Jesus ‘n’ Mo ‘n’ the “no true Muslim” fallacy

September 17, 2014 • 6:45 am

Today’s Jesus and Mo is particularly relevant in view of our discussions (and the apologists’ denials) about whether ISIS represents “true” Islam.  That denial is bunk, of course: one can make a case that ISIS is one of the truer forms of Islam. Regardless, it’s certainly representing the principles of one form of Islam. The J&M cartoonist’s note says this: “Jesus is reading this article.”

The article is by James Brandon at the site Left Foot Forward, and is called “By denouncing ISIS as ‘not Muslims,” moderate Muslims are making things worse.” A quote from Brandon’s piece:

Just as non-Muslims who try to tackle Islamism through defining moderate interpretations of Islam as the sole ‘true Islam’ actually undermine liberal Muslim attempts to develop a pluralist understanding of religion, so moderate Muslims’ use of takfir – the process of denouncing rival Muslims as apostates or non-Muslims – reinforces the ideological underpinnings of the very movements they are seeking to tackle.

Takfirism is the root and enabler of all modern jihadism; takfirist doctrine enables any ‘true’ Muslim to label those with a rival interpretation of Islam as no longer Muslim.

This, combined with traditional Islamic jurisprudence that mandates death for apostates, is taken by jihadists as an open license to denounce and then kill their enemies.

When moderate Muslim groups use takfirism to tackle extremism, this dangerous and intrinsically intolerant doctrine is therefore not challenged but is instead reaffirmed. Illustrating this, one British fighter in Syria, explaining why he regarded the MCB as his enemies, said: ‘The Muslim Council of Britain, they are apostates, they are not Muslims”, ironically the same argument that the MCB itself makes against ISIS.

A better approach is to accept that Islamist extremists, however distasteful their view of Islam, remain Muslims, however much other Muslims, and non-Muslims, might dislike their version of Islam.

AGREED!  But of course neither the U.S. nor moderate Muslims will go that route, for it seems to tar all religion. My one quibble with Brandon is that he thinks the way to eliminate extremist Islam is to “de-fang” the poisonous verses in the Qur’an:

Take, for example, militants’ fondness for beheading captives; jihadists typically justify this practice through referencing the Quranic verse 47:4 ‘when you meet those who disbelieve, strike at their necks’ (and variants of this, according to different translations), often supported by many centuries of warlike, and literally medieval, interpretations.

Rather than seeking to effectively re-contextualise and de-fang this verse for the modern era, a blunt rejection of those who cite it as non-Muslims removes all scope for critically engaging – and dismantling – their arguments. This ostrich approach that extremists’ actions ‘have nothing to do with Islam’ not only fails to recognise how deep-rooted some hardline jihadist interpretations are, but it also effectively cedes such key theological battlefields to the extremists.

By “re-contextualise and de-fang this verse for the modern era,” Brandon means to say either that it no longer applies (which is anathema for most Muslims, who see the Qur’an as the literal and eternal word of God), or that the verse, and others like them, were meant as metaphor. The latter won’t wash either, for the verse in question sure doesn’t look metaphorical! And, in truth, there are few Muslims who read the words of the Qur’an as being a metaphor for something else.

No, the way to de-fang Islam is the way to de-fang all religions: show that they are man-made, that there is no evidence for their deity or their God-given moral strictures, and then try to inculcate believers with Enlightenment values. That will take a long time—decades for Islam—but it’s the only way to rid religion of its malevolence.

But I fulminate; on to the cartoon:

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BTW, Sean Hannity asked me to be on his Fox News show this week to discuss my contention that ISIS was indeed Muslim, but of course he’d also want to go after me for my remarks about Catholicism. I declined politely, saying that I prefer civil discussion to having my viscera gnawed by the host. In other words, I’d prefer to be interviewed rather than mocked, interrupted, or yelled at.

 

Readers’ wildlife photos

September 17, 2014 • 5:37 am

We got your birds and your arthropods today. First, reader Mark Sturtevant has a sort of quiz:

It turns out that for both of these photos your readers might enjoy answering the question: What is going on?

  1. This harvestman (possibly Leuronychus pacificus) has something stuck on its front leg. What is it? [Click to enlarge.]

1Harvestman

  1. I crawled through tall thistles to take this picture of a female banded argiope (Argiope trifasciata) because I saw she had a smaller companion. I was astonished when I uploaded the picture to my computer to see a scene that was rich with depravity. What is going on? Look carefully:

2Depravity

Here’s a ruby-throated hummingbird (Archilochus colubris) from reader Diana MacPherson:

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From reader Stephen Barnard in Idaho:

Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) and a Rainbow Trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) tailing while feeding on mayfly nymphs.

