Professor Ceiling Cat is a bit low today for reasons I’ll describe in the next post. The upshot is that my brain hurts and I have nothing substantive to say, at least for a few hours. In light of that lacuna, let me call your attention to three articles that you may want to read.
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The first is Brother Jeffrey Tayler’s regular Sunday Sermon in Salon, a feature that you should be looking for and, though I don’t sanction Church Replacements for atheists, this beats all of them. As usual, it’s larded with anti-theism, but also with sound arguments for why we should be afraid of even “moderate” Islam. Tayler’s piece is “The left has Islam all wrong: Bill Maher, Pamela Geller and the reality progressives must face.” His subject is the first six words of the title: how progressives have had their brains co-opted by the “Islamophobia” meme because of our otherwise admirable concern for the oppressed. He suggests, and I now agree, that we need to dispense completely with the word “Islamophobia,” and when we see it we must press those who use it to describe exactly what they mean. The term, after all, has become a grab-bag for disparate issues, including dislike of Islam, dislike of individual Muslims (which can be justified if they espouse bad things), and general, unjustified bigotry of people simply because they’re Muslims.
Here are few excerpts, and we should all absorb this first one—especially the second paragraph (my emphasis):P
The canonical glorification of death for the sake Islam, or martyrdom, similarly belies those who would argue that the religion’s nature is pacific. If you, as a progressive, do not believe in the veracity of the Quran, then you have to accept Arthur C. Clarke’s diagnosis of those who “would rather fight to the death than abandon their illusions” as complying with the criteria of “the operational definition of insanity.” Insanity hardly engenders peace.
All those who, à la Reza Aslan, maintain that Muslims today do not necessarily read the Quran literally have lost the argument before it begins. What counts is that there are those (ISIS, say, and al-Qaida) who do, and they are taking action based on their beliefs. To the contention, “ISIS and al-Qaida don’t represent Islam!” the proper response is, “that’s what you say. They disagree.” No single recognized Muslim clerical body exists to refute them.
and this:
This is no call to disrespect Muslims as people, but we should not hesitate to speak frankly about the aspects of their faith we find problematic. But it’s not up to progressives to suggest how an ideology based on belief without evidence might be reformed. Rather, we should cease relativizing and proudly espouse, as alternatives to blind obedience to ancient texts, reason, progress, consensus-based solutions, and the wonderful panoply of other Enlightenment ideals underpinning our Constitution and the liberties characterizing Western countries.
. . . In doing as he urges [the call of Charlie Hebdo editor Gérard Biard to keep debating, writing, and satirizing religion], we will give the terrorists too many targets to attack and convince them that we will not surrender, not cede an inch. That means the media needs to begin showing Charlie Hedbo’s Muhammad cartoons. We must stop traducing reason by branding people “Islamophobes,” and start celebrating our secularism, remembering that only it offers true freedom for the religious and non-religious alike. And we should reaffirm our humanistic values, in our conviction that we have, as Carlyle wrote, “One life – a little gleam of time between two eternities,” and need to make the most of it for ourselves and others while we can. There is nothing else.
If Tayler isn’t yet a “horseman” (horseperson?), he’s got one foot in the stirrup.
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The other day, a friend told me she was an admirer of Karen Armstrong, and was about to start reading Fields of Blood, Armstrong’s widely-lauded book whose theme is that religion has never given rise to anything bad—ever. Anything that superficially looks like religiously-engendered violence, like the 9/11 terrorism, is, to Armstrong, the result of colonialism, disaffection, or other “political” factors. Just as Steve Gould defined “religion” tautologically in Rocks of Ages so that it could never say anything about reality (stuff like creationism he dismissed as “not real religion”), so Armstrong sees any religious views promoting terrorism as “not canonical religion”. It’s a duplicitous and tautological ploy, but because Armstrong writes what people want to hear (religion is benign at worst, but usually helpful), people osculate her rump.
