Today's the Day

....which is to say, my mother's 89th birthday. Well, except that she sort of missed the occasion by three years and a few months. So I guess that means she won't be wanting any cake or candles.

What, you thought I meant some other kind of day? Well, Mom was never much of a blasphemer. I mean, she was an agnostic all her adult life, which I guess counts for something in that department. But she was really a rather quiet, reserved woman. About the closest she ever got to overt blasphemy was that, in moments of frustration, she would mutter "Damn!" under her breath (which these days, hardly counts as blasphemy at all). And that's probably about the limit for an English girl of her generation.

Personally, I'm not big into explicit blasphemy. Even my hammer-on-thumb expletives tend to draw on the lexicon of bodily function, rather than theology. So I'm a bit ambivalent about Blasphemy Day. Somehow, it smacks of the big boys on the playground teaching some little kid all the naughty words. To me, just saying "God doesn't exist" remains a quite sufficient blasphemy -- what else needs to be said?

But my ambivalence goes deeper than that.

One chief aim of Blasphemy Day is to make it safe to diss religion. Trouble is, I've not personally spent much time in any space where religion-dissing wasn't safe. To start with, my family of origin was agnostic. My parents didn't run down religion, but they thought it was false, and told me so. When I hit the cynical adolescent stage, religion was certainly among my targets. And then when I did get religion myself, it was one that in the local context was a somewhat eccentric minority sect -- and I do this while I'm in an age group that punishes non-conformity (not that I ever had much chance of being part of the in-crowd: I was a hopelessly geeky misfit, even without the religion). Then I go off to university, and where I am conspicuously not into certain prominent facets of dorm life. So my religion, at least, was never quite respectable. A few years later I finally get into a more mainstream religion -- and soon after that, I discover Usenet, where absolutely nothing is sacred, or off-limits.

So for most of my Christian period, I seemed to have a talent for innocently wandering into free-fire zones.

Now I'm an atheist -- and therefore part of another minority religious group (using "religious" here in a loose sense). And yeah: Danish Mohamed cartoons, rampant Islamism, thin-skinned Irishmen passing anti-blasphemy statutes, the Smallkowski affair and all the other small-minded small-town bigotry that percolates out of the American hinterland by way of the internet these days -- I know all that, but very little of it is here, in Ottawa, in my face. So let's not overstate the case: in this particular neck of the woods, we have it pretty easy.

It may be that my very first personal encounter with the Thou Shalt Respect Religion meme was in the context of the Ottawa Atheist Bus Campaign, in which several city councillors thought that their personal offense at the rather mild advertisement was grounds for controlling other people's speech rights. And that experience made me realize something: we don't, in pluralistic, liberal urban Ontario, go in for the kind of bare-knuckle bigotry of some places.What we've done instead is, in a very polite-Canadian way, to bury the religion debate and agree not to discuss it. There may not be a lot of overt piety in the Canadian character, but there's a lot of Dennett's "faith in faith" -- it's a Good Thing, so don't question it too hard. That's Not Nice. Running the bus ads broke that taboo -- hence the reaction.

So a few of us (I don't know how many; I'm not planning it) are apparently celebrating Blasphemy Day by going downtown tonight wearing appropriately irreverent T-shirts. I'm going, because I think that taboo should stay broken. Because I think the thin-skinned types who wanted to squelch the bus ads should continue to be offended and uncomfortable, until they get over their own self-importance. Because I think unbelief should advertise itself the same as belief does, daily, on every corner where there is a church or mosque or synagogue. Because I think that, opening that space for out-and-explicit unbelief here helps to open it everywhere.

Because I think.

God and City Council

[I'm going to resist the temptation to do yet another Bus Sign. For one thing, I can't think of a good punchline off-hand]

At Ottawa City Council today, God could be found hiding in the corner behind Policies and Procedures. Or at least, that's where his erstwhile defenders were, when Councillor Alex Cullen presented his motion to overrule OC Transpo's decision to refuse the atheist bus ads.

Cullen gave an impassioned address about free speech and the need for municipal government to uphold it. It probably didn't hurt his case that the city's solicitor had prepared a memo outlining the legal issues involved in carrying "viewpoint" advertising in public facilities -- and pointing out that Transpo's current policy was almost certainly in violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and the city would likely get its ass handed to it in the event of a lawsuit. It boils down to: mere likelihood of public offense isn't enough to ban an ad. IOW: deal with it, pearl-clutchers.

