THE AFFIRMATIONS OF HUMANISM: A STATEMENT OF PRINCIPLES*

We are committed to the application of reason and science to the understanding of the universe and to the solving of human problems. We deplore efforts to denigrate human intelligence, to seek to explain the world in supernatural terms, and to look outside nature for salvation. We believe that scientific discovery and technology can contribute to the betterment of human life. We believe in an open and pluralistic society and that democracy is the best guarantee of protecting human rights from authoritarian elites and repressive majorities. We are committed to the principle of the separation of church and state. We cultivate the arts of negotiation and compromise as a means of resolving differences and achieving mutual understanding. We are concerned with securing justice and fairness in society and with eliminating discrimination and intolerance. We believe in supporting the disadvantaged and the handicapped so that they will be able to help themselves. We attempt to transcend divisive parochial loyalties based on race, religion, gender, nationality, creed, class, sexual orientation, or ethnicity, and strive to work together for the common good of humanity. We want to protect and enhance the earth, to preserve it for future generations, and to avoid inflicting needless suffering on other species. We believe in enjoying life here and now and in developing our creative talents to their fullest. We believe in the cultivation of moral excellence. We respect the right to privacy. Mature adults should be allowed to fulfill their aspirations, to express their sexual preferences, to exercise reproductive freedom, to have access to comprehensive and informed health-care, and to die with dignity. We believe in the common moral decencies: altruism, integrity, honesty, truthfulness, responsibility. Humanist ethics is amenable to critical, rational guidance. There are normative standards that we discover together. Moral principles are tested by their consequences. We are deeply concerned with the moral education of our children. We want to nourish reason and compassion. We are engaged by the arts no less than by the sciences. We are citizens of the universe and are excited by discoveries still to be made in the cosmos. We are skeptical of untested claims to knowledge, and we are open to novel ideas and seek new departures in our thinking. We affirm humanism as a realistic alternative to theologies of despair and ideologies of violence and as a source of rich personal­ significance and genuine satisfaction in the service to others. We believe in optimism rather than pessimism, hope rather than despair, learning in the place of dogma, truth instead of ignorance, joy rather than guilt or sin, tolerance in the place of fear, love instead of hatred, compassion over selfishness, beauty instead of ugliness, and reason rather than blind faith or irrationality. We believe in the fullest realization of the best and noblest that we are capable of as human beings. *by Paul Kurtz

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free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 2 Editorial Features 5 Affirming Life 29 Reason Embattled Paul Kurtz Susan Jacoby 35 Dewey’s Defense of Democracy Op-Ed October/November 2004 Vol. 24, No. 6 Robert B. Talisse ISSN 0272-0701 11 Who Owns the 38 Thy Will Be Done, on Argument from Earth as It Is in Texas Improbability? Joe Bageant Richard Dawkins Response 13 No President Is Above the 40 Science Is Not Constitution Philosophy Nat Hentoff Patrick Frank and 15 Which Side Thomas H. Ray for Seculars? Response Christopher Hitchens 43 Of Course, Science Is 16 Prohibition Not Philosophy Creeps Back Massimo Pigliucci Wendy Kaminer 18 Are Some People Natural Humanists? Vern L. Bullough 19 Taking Humanism Departments beyond Speciesism 9 Letters Peter Singer 27 Frontlines/ 21 What’s Wrong With Sidelines Modernity? Andrea Szalanski Tibor R. Machan 22 Reason and 45 Church-State Update Superstition in Tom Flynn Uganda Bill Cooke 45 World Report 24 Humanism in Africa Bill Cooke Marches Forward 46 Great Minds Norm R. Allen Jr. The Humanism of 25 Science, Civility, and L. Frank Baum Value Judgments Irving Louis Horowitz Katharine M. Rogers

Reviews 48 Applied Ethics Ethics for a Meaningful Life 54 Mother Teresa: 56 Who’s Looking Out Richard Neavel The Final Verdict for You? By Aroup Chatterjee By Bill O’Reilly 49 God on Trial Bill Cooke Hector Avalos The Strange Universe of the Homosexual Christian 55 Gandhi: Behind the Mask 57 Early Mormon David Rand of Divinity Documents By G.B. Singh Edited by Dan Vogel 52 Humanist Living Innaiah Narisetti Paul Kurtz Creeping Humanism Pat Inniss FI Editorial Staff Editor in Chief FREE INQUIRY (ISSN 0272-0701) is published bimonthly by the Editorial Board Paul Kurtz Council for Secular Humanism, a nonprofit educational corporation, Editor P.O. Box 664, Amherst, NY 14226-0664. Phone (716) 636-7571. Robert Alley Thomas W. Flynn Fax (716) 636-1733. Copyright ©2004 by the Council for Secular Professor of Humanities Emeritus, Managing Editor Deputy Editor Humanism. All rights reserved. No part of this periodical may be University of Richmond, Virginia Andrea Szalanski Norm R. Allen Jr. reproduced without permission of the publisher. Periodicals postage Hector Avalos Columnists paid at Buffalo, N.Y., and at additional mailing offices. National Associate Professor of Vern Bullough, Richard Dawkins, distribution by International Periodicals Distributors, Solana Beach, Religious Studies, Shadia B. Drury, Ronnie Dugger, Nat California. FREE INQUIRY is indexed in Philosophers’ Index. Printed Hentoff, Iowa State University in the United States. Postmaster: Send address changes to FREE Christopher Hitchens, Wendy Kaminer, Joe E. Barnhart Tibor R. Machan, Massimo Pigliucci, INQUIRY, P.O. Box 664, Amherst, NY 14226-0664. Opinions Peter Singer expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of the editors or Professor of Philosophy, Senior Editors publisher. No one speaks on behalf of the Council for Secular North Texas State University Vern L. Bullough, Bill Cooke, Humanism unless expressly stated. H. James Birx Richard Dawkins, Martin Gardner, Professor of Anthropology, James A. Haught, Jim Herrick, Gerald A. Larue, Canisius College Taslima Nasrin TO SUBSCRIBE OR RENEW Associate Editor • CALL TOLL FREE 800-458-1366 (have credit card handy). George Bishop Wendy McElroy Professor of Political Science, • Fax credit-card order to 716-636-1733. Contributing Editors University of Cincinnati Jo Ann Boydston, Paul Edwards, • Internet: www.secularhumanism.org Albert Ellis, Roy P. Fairfield, Rob Boston Charles Faulkner, Antony Flew, • Mail: FREE INQUIRY, P.O. Box 664, Amherst, NY 14226- Author, Americans United for Levi Fragell, Adolf Grünbaum, 0664. Separation of Church and State Marvin Kohl, Thelma Lavine, Lee Nisbet, J. J. C. Smart, • Subscription rates: $35.00 for one year, $58.00 for two years, Barbara Forrest Svetozar Stojanovi´c, $84.00 for three years. Foreign orders add $10 per year for surface Associate Professor of Philosophy, Thomas Szasz mail. Foreign orders send U.S. funds drawn on a U.S. bank; Visa, Southeastern Louisiana Univ. Editorial Associate MasterCard, or American Express are preferred. Austin Dacey Stewart Guthrie Editorial Assistant • Single issues: $5.95 each. Shipping is by surface mail in U.S. Professor of Anthropology, David Park Musella (included). Canadian and foreign orders include $1.56 for 1–3 Fordham University Art Director issues and $3.00 for 4–6 issues. By air mail, $3.00 for 1–3 issues Lisa A. Hutter and $7.20 for 4–6 issues. William Harwood Production Author, Mythology’s Last Gods Christopher Fix, Paul E. Loynes Sr. CHANGE OF ADDRESS • Mail changes to FREE INQUIRY, ATTN: Change of Address, Stuart Jordan Cartoonist Webmaster Senior Staff Scientist, Don Addis Terese Rozelle P.O. Box 664, Amherst, NY 14226-0664. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Contributing Illustrator • Call Customer Service: 716-636-7571. Brad Marshall Alfred Kisubi Cover Illustration • E-mail: [email protected] Philosopher, Poet, Todd Julie, Fovea BACK ISSUES University of Wisconsin • Back issues through Vol. 23, No. 3 are $6.95 each. Back issues Lena Ksarjian Vol. 23, No. 4 and later are $5.95 each. 20% discount on Committee on the History of Culture, Council for Secular Humanism orders of 10 or more. Call 800-458-1366 to order or to ask for University of Chicago Chair a complete listing of back issues. Paul Kurtz Ronald A. Lindsay REPRINTS/PERMISSIONS Lawyer, Philosopher Board of Directors • To order reprints of articles or to request permission to use any Vern Bullough, Jan Loeb Eisler, (Chair) part of FREE INQUIRY, write to FREE INQUIRY, ATTN: Timothy J. Madigan Jonathan Kurtz, Joseph Levee, St. John Fisher College Kenneth Marsalek, Jean Millholland, Permis­sions Editor, P.O. Box 664, Amherst, NY 14226-0664. Edward Tabash WHERE TO BUY FREE INQUIRY Michael Martin Executive Director Professor of Philosophy, • FREE INQUIRY is available from selected book and magazine David Koepsell Boston University sellers nationwide. Director, Educational Programs (CFI)

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free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 4 Affirming Life

EDITORIAL PAUL KURTZ

Eupraxsophy Revisited There is no word in the English language that ade- quately conveys the meaning of secular humanism. Secular humanism is not a religion; it represents a philosophical, scientific, and ethical outlook. I have accordingly introduced a new term, eupraxsophy, in order to distinguish humanistic convictions and practices from religious systems of faith and belief. This term can be used in many languages. It is derived from Greek roots: eu-, praxis, and sophia. Eu- is a prefix that means “good,” “well,” or “advantageous.”­ It is found in the Greek word eudaimonia, which means “well-being” or “happi- ness,” and it is also used in English terms such as eulogy and euphoria. Praxis (or prassein) refers to “action, doing, or practice.” Eupraxia means “right action” or “good conduct.” Sophia means “wisdom.” This word appears in philosophy, combining philos (“love”) and sophia (“wis­dom”) to mean “love of wisdom.” Eupraxsophy is designed for the public arena where ideas contend. Unlike pure philosophy, it focuses not simply on the love of wisdom, though this is surely implied by it, but the practice of wisdom. Moral philosophers should be interested in developing the capacity for critical ethical judgments. That is an eminent goal. But eu­praxsophy goes further than that, for it focuses on creating a coherent ethical life stance. Moreover, it presents hypotheses and theories about nature and the cosmos

“What is vital in humanist eupraxsophy is that humanists are not overwhelmed by the tragic character of the human condition; they are willing to face death, sorrow, adversity, and suffering with cour- age and equanimity.”

that at any particular point in history were based on the best scientific knowledge of the day. Humanist eupraxsophy defends a set of criteria evaluating the testing of truth claims. It may espouse at any one time in history a particular set of political ideals. Eupraxsophy combines both a ­Weltanschauung (a worldview or personal philosophy of life) and a philosophy of living. But it takes us one step further by means of commitment; based upon cognition, it is fused with passion. It entails the application of wisdom to the conduct of life. Eupraxsophers make choices—the most reasonable ones in the light of the best available evidence—and this enables them to act. Theologians, politicians, generals,

Paul Kurtz is editor in chief of Free Inquiry, professor emeritus of philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo, and chair of the Center for Inquiry. This article is adapted from Kurtz’s new book, Affirmations: Creative and Joyful Exuberance­ (Prometheus Books, 2004).

5 http://www.secularhumanism.org Oct./Nov. 2004 engineers, businessmen, lawyers, doc- whelmed by the tragic character of the es the fullness and richness of living. tors, artists, poets, and plain men and human condition; they are willing to This occurs when a person is able women have beliefs upon which they face death, sorrow, adversity, and suf- to realize his or her wants and talents, act. Why deny this right to the informed fering with courage and equanimity. dreams and aspirations, and when a eupraxsopher-scientist-philosopher? It They have confidence in the ability of person is able to share the bounti- is our conviction, however, that one’s human beings to overcome alienation, ful goods of life with others—children beliefs­ should be based upon reason, solve the problems of living, and develop and parents, brothers and sisters, rela- critical intelligence, and wisdom. This the capacity to share the material goods tives and friends, colleagues and neigh- is what the suffix -sophy refers to. Wis­ of life with others and empathize with bors—within the various communities dom in the broad sense includes not only them. The theist often has a degraded of hu­mankind. This is most eloquently philosophical and practical judgments, view of human beings who, beset with a­chieved when there is moral growth but also scientific understanding. original sin, are incapable of solving and development: a person is able to Intrinsic to this definition is a sci- life’s problems by themselves and need appreciate the needs of others; there is entific component, for wisdom in­cludes to look outside of the human realm for a genuine willingness to relate to them, the most reliable knowledge drawn from divine succor. The humanist accepts the to love and be loved, to share and even scientific research and scholarship in fact that the human species has imper- to make sacrifices for their benefit. the various fields of inquiry. Theoretical fections and limitations, and that some Joyful immediacies are experienced research is morally­ neutral. The scien- things encountered in existence may be when there is a flowering of life. There tist is interested in developing causal beyond redress or repair. Even so, he or are three e-words that describe this state: hypotheses and theories that can be ver- she is convinced that the best posture excellence, eudaimonia, and exuberance. ified by the evidence. Scientists describe is not to retreat before the unknown, And there are five c-words that define or ex­plain how the subject under study but to exert intelligence and fortitude to it: character, cognition, courage, cre- behaves­ without evaluating it normative- deal with life’s problems. It is only by a ativity, and caring. ly. resolute appraisal of the human condi- This does not deny or ignore the pain Humanist eupraxsophy, on the other tion, based on reason and science, that and despair, defeat and failure, evil and hand, attempts to draw the philosophical the humanist’s life stance seems most tragedy that may befall a person, the implications­ of the sciences to the lives appropriate. The secular humanist is unexpected contingencies of fate and of men and women. It seeks to develop a unwilling to bow before either the forces fortune that may be encountered: intrac- cosmic perspective that is based on the of nature or would-be human masters. table illness, premature death, betrayal, most reliable findings discovered on the Rather, he or she expresses the highest cowardice, dishonesty, or ingrat­ i­ tude.­ frontiers of science. It recognizes that heroic virtues of the Promethean spirit: The mature person has developed there are gaps in our current knowledge audacity, nobility, and developed moral a reflective attitude that enables him that still need to be investigated. It is sensibilities about the needs of others. or her to place these misadventures keenly aware of human fallibility about and setbacks, painful as they may be, what we do and do not know, yet it boldly Joyful Exuberance in a broader context. He or she can applies practical, scientific wisdom to life. Humanists find exuberance to be intrin- compensate for the shortcomings of life Accordingly, the primary task of sically worthwhile for its own sake. This by pointing to the times that he or she euprax­ sophy­ is to understand nature and is usually identified with happiness. has overcome adversity; and he or she life and to draw concrete normative pre- The Greeks called it eudaimonia, or still finds life worth living because of scriptions from this knowledge. Euprax­ well-being; this meant the actualization poetry and profundity, laughter and sophy involves a double focus: a cosmic of a person’s nature, with pleasure as a delight, romance and love, discovery perspective and a set of normative prin- by-product, not for the solitary moment, and ingenuity, enlightenment and suc- ciples and values by which we may live. but in a complete life. This entails some cess, and the times that he persevered Humanists do not look upward to moderation of a person’s desires. But and prevailed. If a person’s career and a heaven for a promise of divine deliv- I add that, in joyful exuberance, there life is like a work of art, then we need to erance. They have their feet planted is high excitement, the intensity of liv- appreciate its full collage, its contrasts squarely in nature, yet they have the ing, throbbing with passion, engaging and highlights, tones and shades, colors fortitude to employ art, science, reason, in daring activities of enterprise and and forms. Marshaling some stoicism in sympathy, and education to create a adventure. periods of anxiety, hopefully a person better world for themselves and their Joyful exuberance is enhanced when will find that the good that one experi- fellow human beings. we not only fulfill our needs and wants, ences can outbalance the bad, the posi- From the standpoint of the individual, but creatively express our goals and tive the negative, and that optimism can happiness is achieved not by a passive aspirations. It denotes some degree of master pessimism. release from the world, but by the pursuit excellence, nobility, even perfectibility, The affirmative person may sum up of an active life of adventure and fulfill- of a person’s talents and achievements. his or her life and declare that, after ment. There are so many opportunities It comes to fruition for those who find all is said and done, it was worth living, for creative enjoyment that every moment life intensely worth living and at times that though one may have some regrets can be viewed as precious; all fit together exhilarating. for what one could have done but did to make a full and exuberant life. More than that, it involves a flowering not, or for what might have been but What is vital in humanist euprax- of one’s personality in that person’s own was not, all told it was good. And, ah, sophy is that humanists are not over- terms. And in its highest reaches it express- yes! Although there were periods of

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 6 pain and sorrow, these were balanced poignant melodies of a symphony, the worlds with our own interpretations. We by those of pleasure and joy. What an appreciation of an altruistic deed, the discover, impose upon, and add to nature. adventure it was—far better to have excitement of an embrace of someone Meaning is found in the lives of the lived and experienced than not to have you love, the elegance of a mathema- ancient Egyptians, in their culture built lived at all! ti-cal proof, the invigorating adventure around Isis and Osiris and the pyramids, of a mountain climb, the satisfaction or in the ruminations of the ancient Creating Your Own of quiet relaxation, the lusty singing prophets­ of the Old Testament. It is Meanings of an anthem, the vigorous cheering in exemplified by the Athenian­ philosopher The meaning of life is not to be found in a sports contest, the reading of a deli- standing in the Acropolis deliberating a secret formula discovered by ancient cate sonnet, the joys of parenthood, the about justice in the city-state. It is seen in prophets or modern gurus, who with- pleasures of friendship, the quiet grat- the structure of the medieval town, built draw from living to seek quiet contem- ification of serving our fellow human upon a rural economy, feudalism, and a plation and release. Life has no mean- beings—all of these activities and more. Christian­ cultural backdrop. It is expe- ing per se; it does, however, present us It is in the present moment of experi- rienced by the Samurai warrior in the with innumerable opportunities, which ence as it is brought to fruition, as well as context of feudal Japanese culture, in the we can either squander and retreat in the delicious memory of past experi- hopes and dreams of the Incas of Peru, from in fear or seize with exuberance. ences and the expectation of future ones, by the native Watusi tribes in Africa, It can be discovered by anyone and that the richness of life is exemplified and and in the Hindu and Muslim cultures of everyone who can energize an inborn realized. The meaning of life is that it can India and southern Asia. And it is exem- zest for living. It is found within living be found to be good and beautiful and plified anew in modern postindustrial, itself, as it reaches out to create new exciting on its own terms for ourselves, technological, urban­ civilizations of the conditions for experience. our loved ones, and other sentient beings. present-day world, which give us new Eating of the fruit of the Tree of Life It is found in the satisfaction intrinsic cultural materials and new opportunities gives us the bountiful enthusiasms for to creative activities, wisdom, and righ- for adventure. living. The ultimate value is the convic- teousness. One doesn’t need more than Human beings have found their mean- tion that life can be found good in and that and, hopefully, one will not settle ings within the context of a historical, of itself. Each moment has a kind of for less. cultural experience, and in how they are preciousness and attractiveness. The meaning of life is tied up inti- able to live and participate within it. Life The so-called secret of life is an open mately with our plans and projects, had meaning to them; only the content scenario that can be deciphered by the goals we set for ourselves, and our differs; the form and function are similar. everyone. It is found in the experiences dreams and the successful achievement Life, when fully lived under a variety of of living: the delights of a fine banquet, of them. cultural conditions, can be euphoric and the strenuous exertion of hard work, the We create our own conscious mean- optimistic; it can be a joy to experience ings; we invest the cultural and natural and a wonder to behold.