The cure for the common but dangerous desire to apply one’s lips to Armstrong’s gluteus—a disease known as Tippett’s Syndrome—is, as I told my friend, to read David Nirenberg’s new, long, and critical review of her book in The Nation, “Power and piety.” There Nirenberg calls out Armstrong for her rhetorical trickery and double standards vis-à-vis politics vs. religion. I’m curious why other reviewers haven’t picked up on this, but of course many are blinkered by “belief in belief”. The review is mandatory reading for anyone who’s read, admired, or is contemplating reading Fields of Blood. I can give only one except; do read Nirenberg’s whole article:
Armstrong’s argument is simple: “From the first, it seems, large-scale organized violence was linked not with religion but with organized theft.” By “organized theft,” she means the activities of the kings, aristocrats, warriors, and other leaders of the agrarian societies that began to appear in written records in Mesopotamia in the third millennium bce. In other words, not religion but politics—the struggle for power to seize the fruits of others’ labor—has always been responsible for violence. Yet in making this claim, Armstrong draws the very distinction between religion and nonreligion that she insists cannot be made before the modern period. This is a substantial inconsistency (Cavanaugh would call it incoherent), but it needn’t necessarily compromise her broader argument, which seems to be, here and throughout the book, that religion only becomes complicit with violence when it is captured and deformed by politics, or when believers are oppressed by injustice, poverty, and violence, or, more recently, when the faithful are humiliated by atheists.
According to this argument, in their origins and essences, religions are a benign and fundamental source of empathy, love of the other, and cognitive comfort in an otherwise incomprehensible cosmos. “The world’s great religious traditions share as one of their most essential tenets the imperative of treating others as one would wish to be treated oneself,” Armstrong writes. If religious movements become violent, it is either because they are driven to extreme measures by oppression and injustice, or because their teachings have been misinterpreted and so are blasphemous and not truly religious.
As an example, consider Armstrong’s account of the religious attitudes of Mohamed Atta and his accomplices in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and other targets. “The hijackers themselves certainly regarded the 9/11 atrocities as a religious act but one that bore very little resemblance to normative Islam.” (Armstrong’s grammar here is confusing; what she means is that although the hijackers understood their Islam as normative, according to her interpretation it was not.) True, the hijackers prayed constantly and repeatedly recited certain passages of the Koran during the attack, but according to Armstrong their thought must be categorized as “magical,” “primitive,” “superstitious,” or “psychotic” rather than “religious,” because it does not achieve what she understands as “the principal imperative of Islamic spirituality”: tawhid, or making one. The terrorists divided their mission into segments, whereas “Muslims truly understand the unity of God only if they integrate all their activities and thoughts.”
Armstrong’s point is that although Atta and his colleagues may have thought of themselves as religious, their actions proved them to be blasphemous and paranoid. We need not accept her definition of “true Islam” as total “integration” of all thoughts and actions, a definition that seems bizarre. By this standard, very few if any humans of any faith could be considered truly religious. But even if we were to reject her definition and pinpoint the ways in which Atta’s faith contributed to his acts, Armstrong would simply regard such complicity as proof of a (perhaps misguided) Muslim response to “the structural violence of the American-dominated Middle East.” Armstrong is fond of the phrase “structural violence,” by which she seems to mean something like the inequality created by political power, which is to say, oppression.
This is more or less the same tactic used by Gould to exculpate religion in Rocks of Ages.
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Finally, one of our readers, John Farrell, as written an analysis of Catholic dogma on evolution for Aeon magazine: “Still seeking Omega.” (Omega, you may recall, is the teleological “goal” of theistic evolution envisioned by Catholic theologian Teilhard de Chardin.) Farrell runs through the history of the Vatican’s love-hate relationship with evolution, noting that the only “official” statement about it comes from Pope Pius XII’s 1950 document Humani Generis, which reaffirms the historicity of Adam and Eve as the actual physical progenitors of all modern humans. (I discuss this inFaith vs. Fact.)
This, of course, creates a tension between science and the Vatican, for no scientist believes that the human species was ever as small as two individuals, much less the eight on Noah’s Ark (genetic evidence rules this out completely). While some later Popes issued “nonbinding” opinions that either promote or criticize evolution, Catholic doctrine as it stands flies in the face of science—something regularly ignored by accommodationists. By desperately trying to comport Adam and Eve with the facts, some Catholic theologians are skirting that doctrine.
The upshot is that the Church is confused about what to say about evolution, but can’t quite bring itself to endorse the facts, much less give up its silly view that humans differ from other species by possessing an immortal soul. Farrell sees this reluctance to embrace evolution as dangerous to the Church, and a cause for its attrition in many places. I’m not sure I agree about the reasons for attrition (the Church’s retrograde views on sexuality, marriage, and abortion surely must contribute), but I do agree with Farrell on the intellectual vacuity of accepting Adam and Eve in an age of science:
Perhaps in the end, the Vatican cannot integrate evolutionary science because it really is too threatening. It would require a thoughtful reinterpretation of the Church’s understanding of the doctrine of original sin – the fundamental idea that Adam and Eve’s epic act of disobedience wounded human nature for all who came after. Theologians from St Paul and St Augustine down to the present day have viewed the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth as God’s ultimate response – the redemption for this sin.