Then the nay-sayers had their turn. Marianne Wilkinson continued to complain that she was offended, but acknowledged that the policy was problematic. She proposed amending Cullen's motion, replacing the directive to run the ads with a directive to review Transpo's policies, and bring them in line with the Charter. Cullen replied: What a great idea, and proposed amending his own motion -- by adding the review directive to his own, rather than replacing it. Councillor El-Chantiry had his say; I don't recall what except he also didn't like them, and the same from Councillor Bloess. But the real comedy came from another councillor, I think Bob Monette, who claimed the ads were from "some young people who thought it would be funny" -- and in the blissfully unselfaware manner common to ideologues, went on to complain that the ads were derogatory (OK, at 51 I guess I should accept "young people" as a compliment). Then there was some blather from that side about how Council was wasting time on irrelevancies like this when we still hadn't got the bus system back to full capacity following the strike -- as if putting (revenue-paying!) signs on the sides of busses was in some way impeding doing maintenance and getting them on the road. But the main theme from the opponents was that it was some kind of sin to override the Process -- that Transpo's bureaucrats had made a decision in keeping with Stated Policy (though we know that Policy has not been consistently applied in past cases of pro-religion ads), and while we should fix the Policy, we shouldn't overrule the bureaucrats, because....well, because. Exactly when the Policy would get fixed, and the ads get approved, wasn't quite clear.

Then Hizzoner Larry O'Brien almost gave us a surprise: he started off talking about how clergy on the Ottawa Interfaith Council (of which he is chair) were pretty unanimous in support of the ad; that they welcomed the opportunity for dialog. And for a moment we thought he was going to change his earlier reported position and vote Yes. But then he reversed course, sought refuge with his cronies in Policy and Procedure, and announced he would be voting No.

There was a little confusion in the voting process, because first Council had to approve adding the policy-review directive to Cullen's motion, then vote on the motion as amended. Both votes passed 13-7, with presumably the same councillors voting the same way on both (I didn't keep track).

Various media were there -- at least Metro, A-Channel, the Citizen, the Sun -- filming and photographing Council and the dozen of us sitting in the gallery wearing our protest T-shirts. After the vote, we filed out, and there occurred in the corridor what I believe is called a "scrum" -- we shook Cullen's hand and thanked him; the journalists talked to people at random; I suddenly found a bright light shining in my face, through which I could dimly make out a camera lens, a mike, and a nice lady asking my opinions what had just happened. I managed to blurt out something about free speech (hopefully without sounding too pompous) and about how some people want religion to be immune from criticism, and it shouldn't be. Maybe they'll edit me into the Slavering Baby-Eating Atheist Monster, I dunno. There's a reason I don't work in PR.

A few people had to take off for other commitments, and the rest of us had a celebratory dinner at an Indian buffet on Laurier. On the way back, we just had to take the picture above, which is an artwork hanging in the elevator lobby off the parking garage (sorry for the quality; the only camera we had was a Blackberry). While we were doing that a woman came out of the elevator, and asked immediately recognized the ad on the shirt. She was very pleased to hear that Council had voted our way, and left saying something favorable (I don't recall exactly what) about Hitchens and Dawkins. Funny how you run into people....

All the other kids have already posted this video, but I especially like the fact that the guy looks like Mayor O'Brien:




Hat tip for the video: Mike.

Bus ads update

The motion to overturn OC Transpo's bus ad ban was tabled at the 4 March Council meeting, and will be discussed and voted on at the 11 March meeting.

There is an on-line petition here; we invite everyone to write letters to city councilors, at that site and also here

Some other ways you can help:

• come to the council meeting at City Hall on Wednesday, 11 March (more information here)
• write a letter to your city councilor (email addresses and suggestions here)
• donate to the Canada wide atheist bus campaign (tax deductible)
• or, direct your donation specifically to the Ottawa atheist bus campaign (not tax deductible)
• join the FaceBook group - tell your friends

Ad Omnibus

Everyone knows the back story by now: OC Transpo has turned down the "Probably No God" bus-side ads, justifying this decision by a series of prevarications. As it stands, Ottawa busses can carry ads for the evangelistic Alpha Course, the Anglican Diocese, pro-life pregnancy counselling services, and (appearing soon) random capsule Bible lessons. But suggesting there's no God? That might offend people! Nooooooo!