In Memoriam: F.H.C. Crick

Francis Harry Compton Crick, a fiercely outspoken proponent of secular humanism, died on Wednesday, July 28, 2004, in San Diego, California, at the age of eighty-eight. He was a laureate of the International Academy of Humanism and a Nobel laureate for his discovery, with James Watson and Maurice Wilkins, of the double-helix structure of DNA. Trained originally as a physicist, Crick was working on his doctorate when England entered World War II. He served in the British Admiralty Research Laboratory, designing circuitry for mines used by his country’s navy. But influenced by Erwin Schrödinger’s book, What Is Life? The Physical Aspects of the Living Cell, Crick left the Admiralty and physics after the war and studied biology, earning a Ph.D. in 1954. Crick went on to work in the emerging fields of biochemistry and molecular biology at the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University. He met Watson in 1951, a friendship and professional association that would lead to their work on the structure of the DNA molecule and, ultimately, to their winning the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962. Later, Dr. Crick worked on the structures of other biological molecules such as collagen and glycines and performed research into certain mutations in the genetic code. Most recently, he conducted research into how the brain processes visual information with his colleague, Kristof Koch. Crick also won awards from the French Academy of Sciences and the Gairdner and Lasker foundations; he was a fellow of the Royal Society of Great Britain, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, University College, London, Churchill College, Cambridge, and the Salk Institute. Married twice, in 1940 to Ruth Doreen Todd and in 1949 to Odile Speed, Francis Crick was the father of a son and two daughters. —David Park Musella

7 http://www.secularhumanism.org Oct./Nov. 2004 LETTERS

cost of soil salination, waterlogging, ero- Imagine an eight-thousand-mile diam- sion, and desertification, which is now eter ball of human beings! The entire in many places leading to decreases in mass of Earth converted into people. food, not increases. Energy shortages Narveson thinks they will still be happily are already serious and will continue to making more! Unfortunately, they’re all increase, especially as China and India dead, as there is no air to breathe, water produce and use more and more automo- to drink, food to eat, etc. biles. Environmental damage, due large- Richard J. Uschold ly to population growth, is now giving us Port Orange, Florida air we can’t breathe, food we can’t eat, water we can’t drink, and surroundings we can’t bear to look at—not to mention Too many people? Not for Jan Narveson, collapsing fisheries, shrinking forests, a fellow libertarian. “The more the bet- deteriorating rangelands, rising carbon ter” is what his article in the last FI dioxide levels, rising temperatures, ris- amounts to. How embarrassing to read ing sea levels, falling water tables, dying him! The optimum population level can coral reefs, and mass extinction of other only be determined by free human beings species. Ecosystems are breaking down choosing to have children in a context all over the world, and it’s increasingly of liberty and free of superstition, both clear that, if we can’t stabilize popula- of which contexts have been largely tion, there isn’t an ecosystem on Earth absent in human history. Fur­thermore,­ that can be saved. I would think an atheist libertarian like Stop the Madness! Philip Appleman Narveson might have mentioned the role East Hampton, New York of the Catholic Church, among others, in Thank you so much for the welcome promoting non-optimum population lev- discussion of overpopulation in your els, not to mention the role of the state. For a moment, while reading Professor August/September 2004 issue (Special In America, having children is subsi- Narveson’s essay, I was taken back to Section, “What Is the Optimum Popu­ dized immensely by the government, from my youth, where I was sitting in a church lation of the U.S.? The World?”). It was tax exemptions to taxpayer-funded educa- listening to a preacher telling me not to excellent throughout. tion for the children of the rich. In August, worry about any problems: “The Lord Except, of course, for the contrarian the Australian government announced it piece by Jan Narveson (“Overpopulation?­ will provide.” The only difference is that would pay, on top of the other subsidies, Fiddlesticks!” which reminded me of a Professor Narveson worships the god of a $2,100 cash bounty for every child pro- remark by the distinguished economist technology, and he preaches that It will duced, to boost the birth rate. Kenneth Boulding, who wrote, “Anyone provide for all human well-being. If more is better, does Narveson mind who believes exponential growth can go I wish that he might have considered the subsidies of religion and govern- on forever in a finite world is either a few other things as he formulated his ment in relation to population growth? a madman or an economist.” Narveson optimistic(?) essay. These might have Sometimes I think the case for liberty shows that that person can also be a included the well-being of other species, would be better presented if we libertari- professor of philosophy. Not since the the quality of life (Is it really that great ans would just shut up. philosopher Pangloss declared that “All in India, China, and Iran?), resources left Larry Fullmer is for the best in this best of all possible for future generations, including beauti- Pocatello, Idaho worlds” has anyone been as immune to ful natural areas, and the probability of the facts as are the Julian-Simonesque continual war due to large populations Jan Narveson responds: Cornucopians who now want us to believe­ struggling for limited resources. that resources are “limitless.” The good professor needs to know Philip Appleman complains that I have Especially interesting is Narveson’s that many of us resent the infringement a “glaring omission” in regard to what glaring omission of the most urgent and of overpopulation on our space and our he claims is “the most urgent and criti- critical problem caused by overpopula- way of life. Overbreeding is selfish. cal problem caused by overpopulation: tion: the water shortage. Deserts are Robert Brown the water shortage.” He cites deserts, advancing, soils are eroding, great rivers Holtwood, Pennsylvania eroding soils, rivers “now completely are now completely used up before they used up before they reach the sea,” etc. reach the sea, and many ancient aquifers This point brings up the need to distin- are being dangerously overpumped for Jan Narveson claims that there is no guish local from large-scale and global irrigation to feed ever-larger populations limit to the growth of the population problems. We all have problems, and and are in danger of total depletion in the of the planet Earth. He further denies local problems of coping with ungener- next few decades. As populations contin- that some pile of resources can actually ous supplies of this or that are usually ue to grow, the situation will deteriorate go to zero! I submit that: Mh

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 8 LETTERS

tion of the cost from America. In other leads to soil salination, erosion, and when it’s only six billion. The general localities, other solutions will be need- so on, are, again, local in nature, and reply to them is: get serious. ed. Americans will be familiar with the every one of them is quite capable of As for Robert Brown, it is worth low-flush toilet imposed on them by being fixed. (Many are also just plain pointing out that in every country an unthinking Congress; its result has false, as Julian Simon points out, via on Earth there are nature reserves, been to greatly increase the amount of close investigation, in his epoch-mak- parks, trees, etc., and ample opportu- water used in toilet-flushing owing to ing book Population Matters.) These nity for a high quality of life, even if the need to flush at least twice. City claims about the evils of water use you happen to think that such quality water engineers will, as usual, cope. have been made frequently for the is derived from being in the middle We should also distinguish between American case, and meanwhile of nowhere. Every­where people move water for irrigation and water for American productivity just keeps from the countryside, with its ample drinking and washing. Much American going up and the problems, insofar as stretches of trees, grass, and whatev- water is lavished at our expense upon they are problems, keep getting sur- er, to crowded cities like New York farmers at subsidized low prices when mounted. What else is new? or, indeed, Calcutta. They evidently the folks in Los Angeles would be happy I do like Mr. Appleman’s reference like it there, despite—or is it, per- to buy it at a more reasonable price to to cornucopia, though. It suggests that haps, because of—the presence of so keep their lawns green. So it goes. he continues to labor under the num- many other people. (Most of the New But the general and global reply ber one fallacy in this area: the belief Yorkers I know wouldn’t want to live to Mr. Appleman is simple: as he well that somehow mankind is dependent anywhere else and went there on pur- knows, water is intrinsically recy- on Mother Nature and is using up her pose.) And—hey!—it is very hard to cled. The amount of water on the globe resources, surely and steadily. Not so. run a good opera company out in the is essentially constant. Plato feared The right belief is that mankind needs middle of North Dakota, you know? overpopulation, though the world now to use his head. He (or she!) has done All the good things that you folks contains, I suppose, several thousand a pretty good job of that so far, and out there enjoy are made by peo- times the number of people it did in his there’s little reason to doubt that in ple, and high population densities day—yet every one of us has enough the future we’ll do it better and better. enable us to have more such things. water to stay alive, and many quite Larry Fullmer appears to think You might bear that in mind when you enough to keep their lawns green, too. that my article was a promo for more complain about the abundance of your What makes this possible is that, when people. It was more modest: it was a fellow humans. Meanwhile, though, we use water for purpose x, there is a promo for abandoning the bad rea- my point remains: there is no reason runoff process that eventually leads sons for thinking that more people are to think that we have too many people back to more x. The rain falls, the water a problem. How many people there in respect of the capacity of the earth employed for this or that evaporates, should be, I think, is how many peo- to receive them. and then falls again. The trick for ple we want. The point is that global humans is to shorten the recycling pro- resources are not the source of limits cess. This always can be done, in one here. What in fact is happening, the Up with People way or another; students of hydrology world over, is that as people get richer are busy night and day thinking up they have fewer children, even though I certainly agree that overpopulation more and better ways to do it. it is this very advance in wealth that is a serious problem and that reduction Again, as Appleman knows, astro- makes it possible to have more. of it is essential to the health and wel-­ nauts take along a very tiny water Richard Uschold engages in math- -fare of this earth. But I disagree with supply that is completely recycled, ematics to refute something I had no Tom Flynn’s claim (“Too Many People,” including total cleanup, constantly. interest in claiming, viz., that the earth August/September 2004), that “Not While there is, of course, no substitute can hold a literally infinite number of enough jobs is the flip side of too many for water, the usability of water is people. My thesis was a lot more down- people.” As long ago as 1888, John infinite: all water is used over and to-earth: that there are no reasonable Ruskin wrote, in his Unto This Last, over again, without end. Claims of concerns about human overpopulation Four Essays on the First Principles of shortages, then, are misleading; what’s in the current or foreseeable future. Political Economy, that “We must be in short supply regarding water is There is, of course, no reason whatever clear on this head before going farther, ingenuity, care, and enterprise. The to think that people will eventually as most people are loosely in the habit idea that global population must be reproduce to the point where popu- of talking of the difficulty of ‘finding limited due to this particular source is lation densities get up to one human employment.’ Is it employment that we entirely unjustified. I noted in the arti- per square yard. There are, however, want to find, or support during employ- cle that energy is no inherent problem people claiming that right now we are ment? Is it idleness we wish to put an end either; by the time the eight or so centu- on the verge of catastrophic resources to, or hunger?” In other words, if there is ries of heavy use of natural oil that we problems due to population. It is these work to be done, material available to do know remains to be used have elapsed, latter I set out to refute, successfully, so it, and people available to do the work, we’ll all be using other forms of energy, far as I can see. It is fascinating how then one of the functions of an economic and probably a lot more of it at that— many people are ready to argue that system is to provide a means of paying including as much as necessary for because it would be difficult for the the workers. Not being able to do this to keeping the water going around fast earth to support a population of ten the extent necessary represents a cata- enough to keep us all washed. trillion, we must therefore be ready to strophic failure of our present economic The claims that food production impose draconian controls right now (Continued on page 57)

9 http://www.secularhumanism.org Oct./Nov. 2004 Planned expansion of CFI–Transnational, Amherst, NY—projected groundbreaking Fall 2004.

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As before, CFI: Branch Centers across • Supports the Council for Secular the United States and the World Humanism and the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of Amherst, New York (HQ): We increased library the Paranormal (CSICOP). space 30 percent and are beginning plans for a major new addition. • Operates the world’s premier freethought and skeptical libraries. Hollywood, California: Renovation of our • Offers distinguished adult education 9,000-square-foot Center for Inquiry – West is Center for Inquiry-Transnational, Amherst, NY programs through the Center for complete. There, a new National Media Center Inquiry Institute. will reach out to — and critically examine — the entertainment media. The 99-seat Steve Allen But, the Center needs to reach out in Theater will also serve as a television production new ways … tackling new facility. problems, exerting influence. New York, New York: Our Center for Inquiry – That’s why the Center for Inquiry’s Metro New York in Rockefeller Center reaches out New Future Fund seeks millions to the nation’s financial, intellectual, and news of new dollars for program needs, media centers, while facilitating local activities capital expansion, and endowment. throughout the metro area. Center for Inquiry-West, Los Angeles, CA Your New Future Fund Tampa Bay, Florida: Center for Inquiry – Florida Gift can support: offers a stimulating menu of Independent Publications. Besides aiding Free programs and activities while it searches Inquiry and Skeptical Inquirer, CFI publishes the for permanent quarters. independent American Rationalist; two import- ant journals, The Scientific Review of Alternative International Centers: in a bold program expan- Medicine and The Scientific Review of Mental sion, new Centers for Inquiry now Health Practice; and skeptical magazines serv- operate in Russia, Mexico, Peru, Poland, Nigeria, ing the UK and the Spanish-speaking world. Germany, France, and Nepal, doing vital work in Center for Inquiry-Metro NY, at Rockefeller Center defense of the open society. We plan further expansion into countries with little or no exposure to humanism.

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free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 10 OP-ED

COLUMNISTRICHARD DAWKINS

Michael Behe, is nothing more than the familiar “What is the use of half an eye?” argument, even if it is now Who Owns the applied at the biochemical or the cel- lular level. Darwin himself anticipated and demolished the general form of the argument in The Origin of Species. For Argument from a splendid anthology of replies to it in its biochemical and cellular guise, see “Behe’s Empty Box” by John Catalano.2 Improbability? “Specified complexity” takes care of the sensible point that any particular rubbish heap is improbable, with hind- ife is too improbable to be due sight, in the unique disposition of its to chance” is the old standby, parts. A pile of detached watch parts “L the creaking warhorse­ relied tossed in a box is, with hindsight, as upon by all creationists, from naïve improbable as a fully functioning, genu- Bible-jocks who don’t know any better to Photo by Lalla Ward inely complicated watch. What is spe- comparatively well-educated intelligent cial about a watch is that it is improb- de­sign “theorists” who should. In truth, able in the specified direction of telling there is no other creationist argument (if the time. Creationists fondly imagine you discount absurdities such as “Evo­ that specified complexity is William lution violates the second law of thermo- Dembski’s recent coining. Here is how I dynamics” and falsehoods such as “There expressed it eighteen years ago: aren’t any intermediate fossils”). Complicated things have some qual- However superficially different various ity, specifiable in advance, that is probability arguments may appear, un-­ highly unlikely to have been acquired der the surface their deep structure is none of the innocent charm of its old- by random chance alone. In the case always the same. In Fred Hoyle’s ver- style, revival-tent parent. Sophistry of living things, the quality that is sion, the spontaneous emergence of life dresses up the venerable watchmaker specified in advance is, in some sense, “proficiency”; either proficiency in a is as improbable as a hurricane blow-­ in two cloaks of ersatz novelty: “irredu- particular ability such as flying, as ing through a junkyard having the luck cible complexity” and “specified com- an aero-engineer might admire it; or to assemble a Boeing 747. Something in plexity.” Both are wrongly attributed to pro­ficiency in something more gen- nature—an eye, a biochemical pathway, recent ID authors, and both eral, such as the ability to stave off death. . . . (The Blind Watchmaker, or a cosmic constant—is too improbable arguments are much older. p. 9) to have come about by chance. (So far, Irreducible com- the argument is impeccable. Now comes plexity, which the false step.) Therefore, it must have creationists been designed. A watch demands a watch- attrib- maker. As a gratuitous bonus, the watch- ute maker always turns out to be the Christian to god (or Yahweh, or Allah, or Lord Krishna, or whichever deity happened to dominate the speaker’s personal childhood). Not only is it wrong to assume that deliberate design is the only alternative to chance: deliberate design is not an alternative to chance at all. The only known alternative to chance as an explan­ - Behe ation for living complexity is natural and selection. And, to those who understand Dembski it,1 it is a brilliantly successful alternative. correctly Intelligent design “theory” (ID) has pose the prob-

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lem of specified improbability as something statistical improbability argument leads their spontaneous existence de novo. that needs explaining. But the explanation to a conclusion diametrically opposed to Sooner or later, in order to explain they offer—“intelligent design”—is not the fond hopes of the creationists. There the illusion of design, we are going even a good candidate solution. It is a lazy may be good reasons for believing in a to have to terminate the regress with cop-out, which is most kindly described as supernatural being (admittedly, I can’t something more explanatory than a restatement of the problem. And, worse, think of any), but the argument from design itself. Design can never be an it shoots itself in the foot. improbability is emphatically not one ultimate explanation. And—here is the First, ID theory is lazy. It poses a of them. Indeed, the argument from point of my title—the more statistically problem (statistical improbability) and, improbability is the most powerful argu- improbable the specified complexity, having recognized that the problem is ment I know in favor of atheism and the more inadequate does the design difficult, lies down under the difficulty. against agnosticism. theory become, while the explanatory “I can’t see any solution to the prob- The design argument is fatally wound- work done by the crane of gradualistic lem. Therefore, a Higher Power must ed by infinite regress. The more improb- natural selection becomes correspond- have done it.” When people write to me, able the specified complexity, the more ingly more indispensable. So, all those bemused by one or other of the ID books, improbable the god capable of designing calculations with which creationists love I invite them to imagine a fictional con- it. Darwinism comes through the regress to browbeat their naïve audiences—the versation between the lazy alter egos of unscathed, indeed triumphant. Improba­ mega-astronomical odds against an two scientists working on a hard prob- bility, the phenomenon we seek to explain, entity spontaneously coming into exist- lem, say A. L. Hodgkin and A. F. Huxley, is more or less defined as that which is dif- ence by chance—turn out to be exercises who in real life won the Nobel Prize for ficult to explain. It is obviously self-defeat- in eloquently shooting themselves in the their brilliant elucidation of the biophys- ing to try to explain it by invoking a cre- foot. ics underlying the nerve impulse. ative being of even greater improbability. The argument from improbability firm- “I say, Huxley, this is a terribly diffi- Darwinism really does explain complexity ly belongs to the evolutionists. It is our cult problem. I can’t see how the nerve in terms of something simpler—which in strongest card, and we should instantly impulse works, can you?” turn is explained in terms of something turn it against our political opponents (we “No, Hodgkin, I can’t, and these simpler still, and so on back to primeval have no scientific opponents) whenever differential equations are fiendishly simplicity. It is the gradual, escalatory hard to solve. Why don’t we just give they try to play it against us. If ever you up and say that the nerve impulse quality of nonrandom natural selection find yourself arguing with a creationist propagates by Nervous Energy?” that arms the Darwinian theory against who tries to hit you with the astronomical “Excellent idea Huxley, let’s write the menace of infinite regress. I suspect improbability of living organization, don’t the letter to Nature now, it’ll only take that “inflation theory” may perform a par- one line, then we can turn to some- deny the improbability and don’t apolo- thing easier.” allel role in cosmology, but I should need gize for it. Rejoice in it and go one better, to be more learned in theoretical physics while echoing the sotto voce response of Andrew Huxley’s elder brother Julian before attempting a confident defense Thomas Huxley3 to Bishop Wilber­force: made a similar point when, long ago, he of my conjecture. My colleague Daniel “The Lord hath delivered him into mine lampooned Henri Bergson’s élan vital Dennett­ uses the vivid word crane for hand.” The Argument from Improbability­ as tantamount to explaining that a rail- theories that do this kind of explanatory belongs to us, and with a vengeance. God way engine was propelled by élan loco- lifting work. is the ultimate Boeing 747. motif. Lamentably, by the way, the only Design is the temporarily correct scientist ever to win the Nobel Prize for explanation for some particular mani- Author’s Note: This article contains passages Literature is Bergson, the arch vitalist. festations of specified complexity such as from my Foreword to Niall Shanks’s admir- With the best will in the world, I can a car or a washing machine. It could con- able book God, the Devil, and Darwin: see no difference between the laziness ceivably turn out, as Francis Crick and A Critique of Intelligent Design Theory (Oxford: Oxford University­ Press, 2004). of my hypothetical Hodgkin and Huxley Leslie Orgel once facetiously suggested, and the really lazy luminaries of ID. Yet, that evolution was seeded by deliberate Notes so successful is their wedge strategy design, in the form of bacteria sent from a 1. The Nobel Prize-winning French biol- that they are managing to subvert the distant planet in the nose cone of a space- ogist Jacques Monod memorably remarked: schooling of young Americans in state ship. But the alien designers then require “The trouble with natural selection is that after state, and they are even invited their own explanation: ultimately, they everybody thinks he understands it.” to testify before congressional commit- must have evolved by gradual and, there- 2. See www.world-of-dawkins.com/Catalano/ box/behe.shtml. tees—all this while ignominiously fail- fore, explicable degrees. It is easy to 3. Andrew’s and Julian’s grandfather. ing to come up with a single research believe that the universe houses crea- paper worthy of publication in a proper tures so far superior to us as to seem like Richard Dawkins’s most recent book scientific journal. gods. I believe it. But those godlike beings is A Devil’s Chaplain: Re­flections on More important, the argument from must themselves have been lifted into Hope, Lies, Science, and Love. He is the improbability, quite apart from being existence by natural selection or some Charles Simonyi Professor of Public lazy, backfires fatally against the design equivalent crane. The argument from Under­ standing­ of Science at Oxford inference. Conscientiously pursued, the improbability, properly applied, rules out University.­

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 12 OP-ED

COLUMNISTNAT HENTOFF

No President Is Above “. . . the Court has defied not only the Bush team the Constitution but any future admin- istration that may place ur constitutional separation of powers has saved the American itself in contempt of the Orule of law. Justice Sandra Day Constitution by O’Connor—writing for the Supreme Court in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld on June discarding due process 28—declared: “We have long since made rights of detainees.” clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation’s citizens.” The president, Justice O’Connor fountain.” wrote in an 8–1 decision, has the power George W. Bush, a man of decent to detain someone he designates as an instincts but little discernible training in “enemy combatant.” But, she empha- constitutional law, does not understand sized, “We reaffirm today the fundamen- that “due process of law” is indeed the tal nature of a citizen’s right to be free core of our fundamental liberties. from involuntary confinement by his own government without due process of law.” Accordingly, after being held incom- municado for two years, U.S. citizen Yaser Hamdi has the right to appear before a judge or other “neutral deci- sion maker” and challenge the govern- ment’s evidence against him. As Justice William O. Douglas said: “The history of liberty is the history of due process.” Dissenting in part, but still oppos- ing the administration, Justice Antonin Scalia, not considered a member of the Court’s “liberal bloc,” said that Ham- di should be charged with treason or Congress should suspend the writ of habeas corpus. Otherwise, he declared, Hamdi should be released. Obviously, he was pointing out that the government must give Hamdi a hearing. H e In this historic decision, sections of which will be quoted for decades to come, the Court made clear that, while the president is commander in chief of our military forces, he is not com- mander in chief of the rest of us. Scalia quoted James Madison’s warning that “the blessings of liberty [were threat- which must grad- ened by] those military establishments ually poison its very

13 http://www.secularhumanism.org Oct./Nov. 2004 OP-ED

has been badly advised—and not only zen, designated an “enemy combatant” or poor, high or low, native or foreign- about “enemy combatants”—by White by the president, had filed his appeal er, white or colored, can have his life, House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, in the wrong court, the Second Circuit liberty or property taken “without due process of law.” This means to me that Attorney General John Ashcroft, and Court of Appeals. His case has now been neither the federal police nor federal Justice­ and Defense Department law­ remanded to the federal courts of South prosecutors nor any other govern- yers who, though law-school graduates, Carolina. However, as Nina Totenberg mental official, whatever his title, can concluded that national security justi- of National Public Radio says: “It would put or keep people in prison without accountability to courts of justice. It fies what Justice O’Connor describes ap­pear that [eventually] a majority of means that individual liberty is too as “an unchecked system of detention” the justices are likely to hold the gov- highly prized in this country to allow that does not “consider the interest of ernment to a standard at least as high executive officials to imprison and the erroneously detained individual” as the Hamdi case and very probably a hold people on the basis of informa- (em­phasis added). higher standard, since Padilla was not tion kept secret from courts. arrested overseas, but on U.S. soil.” This has not been a Supreme Court noted for its sensitivity to civil liberties in many of its decisions. But now, at a “. . . While the president is “The Constitution remains crucial period of American history, due commander in chief of our to the Bush administration’s assaults on in danger from an overar- the Bill of Rights, the Court has defied military forces, he is not ching executive branch.” not only the Bush team but any future commander in chief of the administration that may place itself in contempt of the Constitution by discard- rest of us.” ing due process rights of detainees. Jonathan Freiman, an attorney who The second case decided by the has filed several brilliant briefs to the Supreme Court on June 28, Rasul et Supreme Court in these and other consti- It also means, of course, that no al. v. Bush, concerned the six hundred tutional cases against the Bush adminis- president, on his or her own say-so, has or so foreign-born suspected terrorists tration, cited (and sent to me) a currently the constitutional right to imprison citi- imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. pertinent dissent in the 1953 case of zens or noncitizens as “enemy combat- Writing that 6–3 decision, Justice John Shaughnessy v. Mezel, in which an ants”—as this president has—incom- Paul Stevens found that those “detain- alien resident of the United States was municado, without charges, and without ees” have also been deprived of due excluded from returning to this country meaningful access to their lawyers. process. He powerfully quoted Justice after visiting abroad by the then-attorney On June 28, the Supreme Court did Robert Jackson in a previous opinion: general. This was done without a hear- not go that far, because it said the ing. The Supreme Court approved this president has the initial power to detain Executive imprisonment has been con- sidered oppressive and lawless since subversion of basic due process. enemy combatants. It should have [King] John, at Runnymede [signing In his dissent, however, Justice rul-ed that, as Congress stated in the the Magna Carta, 1215] pledged that Robert Jackson wrote a characteris- Non-Detention Act decades ago, no one no free man should be imprisoned, tically passionate definition of the can be imprisoned or “detained” unilat- dispossessed, outlawed or exiled save essence of the American rule of law. I erally by any president or other official by the judgement of his peers or by the law of the land. have no way of knowing whether Sandra without an act of Congress. But there Day O’Connor read this in the briefs should also be the right, regardless of By contrast, Stevens continued, the to the Court, but in view of the continu­ Congress, to an appearance in a fed- “detainees” of Guantanamo “have never ed erosion of our rights and liberties eral court to make the government im- been afforded access to any tribunal, during this war on terror, I believe mediately prove the lawfulness of the much less charged with and convicted of it’s important for Robert Jackson to seizure on the presidential designation wrongdoing; and for more than two years be heard again. Although the current of “enemy combatants.” they have been imprisoned in territory Supreme Court rescued the separation The Constitution remains in danger over which the United States exercised of powers on June 28, I often remember from an overarching executive branch. exclusive jurisdiction and control.” what Justice William Bren­nan told me: Accordingly, those prisoners must “Liberty is a fragile thing. Don’t ever Nat Hentoff is a regular colum- also have the ability to have a habeas forget that.” nist for the Village Voice and the Wash­ corpus hearing before a judge or a In his dissent, which should be rever- ington Times, a United Media syndi- “neutral decision-maker” and compel berating in our classrooms, legislatures, cated columnist, and the author of the government to show lawful grounds and media, Justice Jackson wrote: Living the Bill of Rights (University of for their imprisonment. California Press, 1999) and The War The Founders abhorred arbitrary on the Bill of Rights and the Gathering In the third case, Rumsfeld v. one-man imprisonments. Their belief Padilla, the Court unanimously ruled was—our constitutional principles Resis­tance (Seven Stories Press, 2003). that the lawyers for this American citi- are—that no person of any faith, rich