Can such a theology be maintained within an evolutionary understanding of human origins? The few, scattered Catholic theologians exploring the issue largely believe that it can. But the Vatican’s long silence on the question suggests that it doesn’t agree.
And there’s a price to be paid for stalling. Millions of people are walking away from the Church. Not just because of the clerical abuse scandal, and not just because of disagreement over points of morality such as gay marriage or abortion. But because the Church no longer speaks to people in a way that is meaningful to humanity in this scientific age.
The result is a slow but steady implosion. The Church is slowly collapsing from within, in a sort of progressive diminution. ‘Instead of evolving, it is devolving,’ Delio writes, ‘its very presence is thinning out to the extent that in some areas of the world, such as parts of western Europe, it is dissolving into history.’
The Church has accepted the Big Bang, the start of the world’s evolutionary journey – but this isn’t enough. It must follow in Teilhard’s footsteps. Unless it embraces not just the evolution of the Universe, but the evolution of all life, including humans, and reclaims a truly cosmic view in which the faith makes sense, the Church is pulling the wool over its own eyes as its people continue to file out the door.
I suggest that the last thing the Church wants to do is follow exactly in Teilhard’s footsteps, since he envisioned a teleological, goal-directed view of evolution that contradicts everything we know about the process.
We are all really sorry – virtual hugs!
Some virtual silliness from this corner, too:
from WB
and Jimmy Durante
sublease
IIRC Catholic membership may be shrinking in the 1st world west, but is increasing in other areas of the globe. So I think tales of its implosion may be greatly exaggerated.
Though perhaps the change in membership supports his point: it is precisely those areas of the world where modern genetics are best understood by the general populace where membership is failing. Maybe that’s coincidence, or maybe not. Personally I think the Church’s positions on birth control and family planning, divorce, and priestly abstinence have much more to do with their losses in the west than its views on evolution.
That membership is growing elsewhere is interesting. I bet its areas of growth are in regions where people are poor, uneducated, and lack access to birth control. Those would be ideal clients for a religion that is based on the dark ages.
This is probably a spectacularly stupid question, so please be patient.
You say scientists agree that the human race was never as small as two people. How did that work? Was it that several of our pre-human ancestors had the same mutation independently (I don’t know how many bases there are in human DNA, so that seems unlikely but not impossible to me) or was it more that, by the time there was a breeding population we could call ‘human’, it was a mix of a bunch of genes from various strands in the pre-human population?
Again, sorry if this is a stupid question. I’ve always had problems understanding how speciation actually works, probably because we’re evolved to think in terms of small groups over weeks, not massive ecosystems over millions of years.
There are no stupid questions about science. It comes from looking at the amount of genetic variation in humans today, and then, using conservative assumptions about mutation rates and the like, seeing how big the population could have been at various times and still account for the existing amount of genetic variation. The answer is 12,500 at minimum: about 10K in Africa and 2,500 people who left Africa to colonize the world. That’s the minimum size in the last million or so years.
Of course if God could suddenly increase all the mutation rates (for reasons known only to himself), then the calculations could be wrong. But you’d then have to explain why God would do that.
So, would I be right in thinking that, although we don’t have any way at the moment of working out populations further back than a million years, there would at some point have been a ‘first human’? Or is that not how this works?
I’m a bit worried that this is coming across as disingenuous ‘just asking questions’ creationism. I am not a creationist, or even whatever they call it when religious people say ‘of course animals evolved, then god did some magic and now people have souls’. I am not in an way religious, I just find biology hard.
There was no “first human,” any more than there was a day when you yourself woke up and were no longer a child but an adult. Or, if you prefer, there is no place on the rainbow where one color begins and another ends.
You can pick an arbitrary point and say, “Yes, this definitely fits this category despite retaining trivial elements of these other categories,” but that’s the most you can do.
It might also help to understand that, just as you are much the same person as you were when you were a teenager (though with some significant differences), humans today are much the same as they were an hundred thousand years ago, and not all that different from what we were a million years ago. And, just as we were great plains apes several million years ago when our great-great…great-grandparents were also the great-great…great-grandparents of today’s chimpanzees, so, too, do we remain great plains apes. And, as we are apes, we are also monkeys, mammals, tetrapods, vertebrates, and so on. It’s only at the very tip of the branch that we split from our closest cousins….