So, the issue went before the city's Transit Committee today -- and actually made the tag end of the six o'clock news. After some nice pics and a sound-bite from some of my fellow Ottawa Humanists, we got committee chair Alex Cullen:

To say that this particular group cannot speak -- if you follow the logic -- means that no Christian can speak, no Muslim can speak, no Hindu can speak, no Jew can speak, because these are all....[interruption by another committee member]

Cullen gets it (and so, to his credit, does the guy running the Bus Stop Bible Studies): If "viewpoint" advertising is allowed at all, then everyone gets their shot at it. If Cullen ever runs for mayor, I'm voting for him (unless of course the other Alex runs again).

Then, cut to Councillor Marianne Wilkinson (whom I believe was the interruptor):

I think that to actually demean religions groups in this city is not what we should be doing at OC Transpo, so I can't support this and I think that you were wrong Mr. Chair that it doesn't do that, because to me as a Christian it does...

No, Marianne. Let me explain "demeaning" to you: "Anyone who believes in God is a moron" -- that would indeed be demeaning of religious individuals and groups. But: "There's probably [not even definitely] no God"? In what universe is that "demeaning"? If I saw that ad 25 years ago, I would have said "No, I disagree", and then had the argument -- but demeaning? How about: "Marianne Wilkinson is a thin-skinned twit" -- yes, that's personally demeaning. Unfortunately, you're providing evidence that it's true.
=========================================================
Our folks made the Metro tabloid:

Meh. Who Cares?

Everyone is no doubt aware of the Atheist Bus Campaign in Britain, mounted by (among others) the British Humanist Association. As of this week, there are some 800 public transit busses in various cities bearing an ad reading: "THERE'S PROBABLY NO GOD. NOW STOP WORRYING AND ENJOY YOUR LIFE". Around the atheist blogosphere, there has been some discussion of (and complaints about) the fact that the PTB who regulate British advertising required the insertion of the qualifier "probably", as the non-existence of God is not considered absolutely proven (this is the same reason that commercial ads rarely say anything definite enough to constitute an actual claim). As Larry Moran notes, such standards of evidence are not uniformly applied across all forms of public expression. Be that as it may, I actually prefer the qualified version, so I consider the amendment serendipitous.

Partly, it's a personal quirk: I don't like absolute statements. At all....at least, not much....OK, on occasion I suppose.... Alright, you get the idea. To me, our attempts to grasp reality are full of nuance and uncertainty, and I feel compelled to acknowledge that. So the qualified version fits my temperament.

But there's also a practical advantage: I think the qualifier makes the message less confrontational, and thereby increases the number of people who will accept it -- and yet, I think it still moves its target audience in the same direction, and by roughly the same distance. I know, some atheists prefer a no-compromise, no-quarter-given approach. I just happen not to. There's certainly a time to be absolutely blunt, with no subtleties -- but it shouldn't be the default. A little friendliness rarely hurts.

To put it another way, there are multiples ways of expressing atheism. One is: "No, there IS NO GOD, DAMMIT! Now bugger off and take your imaginary friend with you!" But that response is essentially forced on atheists by a certain kind of aggressive religion. (Not me personally -- in meatspace I lead a pretty sheltered life. I have to go online if I want to find someone trying to re-convert me). As part of an ongoing interaction, it's undoubtedly justified in some circumstances. But I take the bus ad as a way of starting a conversation, and the blunt opening "There is no God" gives more importance to the "God Question" than is warranted. It accepts the premise that "Does God exist?" is an important question -- maybe even the Most Important Question Of All (especially when backed up by thinly veiled threats). I used to agree with that premise -- I thought it really mattered. Certainly, back when I was an intellectually-oriented Christian with an interest in apologetics, proofs of (the Christian) God's existence seemed very important to me. Over time, however, the subjective importance of that question diminished. When I finally became an atheist, it wasn't so much that I came up with a definitive refutation of the God hypothesis -- it just stopped mattering to me. So my expression of atheism tends to be along the lines of: "Probably not and the question isn't really all that interesting. I've got more enjoyable and productive ways to spend my time, than thinking about it".

So to my ears, that word "probably" gives the bus ad a certain off-hand spontaneity, just the right air of casualness -- and thereby denies the premise of the evangelists, that the matter is so supremely important that we must all dedicate ourselves to figuring it out. It's not -- any more than agonizing over the existence of unicorns or gremlins. In itself, the God Question doesn't deserve to be taken seriously. If it weren't for the historical-cultural weight this concept carries, we wouldn't even be having this conversation.

Is there a God? Meh -- who cares? Not me.