Red tailed hawk

RT9A4763

And a song sparrow (Melospiza  melodia):

RT9A4773

 

My Old School & Bad Sneakers

September 17, 2014 • 4:36 am

The original Steely Dan, with Donald Fagan, Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, and Walter Becker, was moderately famous, but I contend it’s one of the best rock groups of all time: sui generis, with a unique mixture of jazz, rock, and other motifs. Although they’re in sad decline (Fagan’s lost that plaintive voice), I still revisit their music frequently.

This song (missing Skunk Baxter in this live version), is one of only a handful of rock songs that mention a college: and it’s mine! (Can you name some others?)

Wikipedia, however, is curmudgeonly (my emphasis):

In its March 24, 2006 edition, Entertainment Weekly details a return trip to Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York by Donald Fagen, in which he describes a raid by sheriff’s deputies in May 1969. Fagen, his girlfriend Dorothy White, Steely Dan bandmate Walter Becker, and some 50 other students were arrested. Charges were dropped, but the harassment was the origin of the grudge alluded to in “My Old School”. Fagen was reportedly so upset with the school being complicit with the arrests that he refused to attend graduation. The same article speculates that a Bard professor’s wife,Rikki Ducornet, was the inspiration for “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number”.

Because of the reference to The College of William & Mary in the lyrics, “My Old School” has long been a favorite of W&M students and alumni, although the song is actually about Bard College.

Not completely! At any rate, the Dan were never as good live as in the studio, and the guitar solos here, by John Herington, are competent but not as good as Baxter’s on the original version issued in 1973 on the album “Can’t buy a thrill.”

It was always great fun trying to figure out what the lyrics of Steely Dan songs meant (the band is named after a dildo). I’ve spent decades trying to figure out the lyrics of my favorite song of theirs: “Bad Sneakers” (below); and I’m not going to Google further (Wikipedia doesn’t give a clue). What, for instance, is “that fearsome excavation on Magnolia Boulevard”?

NPR attacks “Spockian” atheists

September 16, 2014 • 11:11 am

Krista Tippett, the Martha Stewart of Spirituality, must be influencing her National Public Radio (NPR) colleagues, because they seem abnormally soft on religion. Rarely on that station do I hear anything critical of religion, or anything about atheism at all. So now we have someone who seems to be an atheist, Alva Noë (a professor of philosophy at Berkeley), who has written a completely clueless piece at the NPR blog Cosmos & Culture called “Why atheists need Captain Kirk.”

Noë’s thesis is based on the idea that Spock was robotic, emotionless, and, well, just not well rounded; and that many atheists and scientists—he conflates the two, though about 30% of scientists are religious—are just like the Big-Eared One.  We need to be more like Captain Kirk, who, I guess, was a warm, emotional human being. However, Ben Goren, who called my attention to this execrable piece, claims that “Spock himself was the most emotional character in the original Star Trek.” I wouldn’t know, as I am one of the few Americans who never saw a single episode of the series (science fiction isn’t my thing). But I do know that Nöe’s thesis stinks like rotten fish.

Here’s what Noë says. First, he argues that scientists are human, with human traits. But, it seems, we have only the bad human traits because we do stuff like make atomic bombs:

Scientists, and cultural defenders of science, like to think of themselves as free of prejudice and superstition, as moved by reason alone and a clear-eyed commitment to fact and the scientific method. They reject religion as an irrational and ungrounded burden of tradition. They see religion the way Europeans (and some Americans) see Americans. As somehow backward.

To which one might reply: Science is all those things. Between holocausts!

Scientists supported Hitler the same as anyone else. Their scientists and engineers made missiles and gas chambers. Ours made atomic bombs.

So we have prejudice and superstitions, like everyone else. But we seem to be lacking the other stuff—the good stuff that makes us human as well. We’re Spockian! (Worse: we’re not emotionless, but our only emotions are evil!):

I’m pro-science, but I’m against what I’ll call “Spock-ism,” after the character from the TV show Star Trek. I reject the idea that science is logical, purely rational, that it is detached and value-free, and that it is, for all these reasons, morally superior.

Spock-ism gives us a false picture of science. It gives us a false picture of humankind’s situation. We are not disinterested knowers. The natural world is not a puzzle. [JAC: It isn’t???? Why are there scientists, then?]

Part of what Spock-ism gets wrong is that science isn’t one thing. There’s no Science Party or Scientific Worldview. Nor is there one scientific method, advertising to the contrary notwithstanding.