Cheers,
b&
I’ve just replied downstream to Eric, who said something similar. I made a really obvious mistake in thinking about this, and (despite what PCC says above) I think my question was stupid. I have some kind of mental blind spot about understanding speciation.
Congratulations! You’re one of today’s lucky 10,000!
b&
Brilliant. Thanks.
This is the reaction I had when I found a friend of mine hadn’t read the Disk World books yet. “You lucky, lucky, bastard.”
I’m making my way through them for the first time….
b&
In hindsight it might sound stupid but it really wasn’t: IMO its very common for nonscientists to think of evolution and speciation (wrongly) in terms of an individual organism having some mutation, rather than thinking about it (rightly) in terms of a population of organisms.
Indeed. Difficulty thinking in terms of distributions is a well documented human cognitive bias. Probably everyone who comes to understand evolution, or a wide range of other topics, has to push through this cognitive bias at some point. Often several times before it sticks.
Here’s a short video that may help illustrate common ancestry:
As Ben says, our lineage passes through a large # of speciation events where every parent produces young who also produces young. So there is no 1st ‘human’ (which is generally a member of the genus Homo, or 1st ‘hominin’ (upright walking primate), etc. For example, a fossil species called Ardipithecus ramidus is the earliest species of primate that we are sure could walk pretty much erect on their hind legs. But the difference between this species probably differed only a little from the species that it came from, and that differed only teeny amount from an earlier species, and so on. We have no good record of this, btw, but it is what we see in other fossil linages where the record is far better.
The names like ‘human’ and ‘hominin’ are used to refer to one or more species, but these would emerge gradually, with no sudden change that would let us say that this was a ‘first’ anything. Not even a ‘first life form’, I would bet, as this would emerge very slowly from non-living stuff that gradually got better at self replicating.
Part of the answer to your particular question has to do with what is called ‘mitochondrial eve’. The idea is that all humans share mitochondrial DNA (that we have DNA in our mitochondria was posted here at the end of Mothers’ day) Differences in this DNA exist in people from different geographic regions, and it can be shown how genetic markers found in different regions can be derived from DNA found in another region. This is consistent with the idea, which is only logical, that early peoples spread from one region into other regions carrying their DNA with them as that DNA gradually changes by random mutation. The mutations that I refer to are generally neutral DNA changes that have no effect.
Importantly, all such genetic markers in mtDNA seem to ultimately derive from mtDNA in people living in east Africa, suggesting that all humans are not only from Africa, but had spread out from that region of Africa. But of course there were likely humans living elsewhere in Africa, but they have no descendants today.
Assuming that mtDNA mutates at a steady rate, scientists can estimate how long this DNA has been changing in our species and the answer is between 140,000 – 200,000 years. This is in line with the oldest fossils of our species, which are found elsewhere in Africa.
Any genetic marker found in a population must arise as a mutation in one individual who leaves descendants. So scientists have the idea that the mtDNA that is now in all humans came from one individual, and since only females pass on their mitochondria, this individual was a female dubbed ‘mitochondrial eve’. The article above reviews this idea, and it heads off many common misconceptions. One of these is that mitochondrial eve was the 1st human. She was really a person who lived in a population of humans. But by pure dumb luck, really, her DNA was passed on to all of us while other mtDNA lineages died out at various points.
The simplest and shortest answer is that population genetics is fuzzy. There would have been stretches of thousands, tens or even hundreds of thousands of years where populations slowly drifted apart before the two were distinct. During that transition period, there would have been lots of intermingling; freely at first, but with decreasing frequency as time went on.
Even then, the barriers are often other than genetic. Lions and tigers can produce viable offspring, but only in carefully-controlled captive environments; they’d never do so without human intervention. If left undisturbed, one would expect the two populations to continue to drift to the point that, even with human intervention, no viable offspring would be possible; for example, as between lions and wolves (whose most recent common ancestor is much more ancient).
There are, it should be noted, cases where speciation can happen in a single generation…but only with self-fertilizing organisms like plants.
b&
What about when we went from 48 to 46 chromosomes? Didn’t that have to cause a severe bottleneck?
Yes, but less than you might imagine. Off the top of my head, horses and donkeys have different numbers of chromosomes, but can still produce viable-but-sterile offspring. Down’s Syndrome comes in various flavors involving mismatched counts of chromosome 21, and people with Down’s Syndrome can still have children. I’m sure there’re real biologists here who can provide even better examples….
b&
It might have caused a bottleneck. I don’t think it had to.
