Though it’s Ceiling Cat’s Day of Rest, the Imagine No Religion meetings proceed, with talks today by Harriet Hall, me, Lawrence Krauss, and Carolyn Porco, and a speakers’ dinner tonight. There were some interesting talks yesterday, with three of them about how to address the growing problem of Islamic radicalism—two by ex-Muslims. All of the talks gave different suggestions, but Maryam Namazie’s was especially controversial for me, since she claimed that Islamic radicalism was not at all a problem of religion, but of “politics and control”—the desire of one group to control others, both Muslims of different sects and women. Yet she also asserted that bringing secularism to the Middle East would help the problem (why, if it’s not religious?), and at the end of her talk she quoted from Lennon’s “Imagine no religion” verse. But if religion isn’t at least a major part of the problem, why would its absence help anything? Her implication was that if there were no religion, things would still be as bad in the Middle East as they are now, for the desire to control others would still cause harm. I disagree strongly, for I see that as a Glenn Greenwald/Karen Armstrong approach based on avoidance of palpable motivations. I have great respect for Namazie’s work, but her words seem to contradict both her actions and even other words in her own talk.
Peter Boghossian had some interesting suggestions about how to intervene on both the macro and micro level to “de-brand” ISIS, including forming a PAC to develop an advertising campaign to take the “cool” out of ISIS, just as they took the “cool” out of cigarette smoking in the 80s. He suggested that we rebrand ISIS as “goofy” rather than cool, though I don’t know how one would do that. Both he and Faisal Saeed al Muttar, however, agreed that religion, not “power,” was the biggest problem behind Islamic radicalism, and that the key to solving that problem lies in first recognizing its religious nature.
Chris DiCarlo related the heartbreaking tale about how he had lost jobs and tenure by being an atheist—in Canada!—and proposed that we devise some kind of “fairness machine” that could make decisions without human bias. That, of course, presupposes some objective view of ethics, à la Sam Harris, and I’m dubious that such a machine could work without first being programmed by subjective human values. But it would at least have decided to give DiCarlo tenure, which he fully deserves as an articulate philosopher and excellent teacher who uses the Socratic method.
Finally, Robert Price, an atheist who works at a theological seminary, gave a nice talk about the question of the historicity of Jesus, which he doubts but can’t adduce convincing disproof, though he agrees that question has nothing to do with either the existence of God or the tenets of Christianity. His talk was full of erudite references, but was engrossing, as he showed convincingly that Christianity was just a myth resembling many that had gone before it. He also mentioned—and this is something I hadn’t thought about—that we have no proof that the Jesus person or myth didn’t begin forming long before the “zero A.D.” time we commonly think of.
Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss had an hourlong conversation at the end of the evening, covering diverse topics including the security blanket of religion, the nature of alien life (what might it be like? carbon based? would it have eyes, and DNA?), the bizarre nature of quantum mechanics, and so on. I have pictures, but no time to share them today, I suspect. Tomorrow I have the day off before I fly to Vancouver, and a kind reader, a research biologist at the facility, has promised to give me a “behind the scenes” tour of the Vancouver Aquarium in Stanley Park, which I certainly intend to do. Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is jarred by religion:
A: What are you thinking about?
Hili: Either my ears are ringing or it’s the church bells.
In Polish:
Ja: Nad czym myślisz?
Hili: Albo mi w uszach dzwoni, albo to dzwony kościoła.