Bus photo credit: Jon Worth / British Humanist Association

Hey, Atheists: It's all your Dad's fault!

Atheism Ascendent?

In presumed observance of Boxing Day, Citizen senior writer Robert Sibley gives us one long ad hominem argument against the New Atheists. His screed takes the "Four Horesmen" (Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and Hitchens) to task for their criticism of religion as being irrational, and encouraging of violence, extremism and inhumanity. According to Sibley, they should quit bitching, because in fact atheism has already won (!):

By all appearances atheism is deeply embedded in the contemporary mind. Modern philosophy, natural science and psychology are, more often than not, atheistic in outlook. So, too, are many of our social and political institutions. It is a virtual taboo for a Canadian politician to refer to his or her religious faith in public life. The school system teaches students about sex and drugs, but classroom prayers have largely been cancelled.

First, Sibley seems to confuse "secular" (making no reference to religion) with "atheist" (in the strong sense of denying gods). To a certain school of thought, any statement that does not begin with an invocation and end with a benediction, is ipso facto impious. But let's be honest: the party whose ox is being gored here -- whose prayers are now omitted from school, whose scriptures are no longer taught during "religious instruction" -- is not just some generic "faith", not some non-denominational "spirituality": it is Christianity (and please, don't give me any tokenistic crap about "Judeo-Christianity", just to prove that you're not really a bigot.) And that is what official secularism is for: because inevitably, officially sanctioned observances are always one party's prayer, but not someone else's; it always comes down to the government endorsing one faith over another. Several centuries of blood were spilled in Europe before we finally got the clue that government must be for all the people, not just for one group (or even a loosely-defined coalition of groups). And as for politics: while it's true that Canadians don't seem to like American-style political piety, in which candidates proclaim that they'll do what God wants, it is still the case that more Canadians believe in God than not. We may not be religious enough to suit Sibley -- but neither is atheism "deeply embedded in the contemporary mind".

(I don't at all understand where he's going with the comment about natural science. Sibley certainly isn't a fan of Creationism, as he has previously written:

Science-based evolutionists who seek "mutual understanding" with those who promote creationist doctrine as equally scientific are effectively committing intellectual suicide. The reality is that some ideas, some principles, are mutually exclusive, and to "respect" those who hold unintelligible views is to retreat in the face of fanaticism.

Whatever his motivation, science has been "atheistic" at least since Pierre-Simon Laplace found he "had no need of that hypothesis [ie. God]" to complete his Mécanique Céleste, and will remain so until someone figures out how to weigh and measure God.)

But back to the alleged triumph of atheism. Yes, Western society is far more secular than it used to be: you can no longer be jailed or worse for disagreeing with the state church on a point of doctrine; you're no longer routinely expected to be some sort of Christian (well, at least if you live in many of the large cities in the US or Canada -- there are lots of places where that's still not true); discriminating on the basis of religion is illegal. I assume that Sibley agrees all this is a Good Thing. But it hardly equates to some sort of atheist hegemony. In Sibley's world, apparently are no Christian fundamentalists trying to sneak Creationism in to school science curricula (and coming damned close to succeeding); no fanatical Muslims flying airplanes into buildings (oops -- I see he has an excuse for that, which we'll get to later); no Pentecostals from Alaska capturing the hearts of the Republican party....um, aren't journalists supposed to be better plugged into current events than that?

But never mind that Sibley's opening premise is (to be charitable) grossly overstated: if we atheists are winning, then why are the New Atheists still complaining? In fact, why in general are atheists, atheist?

Father & Son

Apparently, it's all Dad's fault. Alluding to the writings of Christian psychologist Paul Vitz (see here for an sample essay on this topic), Sibley advances the suggestion that the trouble with the New Atheists (and indeed, with atheists in general) is that they had either absentee fathers, or bad relationships with their fathers:

Absent full-scale biographies -- or personal revelations -- it is perhaps presumptuous to apply a psychological approach to the new atheists. Still, there are tantalizing hints that psychological factors are at play in their militancy.

But even self-confessed presumptuousness isn't enough to stop Sibley from charging full steam ahead into some free-wheeling speculation that Dawkins' atheism is caused by his military father's absence during WWII (Dawkins was born in 1941). Really, this is pretty thin gruel, and his attempt to psychoanalyze Hitchens is even weaker:

Christopher Hitchens attributes his atheism to parents who avoided the topic of religion for psychological reasons of their own. "My parents did not try to impose religion," he says, noting that his father "had not especially loved his strict Baptist/Calvinist up-bringing," while his mother "preferred assimilation -- partly for my sake -- to the Judaism of her forebears."

