apart from when you don’t accept there’s doubt in that sentiment, presumably. You could be forgiven for thinking a Rabbi would be on very thin ice with a statement like that. If, where their beliefs that we’d be better off without religion are concerned, Hitchens, Dawkins and Grayling are simply dogmatic then, presumably, at least one of the following has to be true:Either: They have stated directly that whatever the evidence they will continue to believe that we’d be better off without religion. Or: They have been exposed to decisive evidence that we’re better off with religion yet continue to believe we’re not. Now, I’m pretty sure the first is false, and to suggest the second would be to beg a central question. It would presuppose such evidence exists.

If someone seeks to deny your existence, I suppose you may want to fight to assert it. But is Azzim Tamimi’s ontological status really being disputed? Denying the very existence of the faithful is hardly a corollary of arguing that religion is pestiferous and its manifestation in the public sphere inappropriate. Who knows though? That fact may not prevent Tamimi or some of his acolytes from expressing their “violent religiosity” regardless.

The refrain of Christians like [Nick] Spencer is that unless religion is a part of public-policy debates, then society will be impoverished. Last November the Archbishop of Canterbury gave a lecture in which he distinguished between programmatic and procedural secularism. The former meant that in the public domain, everybody had to silence their fundamental convictions and debate in a value-free atmosphere of public neutrality. For Williams, this was a hopeless way of carrying on public discourse in a bewildering society that embraced not only many faiths but many anti-faith positions, and in which real disputes over very different values needed to take place. Better was procedural secularism, which promised that different groups could at least converse with each other in public discussions over sensitive questions of value and policy. This would involve, said Williams, “a crowded and argumentative public square that acknowledges the authority of a legal mediator or broker whose job it is to balance and manage real difference”.

It is an idea similar to one set out by Yahya Birt, research fellow at The Islamic Foundation. “One form of secularism suggests that religion should be kept in the private sphere. That’s Dawkins’ position. Another…, is to do with establishing a modus vivendi. It accepts that you come to the public debate with baggage that will inform your arguments. In this, the government tries to find common ground and the best possible consensus, which can only work if we share enough to behave civilly. Of course, there will be real clashes over issues such as gay adoption, but it’s not clear to me that that’s a problem per se.”

Argues Spencer: “We should be more willing to treat other value systems as coherent, reasonable and even valuable rather than as primitive or grotesque mutations of liberal humanism to which every sane person adheres.”

I’m not sure we should accept that religious people will “come to the public debate with baggage that will inform [their] arguments.” They may well come with baggage that will motivate their arguments, but not inform them. Furthermore, I’d have thought that the only time we should feel obligated to “treat other value systems as coherent, reasonable and even valuable” is when those value systems are, indeed, coherent, reasonable and even valuable. Not at any other time nor for any other reason. Not, for example, because they’re religious values. Religious values that might not actually be coherent, reasonable and valuable but instead deranged, irrational and disgusting. Moreover, how could this proposed public mediation even work? Yahya Birt doesn’t think it’ll be “a problem per se”. Oddly enough though, he doesn’t feel the need to go into detail. Without engagement on the foundations, however, it looks somewhat intractable. If one side, for instance, is arguing that homosexuals should enjoy freedom from discrimination and the other that they should be executed because their God says so then how does one mediate such a thing? And how about when two faith positions themselves are in direct opposition? You can embellish the matter with woolly terms like “common ground”, “mediation” and “the best possible consensus” all you want. But the idea that we should exempt certain values from being judged purely on their merits by granting them special privileges on religious grounds seems, putting it mildly, unsettling.

P.S. David Thompson, Ophelia Benson, Jim Denham, Caspar Melville, Ben at Religion is Bullshit and the peculiarly monikered “Shuggy” also have a go. The Guardian has also posted some letters in response to the piece.

Aynimal Rights

Here’s a discussion on animal rights on the Leitmotif blog between Jim and I and an Ayn Rand Objectivist. It resulted in some really weird and wonderful stuff, but on boiling-down the prose the result is pretty much the same as it normally is. Here are a few snippets:

Ergo Says:
The faculty of volition is not our “rights-conferring” characteristic. We are moral beings because we have the faculty of volition, which means we are causal agents and face choices. Rights are a species of conceptual principles. By the nature of rights as moral principles, and by our human nature as moral beings, rights are applicable only to humans (all humans, including the disabled or the retarded).

Ergo Says:
The Objectivist approach is to always saliently acknowledge the fact that humans do not exist in a vacuum but in a reality that surrounds us and has a specific identity. Our actions are always in relation to the context of this reality around us. If this is acknowledged, then it becomes clear why rights are applicable and possible only to humans and not animals or any other species on Earth.

Ed Says:
If the faculty of volition is a characteristic so foundational to a mental life that any humans who lack it entirely are nothing but vegetables then it would seem undeniable that at least some animals have it. Of course, I agree with the idea that only humans can understand rights and consequentially only humans are moral-beings; just as it is only people who live in Germany who live in Berlin. But, of course, without affirming the consequent, it no more follows that at all humans are moral-beings than it does that all Germans are Berliners.

Enjoy, you lucky people.