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COLUMNISTCHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

more extreme mullahs are attempting to ban the party’s participation in the upcoming vote. Which Side for Among Western liberals and leftists, I find, there is often a too-simplistic equation between the Islamists on the one hand and Bush’s “crusader” Chris­ Seculars? tianity on the other. But, perhaps ironi- cally, you could not tell from his military could not exactly say how I know policy that Bush had any religion at all. this, because I have met very few (I exempt his insane attempt to withhold Imembers of the Free Inquiry team and met those less frequently than I would like, but I nevertheless feel con- “You would never know fident in saying that only a very small percentage of them will be voting for the it from the mainstream reelection of Bush and Cheney this fall. press, but the Iraqi and Actually, to judge from my fellow colum- nists at least, that percentage could be Afghan secular ‘Left’ estimated as nil. are strong allies of, and important participants in, “. . . two of the most the processes of ‘regime influential thinkers of the Right—Ayn Rand and Leo Strauss— were nonbelievers. The media are not change’ now being so haz- American Right—Ayn Rand quite wrong in presenting the “secular- ism” or “separation” debate as a Left- ardously undertaken in and Leo Strauss—were Right one. But they are not quite correct, either. their respective countries.” nonbelievers.” In particular, it seems to me that the whole “war on terrorism” has the poten- foreign aid from groups that advocate In my recent review of Susan tial to recast this question in interesting family planning.) Six percent of Iraqis Jacoby’s excellent book Freethinkers: ways. I’ll begin with a small but not are Christians—you would never know A History of American Secularism* insignificant irony. You would never that from any of the positions advocated (which I once more take the opportunity know it from the mainstream press, but by the United States administration. to recommend) I made a similar obser- the members of the Iraqi and Afghan Wherever possible, the Bush regime has vation.1 For Ms. Jacoby, the struggle secular “Left” are strong allies of, and to hope—devoutly hope, if you like—for for secularism is intimately connected important participants in, the processes the emergence of strong secular move- to the battle for women’s rights, free of “regime change” now being so haz- ments throughout the Muslim world. It speech, black emancipation, and other ardously undertaken in their respec- does not look at Indonesia, say, or Egypt causes. Her identification of it with tive countries. The Iraqi Communists, and wish for the victory of the “faith liberalism doesn’t disturb me, any more one of the stronger social forces before based.” People like to sneer about the than it disturbs me that this magazine their being crushed by Saddam Hussein, improbability of “Jeffersonian democ- prints attacks on John Ashcroft that are heavily in­volved in the preparation racy” in Iraq or Afghanistan (to which have nothing to do, strictly speaking, for the eventual election, while for the I tend to reply that none of my Iraqi with his policies on the separation of Kurdish nationalists in the north, who or Kurdish comrades own any slaves). church and state. After all, one would already live in a largely secular society, But the new constitutions written for not easily guess, from a general view of the battle against jihad forces is an these countries contain strong elements the political scene, that two of the most old story. In Afghanistan, where some of Jeffersonian secularism, which is a influential thinkers of the American of the Left was badly compromised by much better export. association with the Red Army, the old * See Rob Boston’s review of the book in the On a recent visit to Turkey, Presi­ People’s Democratic Party has been August/September Free Inquiry. —Eds. dent Bush made a rather admirable re­formed and reconstituted. Some of the speech, quoting from the novelist Orhan

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Pamuk (who, I was glad to see, was many on the liberal Left. During the days 1. Christopher Hitchens, “Believe It or Not: known to his speechwriters) and stress- of the “Stop the War” demonstrations, Making a Patriotic Case for Those of Little 2 Faith,” Washington Post, April 25, 2004. ing the Kemalist and secular traditions there was a heavily religious character to 2. Mustapha Kemal (1880–1938), the of the country as well as its role as many of the crowds. By this, I don’t just founder of modern Turkey, changed his name a “bridge” between the Islamic and mean the near-unanimous opposition of to Kemal Atatürk in the course of implement- Euro­pean worlds. The Turkish army, the Christian churches to the policy of ing a secularization policy that required in my view, is too much indulged by the “regime change,” all the way from the Turks to take surnames, write their language in a Latin script, and abandon religious head- Pentagon. But there is no denying, also, pope to the Archbishop of Canterbury. I wear for men and women. that it serves as the guarantor of the mean also the enthusiastic participation Kemalist character of the state. of many Muslim fundamentalists. I am Christopher Hitchens is a colum- This view—of America on the right hoping that some of the readers of this nist for Vanity Fair. His study of side in the civil war in the Islamic world magazine share my misgivings. The war Thomas Jefferson is forthcoming in and making allies among the secularizing on jihad is not something, surely, that the “Eminent­ Lives” series (Harper modernists—thus, of course, contains its any secularist can view as a spectator. Col­lins and Atlas Books). own ironies and contradictions. But what worries me is the complacent attitude of Notes

WENDY KAMINER

This relatively soft or sneaky ap­proach to Prohibition also charac- terizes the latest assault on smoking Prohibition Creeps tobacco. Cigarettes will not be outlawed outright; too many voters enjoy or are addicted to smoking. But bans on smok- ing are increasing. In New York City, you Back cannot generally smoke indoors, except rohibition was a disaster, as nearly in your own home (and even there you everyone must know. By banning might encounter complaints from your the legal sale of alcohol, the Nine­ co-op neighbors). Restaurants,­ bars, and P even private clubs are “smoke free” teenth (and stupidest) Amendment­ to the Constitution, enacted in 1919, effectively environments. New York and California promoted illegal sales of sometimes toxic have been at the vanguard of a move- substitutes, spawned lucrative new crim- ment to ban indoor smoking; according inal enterprises, and greatly in­creased to a recent article in USA Today, “281 police corruption without de­creasing municipalities in 23 states had smoking alcohol consumption. Congress­ and the bans in workplaces, restaurants, or bars.” states repealed Prohibition fourteen One entire country, Ireland, mandates years later in a belated fit of common disastrous war on drugs—some drugs, smoke-free workplaces, restaurants, and sense. (According to one legend, the Yale anyway—that demonstrates the faith bars. Bans on outdoor smoking are next Club presciently laid in a fourteen-year we invest in the strategy of Prohibition, on the antismoking crusade. In Port Oran­ supply of alcohol when the Nineteenth against all the odds and the evidence ge, Florida, smoking is banned in pub- Amendment passed; coincidences like that criminalizing particular drugs lic parks whenever children are present, this make people believe in conspiracy greatly erodes civil liberties, increases which is probably much if not most of theories—or God—or at least the value violent crime and the supply of guns the time. Santa Monica, California, has of a Yale education.) on the street, and encourages police banned smoking on the beaches. But the calamitous failure of a law corruption without decreasing drug use. There are, of course, rational, medi- or social practice doesn’t condemn it Consider the efforts to ban abortion, cal arguments in favor of indoor smok- to obscurity; sometimes we treat policy if not directly then indirectly, by limit- ing bans, based on the dangers of sec- failures of the past not as cautionary ing access, shortening the time period ondhand smoke. Outdoor bans, however, tales but as challenges to try again. in which abortions may be performed are harder to justify, except on moral (Maybe that’s why Americans are con- legally, endowing fetuses with rights grounds: a local California politician sidered optimistic.) They surely seem that may someday trump those of preg- (quoted in the Los Angeles Times) unwilling to give up on the supposed nant women, and limiting the abortion expressed hope that Santa Monica’s promise of Prohibition. It’s not just the procedures doctors may employ. outdoor ban would “catalyze a public

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discussion about where it is socially includes (among other measures) an and other restrictions on liberty, which acceptable to smoke.” increase in sobriety checkpoints on the enforce public morality more than they Popular morality has always played a road, allowing police to stop motorists ensure public health, confirm a depress- strong role in the drug war, accounting without probable cause and require them ing trend. Soon freedom may just be for the criminalization of drugs like mar- to take Breath­alyzer tests, and it has another word for nothing left to use. ijuana, associated with the countercul- encouraged police in two respective juris- ture (and previously with racial minori- dictions to raid taverns in a search for the Wendy Kaminer is a lawyer and ties), and the celebration of drugs like intoxicated and to conduct warrantless social critic. Her latest book is Free Ritalin, as respectable as soccer moms. searches of homes on the suspicion that for ALL: Defending Liberty in America Popular morality is reviving efforts to minors might be drinking inside. These Today (Beacon Press, 2002). prohibit alcohol consumption, through indirect restrictions not unlike efforts to ban abortion or smoking. A December 2003 Cato Institute report documents the new “backdoor” approach to prohi- bition, comprising taxing schemes, the censorship of alcohol advertising, zon- ing restrictions on bars, and, perhaps most ominously, a significant lowering of the legal limit for drunken driving. According­ to Cato, the new drinking and driving laws are not needed to control the “seriously inebriated drivers who threaten highway safety”; rather, they are aimed at “embarrassing” generally safe-driving social drinkers and “threat- ening them with draconian drinking and driving laws to the point where consum- ing alcohol away from home just isn’t worth the hassle.” What makes these efforts so ominous? Like most crusades to criminalize behav- iors that do not pose serious threats to others, the targeting of moderate drink- ing threatens individual liberty more than it protects communal health. As the Cato report notes, the antidrinking crusade

New Center for Inquiry opens in Poland

A major expansion of the Center for Inquiry movement was announced on July 17, 2004, when a formal agreement was signed to create a new Center for Inquiry in Poland. It will be known as the Sapere Aude Center for Inquiry–Warsaw. Sapere Aude in Latin means “dare to think.” The agreement was signed at the CFI–Transnational building in Amherst, New York. The executive director of Sapere Aude Center for Inquiry– Warsaw is Andrzej Dominiczak, an investigative journalist, publisher, and intellectual. Dominiczak has recently over- seen the publication of a hard-hitting expose of the politics of Pope John Paul II. He has also translated several titles from Prometheus Books into Polish. An office has been opened, and Paul Kurtz with CFI–Warsaw executive director Andrzej Dominiczak. a full program of events is scheduled.

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COLUMNISTVERN L. BULLOUGH

Are Some People “. . . I wonder if perhaps there are biological factors Natural Humanists? that favor skepticism and the ability of individuals to ne of the most rapidly expand- ing fields of research, one which function without looking to OI helped pioneer, is the study of gender. Though society tradition- higher powers.” ally has been divided into males and females, and while one sex impregnates and the other is impregnated, there situations, while it apparently in­creases are tremendous variations within these in women. This might just reflect the groupings. Many of these variations are stress that both sexes are under. influenced by environmental factors, At any rate, the lower level of tes- although differently than is suggested tosterone in males and the higher level by the old, traditional argument about in females during periods of intense nature versus nurture. love last only for a few months before For example, Canadian researchers returning to normal. Intense love might studying Great Lakes wildlife found sexual and heterosexual individuals lead us to overlook negative qualities in sexual abnormalities in male snapping have found hints of biological factors at our beloved, but reality returns sooner turtles: their penis size has diminished, work. For example, the youngest son of or later, and it is probably advisable for a mother who has given birth to three or a couple to wait to commit to marriage four boys in succession and has borne to see if there are other factors encour- no girls has a greater likelihood of being aging love than the simple hormone turn “How much of our behav- gay than his elder siblings. Why? Is it a in the early stages. meaningless statistic, since there are Other hormones also influence hu­man ior is due to biological homosexual men who are also eldest actions. Oxytocin, sometimes called­ “the inheritances over which we sons? The reasons for this finding are hormone of love,” is a neurotransmitter unknown. So is the fact that homosex- synthesized in the hypothalamus at the have little uals are more likely to be left-handed base of the brain and stored in the poste- than the general population. Again, is rior pituitary. It pulses out during sexual control?” this a meaningless statistic? activity and in childbirth. It induces feel- We do know that hormones play a ings of love, altruism, warmth, serenity, tremendous part in our behavior. When bonding, tenderness, and togetherness. and some males are able to produce a man falls intensely in love, the level of It is the hormone responsible for orgasm. egg-yolk protein, a capability normally testosterone, the male sex hormone in Some persons have more oxytocin found only in females. Scientists believe his body, drops. Love-struck women, in than others. How much of our behavior is this is due to the fact that many species contrast, have higher levels of testos- due to biological inheritances over which are suffering from exposure to “gen- terone than their counterparts. In some we have little control? Dario Maestripieri der-bending chemicals,” industrial pol- ways, men become more like women, at the University of Chicago has shown lutants that mimic sex hormones. These and women become more like men. that abusive monkey mothers typically changes have been observed mainly in Donatella Marzziti of the University of have close relatives—mothers, sisters, fish but have been seen in other spe- Pisa in Italy has said that it is almost as or daughters—who also abused their cies ranging from Florida panthers to if nature wants to eliminate what can be infants.­ 2 He distinguished abuse from Florida alligators. different in men and women because it neglect,­ which he found more common While no such drastic changes have is more important to survive and mate.1 among young monkey mothers who were been observed in humans, researchers We know that testosterone also drops just learning to mother or among very old hunting for differences between homo- in men when they are in highly stressful mothers who perhaps could not cope as

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well. But why does monkey abuse tend life. We know from Jim Christopher and to think about. In my mind, it is not a to run in families? Similarities have been his Secular Organizations­ for Sobriety humanist gene that we have to find but noted in human abusers, and the behav- that the “dependence on higher powers” rather a humanist proclivity, and this ior might well be hormonal or biologically approach­ utilized by Alcoholics Anony­ implies that it is something that has to based. Maestripieri did not test the mon- mous does not work for many alcoholics be cultivated and expressed. keys’ oxytocin levels. or drug addicts. Instead, these people Notes As I look at these biological factors are able to establish a functional lifestyle 1. New Scientist, May 5, 2004, p. 1. at work in the gender field, some of with the help of SOS, which teaches them 2. Newsletter of the Division of Social them undoubtedly influenced by the envi- to rely upon each other and find their own Sci­ences, University of Chicago, Spring 2004, ronment, I wonder if perhaps there are methods of coping. pp. 4–5. biological factors that favor skepticism I suspect that there are biological fac- and the ability of individuals to function tors at work that encourage some of us Vern Bullough, a Free Inquiry senior without looking to higher powers. Some to be more independent than others, and editor, is a noted author and research- people seem to be entirely dependent perhaps these factors are influenced by er in human sexuality. He is with the upon their god to cope with the crises of the environment. At least it is something Center for Sex Research at California

PETER SINGER

“. . . despite many individ- Taking Humanism Beyond ual exceptions, humanists have on the whole been Speciesism unable to free themselves from one of the most cen- uring nearly two millennia of European history in which tral of these Christian dog- DChristian dogmas could not be mas: the questioned, many prejudices put down deep roots. Humanists are, rightly, crit- prejudice of speciesism.” ical of Christians who have not freed themselves of these prejudices—for a way that causes fear and dread for example, against the equality of women everything that moves on the earth is or against nonreproductive sex. It is not improper; it is, in fact, in accordance curious, therefore, that, despite many with a God-given decree. This was the individual exceptions, humanists have thinking of mainstream Christianity for on the whole been unable to free them- at least its first eighteen centuries. There selves from one of the most central of were gentler spirits, certainly, like Basil, these Christian dogmas: the prejudice John Chryso­stom, and (maybe, though of speciesism. that well. Wickedness prevailed upon there is no contemporary evidence for it) In the Judeo-Christian tradition, Earth, so God sent a flood, drowning Francis of Assisi, but for most of Chris­ this prejudice is plain and undisguised. not only the wicked humans but almost tian history they have had no signifi- The biblical story of creation states all nonhuman animals on Earth as well, cant impact on the dominant tradition. the Hebrew view of the special place of even though they were presumably According to the dominant Western human beings in the divine plan: innocent. He then repeated his grant tradition, the natural world exists for God created man in his own image . . . of dominion in more ominous language: the benefit of human beings. God gave and God said unto them, Be fruitful, And the fear of you and the dread of human beings dominion over the natural and multiply, and replenish the earth, you shall be upon every beast of the world, and God does not care how we and subdue it: and have dominion over earth, and upon every fowl of the air, treat it. Human beings are the only mor- the fish of the sea, and over the fowl upon all that moveth upon the earth, ally important members of this world. of the air, and over every living thing and upon all the fishes of the sea; into 1 Nature itself is of no intrinsic value, and that moveth upon the earth. your hand are they delivered.2 the destruction of plants and animals But the creation didn’t work out all The implication is clear: to act in cannot be sinful, unless it leads us to

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harm human beings. belief that humans have duties toward Humanists, of course, don’t believe The difficulties that Christians have animals.4 the old creation myth told in Genesis. had, over many centuries, in taking seri- It is significant that, at least in the They know that, to quote the American ously the interests of animals should West, all the most philosophically import- Humanist Association’s recent Human­ be yet another reason for humanists ant advocates for animals—Plutarch, ism and Its Aspirations, also known to reject the narrow Christian out- Montaigne, Hume, Bentham, John Stu­- as Humanist Manifesto III, “Humans look. As humanists, we should scorn a -art Mill, Henry Salt, George Bernard are an integral part of nature, the result religion that honors a man like Paul, Shaw—have been skeptical about reli- of unguided evolutionary change.” In who—along with his prejudices against gion. Even in recent times, leaders of the other words, we are animals, with no women and homosexuals—could ask animal movement—the late Henry Spira God-given or inherent right to subdue “Doth God care for oxen?” as if it were and Ingrid Newkirk (and if it were not other animals. As Bertrand Russell once obvious that the answer must be neg- too immodest, I would include myself)— wrote, “Since Copernicus, it has been ative. Paul’s question led Christians to have tended to be nonreligious. The evident that Man has not the cosmic disregard those passages in the Hebrew organizations­ that have done the most importance which he formerly arrogat- scriptures that did suggest some com- for animals have been independent of ed to himself. No man who has failed to passion for animals.3 His attitude to religion. There are exceptions, but—in assimilate this fact has a right to call his animals, firmly reinforced by Augustine contrast to many other social issues, philosophy scientific.” and Aquinas,­ dominated Roman like racism, poverty, and peace—no one And yet, the thoroughly religious idea Catholic thinking right up to the middle could claim that religious organizations that humans are at the center of the of the nineteenth century, when Pope have been especially prominent in the moral universe still seems to be alive Pius IX refused to allow a Society for modern movement to free animals from and well in humanist circles. Last year, the Prevention­ of Cruelty to Animals to the misery and suffering that humans I was invited to sign Humanism and Its be es­tablished in Rome on the grounds Aspirations, and so I took a close look that to permit it would imply the false at the document. To my surprise, in the paragraph that follows the one about humankind being the result of unguided evolutionary change, I found the follow-ing sentence: “Ethical values are derived from human need and interest as tested by experience. Humanists ground val- ues in human welfare shaped by human circumstances, interests, and concerns and extended to the global ecosystem and beyond.” Despite the sop to broader concerns at the end of the sentence and another remark at the end of the mani- festo about “a planetary duty to protect nature’s integrity, diversity, and beauty in a secure, sustainable manner,” the manifesto obviously gives precedence to the interests of members of our own species. I did not sign Humanism and Its Aspirations, for my aspirations go beyond human interests and the glob- al ecosystem. Why should we ground values in the welfare of human beings rather­ than in the welfare of all beings capable of having a welfare at all? That many nonhuman animals have interests and welfares is difficult to deny, for they are certainly capable of feeling pain and suffering as well as pleasure and joy. There is no nonreligious reason why the pains and pleasures of nonhuman animals should not be given equal weight with the similar pains and pleasures of inflict human beings. (Of course, if the supe- upon them. rior intellectual capacities of one being

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enable that being to have interests that a ters. But what is “needless” suffering? over animals. being with lesser capacities is unable to If confining calves and pigs in crates too have, that may make a difference to how narrow for them to turn around makes Notes we ought to treat them. But this is not veal and pork cheaper for those who 1. Genesis 1: 27–28. a distinction between humans and non- want to eat it, some will say that the 2. Genesis 9: 1–2. humans, for some nonhuman animals suffering of these animals is not “need- 3. Corinthians 9: 9–10. 4. E.S. Turner, All Heaven in a Rage are superior in their capacities to some less.” Ten billion animals are killed each (London: Michael Joseph, 1964), p. 163. humans, for instance, those suffering year for food in the United States alone, 5. For further discussion, see my Animal from profound intellectual disabilities.5) and the overwhelming majority of them Liberation, 2nd ed. (New York: Ecco, 2002), In what it says about nonhuman live miserable lives in factory farms. In especially Chapter 1. animals, the Council of Secular Human­ the light of pervasive human prejudices ism’s The Affirmations of Human-­ that cause such systematic suffering, a Peter Singer is DeCamp Professor of ism: A Statement of Principles­ is a stronger statement is needed. It is time Bioethics at the University Center little better than Humanism and Its for humanists to take a stand against for Human Values at Princeton Uni­ Aspirations, but not a whole lot. It says this ruthless exploitation of other sen- versity. He is the author of Animal that as humanists, “We want . . . to avoid tient beings, which is so powerfully Liberation, Practical Ethics, Rethinking inflicting needless suffering on other buttressed by the religious view that Life and Death, Writings on an Ethical species.” That at least recognizes that human beings are God’s special cre- Life, and most recently, The President the suffering of nonhuman animals mat- ation and that he gave them dominion of Good and Evil: The Ethics of George W. Bush.