Genomes are full of inversions and duplications of a wide range of sizes, all of which could be imagined to have produced problems for, say, mitosis. Perhaps they were all bottlenecks, but my gut feeling is that many of them were probably close to neutral when they arose and became fixed in various populations mostly by chance, like any other neutral allele. Consider that sequences are paired for mitosis by sequence homology, which can still be satisfied if the DNA can be twisted around to match. It’s a wiggly jiggly (pardon the technical jargon) world in there… not a rigid machine. It might actually be easier for a pair of unfused chromosomes, 2a and 2b, to line up with a fused chromosome 2 than it would be for a within chromosome inversion, since there is no constraint to moving the unfused chromosomes around until the alignment works, but with inversions there are mechanical constraints.
In the end, I think the amount of reproductive isolation that will result from mutations or genomic rearrangements will depend mainly on fine details rather on gross things like the size or kind of rearrangement. As an example, one can imagine a protein mutation that makes sperm unable to bind to an egg. That could be a single nucleotide change that is very isolating. OTOH, one can imagine scenarios where a chromosome fusion would hardly matter at all.
Like any change in the genome, this fusion between chromosomes would have occurred in a single individual who left descendants. But that individual would be a member of a viable population of individuals, so the population need not be at a bottleneck right then.
However, this chromosomal fusion would have eventually been ‘fixed’ to 100% of our species. Factors in getting that to happen can be selection or genetic drift. It is easier for drift to fix a genetic feature in a small population going through a bottleneck. It is easier for natural selection to fix a genetic feature in large populations that are not in a bottleneck at that time.
I think one mistake you’re making is in thinking “humanness” was some singular biological change rather than a collection of a whole host of changes, each coming from a different individual ancestor or genetic line.
Yeah, if there was one mutation that was like flipping a switch between “human” and “nonhuman,” then we could intelligently ask which critter first got that one mutation. But there wasn’t: being human involves thousands or millions of genetic changes relative to our nearest ancestors, and there is no reason to believe (and statistically, every reason not to believe) that they all occurred within the same linear geneaology. Cro-Magnon Alice got a mutation, unrelated Cro-Magnon Bob got a different one, they had kid Charlie who inherited both and was thus more human for it. Meanwhile in a different tribe, unrelated Delilah and Eddie gave their mutations to Felicia, who married Charlie…
AIUI, geneticists can look at the total diversity in the genes of modern humans and figure out the smallest population required to get that diversity. In the case of humans, that number is on the order of 10,000 individuals. If it were significantly fewer, we would not have the diversity of genes we have now (unless, as Jerry mentions, God screwed with mutational rates).
Oh, that makes so much sense. Yes, I was imagining ‘human’ as an on/off thing, even though I know that’s stupid. Thank you.
For us non-biologists, this is a great discussion, by the way.
As someone who would probably have to study for five years just to become not-a-biologist, I’m finding it fascinating.
My last bio class was about 30 years ago (30th class reunion is coming up….) at U of C. with Malka Moscona. She was a great teacher–so great that had I taken biology earlier in my college career, I might have dropped Russian lit in favor of the sciences. Alas.
Eric, as a non-scientist, that’s probably the best short explanation I’ve ever had to getting my head around this as a population change. Thank you!
Glad to hear it was helpful to you and Adam. As soon as I hit ‘post’ I was worried it was a bit hard to follow.
Cro-Magnon Alice got a mutation, unrelated Cro-Magnon Bob got a different one, they had kid Charlie who inherited both and was thus more human for it.
The path is a…bit more specific. A germ cell (egg) of Cro-Magon Alice got a mutation and/or a germ cell (sperm) of Cro-Magon Bob got a mutation and those two cells happen to be the lucky ones to form kid Charlie.
Religion can, at most, fight a rearguard action in a desperate attempt to remain relevant for as long as possible. The truth of the matter is that the fact claims of the religions are demonstrably false — and nearly always trivially so. At best, religions can offer a “fandom” sort of “experience” — Star Trek isn’t really real, but you can still have fun dressing up in costumes (if that’s your thing).
Evolution just happens to be one area of science that quite obviously contradicts some of the most sacred tenets of a number of religions, but it’s not like any of the other sacred tenets are any better immune.
b&
A double entendre? Deliberate or fortuitous?