This is scientism (i.e., prejudice against scientists) on stilts.  In truth, science itself is logical and rational and is the only way to find truth. Scientists aren’t purely rational or logical. Nevertheless, we’re good enough to find truth, for we’re constantly policing each other and can’t make stupid or false claims lest other catch us out.

And yes, there is no “scientific method” per se, but there are methods that are scientific, including the use of reason, the making of hypotheses, the appeal to evidence, and replication. Those methods have enabled us to find zillions of truths about our cosmos, whereas religion, with its “revelatory method,” hasn’t come up with a single verifiable fact about the Universe, much less the Divine.

All Noë is doing here is trying to diss science.  He mentions atomic bombs, but what about antibiotics, GPS technology, the Green Revolution, golden rice, the age of the Earth and Universe, and evolution—the many things found out by whatever “nonscientific method” we use? Why does he leave those out, but mention gas chambers and atomic bombs? Could he have some animus against science? I think so.

There’s more nonsense:

Spockians like to pretend that science has proved that there is no God, or that fundamental reality consists only of matter. But both of these claims are untrue. The first is untrue because science doesn’t concern itself with God one way or they other. As for the second: Science has no more proved that only matter is real than it has proved that there is no such thing as love, humor, sunsets or knuckleballs.

This is remarkably obtuse for a philosophy professor. No we can’t prove there’s no God, because science can’t prove anything absolutely. But we haven’t seen any signs of a god, and shouldn’t we have by now–especially if God wants us to know Him! (Ask Francis Collins or the Templeton Foundation, by the way, if science doesn’t concern itself with God: Collins thinks the “Moral Law” is evidence for God, while Templeton directs its $70 million/year budget towards finding evidence in science for the divine.) Science has been the greatest God-killer in history, and it’s because science doesn’t need God to find out things. In that sense we do have something to say about God, just like we have something to say about the Loch Ness Monster.

And about “only matter being real,” well, it depends on what you mean by “reality.” My thoughts are real to me, and though they’re the product of matter, they aren’t material in themselves.  Mathematics isn’t made of matter, but it’s real in some sense.  What we adhere to is not that matter is the only reality, but that everything in the cosmos obeys the laws of nature. That’s called “naturalism.”

The meat of Noë’s piece, however, is the claim that atheists and scientists (again conflated) are not fully human. Remember that he faulted us earlier for being human, what with the building of gas chambers and all:

Spockians give science a bad name. If you think of science as being in the business of figuring out how atoms spinning noiselessly in the void give rise to the illusion that there are such things as love, humor, sunsets and knuckleballs, then it isn’t surprising that people might come to think that the inner life of a scientist would be barren.

I suspect this is what is at stake when people find it hard to believe that atheists have active spiritual lives — or that they might experience wonder or awe. It isn’t the non-belief in God that makes atheism seem puzzling. It’s the active adherence to the Spockian worldview. For the Spockian worldview is the denial of meaning and value.

In this context, it is no answer to critics of atheism to say that, as a matter of fact, atheists feel awe in the face of nature, that you don’t need God for wonder.

For in a Spockian universe there is no such thing as nature, there is just material process, particles and fields, in the void. Nor, for the Spockian, is there any such thing as wonder, not really; for what is an emotion, but a conjury of particles in the nervous system?

Well if people think that atheists or scientists don’t experience wonder or awe, or even a form of nonreligious spirituality for many, then they don’t know atheists or scientists. Has Noë read Dawkins’s The Magic of Reality? We are just like everyone else, except that we have a different job (a great one!) and we’re a lot less religious than most. I’ve been around scientists all my life, and I don’t recognize Noë’s stereotype in my colleagues. We like to read, go to museums and movies, and eat and drink good stuff. Most scientists have hobbies. Scientists, in fact, know a lot more about the arts and humanities than humanities and arts people know about science.  Really, what kind of clueless person could characterize us like this? It’s a stereotype based on either ignorance or prejudice, and it’s not true.

Noë’s other accusation, which should by now have gone the way of the Edsel, is that atheists and scientists have no way to derive value, meaning or morality in their lives. The fact that these traits are, in fact, abundantly present in largely atheistic countries like Sweden and Denmark should have told Noë that he’s barking up the wrong tree. Granted, he says that religious people don’t have great ways for getting meaning and value, but at least they have ways. (Note, too, that he says “we” when referring to nonbelievers, leading me to think that he’s an atheist):

The religionist, it should be noted, is not much better off. God doesn’t explain meaning or value any better than the laws of physics. But in one respect, the religionist may have an advantage: Atheists, in so far as they are followers of Spock, have an explanatory burden that religionists don’t carry — that of explaining how you get meaning and value out of particles, or alternatively, that of explaining why meaning and value are an illusion.