TIBOR R. MACHAN

What’s Wrong with “Who … is to decide how the earth is to be Modernity? used? Environmentalists think that they should and odernity is under attack by social critics today. Modernity not those who want, for Mis characterized by technolo- gy, science, reason, individualism, and example, similar features of our culture that are more and better housing deemed to be progressive. Since the fourteenth century, the Western world developments and means of has seen an enormous increase in what is known about the universe. Science transportation.” has flourished, as has the resulting technology that enables us to travel more speedily, cure diseases more suc- nology as the devil of the modern age, cessfully, produce food in unprecedent- given its ability to transform the earth. ed amounts, and do much else better One may assume that some of these than we could before. lash. Many yearn for the rigidities of lamentations are genuine and sincere, On the political front, the modern age ancient times; others lament humanists’ even if one takes them to be misguided. has seen a greater stress on individ- preoccupation with improving life on But in many cases there is a hidden ual rights to freedom and to property. Earth instead of preparing for an after- agenda. Government is coming to be viewed as life. There are almost hysterical wor- Most important to note is the asser- a servant and defender of the people ries about commercialism, which could tion of superior wisdom and therefore instead of their ruler, albeit at a slower be viewed positively as using trade to authority on the part of those who issue pace than that of scientific and techno- allocate wealth and resources to those the complaints. Who, for example, is logical developments. who can make the best use of them. to decide how the earth is to be used? Yet, there is also a serious back- Environmentalists have targeted tech- Environmentalists think that they should

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and not those who want, for example, regimented, controlled, regulated. By much to guarantee a better life for us more and better housing developments whom, one might ask? By other indi- all as to place the responsibility for and means of transportation. But the viduals who supposedly know what is seeking such a life with individuals. We bottom line of the chorus of complaints important for the rest to do. now need to decide what to pursue with about modernity seems, in fact, to be Criticisms of modernity are voiced all the great tools that modernity has nothing other than that individuals are in terms of concern for the interests or produced. We can go seriously astray in better equipped now than ever before good of the community, the public, the that task. But it is no longer credible to to pursue their very own chosen goals. nation, or humanity, as opposed to the claim that ordinary folks are to be treat- Technology helps us to strive for our selfish pursuits of individuals. But in ed like little children who must look to chosen goals: we can travel better to the most cases, the conflict isn’t between others—others who are just as capable places where we wish to go; we can keep public and private interests but between of making mistakes—to make us behave alive longer and thus do more of what we one private interest and another. properly. want to do; we can receive information Environmentalists, for example, more rapidly than ever before, so we can have no special understanding of what Tibor R. Machan is the better understand things. Once again, society as a whole should care about— R.C. Hoiles Professor of this leads to more individual control over they simply hope to bamboozle us all Business Ethics and Free Enterprise personal affairs. into thinking that their priorities ought at the Argyros School of Business and There are a great many who find this to be everyone’s. And so it is with oth- Economics at Chapman­ University. intolerable. After all, is the puny individ- ers who try to elevate their own special He is the author of Putting Humans ual to be left to his or her own resources agenda to become everyone else’s, usu- First (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004). when it comes to selecting various ends ally not by argument but by law and to pursue? This cannot be allowed to public policy. go on—those people need to be guided, What modernity has done isn’t so

BILL COOKE

Reason and “In Uganda, superstition is not simply a brand name; it Superstition in is a real danger that blights Uganda real people’s lives.”

t has become problematic through- I was in Kampala, Uganda, for out the Western world to speak three conferences. From all corners of Iof reason or superstition without Uganda, the country Winston Churchill resorting to scare quotes. To talk of rea- once called the “pearl of Africa,” and son or superstition is naïve, logocentric, from neighboring Kenya, Sudan, Tan­ culturally imperialist, or some other zania, and Rwanda, people came togeth- fashionable pejorative. But wrap these er in Kampala to learn more about sorts of words in scare quotes, and we humanism and to help strengthen the can affect a pleasing irony. humanist presence in East Africa. Why has this happened? Probably Kampala is a sprawling city, built because we in the West have lost a around a series of hills and with occa- firsthand sense of what reason or super- simply a brand name; it is a real danger sional views of Lake Victoria. Uganda stition mean in people’s lives. So what that blights real people’s lives. And rea- is a country on the way up, with some a pleasure it was to get away from this son is not a token of Western imperialism im­pressive development taking place. postmodernist trivia last spring and go to but a real means by which people can This is fine for the minority of the popu- Uganda, where things are called by their reclaim responsibility for their own lives lation who have the education and skills real name. In Uganda, superstition is not from those who seek to enslave them. to take advantage of the opportunities

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arising out of development, but most ment expecting outward conformity to article the next day under the headline people are being left behind on what is religious norms. And a man from west- “Homos Meet in Kampala.” Suddenly, the a highly unequal track. Stepping into ern Uganda who had been a practicing humanist conferences had become “the those gaps between the haves and have- witch doctor spoke about his journey first ever conference to discuss the rights nots (an area already crowded with from superstition to reason. No scare of homosexuals.” A cartoon in the follow- those holding traditional beliefs) are quotes were needed here: this man’s ing day’s paper plumbed the depths of some well-funded evangelical groups. journey really was from superstition bad taste. It portrayed some very cari- Unlike the missionaries of old, these to reason. His relief, joy, and pride at catured gays mincing off to a conference groups are not building schools or having made that journey was a sight and taunting police in full confidence hospitals. All they offer is a hysteri- to behold. He is now actively engaged of not being arrested while there were cal brand of salvation that is usually in his region in showing people how other, larger conferences attended by bound up with helping to fund their local the witch doctors’ tricks are done and representatives of nations helping Ugan­ church. The day I arrived in Uganda, I encouraging the people to resist their da still in town. The policeman replies to read about an apocalyptic cult that was blandishments. the homosexuals with a veiled threat to spreading through a prestigious girls’ But the most memorable talk was dare continue the meeting after the other school in Kampala. de­livered by a young Rwandan woman conferences have finished. It took a long time for the human- who spoke of the genocide in her coun- ist community to take much notice of try. She had not been scheduled to Unlike the missionaries Africa. The longest-standing commit- speak, and her talk was entirely unre- ment to Africa has come from African- hearsed, but she gave a full sense of the of old, today’s evangelists Americans for Humanism (AAH), an horror the country had undergone. It are not building schools or organization founded in 1989 by Norm was very moving. One of the stories that Allen and Paul Kurtz. Since then Norm, has not emerged from Rwanda is the hospitals. All they offer is a who is also deputy editor of Free shameful role of many church leaders in In­quiry, has continually cultivated Afri­ encouraging the genocide, leading the hysterical brand of salva- can humanists. He frequently published murderers to victims or at the very least tion that is African writers in his group’s newslet- taking no action to prevent the killings. ter, the AAH Examiner, sending out At the conferences, I also realized usually bound up with donated materials from Prometheus­ the depth of respect for Norm Allen Books and occasionally visiting Africa. that has developed over the past fifteen helping to fund their local Things began to pick up in 2001, when years. Norm chaired sessions in two church. the first major humanist conference of the three conferences (the only non- on the African continent was held in IHEU person to do so) and was a major Nigeria. The conference was paid for by speaker, panelist, and opinion-leader in This blatantly dishonest reporting the Center for Inquiry, and the Center all three. Leo Igwe, Nigerian CFI exec- did the humanist conferences a grave for Inquiry–Nigeria was set up shortly utive director, and Deo Ssekitooleko, disservice. All the other issues discussed afterwards. his Ugandan counterpart, both gave ful- over five days dissolved into irrelevance The first conference held last spring some praise to Norm’s dedication over as we had now been branded a “homo was the International Humanist and the past decade and a half to build the conference.” The hotel where the con- Ethical Union (IHEU) youth confer- foundations of African humanism. And ferences were held was visited by the ence in which about sixty young peo- both mentioned Norm’s role in their own police, though no arrests were made. ple from Africa and Europe took part. path toward humanism. Roy Brown, The New Vision ran a major op-ed piece Then there was a day-long conference IHEU president, described Norm as “a a few days later in which Paul Waibale at which the Ugandan Humanist Asso­ pillar of African humanism.” Sr. confessed to being “gravely amazed” ciation (UHASSO) was established. And Besides persecution of the nonre- to hear that Ugandan law had been flout- then came an international conference, ligious, other forms of discrimination ed in so cavalier a fashion by “two asso- sponsored by the IHEU, under the title were discussed at the conferences. In ciations I have never heard of, namely “Humanist Visions for Africa.” Uganda, homosexuality carries with it the Uganda Humanist Association and I was impressed by the youth and a maximum of life imprisonment, and the International­ Humanist and Ethical passion of the African humanists. Many there is severe punishment even for fail- Un­ion.” Roy Brown went out of his way of them had struggled to Kampala on ing to report homosexual activity to the to correct the misinformation, but I buses; some even hitchhiked. At the con- police. Not surprisingly, then, the few don’t think the New Vision was inter- ference, they told their personal stories. Ugandan homosexuals brave enough to ested in presenting the conference hon- A young teacher from Tanzania spoke show their faces began speaking up at estly. I hope UHASSO can survive the of the discrimination he faced from the the conference. The conference agreed negative publicity. religious authorities of his school for that this form of discrimination was Had the New Vision reporters stayed not toeing the orthodox line. A group of unacceptable in an open society. longer, they could have collected more students from Nairobi University spoke Nobody was ready for the press reac- material with which to berate human- of their sense of isolation in an environ- tion. The New Vision paper carried an ists. Dr. Sylvia Tamale of Makerere

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University gave a fiery indictment of the hundred titles donated by Prometheus The leadership of this organization is ded- patriarchal conservatism in Ugandan Books sit proudly on shelves alongside icated, intelligent, and realistic. Ugandan society that conspires to hold women the two tables and the two computers. humanists will be battling superstition by down. There were also some good pre- The Center for Inquiry delegation had using reason, without recourse to scare sentations on third-world debt, global- come to the conference with a donation quotes. And after this conference, they ization, and the rise of Islam. of US$2,000 for CFI–Uganda/UHASSO are now a focal point for humanists from After the conference it was wonder- (twice the size of any other gift the group all the neighboring countries. I couldn’t ful to see the office of CFI–Uganda/ received), so it was inspiring to see the help feeling hopeful as I left the coun- UHASSO. Just down the road from money being used in this way. This office try—hopeful for Uganda and hopeful for Makerere University, in a building will be the nerve center not only for humanism. being comprehensively renovated, the Ugandan humanism but for humanism only room already occupied is the CFI– throughout East Africa. Bill Cooke is director of Trans­ Uganda office. As one closes the door on Viewing the facilities, I was able to national Programs for the Center for all the concrete dust and noise, the two regain confidence in UHASSO’s future. Inquiry.

NORM R. ALLEN JR.

cinated with the books that they read them in one sitting. A couple of years ago, the Council for Humanism in Africa Secular Humanism offered space on its Web site for the loosely formed African Humanist Alliance. At the Kampala con- ference, this organization was formal- Marches Forward ized, infusing African humanist leaders with new energy and enthusiasm. Under n late May and early June 2004, I par- the leadership of Leo Igwe, director of ticipated in major meetings in Kam­ the Center for Inquiry–Nigeria, and Ipala, Uganda, and Ikenne, Ni­geria, Gebregeorgis Yohannes, of the Ethi­ which were attended by humanists from opian Humanist Organization, African Africa, Europe, and North America.­ humanists are poised to spread human- From May 20 to 24, the Inter­national ist ideals throughout the African con- Humanist and Ethical Youth Organ­ization tinent. (IHEYO) held a conference with the theme On June 1 and 2, humanists met in “Humanism­ for Global Peace and Social Ikenne, Nigeria, to commemorate the Justice.” Numerous workshops addressed tenth anniversary of the death of Tai topics including poverty, sexuality, Solarin, one of Nigeria’s leading edu- women’s­ rights, women and reproductive cators and humanists. The conference rights, AIDS and religion, the education was held at the Mayflower School, which of street children, and others. One of the the Congo, Tanzania, southern Sudan, Solarin­ established as the only secular highlights was a presentation by Caro­- and other African countries discussed school in Nigeria. Since his death in lyn Nakazibwe, a Ugandan and editor of Africa’s need for humanism. Many had 1994, however, the school has become the newspaper The Weekly Observer. never heard of the organization I repre- increasingly religious. There is now a Ms. Nakazibwe discussed the difficulty of sented: African Americans for Human­ Christian church on the school’s prop- publishing information on sexuality in ism, a project of the Council for Secular erty—a development­ that certainly does Uganda’s press. Despite opposition from Humanism. They were thrilled to learn not sit well with humanists who visit the conservative forces in Uganda, her news- that such a group exists. They were very school. paper covers sex education, AIDS pre- eager to learn more about the group, Topics at this conference included vention, masturbation, and other topics and they acquired free copies of my “Tai Solarin’s Philosophical Views,” “Tai many Ugandans consider unsuitable for books African American Humanism: Solarin and Free Thought,” “How Re­ligion publication. An Anthology and The Black Human­ Underdeveloped Africa,” “Free Thought On May 25 and 26, humanists gath- ist Experience: An Alternative to Re­li­ on Nigerian Campuses,” “Secu­ lar­ ism­ and ered for a conference titled “Humanist gion, as well as the latest issue of Nigeria,” and numerous presentations Visions for Africa.” Humanist activists our international newsletter, the AAH on witchcraft and superstition. Indeed, from Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Examiner­ . Some said they were so fas- among the subjects of greatest interest to

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 24 OP-ED

African humanists are witchcraft, super- looks on impotently when a neighbor are people who live well—feed well, stition, and faith healing. comes in with a digger and starts dig- are happily accommodated, have good In the 1990s, a Nigerian humanist ging into the foundation of the house? medical care and insulated against No sensible person would sit by and want in old age or accidents, the less established a group in Cameroon. After see his own house destroyed by any glamorous will be the idea of heaven he returned to Nigeria, however, the other person. (pp. 4–5) and life hereafter. (p. 6) group disbanded. Today, there is anoth­ - Throughout his life, Solarin believed in the er humanist group in Cameroon whose Mayflower students were impatient awesome power of a good education put to leader attended the Solarin conference. to learn more about Solarin. After the good use, as opposed to religious dogma: Humanist activists received its repre- conference, a few of the students met sentative with open arms. with Igwe and organized a Numerous individuals, human­ist group at the school. in­cluding members of the Humanists gave them books, Ni­gerian Humanist Move­ newsletters, and other read- ment, are working to pre- ing materials to get them serve Solarin’s­ impressive started and moving in the legacy. In the May 2004 issue right direction. of the Humanist Inquirer, Until the early 1990s, most the group’s newsletter, read- African humanists commu- ers will find an article titled nicated by postal mail and “Why I Do Not Believe in few had telephones. Today, God.” The article is culled Afri­can humanists have cell from Solarin’s 1989 book To phones, computers, e-mail Mother with Love. Writing ac­counts, personal libraries, about the occurrence of and offices. Humanism in Africa has come a long way, natural disasters and other Norm R. Allen Jr. with a Nigerian journalist at the Mayflower School. problems in the world, and the future looks bright- Solarin­ relates: er than ever. With increased If man is educated to believe that this support from Western humanists, is our only chance and so we should When people ask me who made our African humanists can look forward to make the most of it, most men would world, I tell them I do not know and having an enormous impact across their they tell me it is only God who could behave better. But the romantic picture have made it. Assuming, for this argu- of the next world, which, to the Moslem, continent. ment, that it is God who made this is one with well-bosomed women, is all beautiful world of ours, how could he, fantasy. But as long as man is satisfied Norm R. Allen Jr. is executive director with such handouts, religion will con- if he is a responsible somebody, sit or of African Americans for Humanism stand aside impotently and allow his tinue to be the mainstay of the poor handiwork to go into such rack and people around the world, the Third and editor of its newsletter, the AAH ruin? Which man builds his house and World in particular. But the more there Examiner.

IRVING LOUIS HOROWITZ

ity.—Eds.

am deeply honored to receive the first Science, Civility, and Science and the Public Award offered Iby the Center for Inquiry. I have come to believe that if we are to prevail—and by “we” I mean not just Value Judgments academics but public servants and seri- ous laborers in the world of public opin- The Center for Inquiry gave its first in recognition of his distinguished con- ion and ideas—we must return to the Science and the Public Award to tributions to the public understanding Jamesian premise that the intellectual Transaction Press founder, chair, and of the social sciences. We are proud to class, a class with traditions and goals editorial director Irving Louis Horowitz­ present below Dr. Horowitz’s re­marks that are not defined by parochial loyalties on May 15, 2004, at its “Science and upon accepting the award. Dr. Horowitz or party affiliations, must unite and close Ethics” conference in Toronto, Ontario, is also Hannah Arendt Distinguished ranks. The world has enough servants of Canada. The Science­ and the Public Univers­ ity­ Professor of Sociology and power; it needs careful critics of power. In Award was bestowed upon Dr. Horowitz Political Science at Rutgers Univers­ so doing, we must also return to Kant’s

25 http://www.secularhumanism.org Oct./Nov. 2004 OP-ED

commonsensical belief that everything should be subject to the free and public examination of reason grounded on and confined to itself. This is not a mechan- ical, Weberian plea that insists upon a separation of the political and the scien- tific; it is rather to appreciate the degree to which the sciences must inform politics. Science cannot simply be circumscribed by politics or, worse, by the limited vision of funding agencies. Its mandate includes an autonomy that moves well beyond the boot of masters who both rule and are ruled by ideology. America is not, as Samuel Hunting­ ton claims, a Christian nation with a Irving Horowitz (left) accepts the 2004 Science and the Public Award from Paul Kurtz (center) and David Koepsell (right), Council for Secular Humanism executive director. core European ancestry.1 But it is none­ theless correct to say that it remains we consider beyond redemption. There frontation may also be an embrace of the largely a nation of Christian churches are no magic formulas, no special incan- very evils we seek to oppose (fanaticism, and denominations. tations that will allow us to make such subjectivism, dictatorship, and mayhem). America is not, as Louis Hartz and distinctions. People like ourselves are in Under such circumstances, you might others maintained, a nation of near-un- the business of cooling passions so that we want to consider the great Yiddishist’s contested liberalism in its ideology.2 But can continue cultures. other option: walk away and live to fight it is probably correct to note that liberal For more than a half century, first another day. value systems and egalitarian sentiments with Paine-Whitman Publishers, then with In a world of polarizations, perhaps dominated the entire twentieth century— Oxford­ University Press, and for the past the most difficult idea to absorb is that and still do. forty-two years with Transac­tion, I have there are various gradations of good and America is not, as Russell Kirk was had a daily confrontation, primarily with infinite shadings of evil. It is the task of fond of declaring, a place in which the myself and at times with others, as to what social science to make clear-eyed distinc- permanent things and traditional values constitutes good scholarship, good poli- tions between what we want to fight for prevail.3 But it is the case that American cy, and good science. After five thousand and what we want to walk away from. For people have a high regard for social order books published and something like fifty our human commitment is to life and not and traditional values whatever their journals and serials operating within our death. At seventy-five years of age, I still political affiliations. mandate, I must still try to make decent carry on the struggle—bent, sometimes America may be, as Robert Putnam judgments on ultimate truths. I daresay beaten, but not broken. I like the idea of declared, a nation of deeply increased the same is the case for many of you in this living another day as evidence of the wor- privatization.4 But it is also the case that room. We will err, sometimes on the side thiness of life itself and also the prospects this is a nation of exponential growth in of passion and other times on the side of of victory for what we believe is worth the voluntary and civic organizations, other- caution. We will, in the process, change our struggle. But we must also recognize the wise known as places of civil virtue and minds about what constitutes high quality. need for a world in which defeat is not social capital. We will regret missed opportunities due disgrace and not subject to punishment by What these types of distinctions to being unduly reserved in our decision the victor. Such homiletics may offer small require on the ground, in quotidian life, making and, no less, in mistaking the novel comfort; sermonizing rarely does. This is is fewer belligerences and greater civili- for the creative. all the more reason to moderate our pas- ty—respect for views other than those we To those who have had such experi- sions as we sharpen our principles. hold near and dear. Yes, there are limits to ence, I would recommend a Marx-like code Notes civility: the entire twentieth century bore derived from the ancient skeptics: Doubt witness to a hideous round of genocides everything. This should be leavened by 1. Samuel Huntington, Who Are We?: The that extended across nations dedicated an Oakeshott-like resolution: Sit down for Challenges to America’s National Identity (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004). to high culture as well as those that advo- a decent meal with those whose views are dissimilar from your own and see if 2. Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in cated an end to history. Entire continents America (New York and London: Harcourt, were affected. At such moments civility there are grounds for resolution. If not, Brace & World, 1955). should be trumped by concerns of surviv- then carry the struggle to its conclusion 3. Russell Kirk, America’s British Cul­ al. But let us make sure that we distin- but keep in mind the costs of struggle and ture (New York and London: Transaction what it may do to the victor no less than Publishers, 1993). guish the real culprits from cultural tradi- 4. Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: tions that remain vital even as they may go the vanquished. As Isaac Bashevis Singer The Collapse and Revival of American awry. Public policy and scientific activities once said, there are two ways of dealing Community (New York: Touchstone/Simon & require distinctions between those with with evil. The first is to confront it without Schuster, 2001). whom we simply differ and those whom compromise. The problem is that such con-