“The world’s great religious traditions share as one of their most essential tenets the imperative of treating others as one would wish to be treated oneself,” I believe that the golden rule of reciprocal altruism was a part of human culture before any of the so called great monotheistic religions usurped it for one of their most essential tenets.
Reciprocal altruism likely predates our species, and even our genus and tribe. We see that behavior in other social primates and to some extent in other large brained social mammals. I have never thought of reciprocal altruism as analogous to the golden rule, but it seems an apt comparison.
“The world’s great religious traditions share as one of their most essential tenets the imperative of treating others as one would wish to be treated oneself,”
Besides what you mention, there are other major problems with that quote. Namely, “except when they don’t?” And they “don’t” a lot. This common statement from believers is a flat out lie by those that know their religions “foundational documents” well enough, and a display of ignorance by the sheep.
From Armstrong: “The world’s great religious traditions share as one of their most essential tenets the imperative of treating others as one would wish to be treated oneself.”
This is a description of religion that has not existed for outsiders of the religions in question. The golden rule for outsiders has always been to either forcibly convert them, or (more likely) to kill them.
Exactly. “As I would want to be treated” = “If I were a benighted heathen I would want someone to come and forcibly convert me.”
Yes, and this is something we need to keep pointing out.
The golden rule of “do as you would be done by” has always, among religions, only applied to members of the same religion.
Similarly in tribal cultures it only applies to members of the same tribe.
Its only in modern secular society that we’ve had the strange idea of applying it to everyone.
The Golden Rule is also a dangerously incomplete foundation for a moral code. It is, yes, the basis for cooperative endeavors such as barn-raising and global finance…but, if you don’t temper it with an even more important rule, you run into serious trouble real quickly.
Specifically, do not do unto others as they do not wish to be done unto, except as minimally necessary to prevent unwelcome doing-unto by others.
Torquemada was perfectly following the Golden Rule. You’d want the doctor to set your broken bone despite the short-term pain it would cause. And, by Torquemada’s reasoning, better a few earthly weeks or months of torture than an unending eternity of worse in Hell.
We have informed consent laws to keep doctors from doing unto you that which you really don’t want done unto you, even if the doctors are convinced you should want them to do it to you. Torquemada had no such restraints.
b&
Thanks for the comment. It helped me to put things in perspective about the Golden Rule! I’ve sometimes wondered whether guys like Torquemada were doing what they did out of a true desire to save souls, or whether they used religion as a rationalization for being cruel–to watch with enjoyment the suffering of others. What do you think? Or was it some of both?
I’d hesitate to try to get inside the mind of such as Torquemada, and for a variety of reasons….
b&
John Calvin comes to mind as well . . . .
And we are not yet very good at applying it to everyone. The inspiration to commit mass murder will continue, but the cause of most of this inspiration will end when religion becomes a quirky pastime like being a Trekkie.
She has distorted the concept, at least as it is stated in Christianity: Do unto others as you would have done unto yourself. The believer would want to be converted, and so feels good about forcibly trying to convert others.
Armstrong version of the Golden Rule is what I call the Platinum Rule: Do unto others as they would have done unto themselves. In other words, think about what others would want, not what you want. Be considerate, for Ceiling Cat’s sake!
Does any religion actually urge its believers to think about what others might want, or do they all extrapolate what the believer wants to what others should want?
Karen Armstrong is correct about the malignant effect of colonialism: for centuries, the area that spawned ISIS was subject to the Islamic and brutal Ottoman empire.
Evidence of colonialism is all around the Southwest of America. How sick it makes me to see a Navajo follow the religion of a white man, figuratively speaking.
White man came…
Karen Armstrong would gain a bit of credibility if she adopted any of the following rhetorical strategies (though they have problems of their own):
1) Authoritarian religion vs. Humanistic religion- Erich Fromm (Fromm’s specific examples are not that convincing however)
2) Static religion vs. Dynamic religion–
Henri Bergson
3) Toxic religion vs. Healthy religion-
a variety of authors including anti-cult activist Jan Groenwald
4) Bad Religion vs. Good religion-
Russ Douthat (whose standards of same are almost the reverse of mine, but whatever)
But “really” religion vs. “not really” religion just doesn’t cut it. It becomes circular reasoning for all the reasons mentioned above.
The incredible underdogism has reached the fair shores of Cayuga Lake, as the local UU Church (the Unchurch church!) has invited Alison Weir to give a talk. Great. A woman who claims Jews have too much power, that Jews are at the center of an organ harvesting ring preying on Palestinians, she gives talks at Holocaust denial conferences in Iran, etc., etc. When this is brought to the attention of the UU leadership, they blather on about how they are open to all points of view.
