Shoot me for backsliding.  At the National Times of Australia, Michael Brull goes after “crybaby theists,” those theists who don’t have good arguments for their beliefs and so resort to whining about atheists’ incivility and rudeness (his exemplar is Greg Craven, who published an attack on the New Atheists, also in the Times). Brull argues:

Facing a new attack with an international audience playing close attention, religions have as little rational argument in their favour as ever. There was a time when they could deal with dissent through more draconian measures: the kind that can still be practiced in, say, Saudi Arabia. Having lost the power of the gun in the West, apologists of religion have a new weapon: being offended.

Rather than confronting (say) Dawkins’ arguments with counter-arguments, people like Craven, and many others like him, instead cry out: why are you picking on us? All we want is for you to respect our beliefs. And so, the crybaby theists hide behind the demand for respect, which sounds reasonable enough. . .

. . .The bottom line is that such special pleading is a way for theists to avoid answering their critics. The cry that religious beliefs are not being treated respectfully often demonstrates incredible arrogance and hypocrisy.

Firstly, in a liberal democracy, people should adjust to the prospect of other people finding their views stupid, immoral, pernicious, or any other terrible thing. For example, consider the case of a racist. They may view others with contempt, and members of the targeted minorities might respond with contempt for the views of the racist. Should we demand that victims of racism respect the beliefs of racists? Of course not: we grant the truism that some beliefs are stupid, immoral, pernicious and other terrible things. A liberal democracy cannot function without the possibility of discussing which beliefs are good and which ones are not. Crybaby theists wish to be shielded from the normal rough and tumble of arguments about beliefs. There are people who honestly think religious belief irrational, and find aspects of organised religion troubling. If anything is outrageous, it is the arrogance of religious extremists, here and elsewhere, holding that such views should not be allowed open discussion.

And let it be noted that athiests rarely complain about the tone of theists’ arguments, which are often pretty vitriolic (c.f. Andrew Sullivan on Scientology), except to point out the hypocrisy. Nor do we request kid-glove treatment for our own atheism. We’re perfectly happy going hammer and tongs with our opponents in the marketplace of ideas:

Indeed, no atheists that I know of actually suggest that theists should “respect” their beliefs and stop arguing for theism. Atheists have simply taken up arguing their point of view: against religious belief.

Indeed, but do read both Brull and Craven’s pieces in their entirety. The striking fact about crybaby theists (and their nonbeliever counterparts, faitheists like Barbara Forrest mentioned in Dan Jones’s New Statesman piece) is that they rarely deal with the substantive arguments of atheists. No new arguments for the existence of gods have arisen in centuries, and their refutations are well known. You rarely see a crybaby theist mounting a vigorous defense of the Ontological Argument,  the Argument from Design, or the Argument from Morality. All their complaints are either about how mean we are, or that we are politically hamhanded and should stop saying that religion is irrational, or that we simply don’t understand theology in the first place. And faitheists are loath to admit that Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris have adduced or reprised really substantive arguments against the existence of gods. Even though they must agree with some of these arguments (they are atheists after all!), they pass this over in silence in their rush to accuse the atheists of nastiness.

When I see this, I know that we’ve won on the substance. It’s been pointed out that the same arguments against tone were used against the civil rights movement and in-your-face gay-rights activists. (Now I know that someone is going to beef that religion is not the same thing as racism or homophobia. Granted — although all are based on irrational premises –but that’s not the point.) The “tone” card is always played by those on the losing side — those who have exhausted their supply of rational arguments.

I forgot to proffer this paper of the week before I left. The title alone is a classic: Fellatio by fruit bats prolongs copulation time. 2009. M. Tan, G. Jones, G. Zhu, J. Ye, T. Hong, S. Zhou, S. Zhang, and L. Zhang. PLoS One :4(10): e7595. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0007595. Be sure to check out the short video at the end of the paper.