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 26 FRONTLINES

U.K. Case Breaks New icans) to attribute inequality among races to laws and institutional policies. SIDE LINES Ground for Atheist The survey also queried participants Schoolchildren about their attitudes toward other groups regarding their visions of soci- In Lancashire County, England, chil- ety. Most felt that atheists were the dren who wish to attend a religious group they had least in common with, The People’s Choice—A comedy involving a school can have their transportation as opposed to 54 percent of all other Americans. cleric was a big hit in Iran, but, despite the expenses paid by the County Council. hopes of the director, the religious establish- But now, thanks to National Secular ment made sure its run was brief. The Lizard Society (NSS) member Ian Abbott, athe- featured a criminal named Reza who dis- ist children who must travel to avoid More on Monuments guised himself as a a cleric to escape from attending a religious school can count prison. It was fun while it lasted: audiences on the same support. Former Alabama chief justice Roy especially en­joyed a scene in which passing Abbott filed a suit under the UK’s Moore’s Ten Commandments monu- cabs ignored Reza as he tried to flag them down. Apparently, cabbies in Iran routinely Human Rights Act for his daughter, ment may have been removed from Laura, who had to travel eight miles ignore clerics trying to hail them as a way to the state judicial building, but it is show their resentment of the clerics’ power, to attend a nonreligious school. The hardly out of sight. In August, the mon- which they suspect is being wielded for County Council had refused to pay ument began a national tour arranged personal gain. Nevertheless, director Kamal Laura’s travel expenses, even though by Americans Standing for God and Mosafaye Tabrizi thought the film would be it was already funding students to Country, a Texas-based veterans’ group well received in religious circles. He infused travel to religious schools. Abbott was that is lobbying to have the monument it with a basically respectful attitude toward awarded travel expenses going back permanently displayed in the U.S. the clergy and even arranged screenings for to November 2002, when Laura started Capitol. several prominent clerics and their families. attending the secular Hodgson High One of its first stops was in Day-­ Nonetheless, a member of Iran’s Guardian Council who had not seen the film declared School Technology College. ton, Tennessee, outside the courthouse “It is blatant discrimination to deny it morally unsound and, after movie theaters where the Scopes Monkey Trial took cut back on screenings, it was withdrawn. nonbelieving families wishing to avoid place in 1925. The monument is also their children attending a nearby church scheduled for an appearance at the It Couldn’t Happen Here?—The clergy nixed school the equivalent transport con- October 22 America for Jesus rally in movie-going for all followers. The film indus- cession given to, for example, Ro­man Washington, D.C. try adopted its own strict rules that for- Catholics to attend an RC school,” said Meanwhile, another court battle is bade filmmakers from depicting ministers as Keith Porteous Wood, NSS executive being waged over a religious monument “comic characters or as villains” or showing director. in Houston, Texas. Real estate broker “excessive and lustful kissing, . . . methods and attorney Kay Staley has sued to of crime, . . . seduction or rape, . . . profani- ty, . . . illegal drug traffic, . . . sex perversion, have a four-foot stone and glass monu- [or] miscegenation.” This didn’t happen in The Intolerance of the ment containing the King James Bible Iran, but in the United States in the 1930s. removed from the west side of the Civil On June 7, 1934, Cardinal Dennis Dougherty Religious Right Courthouse. A businessman who erect- forbade all Catholics in the Archdiocese of ed the monument in 1956 and a judge Philadelphia from going to the movies. He White, conservative Protestants are who refurbished it are fighting to retain had taken to extremes the worries shared more likely than other Americans to the monument. by many religious leaders of his day over be less tolerant of other races and Carloss Morris, eighty-nine, said the Hollywood’s influence, calling movies “the religions—and the nonreligious. monument is not religious but hon- greatest menace to faith and morals in So says a survey conducted by the ors the memory of William S. Mosher, America today.” He ordered his subjects to “stay away from them . . . not merely a American Mosaic Project, run by three who heavily supported the nearby Start counsel but a positive command, binding University of Minnesota professors. of Hope Mission. But the monument When asked how they would react if all in conscience under pain of sin.” Although is four blocks from the mission, and Catholic viewers drifted back after a year and their son or daughter wanted to marry a records from the time of its installation the ban was forgotten after Dougherty died black person, 48.3 percent of the white, de­scribed at as a “Bible stand memo- in 1951, it was never officially lifted, and conservative Christians said that they rial.” In the court proceedings Morris, it heavily influenced years of self-policing would disapprove, compared with 21.8 who raised private money for the origi- by the film industry. Dougherty, by the way, percent of all other Americans. The nal project, has testified that if govern- didn’t practice what he preached: he had a white, conservative Christians said they ment officials accepted Christ “it would screening room built in his residence where would also object to their children mar- be better than if they were Hindus.” he would entertain guests with movies. rying Hispanics, Asians, and Jews at And former state district Judge John higher levels than other Americans. But Devine, who also used private money for they were less likely (31.9 percent as the restoration, has said that is “pretty opposed to 47.9 percent of other Amer­

27 http://www.secularhumanism.org Oct./Nov. 2004 FRONTLINES

clear” America is a Christian nation. “I Vatican Document SIDE LINES don’t believe the separation of church and state is a constitutional doctrine,” Pro-Family, Anti- he has said. Feminist

In an effort to bolster the family structure, the Vatican is castigating Son of Sam Shills for Religion—For a “sug- Faith Healers in feminism as a threat. gested” donation of seven dollars for a cas- Criminal Trial sette or nine dollars for a CD, Focus on the A thirty-seven-page pamphlet written for bishops by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Family will send a recording of an interview Two leaders of the Great Deliverance with David Berkowitz,­ the infamous “Son of the Church’s orthodoxy watchdog, charg­ Spiritual Baptist Church in Crown Sam” who killed six people and wounded es that recent approaches­ to women’s seven others in the New York City area in Heights, Brooklyn, New York, are on issues strongly emphasized a “condition the 1970s. Now serving six consecutive trial for assault in a case involving a of subordination in order to give rise to twenty-five-years-to-life sentences, Berko­­ ­ young mother who was left unable to antagonism: Women, in order to be them- walk after her treatment. The wom- witz has become a born-again Christian.­ In selves, must make themselves the adver- his interview and on a Web site that he an’s husband is also on trial. saries of men.” The result, he wrote, “has maintains, Berkowitz ex­presses his remorse Charmaine Babb, thirty-four, had a its most immediate and lethal effects in for his crimes and credits Christianity for stroke during childbirth in 1998 that the structure of the family.” his turnaround. But not everyone is finding left her dependent on a walker. In He also said that feminism wrongly his example inspirational. As Parents of June 2002, her husband, Curis, a church Murdered Children executive director Nancy denies differences between the sexes deacon, suggested that she seek the Ruhe told the Associated Press, ”Tell me what to avoid the dominance of one over the aid of the Reverend Junior Mitchell murderer doesn’t find religion when the bars other. That results in calling “into ques- and his wife, Desrein. They held her for close behind them.” tion the family, in its natural two-parent nine days at the church, where, while structure of mother and father.” Digging In—The fossil fields of South congregants sang and prayed, Mitchell Catholic feminists protested the Dakota have a new type of dinosaur hunt- and wife sliced Babb’s feet with razor pamphlet, saying that it exaggerated er—Christians intent on proving the Bible. blades, poured hot wax on them and feminist positions and ignored femi- Adventure Safaris organizes small groups set them on fire. Babb was then told nism’s basic goal of attaining equal of Christians to dig for dinosaur bones to she could leave and was abandoned: rights and respect for both sexes. find proof that the animals died suddenly unable to move, she was later found by in Noah’s Flood in 2300 b.c.e. instead of paramedics, dehydrated and lying in millions of years ago. They see evidence to support their belief in the geological strata. her own waste. They think Noah took some dinosaur babies The defendants face fifteen years in on the Ark, which grew up to be the dragons jail if convicted. of popular legends that eventually disap- peared. Today’s lizards are their relatives. According to a report in the UK Telegraph, the products of these Christ­ian digs are dis- played in small museums and churches in a new outreach effort to convince Americans that evolution is false.

Messages from God—A Pentecostal pas- tor in Sweden has gotten life in prison for convincing his nanny and lover to kill his wife with text messages that he said were from God. The woman, Sara Svensson, also shot but did not kill the pastor’s next-door neighbor. The man’s wife was also having an affair with Pastor Helge Fossmo, who hoped to start a new life with her after getting her husband, his wife, and his other lover out of the way. The nanny admitted to the shootings but said Fossmo had persuaded her that committing them was the only way to win’s God’s grace.

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 28 THE RISE OF THE NONES

Secularism in peril Susan Jacoby

“The eloquent omission of God is one instance in which self-styled, strict construc- tionists like Scalia choose to ignore what the Constitution actually says—or rather, does not say.”

n January 2002, Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia made a major speech so sweeping and extreme in its contempt for democracy, and so Iwillfully oblivious to the Constitution’s grounding in human rather than divine authority, that it might well, in an era when American secularists were less intimidated by the forces of religion, have elicited calls for impeachment. Delivered at the University of Chicago Divinity School and revealingly titled “God’s Justice and Ours,” Scalia’s address opened with an overview of the death penalty in America but moved quickly to the justice’s disdain for secular government. The death penalty does not violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, in Scalia’s opinion, because executions were not considered “cruel and unusual” when the Constitution was written. Indeed, as the justice pointed out, the death penalty could be imposed in the eighteenth century not only for murder but for many other felonies like horse-thieving. To Scalia, the Constitution is “not living but dead—or as I prefer to put it, enduring. It means today not what current society (much less the Court) thinks it ought to mean, but what it meant when it was adopted.” The real underpinnings of Scalia’s support for the death penalty are to be found not in constitutional law but in the justice’s religious convictions. He believes that the state This article is excerpted from Susan Jacoby’s book Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism (Metro­ politan Books, 2004).

29 http://www.secularhumanism.org Oct./Nov. 2004 derives its power not from the consent of the governed—“We Scalia does not even consider. the People,” as the “dead” document plainly states—but from As evidence of the religious faith upon which the nation God. God has the power of life and death, and therefore lawful was supposedly founded, Scalia cited the inscription “In God governments also have the right to exact the ultimate penalty. We Trust” on coins; the phrase “one nation, under God” in “Few doubted the morality of the death penalty in the age that the Pledge of Allegiance; and the “constant invocations of believed in the divine right of kings,” Scalia noted in his speech. divine support in the speeches of our political leaders that often conclude, ‘God Bless America.’” Scalia failed, however, to mention the relatively recent and opportunistic origins of these supposedly sacred symbols and practices. It is fair to say that the first six presidents of the United States did not “. . . indispensable invoke the blessings of the deity as frequently in their entire public careers as President George W. Bush does each month. . . . for the successes of the And somehow, the republic survived. In Scalia’s pantheon of American religious symbols, there is one conspicuous excep- ultraconservative minority tion—the Constitution itself. He did not explain to the Chicago . . . is the larger American public’s divines exactly how he reconciles the Constitution’s deliberate omission of any reference to God with the contention that the unexamined assumption that religion American government derives its ultimate power not from per se is, and always must be, the people but from the divinity. Of course, the two cannot be reconciled. The founders were fully aware of all of the minis- a benign influence on society.” terial predictions that the deity, furious at being left out of the Constitution, would “crush us to atoms in the wreck”—and

He would have been just as accurate had he pointed out that most subjects in absolute monarchies also supported the right of kings to torture and to impose the death penalty by drawing “Since the religiously and quartering. To bolster his argument, Scalia turned to that correct do not acknowledge any perennial favorite of conservative politicians and theologians, the evangelist Paul, who famously proclaimed in his epistle to danger in mixing religion and politics, the Romans, “the powers that be are ordained of God.” evil acts committed in the name of Scalia then laid out a philosophy in which democracy can never serve as a sufficient basis for governmental authority. religion must always be “It is easy,” he asserted, “to see the hand of the Almighty dismissed as the dementia of behind rulers whose forebears, in the dim mists of history, were supposedly anointed by God, who at least obtained their criminals and psychopaths.” thrones in awful and unpredictable battles whose outcome was determined by the Lord of Hosts, that is, the Lord of Armies. It is much more difficult to see the hand of God—or any higher moral authority—behind the fools and rogues (as the losers would have it) whom we ourselves elect to do our still they preferred to invoke the authority of the people. The own will. How can their power to avenge—to vindicate the eloquent omission of God is one instance in which self-styled, ‘public order’—be greater than our own?” strict constructionists like Scalia choose to ignore what the In other words, if our elected leaders are merely human, Constitution actually says—or rather, does not say. with power that can be granted and rescinded only by humans, The virtue of Scalia’s extremism is that it lays bare the there is no reason for the rest of us to respect their authority. messianic radicalism at the heart of the current assault on sep- That citizens might respect themselves enough to respect the aration of church and state. This is not merely a constitutional authority of their elected officials—even without being threat- or legal argument, though it is that too, but a far more funda- ened by the sword of the Lord of Hosts—is a possibility that mental attack on secularist and nonreligious humanist values.

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 30 For the warriors of the religious Right, governmental power is who adhere to the most retrograde brand of fundamentalism— not an end in itself but merely one more mechanism, along with as opposed to reasonable religious believers who have allowed institutions of education, communications, and finance, for their faith to be influenced by secular knowledge.) advancing their values within society. The official White House Religion is so much a part of the public square that a major- Web site says it all: the Office of Faith-based and Community ity of Americans say they would refuse to vote for an atheist Initiatives offers a long list of “do’s [sic] and don’ts for faith- for president, even though they would consider voting for an based organizations” attempting to negotiate the federal grant system. Fifty-six years ago, in a landmark decision forbid-­ ding “released time” for religious instruction in public schools (McCollum v. Illinois), Justice Hugo Black asserted that “Jefferson’s metaphor in describing the relation between Church and State speaks of a ‘wall of separation,’ not of a fine “The attack on science is a prime secularist line easily overstepped. . . .” Reasonable people may disagree about how high the wall should rise in specific situations, but issue not because religion and science are the White House’s manual inviting churches to begin feeding at incompatible per se, but because particular the federal trough—and providing detailed instructions on how to strike the best deal within the government labyrinth—does forms of religious belief . . . are incompati- not even acknowledge the existence of a line, much less a wall. Short of erecting a cross atop the White House (and perhaps a ble not only with science but with democra- menorah, crescent, and statue of Buddha to show that America cy.” respects all faith-based institutions), the current administra- tion could hardly do more to demonstrate its commitment to

African-American, a woman, a Jew, or a homosexual. Ameri­ cans are probably not telling the truth on this issue to pollsters; “Men like Robert Green Ingersoll were it is difficult to credit the assertion that a majority of citizens, certainly wrong in their predictions of the in the privacy of the voting booth, would cast their ballots for a gay or a black presidential candidate, and I also have my imminent demise of religion—even in its doubts that a Jew or a woman could be elected. It is clear, how- most retrograde and cruel forms—but ever, that Americans find it much more socially acceptable to express prejudice against atheists than against other groups. whether they were wrong under the long One can only imagine the outcry from the religiously correct if, arc of the moral universe remains to be say, the Council for Secular Humanism applied for a grant to provide pregnancy counseling for teenagers. seen.” The capture of the Republican Party by a militant religious minority, and the marginalization of libertarian conservatives like Arizona Senator John McCain and the late Senator Barry Goldwater, has produced decades of judicial appointments that have moved the entire federal bench to the right. The Supreme pulverizing a constitutional wall that has served both religion Court now decides most abortion cases by a 5–4 vote, and the and government well for more than two hundred years. It is resignation of just one pro-choice justice would give Bush the demoralizing, and a measure of the intimidating power of reli- chance to make an appointment that could finally fulfill the giously correct rhetoric, that so many Democrats have jumped most cherished dream of the religious Right—the overturning on the faith-based bandwagon, practicing a form of religious of Roe v. Wade. However, the initial right-wing focus on abor- “me-tooism” in an effort to challenge the Bush administration’s tion has long since been expanded into a much larger agenda supposedly impeccable religious credentials. (Only recently designed to obliterate the distinction, to borrow Scalia’s has the Kerry-Edwards ticket begun to point out that the reli- words, between “God’s justice and ours.” From well-publicized gious credentials of the Bushmen are impeccable only to those campaigns such as the revived battle against the teaching of

31 http://www.secularhumanism.org Oct./Nov. 2004 evolution—now repackaged as “creation science”—to quieter footing around the issue of the harm that religion is capable efforts like the push by fundamentalist broadcasters to drive of doing. In a peculiar essay in the Atlantic titled “Kicking the “liberal” public radio stations from the airwaves, the Christian Secularist Habit,” the conservative writer David Brooks (now Right tirelessly works to insinuate its values into every aspect an op-ed columnist for the New York Times) admits to having of public policy at every level of government. discovered the astonishing fact, in the wake of September Yet it is a mistake for secularists to view the rise of reli- 11, that humans “yearn for righteous rule, for a just world gious correctness as a phenomenon driven exclusively by or a world that reflects God’s will—in many cases at least as right-wing money and political clout. An equally important strongly as they yearn for money or success.” To understand that yearning, Brooks argues, it is necessary to move “away from scientific analysis and into the realm of moral judge- ment.” The crucial questions are, “Do individuals pursue a moral vision of righteous rule? And do they do so in virtuous ways, or are they, like Saddam Hussein and Usama bin Laden, “It is precisely because evil in their visions and methods?” But fanatics throughout history have always been con- secularists do understand vinced of the virtuousness of their visions. The fundamental the power of religion . . . issue is whether the melding of religion and government, or religion and a transnational terrorist movement in the case that they insist on the of bin Laden, enables fanatics to pursue their particular reli- fundamental importance of gious/political vision with devastating consequences for those who do not share it. If bin Laden did not have political and separation between church and state.” financial support from radical Islamists dedicated to extend- ing the sweep of their theocracies, the morality or immorality of his personal vision would be of little consequence: he would be just another aggrieved prophet crying in the wilderness. factor—indeed, an indispensable condition for the successes of the ultraconservative minority—is the larger American public’s unexamined assumption that religion per se is, and “. . . religious fundamentalists always must be, a benign influence on society. The extreme Right has exploited that assumption brilliantly and succeeded care more about in tarring opponents of faith-based adventurism as enemies religious issues than of all religion, as atheists, as “relativists.” It takes a drastic example of the religious potential to do either public or pri- the rest of the public does, vate harm—say, a Christian Scientist parent’s denial of a and they do more to see that their life-saving blood transfusion to his child or the transformation of a plane into a death-dealing weapon in the name of the views are heard. They have dominated extreme fundamentalist wing of Islam—to shake the general public discourse. . . .” American faith in all religion as a positive social force. Indeed, religious correctness demanded that President Bush deny the existence of any connection between the events of September 11 and “real” Islam. The problem, of course, is not religion as a spiritual force but religion melded with political ideology and political power. Since the religiously correct do not acknowl- It is precisely because secularists do understand the power edge any danger in mixing religion and politics, evil acts com- of religion, and the possibility that any intensely felt drive for mitted in the name of religion must always be dismissed as the righteousness may overwhelm dissenters in its path, that they dementia of criminals and psychopaths. insist on the fundamental importance of separation between For secularists to mount an effective challenge to the basic church and state. Bin Laden is an easy case; the hard cases, premises of religious correctness, they must first stop pussy- which the Constitution was designed to prevent, involve polit-

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 32 ical decisions in which both virtue and evil may be in the eye paign and the general decline of American scientific literacy. of the beholder. There is no doubt that Bush, in many areas of During the past two decades, study after study has document- foreign and domestic policy, is pursuing his vision of righteous ed the declining knowledge of basic scientific facts among rule in a fashion compatible with his religion-based personal American public-school students and their teachers. This morality—but he is pursuing it through a governmental mech- ignorance is generally attributed to lax American educational anism that represents millions of Americans who do not share standards, and there is, of course, a great deal of truth in the his religion or his personal idea of righteousness. charge. But fundamentalist, antimodernist religion has, since Nor is it enough for secularists to speak up in defense of the the twenties, been a significant player in the dumbing down godless constitution; they must also defend the Enlightenment of the scientific curriculum at the elementary and secondary values that produced the legal structure crafted by the fram- ers. Important as separation of church and state is to American secularists, their case must be made on a broader plane that includes the defense of rational thought itself. The great nine- teenth-century freethinkers, heirs of the Enlightenment,­ are often mocked today for their faith in human progress and the “Nor is it enough for secularists ascendancy of science and for their predictions that a secular religion combining humanism and scientific rationalism would to speak up in defense of the soon replace the orthodox creeds of the day. Men like Robert Green Ingersoll were certainly wrong in their predictions of godless constitution; they must also the imminent demise of religion—even in its most retrograde defend the Enlightenment values that and cruel forms—but whether they were wrong under the long arc of the moral universe remains to be seen. The need for produced the legal structure crafted a strong secularist defense of science is particularly urgent by the framers.” today, because many of the antisecularist right’s policy goals are intimately linked to an irrational distrust of science. There

school level. Just as the word evolution was removed from many text- “If secularists are in charge of books in the twenties, evolutionary development as a scientific everything, then America is not fact began to be downplayed in the nineties in school districts where organized fundamentalists brought pressure to bear on as religious as the religiously school administrators and elected school boards. The obfusca- correct claim; if secularists are tion of scientific terminology to placate the religiously correct cannot help but undermine Americans’ general ability to make an insolent minority trying to erode crucial distinctions between scientific fact and theological the values of the majority, then they opinion. The heated political debate over embryonic cloning, for example, has been characterized by a stunning inability on the are not in charge of everything.” part of many in Congress to distinguish between duplicating embryos for the purpose of extracting their cells to treat dis- ease and cloning humans by nursing embryos in hatcheries `a la Brave New World. This lack of scientific understanding has enabled religious opponents of the research to obscure the fact is a particularly strong utilitarian and philosophical connec- that their real objection to all medical uses of embryonic stem tion between the revival of antievolutionism since 1980 and cells is that they consider any interference with the embryo a the political attack on separation of church and state, because form of abortion. That is a theological position that should not the Christianization of secular public education has long been be permitted to masquerade as a general ethical principle. a goal of the forces of conservative religion. The attack on science is a prime secularist issue not because There is also a connection between the antievolution cam- religion and science are incompatible per se, but because

33 http://www.secularhumanism.org Oct./Nov. 2004 particular forms of religious belief—those that claim to have found the one true answer to the origins and ultimate purpose Want to get more involved of human life—are incompatible not only with science but with democracy. Those who rely on the perfect hand of the Almighty in secular humanism? for political guidance, whether on biomedical research or capi- tal punishment, are really saying that such issues can never be We have a new Internet service that can help a matter of imperfect human opinion. If the hand of the Almighty you “Get Active” with us. explains and rules the workings of nature, it can hardly fail to rule the workings of the American political system. • Keep up to date between issues of Free Inquiry The great obstacle to public debate on these questions is that • Learn about the latest news and concerns as they happen • Easy advocacy—send e-mail letters to your legislators and oth- ers on important issues “To make an effective case to their fellow • Read about upcoming secular humanist events online Americans, secular humanists must reclaim • Correspond with Council for Secular Humanism staff the language of passion and emotion from • Pass on messages to friends and family! Free sign-up at the religiously correct.” http://ga1.org/secular_humanism/home.html

religious fundamentalists care more about religious issues than the rest of the public does, and they do more to see that their views are heard. They have dominated public discourse and have trapped American secularists between two poles. On the one hand, secularists are credited with exaggerated importance by those who have swallowed the argument that the nonreligious have already won the day; on the other, secularists are attacked (sometimes by the same people) as enemies of majoritarian, by definition religious, American values. The antisecularists cannot have it both ways. If secularists are in charge of everything, then America is not as religious as the religiously correct claim; if secularists are an insolent minority trying to erode the values of the majority, then they are not in charge of everything. To make an effective case to their fellow Americans, sec- ular humanists must reclaim the language of passion and emotion from the religiously correct. The revitalization of American secularism in the twenty-first century depends upon its ability to convey the passions of humanism as Ingersoll did in the nineteenth, to move hearts as well as to change minds. In a speech (appropriately titled “A Lay Sermon”) delivered before the American Secular Union in 1886, Ingersoll quoted “the best prayer I have ever read”—Lear’s soliloquy when, after raging on the heath, he stumbles upon a place of shelter. Poor naked wretches, wheresoe’er you are, That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm, How shall your unhoused heads and your unfed sides, Your loop’d and window’d raggedness, defend you From seasons such as these? Oh, I have ta’en Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp; Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel, That thou mayst shake the superflux to them, And show the heavens more just. This is the essence of the secularist and humanist faith, and it must be offered not as a defensive response to the reli- giously correct but as a robust creed worthy of the world’s first secular government.