This guy is a professor of philosophy, and yet he claims that there is no good secular way to find meaning and value in one’s life? Has he not read the ancient Greeks, or his fellow philosophers through Hume, Kant, Spinoza and up to Singer and Grayling? Does he ever get out at all, even in his own profession? And yet he has the temerity to lecture us, his fellow atheists, to take off our pointy ears and become more like Captain Kirk—to become more like religious people:

The big challenge for atheism is not God; it is that of providing an alternative to Spock-ism. We need an account of our place in the world that leaves room for value.

What we need, then, is a Kirkian understanding of science and its place in our lives. The world, for Captain Kirk and his ontological followers, is a field of play, and science is a form of action.

If i were talking to friends, at this point I would hurl a stream of invective, including some not-so-nice epithets about Professor Noë. But this is a family-friendly site, so I’ll just close by saying that the good Professor is bigoted against atheists and scientists, even if he’s one of us.  The prejudice that we’re cold and inhuman, lacking meaning and value, is a stereotype that isn’t supported by the facts.  The biggest mystery is why anybody would let Noë write this kind of stuff on a website sponsored by a supposedly thoughtful organization. And if he got paid one cent for writing this, that’s way too much.

 

 

David Gelernter schools the free-speech cowards at Yale

September 16, 2014 • 7:59 am

From the National Review online—why must I always cite conservative sites in defense of free speech?—we have an angry but also humorous letter from Professor David Gelernter at Yale, addressed to the cowards who signed the letter protesting the appearance and “hate speech” of Ayaan Hirsi Ali. You’ve probably heard of Gelernter: he’s a polymath who does computer science, art, and writing, and was permanently injured by one of the letters sent by the “Unabomber,” Ted Kaczynski.

To the Yale Muslim Students Association and its many sister organizations that have co-signed a letter protesting Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s lecture on Monday:

I love your new free-speech concept! Obviously this woman should have been banned from campus and had her face stomped in; why couldn’t they have just quietly murdered her in Holland along with her fellow discomfort-creators? These people are worse than tweed underwear! They practically live to make undergraduates uncomfortable. But let’s deal with the harsh realities. Your inspired suggestion, having Official Correctors speak right after Ali to remind students of the authorized view of Muslim society, is the most exciting new development in Free Speech since the Inquisition — everyone will be talking about it! You have written, with great restraint, about “how uncomfortable it will be” for your friends if this woman is allowed to speak. Uncomfortable nothing. The genital mutilation of young girls is downright revolting! Who ever authorized this topic in a speech to innocent Yale undergraduates? Next thing you know, people will be saying that some orthodox Muslim societies are the most cruel and benighted on earth and that Western societies are better than they are (better!) merely because they don’t sexually mutilate young girls! Or force them into polygamous marriages, countenance honor killings, treat women as the property of their male relations, and all that. Can’t they give it a rest? You’d think someone was genitally mutilating them.

We all know that Free Speech doesn’t mean that just anyone can stand up and start spouting. Would you let your dog talk for an hour to a Yale student audience? What’s next, inviting Dick Cheney? Careful study of contemporary documents makes it perfectly clear that when the Bill of Rights mentions Free Speech, it is alluding to Freedom of Speech for the Muslim Students Association at Yale. We all know that true free speech means freedom to shut up, especially if you disagree with your betters. And true free thought means freedom to stop thinking as soon as the official truth is announced by the proper Authorities — and freedom to wait patiently until then.

Now take this Ayaan Hirsi Ali. First of all, she’s a black woman, and they’re not quite ready for prime time, know what I mean? And she’s against the systematic abuse of women in Muslim societies. What about people who are for the systematic abuse of women in Muslim societies? Furthermore, she lacks “representative scholarly qualifications.” Want the whole campus flooded with quacks expressing their so-called opinions based on “experience” and “knowledge” instead of academic authority? And she’s Dutch. More or less. Enough said.

Thank you for protecting us from having to listen to uncensored ideas and make up our own minds, Yale Muslim Students Association. Or at least trying. We will treasure your letter and keep it under our pillows forever.

This is a great letter, far more effective than had Gelernter simply penned an angry rebuke (something that I might have done). I love the bits about the Official Correctors and the proper Authorities.

But where are the liberals who are supposed to be protecting free speech: my comrades who stood with me in college to protest the war in Vietnam and the inequities of segregation?  It would appear that many of them, including the members of the Yale Women’s Center (who really should know better), the Black Students Alliance (ditto), and, most shamefully, the Yale Humanists, Atheists, and Agnostics, seem to have made cause with those who would prefer censorship to offense, sexism to equality, and barbarism to humanism.