....which says precisely nothing about not getting along with his father, only that his parents did not teach him religion. Sibley seems to have lost sight of his own argument (Vitz's "bad dad" theory) and gone off on a tangent about general parental influence. In response, I must point out that right across the board, children usually end up being of the same persuasion as their parents. While this no doubt tells us something about the psychology of belief formation, as an argument for or against religion it invalidates everyone's opinions equally. I have to wonder what he would make of my experience: raised by agnostic parents, in an intact functional family -- and I became a fundamentalist at age 15, an atheist at 44. Which conversion was in reaction to exactly which aspect of my relationship with my father?

But Sibley's excuse for Islamic terrorism takes Vitz's hypothesis in a bizarre direction. It's not too much religion, or the wrong kind, it's about fatherhood again:

It's worth pointing out that most acts of terrorism, whether the 2001 terrorist strikes on the United States or the recent attacks in Mumbai, involve young men. Is it possible that the violence atheists attribute to religious faith is in fact rooted in psychology? Is Islamist terrorism a pathological response to the weakening of the traditional patriarchal culture in the Muslim world?

OK, I'm sympathetic to explanations of extremism that supplement dogma with social factors and geo-political grievances, but this is simply the nadir of silly. I don't know, Robert -- is it in fact the case that Muslim patriarchal culture is breaking down? Did the 9-11 hijackers have bad relationships with their fathers? Either provide some evidence for your speculations, or admit you're just making it up, OK?

Vitz Fits?

Since Sibley rests so much of his argument on Vitz's ideas, his essay itself is worth a brief perusal. Near the top he lays out terms of reference which explain a lot about the Sibley article:

Before beginning, however, I wish to make two points bearing on the underlying assumption of my remarks. First, I assume that the major barriers to belief in God are not rational but-in a general sense- can be called psychological. I do not wish to offend the many distinguished philosophers-both believers and nonbelievers-in this audience, but I am quite convinced that for every person strongly swayed by rational argument there are many, many more affected by nonrational psychological factors.

This is why Sibley never attempts (beyond invoking John Haught to deliver a predictable Courtier's Reply) to grapple with the first prong of the New Atheists' critique: that religion is irrational. Now in my opinion it is true that everything we believe is some combination of rational and irrational -- even the choice to use rational decision-making cannot itself be rationally justified without peril of circularity. As a matter of personal history, the stimulus which gets an individual thinking seriously about issues like the existence of God, or the reliability of church dogma, may be some entirely contingent stressor like the untimely death of a parent. But this does not constitute a license to ignore one's opponents rational arguments in favour of speculative psychologizing, as Sibley does. To do so is to commit the Ad Hominem fallacy.

To support his claim that most atheists are being irrational, Vitz uses himself as a case study, citing his experience in an academic environment where piety was frowned upon. He confesses: "....it is now clear to me that my reasons for becoming and for remaining an atheist-skeptic from about age 18 to 38 were superficial, irrational, and largely without intellectual or moral integrity". Feh: just because he was stupid and venal, doesn't mean the rest of us are. There's this thing called projection -- as a psychologist, Vitz may have heard of it.

Vitz goes on to cite specific examples of prominent atheists with paternal issues: Freud, Marx, O'Hair, Nietzsche. But surely this is proof by anecdote? A scientific approach might, say, systematically survey many atheists and believers on their family histories, and attempt to discern correlations, not just cherry-pick a few historical examples. Isn't psychology a science?

Religion as Social Glue

Sibley concludes by citing the work of Rene Girard, who advances the idea that religion (especially its sacrificial rituals) arose as a way of mitigating violent competition among individuals, thus making orderly society possible. Personally, I'm not competent to critique Girard (read: damned if I can make head or tail of him), but he may have a point. In general, I agree with those who argue that religion played a role in expanding the "in-group" beyond the local clan, all of whom were relations by blood or marriage. This is a Good Thing, as far as it goes -- but it must be noted that the process fell short of truly universalizing the in-group; that it ground to a halt at a point where we had larger, mutually hostile groups. It's only in the past few centuries that we've begun to unravel the residue of these old rivalries -- Catholics and Protestants (mostly) kissed and made up, then they allowed that Jews maybe weren't such bad folks after all, and now they're even making nice with the Muslims (not all of whom are returning the favour, but they've got similar issues to work out themselves). And the impetus for this outpouring of tolerant brotherly love was precisely the growth of secularism (oops, "atheism") springing from the Enlightenment -- the determination to bury the theological hatchets, and seek identities beyond the denominational.