©2004 Susan Jacoby

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 34 Dewey’s Defense We must commit to intelligent inquiry of Democracy Robert B. Talisse

et us begin our discussion of “. . . according to Dewey, Dewey’s views on democracy knowledge is essentially with a brief review of a familiar Lcriticism. Consider the following: Average cit- a kind of social undertaking. . . .” izens are too foolish to engage responsibly in self-government. Wisdom concerning political matters is not distributed equally across the population but invested in a relatively small subset of individuals in any given society. Political wisdom enables the few who have it to discern the best political policies among the possible options, and, hence, to make the best political decisions. Therefore, the democratic principle of distributing the power of political decision equally among all citizens is unrea- sonable. Moreover, when the commitment to the equal distribution of political influence is coupled with the majoritarian principle of decision, we see that democracy is unjust, since it places the social good in the hands of those least able to discern it. This line of reasoning will be familiar to anyone who has worked through Plato’s ­Republic or Walter Lippmann’s Public Opinion,1 and, indeed, it has exerted a pro- found influence over the entire history of polit- ical theory. Extending the appropriate credit to Plato, we shall call it the “Guardianship Argument.” Since it concludes that political influence should be distributed according to political wisdom, we may refer to the political order rec- ommended by the Guardianship Argument as epistemic John Dewey (1859–1952) authoritarianism, what I shall call “epistemarchy,” that is,

35 http://www.secularhumanism.org Oct./Nov. 2004 “rule of the Knowers.” The Guardianship­ Argument is among But by severing politics from epistemological and moral the most serious challenges to democracy. concerns, liberalism promotes what Jane Mansbridge has aptly characterized as an “adversarial” vision of democracy.3 Popular Responses to Guardianship The problem is that a strictly procedural or aggregative con- One natural response to those who would distribute political ception of democratic politics cannot articulate compelling power according to political expertise is that we would first accounts of citizenship, civic duty, and collective responsibil- have to determine who the experts or “Knowers” are. But the ity. A polity unconcerned with such matters will, as Michael kind of wisdom needed to identify the Knowers is precisely what Sandel has argued, “generate its own disenchantment”4 in the the Guardianship Argument denies we have; thus, the argument form of the dwindling political participation, eroding civility, is a muddle, and epistemarchy is practically unattainable. and dissolving trust that is currently evident in the United Despite its confident air, this reply is inadequate. Certainly, States and elsewhere. An alternative response to Guardianship is needed, and John Dewey has given us sufficient resources for meeting the “. . . the epistemarchist may endorse a kind challenge. He gave us a vision of democratic politics that can accommodate the Platonic intuition that political legitimacy of must be tied to wisdom without inviting epistemarchy. epistemic aristocracy. We simply find the A Deweyan Response to Guardianship few The Guardianship Argument was originally framed within the wisest among us and place in them a pro- context of an entire metaphysical system that we may call “Platonism.” Socrates understood the politically wise person, portionally greater degree of political the philosopher king, to be one who has knowledge of The power.” Good and who could design public policy to realize particular goods in the political realm. Since few people are capable of grasping The Good, and since knowledge of The Good is nec- anyone posing the Guardianship Argument will respond that essary for legitimate rule, few persons are fit for political rule. the Knowers are entitled to rule, whether they can be identi- Consequently,­ democracy is unjust, and only that constitution fied or not. The Guardianship Argument is posed not as a prac- which places political rule in the hands of the few who know The tical program but as a philosophical challenge to democracy. Good is legitimate. Hence Socrates’ most infamous assertion: Moreover, the advocate of epistemarchy may concur that it Until philosophers rule as kings . . . that is, until political power is perhaps impossible to identify that small class of absolutely and philosophy entirely coincide . . . cities will have no rest wise political Knowers in whom all political power should be from evils . . . nor . . . will the human race.5 invested. However, this concession is not enough to put all Although few today explicitly accept Platonism as a via- doubts to rest, since we certainly can identify among citizens ble philosophical option, the attempts to respond to the those who are relatively wiser than most and invest in them Guardianship Argument we have surveyed leave these episte- greater political influence without giving absolute political mological notions in place and so have tacitly conceded a cru- power to any. Hence, the epistemarchist may endorse a kind of cial element of Socrates’ case against democracy. However, epistemic aristocracy. We simply find the few wisest among us the epistemological assumptions of Platonism are highly and place in them a proportionally greater degree of political dubious. Perhaps it’s not an overstatement to say that the power. It is worth noting that no less a defender of democracy most enduring element of Dewey’s legacy lies in his vigorous than John Stuart Mill succumbed to this line of reasoning.2 rejection of these epistemological assumptions, assumptions Let us turn to another, more philosophically sophisticat- that comprised what Dewey called “the spectator theory of ed strategy for dealing with the Guardianship Argument. It knowledge.” has occurred to many theorists that the proper response to Against the Platonist view that knowledge is essentially an Guardianship is to sever the presumed ties between wisdom affair of “beholding,” Dewey argued that knowledge in all its and politics. The history of philosophical liberalism—a tra- forms is best construed in terms of a certain kind of activity.6 dition running from John Locke and Immanuel Kant through Specifically, knowing is primarily the ability to inquire prop- John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin—can be read as an attempt erly, where inquiry is understood as the self-correcting meth- to reject the philosophical claims presupposed by the Guard­ od of looking to reasons and evidence in resolving problematic ianship Argument. Liberals appeal to doctrines of natural or situations.7 Dewey famously saw science as a paradigm of God-given rights as guarantors of equality in political influ- proper inquiry, yet his appeal to science was not positivis- ence. If each person has rights, and, if these rights entitle each tic; Dewey did not seek to reduce everything to science, he person to equal treatment and political consideration, then instead saw scientific practice as an especially refined case even the absolute wisdom of Socrates’ ideal Guardians does of the more native and ordinary process we typically employ not justify epistemarchy. whenever we lose our keys or try to find our way in an airport.8 Robert B. Talisse is assistant professor of philosophy at Dewey’s epistemology is anti-Platonist in that it begins not Vanderbilt University. He has published extensively on with the mind beholding eternal objects but with the practical political philosophy and American pragmatic natural- affair of confronting and resolving problems. A further and ism, and his latest book is Democracy After Liberalism: even more important contrast between Dewey and Platonism Pragmatism and Deliberative Politics (Routledge, 2004). lies in Dewey’s rejection of the idea that knowledge can be attained by an individual act of cognition. Unlike Platonic

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 36 one open to hearing new ideas and unfamiliar considerations and to exploring new possibilities. It is a life of what Dewey called “growth.”11 Second, as Dewey places experimental “. . . John Dewey has given us … a vision of in­quiry at the heart of the democratic life, democratic commu- democratic politics that can accommodate nities must be strongly committed to a substantive system of public education. As Dewey argued in his 1916 masterpiece, the Platonic intuition that political legitima- Democracy and Education, a democratic education is one cy must be tied to wisdom without inviting in which pupils master the attitudes and procedures neces- sary to proper inquiry and intelligent action. This involves epistemarchy.” more than gaining competency in key areas of the curric- ulum; it involves the cultivation of the skills necessary to the intelligent application of one’s curricular competence theoria, Deweyan inquiry is essentially a social enterprise. in conducting new inquiries and addressing new problems. On Dewey’s view, inquiry requires a community of inquir- Finally, Deweyan democracy places upon the ordinary citizen ers; accordingly, knowledge is not grasped by an individual, the responsibility to engage in public inquiry. In contrast to but practiced by a community. That is, according to Dewey, knowledge is essentially a kind of social undertaking; it is “intelligence,” the ongoing practice of experimental reevalu- ation, reexamination, and reconstruction of our ideas, ideals, “. . . a properly inquiring community is nec- habits, and institutions.9 essarily a democratic community, and only Political wisdom could not be the possession of a single individual or an elite group but could be attained only by a a democratic community can be politically community of social inquiry. In this way, Dewey is able to wise.” acknowledge what I think is correct in Platonic political phi- losophy, namely, that political legitimacy is tied to political wisdom; however, Dewey eschews epistemarchy because polit- ical wisdom is not an individual achievement, but the ongoing practice of a community that properly inquires. Of course, our popular democratic practice, which too often calls upon such a community recognizes its own fallibility; no conclusion citizens to identify with a pre-packaged political agenda, the of inquiry is final or beyond revision, and thus no policy that Deweyan view calls us to commit primarily to the project of would cripple or foreclose further inquiry is acceptable. In continuing inquiry. Accordingly, it calls us to combat uncriti- short, a properly inquiring community is necessarily a dem- cal and nonexperimental intellectual habits. That is, Deweyan ocratic community, and only a democratic community can be democrats must defend the processes of intelligent inquiry politically wise. with great vehemence against all forms of dogmatism, myste- A few important implications follow. First, on Dewey’s view rianism, and supernaturalism. The Center for Inquiry is hence democracy is not strictly speaking a kind of state or a collec- a fundamental democratic force and vital testimony to the tion of political institutions; democracy is rather a way of life.10 legacy of John Dewey. Specifically, it is the life of collective and cooperative experi- mental inquiry at all levels of social association. Such a life is

Notes (1929) reprinted in Jo Ann Boydston, ed., The Later Works of 1. Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (New York: Free Press, John Dewey, Volume 4 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University 1922). Press). 372. John Stuart Mill, Considerations on Representative 7. John Dewey, Freedom and Culture (New York: G.P. Government­ (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). Mill Putnam’s Sons, 1939). Reprinted in Jo Ann Boydston, ed., The writes, “No one but a fool, and a fool of a peculiar description, feels Later Works of John Dewey, Volume 13 (Carbondale: Southern offended by the acknowledgement that there are others whose Illinois University Press), p. 108. opinion, and even whose wish, is entitled to a greater amount of 8. On this, see Dewey’s Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (1938), consideration than his” (p. 335). Mill goes on to suggest that those especially Chapters 2 and 3. who are “graduates of universities” and that “labour with their 9. Robert B. Talisse, On Dewey: The Reconstruction of heads” should be given “two or more votes” at the polls (p. 336), Philosophy (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 2000). See Chapter 4 for claiming that “in this direction lies the true ideal of representative a full treatment of Dewey’s experimentalist epistemology. government” (p. 337). 10. See Dewey’s Freedom and Culture, especially Chapter 3. Jane Mansbridge, Beyond Adversary Democracy (Chicago: 6, and also Sidney Hook’s essay “The Democratic Way of Life” University of Chicago Press, 1980). (in Robert B. Talisse and Robert Tempio, eds., Sidney Hook on 4. Michael Sandel, Democracy’s Discontent (Cambridge: Pragma­tism, Democracy, and Freedom (Amherst, N.Y.: Pro­ Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 24. metheus Books, 2002). 5. Plato, Republic, Grube Translation (Indiana: Hackett, 1992), 11. John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy. Reprinted in 473d. Jo Ann Boydston, ed., The Middle Works of John Dewey, Volume 6. For this view, see John Dewey, The Quest for Certainty 12 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press), p. 181.

37 http://www.secularhumanism.org Oct./Nov. 2004 Thy Will Be Done, on Earth Things are worse than you think as It Is in Texas Joe Bageant

ot long ago, I pulled my car up alongside a tiny wooden church in the woods, a stark, white frame box my family built in 1840. From Nthe wide-open front door, the Pentecostal preacher’s message echoed from within the plain wooden walls: “Thank you, Gawd, for giving us strawng leaders like President Bush during this crieeesis. Praise you, Lord, and guide him in this battle with Satan’s Muslim armies.” If I had chosen to go back down the road a mile or so to the sprawling new Bible Baptist church— complete with school facilities, pro- fessional sound system, and in-house television production—I could have heard approximately the same exhortation. Usually offered at the end of a prayer for sons and daughters of mem- bers in the congregation who are serving in Iraq, it can be heard in any of the thousands upon thousands of praise temples across our republic. sup- After a lifetime of identity conflict, I have come to port is accept that, blood-wise, if not politically or spiritually, limited to these are my people. And, as a leftist, it is very clear to me a few urban these days why urban liberals not only fail to understand these pockets on each coast people but do not even know they exist, other than as some and along the upper edge of the general lump of ignorant, intolerant voters called “the reli- Midwestern tier states. Most of the rest of the nation, the gious Right” or the “Christian Right” or “neo-con Christians.” much-vaunted heartland, is the dominion of the conservative But until progressives come to understand what these people and charismatic Christian. Turf-wise, it’s pretty much their read, hear, are told, and deeply believe, we cannot understand country, which is to say it presently belongs to George W. Bush American politics, much less be effective. Given fundamen- for some valid reasons. Remember: He did not have to steal the talist Chris­tianity’s inherent cultural isolation, it is nearly entire election, just a little piece of it in Florida. Evangelical, impossible for most enlightened Americans to imagine, in born-again Christians of one stripe or another were then, and honest human terms, what fundamentalist Americans believe, are now, 40 percent of the electorate, and they support Bush let alone understand why we should all care. 3–1. And as long as their clergy and their worst instincts tell For liberals, to examine the current fundamentalist phe- them to, they will keep on voting for him, or someone like nomenon in America is to accept some hard truths. For him, regardless of what we view as his arrogant folly and starters, we libs are even more embattled than most of sub-intelligence. Forget about changing their minds. These us choose to believe. Any significant liberal and progressive Christians do not read the same books we do, they do not get their information from anything remotely resembling reason- ably balanced sources, and, in fact, consider even CBS and NBC super-liberal networks of porn and the devil’s lies. Given how fundamentalists see the modern world, they may as well be living in Iraq or Syria, with which they share approximately Joe Bageant is a senior editor at the Primedia History the same Bronze Age religious tenets. They believe in God, Group and writes from Winchester, Virginia. This is Rumsfeld’s holy war, and their absolute duty as God’s chosen excerpted with permission of the author from an article nation to kick Muslim ass up one side and down the other. In originally published at http://www.dissidentvoice.org. other words, just because millions of Christians appear to be

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 38 dangerously nuts does not mean they are marginal. alive, we talked about the Rapture. And when he asked me, Having been born into a Southern Pentecostal/Baptist “Will you be saved? Will you be there with me on Canaan’s family of many generations and living in this fundamentalist shore after the Rapture?” I was forced to feign belief to give social landscape means that I gaze into the maw of neo-con a dying man inner solace. But that was the spiritual stuff of Christianity­ daily. Hell, sometimes hourly. My brother is a families, and living and dying, religion in its rightful place, the fundamentalist preacher, as are a couple of my nephews, as way it is supposed to be, personal and intimate—not political. were many of my ancestors going back to God-knows-when. Until recently, I’d never heard the Rapture spoken about in the My entire family is born-again; their lives are completely context of a Texan being selected by God to prepare its way. Now, however, this apocalyptic belief, yearning really, “Given fundamentalist Christianity’s drives an American Christian polity in the service of a grave and unnerving agenda. The pseudo-scriptural has become an inherent cultural isolation, it is nearly apocalyptic game plan for earthly political action: To wit, the Messiah can only return to Earth after an apocalypse in Israel impossible for most enlightened Americans called Armageddon, which the fundamentalists are promoting to imagine, in honest human terms, what with all their power so that the Rapture can take place. The first requirement was, the establishment of the state of Israel. fundamentalist Americans believe, let alone Done. The next is Israel’s occupation of the Middle East as a understand why we should all care.” return of its “Biblical lands,” which, in the reconstructionist scheme of things, means more wars. These Christian con- servatives do not believe that peace can lead to the Rapture; focused inside their own religious community and on the time indeed, they think it impedes the 1,000-year Reign of Christ. when Jesus returns to Earth—Armageddon and the Rapture. So anyone promoting peace is an enemy, a tool of Satan, Only another liberal born into a fundamentalist clan can hence the fundamentalist support for any and all wars Middle understand what a strange, sometimes downright hellish fam- Eastern, in which their own children die in what is often ily circumstance it is—how such a family can love you deeply yet despise everything you believe in, see you as a humanist instrument of Satan and still be right there for you when your “If perpetual war is what it will take, back goes out or a divorce shatters your life. Between such times, I wait rather anxiously and strive for then let it be perpetual. After all, perpetual change, for relief from what feels like an increased stifling of war is exactly what the Bible promised. Like personal liberty, beauty, art, and self-realization in America. They wait in spooky calmness for Jesus. They believe that, it or not, this is the reality (or prevailing until Jesus does arrive, our “satanic humanist state and feder- unreality) with which we are faced.” al legal systems” should be replaced with pure “Biblical law.” As much as liberals screech in protest, few understand the depth and breadth of the rightist Christian takeover that’s viewed by Christian parents as a holy martyrdom of its own underway. They catch the scent but never behold the beast kind. “He (or she) died protecting this country’s Christian val- itself. The other day I heard a liberal Washington-based ues.” One hears it over and over from parents of those killed. political pundit on National Public Radio say the radical If we are lucky as a nation, this period in American his- Christian Right’s local and regional political action peak was tory will be remembered as just another very dark time we a past fixture of the Reagan era. I laughed out loud (it was managed to get through. Otherwise, one shudders to think of a bitter laugh) and wondered if that pundit had ever driven the logical outcome. Tens of millions of hard-working, earnest twenty miles eastward on U.S. Route 50 or into the suburbs American Christians see it as a war against all that is un-bib- of Maryland, Virginia, or West Virginia. The fellow on NPR lical, the goal of which is complete world conquest or, put in was a perfect example of the need for liberal pundits to get Christian terminology, “dominion.” They will have no less than their heads out of the sand, get outside the city, quit cruising the “inevitable victory God has promised his new chosen peo- the Internet, and meet some Americans who do not mirror ple.” Screw the Jews, they blew their chance. If perpetual war their own humanist educations and backgrounds. If they did, is what it will take, then let it be perpetual. After all, perpetual they would grasp the importance the Rapture has taken on war is exactly what the Bible promised. Like it or not, this is in American national and international politics. Despite the the reality (or prevailing unreality) with which we are faced. media’s shallow interpretation of the Rapture’s significance, The 2004 election, regardless of its outcome, will not change it is a hell of a lot more than just a couple hundred million Left that. Nor will it necessarily bring ever-tolerant liberals to Behind books sold. The most significant thing about the Left openly acknowledge what is truly happening in this country, Behind books is that, although they are classified as “fiction,” the thing that has been building for a long, long time—a holy most fundamentalist readers I know accept the series as an war, a covert Christian jihad for control of America and the absolute reality soon coming to a godless planet near you. It entire world. Millions of Americans are under the spell of an helps to understand that everything is literal in the fundamen- extraordinarily dangerous mass psychosis. talist-voter universe. Pardon me, but religious tolerance be damned. Somebody Personally, I’ve lived with the Rapture as the psychological- had to say it. ly imprinted backdrop of my entire life. In fact, my own father believed in it until the day he died, and, the last time I saw him

39 http://www.secularhumanism.org Oct./Nov. 2004 RESPONSE Science Is Objective analysis rules Not Philosophy Patrick Frank and Thomas H. Ray

e must know the foundations of sci- described nor verified. ence in order to understand just what B-type hallucinations that can be both objectively described sort of knowledge it represents. It’s and verified. also important to know this when contesting ideas with such W “Objective description” means an unambiguous mathematical people as creationists and postmodern skeptics. If science claim—one that has only a single meaning. It is indistin- is based on philosophy, as Massimo Pigliucci wrote in Free guishable from a testable theory. “Verified” means that, if the Inquiry (“Creationism vs. Scientism,” Summer 2003), then the conditions entering your prior hallucination repeat, the hallu- knowledge it offers is no better than the axioms and assump- cination recurs in the same form as before. Our metaphorical tions it asserts. Disputing creationism or postmodernism then B-type hallucinations, in other words, are not distinguishable becomes­ no more than a competition of opinions. Professor from objectively verifiable observations. This means that both Pigliucci’s article offers us an opportunity to dispel some the theoretical description and the experience (observation) mistaken notions about its fundamentals of science that are of the hallucinations are independent of your subjective inner holdovers from its philosophical induction period. Following judgment about them. that, we will discuss what science actually is. Therefore, the interpretation of metaphorical B-type Mistaken Notions hallucinations (observations) is not concerned with meta- In his article, Professor Pigliucci writes: [T]he practice of science is built on several fundamental philo- sophical assumptions, and axioms: realism, the idea that there “. . . science is an objective method is a unique and consistent reality “out there”; naturalism, the supposition that the universe can be explained entirely of analysis, not a philosophy.” in terms of natural phenomena; Occam’s Razor, the idea that one should attempt to explain phenomena by avoiding use of superfluous hypotheses; and Hume’s dictum, a fundamental component of skepticism that requires extraordinary evidence for extraordinary claims. physical claims about the phenomena—about the “nature of nature”; it is concerned with the method by which the These ideas are very widespread. One encounters them often phenomena are described. This method is indistinguishable in conversations about the elements of science. However, they from the objective theory and the repeatable observation and are all either mistaken or mischaracterized. Science is based experiment of science. on no such axioms or assumptions, because science is an All B-type conditions meet the criteria of objective science. objective method of analysis, not a philosophy. We can show The method requires no external, i.e., Platonic or metaphys- this briefly, taking the ideas in their turn. ical, “reality.” It requires only that we attain the method of objective description and verification for our hallucinatory Is “Realism” Necessary to Do Science? inputs. In that case, a body of knowledge can be built up that Let’s suppose metaphorically (not metaphysically) that you were would be indistinguishable from the science we know today. a disembodied mentality with a consciousness full of detailed The critical point here is that the source of our metaphorical and fine-grained hallucinations instead of perceived physical B-type hallucinations, of our sensory inputs, doesn’t matter. It sensation. Would it be possible to do science? doesn’t matter if we are all brains in vats having B-type hallu- Suppose you were able to divide your hallucinations into cinations.1 All that matters is that we have them and that they two sorts: meet our objective criteria. All of science follows from that. A-type hallucinations that can be neither objectively The methodological criteria of science propose objective description of phenomena and theory, not philosophical cau- Patrick Frank works at the Stanford Linear Accelerator sality. They hypothesize that something like our metaphorical Center, and Thomas H. Ray is a technical writer. B-type hallucinations, i.e., results or data that can be both objectively described and verified, can be found, described,