You can imagine snickering that went along with writing this abstract:

Oral sex is widely used in human foreplay, but rarely documented in other animals. Fellatio has been recorded in bonobos Pan paniscus, but even then functions largely as play behaviour among juvenile males. The short-nosed fruit bat Cynopterus sphinx exhibits resource defence polygyny and one sexually active male often roosts with groups of females in tents made from leaves. Female bats often lick their mate’s penis during dorsoventral copulation. The female lowers her head to lick the shaft or the base of the male’s penis but does not lick the glans penis which has already penetrated the vagina. Males never withdrew their penis when it was licked by the mating partner. A positive relationship exists between the length of time that the female licked the male’s penis during copulation and the duration of copulation. Furthermore, mating pairs spent significantly more time in copulation if the female licked her mate’s penis than if fellatio was absent. Males also show postcopulatory genital grooming after intromission. At present, we do not know why genital licking occurs, and we present four non-mutually exclusive hypotheses that may explain the function of fellatio in C. sphinx.

Seriously, why the licking? Here are the authors’ four theories:

First, genital licking may lubricate the penis or increase penile stimulation, prolonging the duration of copulation. Prolonged copulation might assist sperm transport from the vagina to the oviduct, or stimulate secretions of the pituitary gland in the female [26] and hence increase the likelihood of fertilization. Second, prolonged copulation might be a method of mate-guarding, because the mates would normally segregate after copulation to form unisexual groups which persist throughout the non-breeding season [29]. Third, fellatio may confer bactericidal benefits and assist in the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) both to females [30]–[33], and to males that lick their own penis briefly after copulation [34]–[37]. Saliva has a protective repertoire that goes beyond antibacterial activity to include antifungal, antichlamydial, and antiviral properties as well [38]. Finally, genital licking may facilitate the detection and identification of MHC-dependent chemical cues associated with mate choice [39], [40].

Hola from Mexico, where the Ciudad de las Ideas meeting starts tonight. Puebla is a nice town, a welcome respite from the hideous, smog-ridden sprawl of Mexico City. Volcanoes are in sight, and the city is rumored to be the gastronomic capital of Mexico, something I hope to investigate. But on to today’s post:

If anything shows that our internet debates on accommodationism have reached an impasse, it’s this curiously inconclusive article by Dan Jones at The New Statesman. There’s no attempt here to go deeper than the quotes of the participants — for example, Jones made no effort to find out if atheists have indeed been “excessively mean,” as accommodationists claim. He doesn’t press those who make this argument for examples, nor look for any himself.

Even Jones himself seems bored with the debate as he reaches the predictable non-commital and middle-of-the-road conclusion beloved by journalists:

In the meantime, there is little reason to suppose that the world will reach any meaningful consensus on the question of how best to engage the public with science in general, and evolutionary theory in particular. Perhaps, in true Darwinian fashion, those arguments and ideas best adapted to the modern world will prevail. In an era of resurgent religion, it is far from clear which approach this will be.

Those last two sentences are completely meaningless filler, designed to look clever. Dan seems like a nice guy, and is no intellectual slouch, but this one he phoned in.

And I guess I’m tired of the debates myself. I’m posting this only because I was intereviewed for the piece, as were several other participants.

The travels of Darwin Year continue, and I’ll be off for a few weeks, posting sporadically.  As always, I’ll be covered by my pitch-bloggers Matthew Cobb and Greg Mayer.

This Wednesday I’m going to the Ciudad de las Ideas in Puebla, Mexico, a meeting that resembles the TED conferences in assembling a diverse group of “thinkers.”   The program, whose theme is “re-evolution,” features lots of interesting people, including confrères like Sam Harris, Dan Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens, scientists like Frans de Waal, and real or potential nemeses like Dinesh D’Souza, Robert Wright, and SuperRabbi Schmuley Boteach.  Randy Cohen, the New York times ethicist, will also be there, along with luminaries in fields far removed from mine, including Sudanese hiphopper Emmanuel Jal.   It should be a hoot.  The Sunday morning session promises some fireworks, featuring Hitchens, Harris, Boteach, and d’Souza.

I return for one day, and then am off for two weeks and three talks in Europe, first in London at the Royal Society meeting Genetics and the causes of evolution: 150 years of progress since Darwin, then in Groeningen, Netherlands, and Padova, Italy.  I’m taking four vacation days in Amsterdam and two in Venice, and would appreciate hearing of any good places to eat.