However, even if religion enabled the rise of civilization, this does not warrant the conclusion that getting rid of religion will bring back the Stone Age -- history is not so simply reversible. Establishing that thesis would require data from modern society, say on the correlations between religious belief and observance, and violence, across the Western world. And in fact, some data on that topic is available, in a paper in the Journal of Religion and Society. What it shows is that for many reasonable measures of societal health (rates of homicide, young adult suicide, teen pregnancy and STDs), there is little correlation with measures of religiosity -- and where there is correlation, it appears to be negative, ie. higher rates of belief go with worse outcomes (the USA being a prominent outlier among Western democracies -- among the most religious of the bunch, and also by far the most dysfunctional).

Sibley concludes:

So long as the seed of "resentment" remains embedded in the human psyche -- and it will so long as we remain "human" -- uprooting religion is unlikely to produce a peaceful world.

Well, no it probably won't: we humans are a cussed bunch, and have always fought over resources, if nothing else. But eliminating organized and enforced irrationality -- which frequently explicitly encourages violence -- can't really hurt, either.

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Update: Dan Gardner, who is AFAIK the sole voice of rationality left at the Citizen, has posted a short-but-delicious smackdown of his colleague's piece. I was not previously aware of Dan's blog, but it's now in my RSS subs. Hat tip: Paul @ Unscrewing the Inscrutable.

Thinking for Free - Pass it on

Saturday afternoon, and it's pouring rain. My doorbell rings, and on my way to answer it I try to decide if it will be kids selling chocolate bars to raise money for schools or sports teams, or someone who thinks I should pay less (or at least pay them) for my gas or electricity bill. Wrong on both counts - upon opening the door, I see a well-dressed man of 30 or so, accompanied by a boy about 10 (I surmised that they were father and son). The man says that they are going around my neighbourhood talking to people about what is important in life. and asks if they could leave me a pamphlet to look at. (I think they might have identified their church, but it was said so quickly I didn't catch it, but I am reasonably certain that they were neither Mormons nor JWs; likely just run-of-the-mill fundamentalists.)

OK, my sign says "No Flyers Please", but I guess they figure that a pamphlet which proclaims the good news of salvation does not qualify for my prohibition. So, I politely decline, saying that I don't need any more paper. A split second later, I decide that was a pathetically wimpy way to turn away evangelists, and add, "We are atheists here". The man looks a bit surprised, and says something like, "I see. Well, have a nice day", and off they go.

Did the boy ask his father what an atheist is, as they walked down the street, or later that day? I certainly hope so, and I wonder what the father will say in response. (I did feel a twinge of guilt for potentially disturbing the child's faith, but quickly decided that was silly - they were the ones who came to *my* door, and I said nothing rude or otherwise inappropriate.)

PZed Myers comes to TO

TO is also known as Toronto, Ontario (Canada), and not to be confused with t.o aka usenet newsgroup talk.origins, (where I had my first encounter with PZed, known to some as PZ, some mumblety many years ago).

PZed's Toronto talk was sponsored by the Centre for Inquiry, Ontario. Co-opting the gourd carving meme from the local religious observance, the CFI displayed a cephalopumpkin*:



and also this:



- possibly a flower, or a ghost with a belly-button, but I interpret it as a curcurbit representation of electron orbits around the atomic nucleus.

On to the talk - an overview of various aspects of the conflict between religion and science education
.

Though some have commented that PZed was preaching to the choir, so to speak, everyone was very surprised to see Ken Ham in attendance! Here's a picture of Ken at the pub asking Jesus (who was just hanging around at the bar) to sign a copy of the book He wrote.




The symposium (original Greek usage) following the meeting continued for some time after Eamon and I wimped out.




* not to be confused with a punkin-head

Tentacled Horrors Invade Ottawa Pub!!

OK, really only a few toys and some geeks:

L to R: Epinephrine, bPer, AJ Milne, Eamon Knight, Theo Bromine
Table centre: Various cephalodic things, siezing firm control of the condiments.
Behind the camera: Nic (who doesn't read Pharyngula, but tagged along to offer the occasional insight from a Soc-Anthro perspective).

The beer was (of course) great. But for some bizarre reason the Clocktower doesn't serve calamari.