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 40 and explained. The practice of science is a continual test of “nature” in order to bolster or justify the interpretation of a that hypothesis. As Jacob Bronowski elegantly said, “All sci- result. Nature is merely everything that science describes. As ence is the search for unity in hidden likenesses.”2 more phenomena impinge upon us, our description of nature expands to accommodate them. If so-called supernatural phe- Does Science Require “Naturalism”? nomena were accessible to science, the supernatural would be Science is the philosophical position of “naturalism” by default demoted to the natural by philosophers. To scientists, howev- only if it is described as the explanation of natural phenom- er, what was “supernatural” would only be one more observa- tional result that has been explained by an unambiguous and “Scientists are opportunists because they objective theory but with no superfluous appeal to the nature of nature; that is, no appeal to philosophy. must go where the data lead and the theo- Einstein characterized the scientist as appearing to be ries point. That is the meaning of ‘data-driv- a realist, as opposed to actually being one. The appearance extends­ only “insofar as he seeks to describe a world indepen- en.’” dent of the acts of perception.” This is identical to the criterion of objectivity noted above: observation and experiment that are ena.3 However, all we factually know about nature is what independently verifiable and free of opinion or personal belief. science informs us in our theories. If our knowledge of nature This means that results are objectively communicated in a consists only in what science tells us, then saying that science common language by mathematical standards that are closed to is the production of natural explanations reveals nothing interpretation. For example, the primary result of the theory of about science. That explanation is circular: science is the nat- special relativity, E = mc2, refers to a very specific equivalence ural explanation of nature. But science is not philosophy—not about nature—but is knowledge for its own sake. So if searching for “natural” explanations does not describe “A foundation in the criteria of objectivity science, what does describe it? In a revealing conversation with Niels Bohr about science, Einstein said: rather than in the perception of natural phenomena frees science from any inherent The reciprocal relationship of epistemology and science is of noteworthy kind. They are dependent upon each other. connection to philosophy.” Epistemology without contact with science becomes an empty scheme. Science without epistemology is—insofar as it is think- able at all—primitive and muddled. However, no sooner has of energy and mass. The claim is that whatever I measure from the epistemologist, who is seeking a clear system, fought his my position in space-time can be shown objectively to agree with way through to such a system, than he is inclined to interpret the thought-content of science in the sense of his system and what you measure from yours. What we mean, then, by “closed to reject whatever does not fit into his system. The scientist, to interpretation,” is that the theory of relativity describes however, cannot afford to carry his striving for epistemological only its own standard and offers one and only one interpretive systematic that far. He accepts gratefully the epistemological meaning. No other standard of meaning has any relevance to the conceptual analysis; but the external conditions, which are observations it commands. On the other hand, the standard of set for him by the facts of experience, do not permit him to let himself be too much restricted in the construction of his con- one theory neither dictates nor obviates any other measurement ceptual world by the adherence to an epistemological system. standards of any other theories (such as quantum mechanics). He therefore must appear to the systematic epistemologist All good theories in science must hew to this same standard of as a type of unscrupulous opportunist: he appears as realist internal unity of meaning—of closed interpretation. insofar as he seeks to describe a world independent of the acts of perception; as idealist insofar as he looks upon the concepts s ccam s azor hilosophy and theories as the free inventions of the human spirit (not I O ’ R P ? logically derivable from what is empirically given); as positivist The testability of scientific theories makes Occam’s razor an insofar as he considers his concepts and theories justified only obvious consequence of the method. That is, superfluity makes to the extent to which they furnish a logical representation of no independent predictions. Theory is pared to explanation relations among sensory experiences. [Italics added.]4 plus prediction. More than that provides no useful theoretical Let’s repeat the relevant crux of that, “[T]o the systematic content. Occam’s razor is therefore less philosophy than a epistemologist [the scientist must appear] as a type of unscru- form of scientific housekeeping necessitated by the strict cri- pulous opportunist. . . .” This opens a critically central point terion that all theoretical content be predictive. regarding science and the scientist. Scientists are opportun- o xtraordinary laims eally ists because they must go where the data lead and the theo- D E C R ries point. That is the meaning of “data-driven.” A foundation Require Extraordinary Evidence? in the criteria of objectivity rather than in the perception of Finally, Hume’s dictum about extraordinary evidence is useful natural phenomena frees science from any inherent connec- only if one wants to put off the claims of “It’s a miracle!” by tion to philosophy. creationists. Within science, an extraordinary claim, such as The methodology of science can be extracted from Einstein’s that continents move their vast bulk through the sea, is met by words above. Science inheres methodological opportunism.­ very ordinary evidence; in this case, laser interferometry from The progress of science exactly tracks what has worked to space. Almost all the claims of modern science are extraordi- explain the details of prior data and to predict what is to be nary: causeless universes from quantum mechanics; chemical discovered. Nowhere do scientific journals describing pro- biogenesis from atomic theory plus micro-paleontology; intel- gressive results invoke “naturalism,” or make an appeal to ligence from evolutionary biology. None of those extraordinary

41 http://www.secularhumanism.org Oct./Nov. 2004 deductions require extraordinary evidence. They are the the- oretical outcomes of our attempt to explain ordinary evidence gathered over years. What Is Science? So, if science is not realism plus naturalism, what is it? In the Notes sparest terms, all of science reduces to theory and result.5 Neither alone is sufficient. The content of science journals is 1. Our thanks to physicist Robert Reiland for forcefully making this analogy and for reviewing this manuscript little more than that. What remains of science after the relent- prior to submission. less winnowing by scientists is no more than that. Published 2. Jacob Bronowski, Science and Human Values (New science seeks to eliminate superfluities, retaining only knowl- York: Harper Torchbooks, 1956), p. 23. edge that is measured by objective standards. That is the 3. A useful review of the philosophical approaches to explaining what science does is Robert W. Proctor and E. knowledge we call “objective.” It is independent of anything J. Capaldi, “Empirical Evaluation and Justification of Meth­ we can say about it. odologies in Psychological Science,” Psychological Bullet­ No finite amount of experimental data can ever prove a in 127 (2001): 759–72. scientific theory. Scientific theory displays strength exactly 4. Paul Arthur Schilipp, Albert Einstein: Philosopher- Scientist (Cam­bridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, because of its vulnerability to falsifying data.6 Scientific theory 1949), Neils Bohr’s report of conversations with Einstein is progressive because it remains subject to being discarded and Einstein’s reply. and replaced by a better theory that supports more, or dif- 5. T.H. Ray, “When Science Becomes Mathematics: ferent or contradictory, data. The content of theory does not The New Demarcation Problem,” Karl Popper Centenary determine the contents of our observations and experiments Congress: Volume of Abstracts (Vienna: Karl Popper Institute and the University of Vienna, 2002). The abstract as it would do if science truly were axiomatic. is available in pdf file format at: http://www.univie.ac.at/ Science is not philosophy. That disparity was settled in the karlpopper2002/. sixth century b.c.e., when Thales of Miletus decided to test his 6. Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations (London: ideas against objective phenomena. It’s just taken us another Routledge and Keagan, 1963). 2,600 years to recognize that distinction.

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free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 42 RESPONSESPECIAL Of Course, Science But some assumptions are required Is Not Philosophy Massimo Pigliucci

welcome Frank and Ray’s discussion of my article in claims I make for a philosophical basis to science. First, they Free Inquiry as an opportunity to clarify some points deny that “realism” (i.e., the assumption of an objective reality that I evidently did not sufficiently explain. Let me independent of the observer) is necessary for the practice of Istart by completely agreeing with the authors on one point: science. Curiously, they do so by means of a thought experi- most decidedly, science is not philosophy, nor have I ever ment (a philosophical device, if ever there was one!) imagining claimed that. What I am defending is the proposition that a virtual reality world of hallucinations in which one could still science is made possible by some philosophical assumptions. do science as long as some of the hallucinations had the prop- These assumptions go unexamined by scientists, and rightly erty of coherence and repeatability. But what on Earth would so, since it is the business of scientists to “get results” within guarantee such a property if not the existence of an inde- a certain framework, commonly referred to as naturalism. It pendent reality? Dreams and hallucinations are well known is the business of philosophers, on the other hand, to consider precisely for their idiosyncratic and unpredictable manifesta- the logical foundations and reasonability of such assumptions. tions. It will not do to imagine that such a virtual world were From this, however, it simply does not follow that “if science put in place by a network of computers as in the Matrix mov­ is based on philosophy . . . then disputing creationism or post- ies, for, in that case, there would be an independent “reality,” modernism becomes no more than a competition of opinions.” the one imposed by whoever is programming the computers. Consider a parallel case from everyday experience. If your car Without the assumption of independent reality, science cannot breaks down, you are very likely to adopt the philosophical possibly aspire to objectivity of results. assumption of naturalism and go to a mechanic to attempt to Next, Frank and Ray tackle “naturalism,” the idea that sci- fix it (this is probably the case even if you are a fundamental- ence by definition can only work with natural (as opposed to supernatural) explanations. The authors make an interesting move here, claiming that science is a matter of getting predic- tions right, not of explaining nature. I beg to differ. The reason “The authors [Frank and Ray] . . . make an we value science is exactly because we think we are better at explaining nature as science progresses. Indeed, it is easy to interesting move here, claiming that science demonstrate that one can make the right predictions by using is a matter of getting predictions right, not the wrong theory: consider the fact that an infinite number of mathematical functions can predict the same set of empirical of explaining nature. I beg to differ.” data; if each function corresponds to a different theory, how are we to tell which theory is correct? As an aside note, I strongly disagree with Frank and Ray that “God did it” can ever be counted as an explanation just ist creationist). More important for the issue at hand, even if because “it cannot be refuted where objective knowledge is several mechanics cannot find an explanation for why the car lacking.” “God did it” isn’t an explanation, because it doesn’t doesn’t start, you will take the scientist’s practical stance of give us an account of how God did what he allegedly did. An junking the vehicle and getting a new one, still retaining the explanation is not a fancy label for “I don’t know” but a com- conviction that there is indeed a natural explanation for the plex (not necessarily mathematical, by the way) articulation of breakdown, but it just happens that there are not enough clues how things happen to be. nor bright enough mechanics to find it. However, while it isn’t Third, we get to Occam’s Razor, which Frank and Ray true that it is a matter of opinion whether the car works or not, simply say is not a philosophical assumption, but rather is you are assuming that God didn’t break it, because there is “necessitated by the strict criterion that all theoretical content no way you can disprove such a supernatural “explanation.” be predictive.” Things are not that simple for two reasons: Frank and Ray then turn to an examination of the four first, it would be very difficult to argue that all theoretical content of a given scientific discipline be predictive at any Massimo Pigliucci is in the Department of Ecology and particular moment. If that were the case, new theories would Evolution at the State University of New York at Stony rarely be scientific, because they tend to be only very partial- Brook. See www.rationallyspeaking.org for more of his ly predictive. Consider superstring theory in physics: at the work.

43 http://www.secularhumanism.org Oct./Nov. 2004 moment it makes no testable predictions at all, and yet it is not obtainable by ordinary means. He meant that we need being seriously (and rightly) considered by physicists because an amount of evidence proportional to the claim. If I claim it is too early to dismiss it, saying that it will never be able to that I crossed the street and got myself a soda at the vending make useful predictions. Second, as argued above, science is machine, you need no evidence at all to believe me; my word not just about prediction, it is an empirically based account of is enough because you have no reason to think I’m lying and the world. Occam’s Razor helps us make such accounts more the claim is perfectly ordinary. But if I claim to have levitated intelligible to humans, but does not guarantee the truth of the over the street and landed safely on the other side, you will accounts: the world could, for all we know, include additional (reasonably) require plenty of evidence before you believe me. entities that are theoretically incapable of providing us with That is why a lot of ordinary science—contrary to popular further explanatory power, and yet happen to exist. It may belief—never actually gets independently confirmed: it’s just turn out, for example, that kitchen tables are held together too boring to bother. But when one claims to have discovered by the fundamental physical forces and are also surrounded cold fusion, you can bet that several other laboratories will by colorless, odorless, and massless elves that do absolutely immediately attempt to replicate the alleged finding. The more nothing but are there all the same. If that were true, science extraordinary the claim, the more stringent the standard of would be an incomplete account of reality, but nonetheless evidence required to believe it. (As an aside, Hume’s argument the best one we can get (because there is no way to test the against miracles was that they are so extraordinary that no properties of the invisible elves). amount of evidence would actually suffice to establish them.) Finally, we get to Hume’s dictum, rephrased by Carl Sagan So, what kind of activity is science? As philosopher Daniel as “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Dennett wrote: “There is no such thing as philosophy-free Here, Frank and Ray take Sagan a bit too literally and do science; there is only science whose philosophical baggage is not seem to have a sense of what Hume actually said. They taken on board without examination” (Darwin’s Dangerous state: “Within science, an extraordinary claim, such as that Idea, p. 21). While this is a much needed call to scientists to be continents move their vast bulk through the sea, is met by a bit more humble about their exaggerated claims of absolute very ordinary evidence; in this case, laser interferometry from objectivity and truth, it is no opening at all for creationists and space.” First off, the specific example is anachronistic, since postmodernists. In fact, to argue that unless science is com- Wegener’s­ theory of continental drift was generally accepted pletely objective then it must be entirely subjective commits before laser interferometry from space was possible. It became one of two well-known philosophical fallacies (depending on accepted when geologists figured out a good mechanism that how exactly the argument is phrased): the slippery slope or would make continental drift possible. Second, Hume did not the false dichotomy. See? Philosophy is useful. suggest that we need extraordinary evidence in the sense of

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free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 44 CHURCH-STATE UPDATE Tom Flynn stitutional amendment to outlaw same- Lincoln­ Gardens (Franklin, New Jersey), ¸Bush Campaign Targets Churches. sex marriage. The amendment never was a 7,000-member mega­church with an The George W. Bush re-election cam- likely to pass, which would have required 80,000-square-foot, $25 million physical paign has sent a memo to volunteers who a two-thirds vote. Critics charge that plant. The church bills itself as among are active in their churches, tasking them Republican Senate leaders forced the vote the “leaders . . . in the faith based com- with no less than twenty-two “duties” partly to create an opportunity for conser- munity development movement.” While including: urging pastors to conduct voter vatives to grandstand in debate and partly remaining active in his ministry, Soaries registration drives, passing out campaign as a ploy to put Democrats on the record served as a U.S. congressman and as materials in church, and even slipping with an “anti-family” vote. After the smoke New Jersey’s Secretary­ of State. Late in church directories to party headquarters. cleared, the brouhaha may have served 2003, President Bush appointed Soaries The Bush team calls all of this nonparti- principally to highlight divisions be­tween to chair the Election Assistance Commis­ san, but others are skeptical. “Any coor- Republicans eager to prevent “societal sion (EAC), a constitutionally dubious dination between the Bush campaign and decline” and Republicans who view feder- new body with the weirdly Orwellian mis- church leaders would clearly be illegal,” al intrusion into the regulation of marriage sion of giving federal help to states to run observed Barry Lynn of the watchdog as usurping states’ rights. better elections. Through it all, Soaries group Americans United. continued to preach at First Baptist. He ¸Election-delay Idea Had Church-State publicly chafed at conditions at EAC, to ˘No to Vouchers. The Colorado Link. Much has been said about the pro- which he and his fellow commissioners Supreme Court struck down a school posal to delay elections in the event of a were appointed nine months late. Starved voucher program, ruling that it violated terrorist attack—most of it harshly crit- for funds and office space, EAC accom- the state’s constitutional requirement ical. (After all, Lincoln managed to fight plished little. (For example, only nine of for strict local control of school funding. the Civil War—talk about homeland inse- the fifty states it is supposed to be helping The program would have given vouchers curity!—without delaying the election of expect to meet a 2004 deadline for creat- to poor students who attend low-per- 1864.) Too little has been said about ing voter registration databases.) Out of forming public schools. DeForest Soaries Jr., who first swayed this background came the bold and, many Homeland Security director Tom Ridge to would say, constitutionally tin-eared ˘No to Marriage Amendment. The U.S. ponder the idea. As it turns out, Soaries— election-delay proposal. In any case, for Senate handily defeated a proposed con- make that the Reverend Soar­ies—is a better or worse the Election Assistance walking church-state scramble. He is Commission­ is finally on the map. Tom Flynn is editor of Free Inquiry. senior pastor at First Baptist Church of

WORLD REPORT by the Iranian authorities and the death ˘The dispute that has been raging Bill Cooke penalty reimposed. Dr. Aghajari has for months about the wording for the been under varying levels of state con- European Union constitution is over. finement since 2002, when widespread Powerful delegations from the Vatican ¸As if the Roman Catholic Church doesn’t student unrest followed his arrest for and other European church organiza- have enough trouble, a new scandal has supposedly “insulting religious values.” tions had been lobbying to bulk up ref- blown up in Austria, when computers He has been in trouble ever since he said erences to Christianity and God in the loaded with graphic pornography, includ- that Iranians shouldn’t have to follow European constitution. Well, happily, ing the abuse of minors, were seized mindlessly what the mullahs say. Dr. neither Christianity nor God made it from a seminary at St. Pölten, west of Aghajari is a practicing Muslim and vet- into the final version, which refers only Vienna. The pornography was just the eran from the war against Iraq between to the “cultural, religious and human- latest scandal to emerge from St. Pölten, 1980 and 1988, when he lost a leg fighting ist inheritance of Europe, from which which had already had its rector and for his country. have developed the universal values of vice-rector resign after photographs of the inviolable and inalienable rights of them fondling seminary students were ¸It is one of the sad injustices of the the human person, democracy, equality, splashed across an Austrian tabloid jour- world that Mother Teresa, whose relief freedom and the rule of law.” A truly nal. Catholic claims to have learned seri- work in India was at best negligible, excellent result. ous lessons from earlier sexual abuse is lionized as the finest woman since scandals seem hollow in the light of this Mary, while Dr. Indumati Parikh, who ¸We reported in the previous issue the new outrage. died on June 17, 2004, and whose work savage attack by Muslim fanatics ear- really was worthy of praise, is known lier this year on the Bangladeshi intel- ˘The ongoing struggle of the Iranian dis- to only a few outside India. Dr. Parikh, lectual Dr. Humayun Azad. Once he was sident Dr. Hashem Aghajari took a step a trained gynecologist, worked tireless- well enough to travel, Dr. Azad went to in the right direction in June. In the pre- ly in the slums of Mumbai, providing Germany for a period of recuperation vious issue of Free Inquiry, we reported contraceptives and medical advice to and study. But days after arriving in that Dr. Aghajari had been rearrested slum women. She founded the women’s Germany, Dr. Azad was found dead in organization Streehitakarini to empow- Bill Cooke is Transnational director of his apartment. We can only hope there er women at the lowest levels of Indian the Center for Inquiry– Transnational. will be a thorough investigation into the society. cause of Dr. Azad’s death.