Especially the Jew hating ones, I guess. Karen Armstrong and her sort make this stuff possible.
Do you have a link to that? If so, email it to me, please.
Isn’t that exactly what I wrote the other day: Everyone draw Mohammed! They can’t kill us all!
Taylor is right on target: blind obedience and belief without evidence. The satire of Hebdo is a mirror for those who follow ignorance. The religious need to be shamed for what they belief, not for who they are. Furthermore, criticism of religion is not some kind of a hateful game; this is our civilization…it’s time to stop the ignorance that perjures so many people.
I’ve read quite a bit of Armstrong – particularly her early work. “The Case for God” put me off her for good. Somehow couldn’t understand how she could write what I took to be a neutral exposition of religion for most of the book and then at the end come to the conclusions she posited. I wanted to say, “Haven’t you comprehended what you’ve written so far?” I do have to say, however, that she was one of the insturmental steps on my journey out of a belief tradition (Catholic) to atheism, secularism, humanism. On that journey I found her historical surveys of world religeous belief acted as the catylist for my realizing the plethora of religeous beliefs that exist and have existed. I realized that I was going to have a great deal of trouble figuring out which god or gods to believe in. That lead to the realization that everyone who believes in god or gods is just making it up as they go. Then the palm to forehead “duh” happened. From there it was on to Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, Jacoby, Krauss, Coyne, Stenger, Shermer…
I wonder if Armstrong would appreciate that her head was your stepping stone?
I read her “History of God” from which I inferred she must be an atheist. Clearly she didn’t think that her book said what I thought it said.
Reading this:
“the principal imperative of Islamic spirituality”: tawhid, or making one.
led me to think it should be obvious to Armstrong that her understanding is incorrect, else the Quran wouldn’t be “truly Islamic” as it wasn’t dictated whole in one session. If your theory invalidates the field of study, you need to give it a second thought. And perhaps a third.
If we imagine ourselves with an Islamist’s gun to our head- are we going to say “Fuck Muhammad!” to prove to ourselves for .5 seconds we had the balls? Of course not. So, the response seems to be if we build our numbers up with enough people to say “Fuck Muhammad!” they will somehow lose the will to kill everyone. This is where I don’t see the logic holding up. If the entire world was telling these people they were deluded- they do not have the tools or willingness to engage such a quandary thoughtfully. Numbers mean nothing to them- it actually gives them the war they want. So escalating critical rhetoric doesn’t diminish their willingness. Does it diminish their capability? No- it increases it. Every event that seems to bolster the illusion that they are at war bumps up enrollment numbers. It pulls fringe moderates into extremism. Each enrollment runs the risk of someone additional actual technical skill in bomb-making or weaponry being attached to the cause. So, all that is to say- there is some war-time logic to be thought through that might lead us to conclude that mitigating freedoms of speech during such a war prevents the purchase of otherwise absent fuel for the enemy’s machines (more converted extremists). This is the problem I see with the liberal media- they refuse to pose the problem in these terms. There is all this talk about offending the oppressed or inciting violence. The armed people are not oppressed- they are middle class being deluded by religion. The words are not inciting violence- they are arbitrary points the enemy has decided to target. I have a right to participate in an open free market according to my means- but in times of war I am rationed like the rest. I think this needs to be thought of in terms of rationing speech for the benefit of defeating an enemy. Then the discussion can be had. I’m not convinced that rationing speech is the actual solution- this war on ideas is complicated and the enemies are dynamic and decentralized. But it needs to be on the table in thoughtful debate. I would prefer if the most reasoned solution turned out to be a full-scale media blitz against this disgusting collection of ideas- but sticking to speech freedoms at all costs (which are anything but predictable), as a knee-jerk response to tasteless victim-blaming from the pseudo-left, is not a conclusion we should be confident in until the necessary debate has been had.
“I think this needs to be thought of in terms of rationing speech for the benefit of defeating an enemy.”
No. No no no. If this is your approach to the conflict of ideas, you have already lost it, because you NOT criticizing them or you NOT drawing Mo because they don’t want you to means they are already getting what they want – you are following their rules, out of fear of their actions should you not do so.