Announcing My Reconversion

Sorry, fellow atheists, but I really can't argue with the logic of this:

(OK, as PZ points out, I can argue with it. But why spoil the joke?)

Gyapong Gets It Wrong

One of Deborah Gyapong's favorite topics is the various Human Rights Commission hate-speech proceedings against people she considers her heroes. I actually have some sympathy insofar as I support free speech, and view hate-speech laws with misgiving (or else I just hang out at Ed Brayton's place too much). But that's a can of worms to open some other time.

However, on one recent free speech rant, Gyapong drags in (with tenuous relevance) a bit of Christian apologetics. I left a brief comment over there, but decided to also bring it back here for a more thorough fisking:

When I took Philosophy 101, one of the debates that, according to our professor, had never been solved was whether God existed or not.

Well, whether that question has been resolved might depend who you ask, but never mind....

Even Christian mystics and philosophers like Blaise Pascal have granted that you really cannot prove definitively one way or the other. That's why Pascal's famous wager says you have far less to lose if you choose to believe God exists and live as if He does and discover after death that He is in fact real, than to believe He doesn't exist, live as if He doesn't and discover, whoops! you are going to hell.

Even if you believe in God and discover after death He does not exist, you have at least led a good life.

I guess Deborah's Phil 101 class didn't also cover the criticisms of Pascal's Wager. First of course, note that it does not even claim to be an argument for the existence of God. Rather, it is a strategy for maximizing your welfare over the span of your mortal life, and possible after-life, in the face of objective uncertainty about the existence of God. As such, the Wager is of legitimate interest to philosophers as an abstract exercise in probability and decision theory.

However, as a strategic reason for adopting religion it fails badly. It doesn't even begin to work unless the "believe in God" choice is singular and well-defined. If (and this is actually the case in the real world) there are multiple competing and mutually-anathematizing sects, each advancing its own god(s), each with his/her/their particular criteria for admission to posthumous bliss, then the decision process fails. The Wager gives no guidance on how to choose between Christianity and Islam -- or even between Catholic and Baptist belief. It simply swallows whole the assumption that we know what the postulated God wants us to do to be considered righteous.

One more thing: I can't let pass without comment, the casual bigotry implied by: "Even if you believe in God and discover after death He does not exist, you have at least led a good life." Apparently, whether or not God exists, you can only lead a good life if you believe in him/her/them/it.

However, it seems Gyapong's invocation of Pascal is mostly meant to set up the false dichotomy at the core of her argument:

We live in a universe of unsolved mysteries. I can look at the heavens and like the psalmist say they testify to God's glory, that they and all the beauty of nature are like a book that testifies to God's design and God's laws. But others look at the same universe and see primordial slime and nothingness and random chance natural selection.

[I have to break in here to note that Gyapong's confusion of the fields of astronomy and biology suggests that, while she may have taken Philosophy 101, she never took Science 101. Here's a quick remedial lesson, Deborah: no one thinks the stars came from "primordial slime" (of course, I also don't know anyone who thinks life did either, in quite those terms, but I'll let it go) or were subject to natural selection -- a process reserved to entities that reproduce themselves with at least moderate fidelity. Either she knows roughly nothing about science, or is just tossing rhetoric around in a fact-free attempt to impress. But I digress:]

In other words, we both base our beliefs on a priori assumptions about existence that cannot be proven, even though we could both say there is evidence to support our views. My a priori assumptions are religious, Christian, and rely on revealed truth in holy Scripture and holy Tradition. The a priori assumptions of secular humanists are based on Darwinism, and materialism that are just as much faith-based as my beliefs, though God is not in the picture for them.

That paragraph is a remarkable example of managing to get just about everything wrong.

First of course, there's the obligatory abuse of the term "Darwinism", an almost sure sign you're dealing with someone who knows nothing about the subject, except that whatever it is they don't like it.

Secondly, she seems to assume that, just because she's accepted the terms of Pascal's Wager (albeit without justifying her particular choice of god and "Tradition"), it follows that we Darwinist-materialist humanists also have, only we're betting on the other side. Wrong, wrong and wrong, Deborah: I (and most other "materialists" I know) reject the Wager, partly for the reasons I outlined above, but additionally because having examined the available evidence, we conclude that the question of God's existence is resolvable in the negative to a reasonable degree of certainty -- at least enough that we can pretty much ignore the question and get on with our lives. This is not the result of some "a priori assumptions" we hold -- I and many other atheists were practising Christians (or other religion) at some time in our lives; we did hold those religious priors, but came in time to see that they did not match reality. You see, in the real world, "assumptions" are not like mathematical axioms, where all that matters is internal consistency (though religious claims frequently fail even that criterion) -- at some point, incorrect assumptions tend to collide with that real world. You start to run into situations where you find yourself saying: "My assumptions imply that the world should look like This. In fact, it looks like That. Better re-think those assumptions...." That's the way science works, and the only a priori of science is something like: the universe works consistently, and if we study it in a disciplined way, we can figure it out.