As for turning moderates into extremists, anyone who would join their side because you draw a cartoon or say an idea is bad was never on your side to start with, but was instead already quietly sitting on the side of the extremists. Muslims who don’t commit violence themselves, but who DO support stoning of adulterers or apostates, are not moderates that we lose when we draw Mo – they are extremists who already do damage to society, by providing ideological support for their violent counterparts, by helping shut down discussion, and via nonviolent tools of social repression. Just because they aren’t violent does not make them on my side.
A Muslim like Maajid Nawaz, on the other hand, is absolutely on my side – not because he’s non-violent, but because he supports freedom of expression. Was his response to Mo cartoons to become more extremist? No. It was to re-post them himself.
I was reposing the issue in different terms from the point of view of those I disagree with. When the psuedo-left suggests we curb free speech rights (or any right i.e. free market participation), it cannot be for reasons that constitutionally cannot warrant such suppression. “Offense” is not a valid reason to curb freedom. The only possible way to legitimately frame the demands the liberal media is making- is to frame in a way that could actually warrant the temporary suppression of rights. That’s my point- not that I think this approach works. But that is how you should approach the argument. Also- it doesn’t help to declare it merely a “war of ideas.” This war is our ideas vs. their bullets. They have no ideas- they have dogma.
Again, I don’t think it’s worth rationing speech. I think it can and should be done otherwise. But if good discussion and good conclusions are to be drawn- I think the opposing argument (and one I disagree with) should be framed more logically- as this rationing in wartime concept- as opposed to “we shouldn’t hurt feelings” and “it’s the blasphemers fault!”
Ah. Well, I don’t seem to be the only one who didn’t realize you were intending a devil’s advocate argument, so I feel less bad about misunderstanding your position there. 😉
However, I stand by considering it a war of ideas – this is a conflict over what people are allowed to say and think. That some try to win that conflict via bullets instead of arguments doesn’t change what the conflict is about.
I think you’re wrong almost across the board.
1. Yes, it does reduce capability. Muslims comprise 0.6% of the US population. The fervent blasphemy-punishers could recruit every single Muslim in the country, and they still couldn’t keep up with the number of drawings. They couldn’t keep up with 10% of the population doing it. They couldn’t even keep up with 1% of the population doing it.
Realistically, the percent of US Muslims who would actually commit a violent crime to punish blasphemy is probably itself on the order of hundredths of a percent, so we’re really talking about them not even being able to keep up with drawings by 0.01% of the US population.
2. Social acceptance and commonality may cause the next generation to lose the will to punish. We see this a lot in the US, where 2nd gen and 3rd gen immigrants do not necessarily share the values of the 1st gen immigrants; they more share the values of the young people around them. So if the young people around them are tolerant of blasphemous speech, so will be 2nd gen and 3rd gen Muslim immigrants. I’m not saying they will see it as morally okay, but rather they may start viewing it like adultery: a moral wrong done by others which does not demand their individual attention or action.
Sorry, but I’m not interested in giving the censor’s pen to anybody, most especially brutish thugs.
b&
🍌
Karen Armstrong is an author I feel some sort of obligation to read so I can see her for myself (part of me always thinks: “Surely what she’s actually arguing can’t be as stupid as it sounds”).
But I’m procrastinating.
Wise choice, her stuff is extraordinarily lengthy and thoroughly pointless.
Can’t remember where I first heard this, and to what author it was about, or even if it was said about a specific author. But it has always stuck with me because I have encountered plenty of writing in my life that really does feel just like this . . .
. . . reading Karen Armstrong “is like pushing your head through mush.”
How about swimming in oatmeal. 🙂
Egggsssactly!
The fact that there was no original two, no real Adam and Eve really is the nail in the coffin for the Church. There are more than enough historical statements affirming their literal existence to demonstrate that they’ve never been viewed as metaphorical until very recently. Even then, it isn’t the Church, rather it us the sophisticated theologians, contorting themselves trying to square this circle.
If the Church fully accepts evolution, it is admitting that the whole basis of their existence has been in error for 2000 years. That’s hardly something that can be brushed aside for the institution that claims it has a hot line to the divine. I predict their approach will remain much as it is now, “accept” evolution and keep quiet about the fact that it discounts Adam and Eve since many faithful never think to question it in the first place. Keep the masses ignorant and the women pregnant, it’s their only shot.
I am slowly catching up. But I swear, some of the comments on Tayler … One oblivious bigot accused Tayler for bigotry – on the basis of presuppositions about Hebdo, no less. I actually SCREAMED for the first time in years.
I flashed on Edvard Munch. 😎