There's a lovely irony in Gyapong's argument. If you read her blog for any length of time, you find that one of the other epithets (ie. in addition to "Darwinist" and "materialist") she likes to toss out is "postmodernist" -- a school of thought which among other things denies absolute universal truth in favour relative, individually constructed truths. But her assertion that our understanding of the Universe is completely determined by arbitrarily-chosen priors essentially sets up the same kind of relativist epistemology. The only difference between this and "classic" postmodernism is that in the latter it is social factors like one's race, gender and economic class that determine one's worldview. And on the whole, scientists (including most of those dreaded "Darwinists") have little use for post-modernism.

Of course, this whole digression into bad apologetics is just a lead-up to Gyapong's favorite hobby-horse, the supposed persecution of Christians by the Human Rights Commissions:

As Ezra Levant points out today, we have a new state religion. We can't really call it a theocracy because God is missing from the creed. But it is a faith nonetheless with its own strictures, its own moral code, its own high priests and priestesses and its own inquisitors. And these new inquisitors share a similar zeal for enforcing their dogma on heretics and schismatics.

This "state religion" at least as she sets it up, is a bogey man of her own devising. Gyapong is advancing a dichotomous view in which there are only two sides: the conservative Christians, and the Darwinist-materialists who are out to get them. In fact (as anyone who isn't determined to fit the facts into the straight-jacket of their martyr complex knows), there are are all sorts of "sides" in our society. At the very least, there are: conservative Christians who rail against the modern world; the leftist po-mos whose views I find just as silly and anti-intellectual; the scientific view in which evidence decides matters of truth (and is in itself largely independent of ideological commitments); and libertarians who believe in free speech as a principle, even for fools and bigots (for an example of the last view, Deborah should go check out Ed Brayton's Dispatches From The Culture Wars: a harsh critic of religious excess, who regularly jeers at creationism, and fiercely defends gay rights -- but who has also defended Ezra Levant on strict free-speech grounds).

There are aspects of the Stephen Boissoin case that I am unhappy about (or would be, if they were to be confirmed by a source that wasn't so obviously grinding an axe over it), but Deborah's bogeyman of materialism, Darwinism and a priori philosophical assumptions have nothing to do with it.

[As an aside, I should note that Stephen Boissoin is being persecuted for being an ignorant bigot repeating the standard lies of the Christian Right. One can defend him on the principled basis that even ignorant bigots should enjoy the right to free speech, and the proper response is public refutation and ridicule -- but to defend him as a persecuted Christian says something about the kind of Christianity you endorse.]

Free-associating Follies

So at work today, I check the mailstop to see if there's anything for me. There isn't, but among the stuff in the inbox is an envelope for someone I don't know, that says on the outside, "Want to Serve God Better?".

And the first thing that pops into my head is: "You mean like: in a pesto sauce, with a glass of cabernet?"

[ba-dump!]

I think this means I'm completely cured of religion. The sense of humour, however, is beyond any possible therapy....

Just so reading this post wasn't a complete waste of your time, here's a blog carnival that looks interesting: Humanist Symposium #17.

Hat tip to Tangled Up In Blue Guy.

No Big Surprise

I especially liked the question about Jason Gastrich ;-).

You scored as Scientific Atheist, These guys rule. I'm not one of them myself, although I play one online. They know the rules of debate, the Laws of Thermodynamics, and can explain evolution in fifty words or less. More concerned with how things ARE than how they should be, these are the people who will bring us into the future. Scientific Atheist 92% Apathetic Atheist 50% Spiritual Atheist 42% Militant Atheist 33% Agnostic 33% Angry Atheist 17% Theist 8% What kind of atheist are you? created with QuizFarm.com

(Hat tip to BigHeathenMike).

Dawkins on CBC-TV

Just watched Dawkins being interviewed by George Stroumboulopoulos (I don't know how long the site keeps those clips around). It's late and I'm off to bed now, so all I'll say is: Stroum did a good interview and Dawkins rocks.