45 http://www.secularhumanism.org Oct./Nov. 2004 GREAT MINDS

is the aim of theosophists,­ who find some truth in all religions, including Christianity, but do not believe that any The Humanism of religion embodies absolute­ and complete truth. Theosophists­ “admit the existence of a God—not necessarily a personal God. To them God is Nature and Nature L. Frank Baum God.” While we today may associate the- osophy with esoteric mysteries, occult Katharine M. Rogers studies, and spiritual planes populat- ed by invisible spirits, many theos- he marvelous land of Oz is a utopia dentally, who started him on his career ophists in Baum’s time thought of it where people are happy because as a fantasy writer by suggesting he rather as a rational attempt to discover Tthey are prosperous and valued. publish the stories he told his children.) truths not yet known. Theosophy sat- They are good because happy people Gage maintained that the established isfied the intellectual and emotional have no motivation to be malicious. churches were “the bulwark of wom- needs of people who could not accept Their natural inclination is to help each an’s slavery” and tirelessly rebutted the orthodox religion and blind faith but al-­ other, consider each other’s feelings, self-serving rationalizations of patri- so needed to believe in something beyond and respect everyone for what he or she archal religion. However, although she the material world. Theo­sophists saw is—whether man, woman, child, animal, themselves investigating the spiritual robot, or patchwork girl. Laws are min- world exactly as scientists investigate imal and reasonable, and law enforce- the physical world; in both cases, the aim ment is no problem because people have was control of natural forces, whether no motive to disobey the law. When physical or mental and moral, and the problems appear in the Oz books, the methods were the same—observation of characters draw on their own enterprise, objective phenomena, framing of hypoth- ingenuity, and common sense to solve eses, and testing them by experiments. them. There is no mention of divine sanc- Theosophy was emphatically human­ ­­ tions because none are needed. The only ist, teaching that people should look for church in Oz is a piece of bric-a-brac in strength within themselves rather than the Dainty China Country of The Wizard appealing to God; everyone has latent of Oz, which is accidentally smashed by a abilities that can be developed through sweep of the Cowardly Lion’s tail. resolution and effort so as to master In the Oz books, L. Frank Baum’s oneself and the forces of nature. While rejection of organized religion is implicit. a conventionally religious person prays But in other contexts, he spelled out his for help, a theosophist depends upon views explicitly. At the age of fifteen, he him- or herself. Similarly, Baum’s heroes had mocked believers with “The True consistently solve difficulties by drawing Origin of the Cardiff Giant,” verses he on their own courage and enterprise. wrote and published in his family news- Nine months after his first editorial, paper: the alleged giant, a ten-and-a-half- Baum proceeded to an open attack on foot stone figure, had been buried by a conventional religion while still main- L. Frank Baum c.1908. Prints and Photographs, local con artist but was widely accepted Library of Congress. taining the importance of spiritual life. as a petrified man from the race of giants “Fully two thirds” of the American peo- described in the Bible, left behind by the ple are unchurched, he declared, and Flood. By Baum’s mid-thirties, when he rejected traditional religion, she believed this percentage will become greater was editing The Aberdeen Saturday in the reality of spirit; she found a basis because “The people are beginning to Pi­oneer, a local newspaper in South for her faith in theosophy. Like other think. While everything else has pro- Dakota,­ Baum was a committed unbe- freethinkers, including Annie Besant and gressed, the Church alone has been try- liever. In his very first issue, he wrote an Elizabeth Cady Stanton, she was attract- ing to stand still,” teaching “the same editorial celebrating “the age of Unfaith.” ed by the theosophists’ claim to provide old superstitions, the same blind faith in He had probably been listening to a rational basis for belief in a spiritual the traditional Bible, the same precepts his mother-in-law, the eminent suffragist world. Baum, too, was not satisfied with of salvation and damnation.” As “peo- Matilda Joslyn Gage. (It was she, inci- atheistic materialism. “Unfaith,” he said ple have been growing more liberal in in his editorial, did not mean atheism, thought . . . Their reason revolts from” Katharine M. Rogers’s L. Frank Baum: but “rather an eager longing to pene- such teachings. This does not mean that Creator of Oz recently appeared in trate the secrets of Nature” regardless the world must be entirely abandoned to paperback. of orthodox religious restrictions. This secularism, but only that priests must

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 46 “acknowledge their fallibility . . . abol- ish superstition, intolerance and bigotry . . . establish the true relations between God and Christ and humanity . . . accord justice to Nature and love and mercy to the All-High . . . reconcile reason and religion and . . . let the people think for themselves.” A priest should not think all is well just because his church is filled, his salary is forthcoming, and his congregation does not protest against his precepts. For nine out of ten of them do not come out of devotion. Business­ men go to church because they need to be considered solid citizens, and women go to maintain their position in society. “Insincere and indifferent men, fash- ionable and unthinking women: these are your church-goers.” People of intel- ligence and character are “Studying sci- ence” which “we know to be true.” A month later, deeply discouraged The main cast of the classic film “The Wizard of Oz” is shown in this undated publicity photograph. Shown (L-R) are the Cowardly Lion played by Bert Lahr, The Scarecrow played by Ray Bolger, Dorothy played by Judy Garland and the because practically every political cause Tin Woodsman played by Jack Haley. fsp/HO-Photo By Turner Entertainment Co./Warner Bros. REUTERS he had fought for had just been defeated at the polls, Baum was prompted by the president’s Thanksgiving­ proclamation by the same laws. These laws were not which horrifies fundamentalists to this to write a withering editorial. “It’s a pret- ordained by a personal god, and humans day, came directly from Gage. ty custom, this Thanksgiving,” he wrote, could and should learn to understand Baum went closer to direct mockery “and the hollowest and most in­sincere them through scientific and religious of orthodox piety in two of his non-Oz of all the mockeries which usage has inquiry. Baum’s created world is likewise fantasies, where he allegorically sati- accustomed us to. The way we do it is governed by the physical and moral laws rized the orthodox concept of heaven. to prepare a better dinner than we can of an all-embracing order. His magic Trot, the girl protagonist of The Sea afford, and overload our stomachs to usually operates in accordance with nat- Fairies, travels under the sea and meets an alarming degree. One man out of ural (though hidden) laws and is anal- many marine creatures. Among them are a hundred and one woman out of fifty ogous to science and technology in our the mackerel, who eagerly take the bait goes to church and hears the minister world. Gage had developed­ this concept and the hook because they are convinced tell how much they have to be thankful in her major work, Woman, Church, and that when one of them is jerked out of for, and a few sound their own hearts the water and disappears “he has gone and decide that the blessings which they to glory—which means to them some have attained are very meager, and are “In the Oz books, L. Frank unknown, but beautiful sea.” A mackerel owing fully as much to their own unaided Baum’s rejection of orga- laments that someone has got the hook exertions as to the grace of God.” It was before him and refuses to believe that brave of a small-town editor to defy pub- nized religion is implicit. But his friend has gone, not to glory, but into lic opinion in this way, and he must have in other contexts, he spelled someone’s frying pan for dinner. When been motivated by a strong antipathy to Trot worries about the fate of so many conventional piety. out his views explicitly.” pretty fish, a mermaid tells her that they Such explicit cynicism would obvious- are needed to feed other creatures and ly have been out of place in Baum’s fan- would soon clog the oceans if none were tasies for children. These take place in State, where she discussed the Church’s destroyed, so “it is just as well they are an ideal world conceived by the imagina- persecution of witches as a conspicuous thoughtless and foolish.” This is no world tion, not bound by physical circumstance example of its oppression of women. run by divine providence but an imper- or everyday probability—although,­ for Witches, she said, were proto-scientists, sonal nature governed by the survival of Baum, it had a subjective reality just whose penetration into the secrets of the fittest. as valid as the objective reality that we nature and control of its invisible powers Baum’s most detailed satire of the see around us. In theosophy, he found seemed like magic to an ignorant age. orthodox concept of heaven appears, a framework for such a world with- It was not intrinsically evil or presump- remarkably, in Policeman Bluejay, a out resorting to conventional religious tuous to have or use this knowledge, book for small children. The protagonists beliefs. Theosophy envisioned a cosmos though it is forbidden by orthodox the- are two children transformed into larks, in which physical and spiritual reality ology; magic powers are evil only if they who live with the other small animals in were part of one great whole, filled with are used for evil purposes. The concept a forest where owls kill to eat and human beings seen and unseen and governed of good witches in The Wizard of Oz, hunters slaughter animals for fun. In the

47 http://www.secularhumanism.org Oct./Nov. 2004 center of this forest is the Land of Para­ lived there, but for some unknown crime subjects, does bring to mind God sur- dise, which is, appropriately, populated was driven away,” Baum clearly relates rounded by the heavenly hosts who sing entirely by birds of paradise. This happy it to the biblical Garden of Eden. But hosannas all day long. This is very differ- country is totally free of the dangers he does not portray it as the ideal place ent from the theosophist heaven, where and suffering that dominate life on the of orthodox Christian doctrine. Baum’s souls actively strive for improvement of outside; “there are no such things as unfallen creatures are vacuous and com- themselves and the world. Existence in quarrels or fighting, or naughtiness of placent. The Birds of Paradise do no Paradise contrasts strongly with the rich any sort; for as they have everything evil because they have no temptation: variety of Oz, where every human, ani- they want there is nothing to quarrel everything they need for a comfortable mal, or machine is accepted for what she over or fight for.” Only “one race” lives life is constantly provided, and conflict or he is, where conflicts arise because in Paradise, “every member of which is cannot exist in a society that has bound people express their differing opinions, quite particular not to annoy his fellows itself to bland conformity. As the preda- where characters must make an effort in any way.” Paradise is, indeed, per- tory but loving Owl points out, they “are to be good and achieve success. Baum fect; it is bathed in rosy light and filled not obliged to take life in order to live should not, perhaps, be described as with flowers and fruits that constantly themselves; so they call us savage and a secular humanist, for he seemed to regrow. The King Bird of Paradise, who fierce. But I believe our natures are as require belief in something that tran- is even more magnificently plumed than kindly as those of the Birds of Paradise.” scends the world we see around us. “The his subjects, welcomes the child-larks They have not sinned, but they have spiritual was a living experience for graciously, but immediately asks them not done any good either; it is scrappy him,” a close friend wrote. He believed to admire his beauty. In a sterile metal Policeman Bluejay who helps the child- in the reality of things unseen and in forest, he and the other male birds dance larks to survive. universal moral as well as physical laws. and admire their reflections in the silver Since paradise can mean heaven But he did not think in terms of a divine leaves. as well as the Garden of Eden, Baum lawgiver imposing laws on nature. And, This land without need, evil, or con- may have intended an even more dar- in Oz, he created an ideal world that flict is indeed a paradise in its sharp ing allusion. The King Bird of Paradise, works very well using only human wis- contrast to the stressful life of the forest. who exists solely to be perfect and to dom, human effort, and human goodwill. By referring to “a legend that man once be admired by his beautiful and sinless

APPLIED ETHICS

aware people will reject dogma as a guide to living. On the other hand, cooperation, empathic morality, and service to others Ethics for a appeal to reason because they enhance the physical and emotional quality of one’s own life. Such practice is rational Meaningful Life (life sustaining) because it makes one’s life significant and valuable in a way that transcends simply existing to preserve the gene pool. Richard Neavel S. Matthew D’Agostino writes1: “A ll people should be socially re­ around them. Since the prehistoric era, cogent account of meaning can, at least sponsible, and not just because­ humankind survived and prospered as to some extent, help set standards by A any authority—secular or reli- cooperative cultures evolved. Al­though which reflective people normally decide gious—ordains it. They should be re­ competition may drive individuals to how they ought to behave.” I interpret sponsible because, pragmatically, their excel creatively, ethical cooperation this as saying that the value, the sig- own lives are prolonged and made more enhances survival and pleasure of indi- nificance, the meaning that we each emotionally satisfying when they ac­ viduals and the species. assign to our own lives influence the knowledge and support the dignity and One should not be benevolent just ethical standards that we apply in our significance of their lives and the lives because someone dogmatically declares,­ interactions with others. Understanding “Altruism is good!” Dogmatic assertions the impact of our lives on others leads to Richard Neavel is a retired scientif- that “Thou shalt do this” or “Thou shalt moral behavior. ic advisor with Exxon Research and not do that” often conflict with a person’s I believe that all ethical standards are Engineering. He lives in Austin, Texas. reasoning and emotions. Therefore, self- based on three moral precepts, namely:

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 48 • responsibility for self; gate the species, all human actions that ish pain.”2 A benevolent society reduces • respect (love) of self; and contribute toward that purpose have collective pain and advances pleasure. • respect (love) for the world and our positive significance—they are good— Improving the dignity and quality of environment, especially the people whereas those that impede survival are lives of humans contributes to the will of in it. bad. To promote life is moral; to stifle self and others to live and support life. life is to deny life’s meaning. The life of my favorite composer, Duke Most universally revered humans The highest calling of human life Ellington, was significant not because are (or were) humanitarians who took worldwide is to recognize the potential he sired a son but because he contribut- responsibility for themselves and oth- for the extinction of human life and to ed artistically to our pleasure, thereby ers. When we follow their examples, we provide noble meaning to our lives. use humanity’s greatest asset, reason, enhancing our lives and our will to live. All morality is situational. The sig- to devise actions that will prevent that The most important, immediate ac­ nificance of one’s actions depends upon fate. Unless humankind devotes itself tion that humanity can take in order to the nature of the situations where one to survival of the species, the identities contribute to the survival of human life must act. I propose these three moral of religious faith, territorial subdivision, is to control human population at a sus- precepts, not as dogmatic truths, but and even family and individual person- tainable level. All cultures must work because they are predicated upon a still hood will become meaningless. When toward that goal lest we overwhelm the higher proposition that does approach you help humanity to survive with digni- capacity of the earth to support all life. an absolute truth. ty, you make your life significant. That I contend that the only ultimate value is the meaning of life. worth considering is one based on the I quickly add that “promote life” does ultimate purpose of humanity—the con- not mean every human must reproduce tinuance of our species. Life’s biolog- abundantly. We contribute meaningfully ical essences, the genes, ordain that by promoting the dignity of life. At a min- Notes indisputable truth. It is imperative that imum, human dignity depends on having 1. S. Matthew D’Agostino, “A humans recognize that we are our genes life support (food, pure air and water, Challenge for Naturalism,” Free shelter) and sufficient liberty to pursue Inquiry (Winter 2001/02): 38. and act accordingly. Every society’s 2. Cited by Mihaly Csikszent­ purpose, then, is the same as every indi- individual happiness, limited only by mihalyi, “If We Are So Rich Why vidual’s—survival. the constraint not to transgress on the Aren’t We Happy?” American Because the biological purpose of well-being of others. John Locke wrote Psychologist (October 1999): 821. human beings is to live and to propa- in 1690, “That we call good which is apt to cause or increase pleasure, or dimin-

GOD ON TRIAL

societies sometimes displayed a more tolerant attitude towards homosexuality than did Christians and Jews, Islamic The Strange Universe doctrine also contains such condemna- tions, which are in turn confirmed by actual practice (an extreme recent exam- ple being the period of Tali­ban control of of the Homosexual Afghanistan). Leaders and spokesmen of the three major monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity,­ and Islam) have Christian made and continue to make pronounce- ments that leave little room for doubt. A few more liberal churches have begun to soften their attitude and even, in David Rand some cases, to recognize same-sex cou-­ he unequivocal condemnation of ples and to endorse gay/lesbian rights homosexuality is a well-known and and gay marriage. However, they remain Those who would outlaw abortion, documented aspect of Christian largely marginal to the anti-gay Christian contraception and same-sex [mar- T tradition and history. This tradition is in riage] while extolling the family and mainstream. breeding are themselves the active turn rooted in the Judaism out of which Given this history, it is perhaps sur- agents of the destruction of the spe- Christianity grew.1 The Bible contains prising that over recent decades, a cer- cies. several explicit condemnations of homo- tain number of Christian organizations —Gore Vidal, The Nation, 1991 sexuality.2 Although historically, Islamic have arisen within the gay and lesbian

49 http://www.secularhumanism.org Oct./Nov. 2004 communities, the most well known being sexual repression, the existence of such preserving? Gay Christians don’t even the Metropolitan Community Church religious groups among those who should, consider such questions. Other religious (MCC). The emergence of gay Christian theoretically at least, know better is but non-Christian gays will grant that groups is a mainly American phenom- regrettable—but it is understandable. organized religion in general and Christian enon, with a few exceptions, mostly in The establishment of gay-positive institutions in particular are fundamental- other English-speaking countries. This Christian organizations could be con- ly flawed but insist on the importance of can be partly explained by the contra- sidered an appropriate slap in the face “true faith,” whatever that is. However, dictory nature of the American socio-po- of homophobic Christian traditionalists, if one accepts things on faith alone, then litical climate. The United States is a fighting fire with fire so to speak. Such how do we know that the Christian bigots wealthy, developed country with a rel- groups may also serve a positive support are not right after all? If we reject rational atively high average standard of living, role for individuals having difficulty deal- thought in favor of faith, then anything although major differences between rich ing with their homosexuality because goes, including homophobia. and poor certainly remain. The personal of the homophobia of their religious When confronted with scriptural condem- liberty of each individual citizen is con- heritage. However, that role should be nations of homosexuality, gay Christians sidered to be of the highest importance, temporary, because, in the final anal- like to fuss over translations, claiming despite recent serious encroachments on ysis, the negative implications of gay that the Bible condemns only promis- civil liberties by the current government. participation in the Christian community cuous homosexual behavior, or prosti- It is also a country whose founding prin- outweigh any positive effects. tution, etc. But in light of the realities of ciples, forged during the eighteenth-cen- Gay religionists will sometimes quote Christian practice, such subtleties are tury Enlightenment, include the principle John 8:7—“He that is without sin among just so much equivocation, and they mask of separation of church and state, despite you, let him first cast a stone”—in a another question that gay Christians significant and frequent violations in feeble attempt to deflect the disapprov- never confront: What does it matter recent years. On the other hand, religios- al of Christian homophobes. But this what is written in that old compilation ity, especially Christianity—including­ its statement is impotent. It is tantamount of tribal legends commonly known as fundamentalist varieties—is much more to an admission of guilt, arguing that the Bible? What interest, other than widespread in the United States than in the disapproval is justified but should historical or academic, do we have in its other developed countries, and religious be moderated because all are guilty. It is pronouncements about homosexuality homophobia remains dangerously strong. difficult to conceive of a weaker defense. or any other topic? The puritanism and religious fanaticism Why would any gay person act so The fact is that gays have been, and of the Pilgrims of seventeenth-century contrary to his or her own self-interest continue to be, psychologically brutal- New England live on in modern America. as to adopt a religion that promotes con- ized by the unrelenting Christian obses- tempt for homosexuals and teaches the sion with condemning any sexual behav- Looking for Respect in All homosexual himself or herself to wallow ior whose goal is not specifically one the Wrong Places in self-hatred and self-pity? Are they of reproduction. This, coupled with the duped by the disingenuous “love the underlying­ assumption—made by all the When a group of people has been stigma- sinner, hate the sin” rhetoric that some monotheisms—that religious faith is the tized, anathematized, and, treated with Christians homophobes use to soft-ped- sine qua non of morality and goodness, the most profound contempt by practically al their bigotry? (If the homophobes constitutes a powerful emotional assault all elements of society (and, in particular, were sincere, they would offer at least that has taken its toll on those who do by those who claim authority in matters of some support for gay rights in spite of not fit the mold and whose moral char- morality) as homosexuals have been, it is their moral disapproval.) acter is thus denigrated. to be expected that many members of that Some women freely embrace Islam, Even the popular expression “Gay group will attempt to present a very main- that most misogynistic of religions, so Pride” is merely the flip side of the stream, conformist image. This desire to should gays be any more immune to this shame that homosexuals are taught by wrap oneself in a cloak of respectability kind of error? But gay Christians go Christianity to feel. The expression is is undoubtedly a major factor underlying further, establishing separate organi- meant to be defiant, “in your face,” the foundation and growth of gay/lesbi- zations, even completely new churches, replacing­ shame with pride, but it does an Christian organizations. Given Christ­ in their race to adopt the faith of their as much to remind us of the shame as ianity’s notorious record of anti-homo- oppressors. The MCC, for example, calls to defy it. In reality, neither emotion— David Rand lives and works as a soft- itself “a worldwide fellowship of Chris­ shame nor pride—is appropriate. A ware developer in Montreal, Québec, tian churches with a special outreach person’s sexual orientation is just one Canada. He thanks Athéo, Dean Aus­ to the world’s gay, lesbian, bisexual detail of his or her nature, of which he or tin, and Robert Feinstein for their and transgender communities,” but we she need be neither proud nor ashamed. feedback during the preparation may simply call it a gay church, a of this article. A longer version is rogue church attempting to reconstruct The Ex and the Ex-ex available on the site Living Witho­ Christianity sans homophobia. If hell exists, it can surely be found in ut Religion, http://atheisme.ca/. This If Christianity is wrong about homo- the so-called ex-homosexual movement, of article­ is dedicated to the memory sexuality, as gay Christians claim, is it which the organization Exodus is per­haps of Maurice Flood, an American-born not reasonable to ask what else is mistak- the best known representative.3 While leftist who played a pivotal role in the en about that religion? Is there anything most homosexual Christian organizations Canadian gay movement of the 1970s. right about Christianity, anything worth attempt­ to construct a Christianity that

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 50 accepts and welcomes gays and lesbians, amongst Catholic priests has been an open Forced by personal circumstance to the ex-homosexual movement fully endors- secret for a very long time. Nevertheless, it question the sexual norm of obligato- es the traditional Christian condemnation. must be recognized that those priests ry heterosexuality, the homosexual can This movement, permeated with funda- who have sexual relations, and in partic- turn that marginal position to his or her mentalist dogma, claims that homosexu- ular homosexual relations, are complicit advantage by calling into question other ality can be cured, or at least controlled, in the Church’s hypocrisy. Decades ago, preconceived notions of normalcy, such through the assiduous application of when societal homophobia was stron- as the normalcy of religious faith, or Christian faith. This claim is pseudosci- ger, the priesthood may have appealed of patriotism, or of commonly accepted entific at best, as all attempts to change to some young gay men as an escape notions in any sphere of activity: political, sexual orientation have consistently failed from that repressive atmosphere, from social, artistic, aesthetic, etc. Instead, since first attempted decades ago. the all-pervasive pressure to marry, into the Christian homosexual squanders this Exodus and its ilk use the standard a safer, all-male milieu. But today, in the opportunity and rushes headlong in the Christian jargon of “love” and “respect” for early twenty-first century, when the situ- opposite direction, straight (pun intend- the homosexual person, but their underly- ation for gays has improved considerably ed) into the arms of banality and con- ing contempt is obvious. The “ex-homosex- (no thanks to Christianity), can we have formism. The obsession with proving that uals” of Exodus and similar groups are a any sympathy for a gay man who would the Bible is not really homophobic serves pathetic lot. They occasionally make head- be foolish enough to become a Catholic only to legitimize the biblical fetishism lines when they fall off the wagon, so to priest? Can he possibly be unaware of that is a major cause of our problems. speak, becoming ex-ex-homosexuals. The the absurdity of his career choice and the A friend expressed this sentiment in 1993 documentary film One Nation under anguish that it will bring him? Even the the following words: God features two men who were leaders ordinary gay man or lesbian who is simply This oppressive awareness of my of Exodus and left the organization after a member of the Catholic Church needs “difference,” although the cause of falling in love with one another.4 to start asking himself or herself some so much suffering, nevertheless per- serious moral questions—not questions of mitted me to see the world in a new Homosexuality and the sexual morality, but rather considerations light, to develop a particular sensibil- ity which has been very useful in my Catholic Church of intellectual honesty and integrity. search for a personal philosophy and No discussion of homosexuality and As for the association of gay Catholics in my life in general. It has given me Christianity would be complete without known as Dignity, the name itself is the ability to think more independent- special attention to the Roman Catholic a bad joke. Roman Catholic authori- ly and critically. Church, partly because of its central ties remain dogmatically opposed­ to any importance in Christendom but also open, honest expression of homosexual- because of the nature of the Catholic ity; the members of Dignity are thus in a Notes priesthood—in particular, mandatory false position, pretending to be Catholic 1. John Lauritsen, “Religious Roots celibacy. The sexual and physical child when they are in fact utterly rejected by of the Taboo on Homosexuality,” a abuse perpetrated by members of the the Church. Indignity would be a more pamphlet­ based on a 1974 presenta- Catholic clergy and “pedophilia” among appropriate name. tion made to the Scholar­ship Com­ To the naïve who would attempt to mittee of the Gay Academic Union in priests received enormous attention. New York City. As some observers pointed out, most reform the Catholic Church by asking 2. From the Old Testament: “Thou of the young males involved were ado- that priests be allowed to marry, or even shalt not lie with mankind, as with lescents, so a more appropriate term more improbably, that the Church accept womankind: it is abomination” (Lev­ would be ephebophilia. But even with homosexuality, we must put this ques- iticus 18:22, King James Version). “If a man also lie with mankind, as he that correction, most people seem to tion: Even if that were possible, why lieth with a woman, both of them have have missed the essential point: When bother? What is the point in attempting to committed an abomination: they shall an entire caste of men is accorded reform an institution that is, and always surely be put to death; their blood “divine” authority but denied a basic has been, fundamentally obscurantist? shall be upon them” (Leviticus 20:13, King James Version). From the New human need—sexuality—then attempts The Silver Lining Testament: “For this cause God gave to fulfill the forbidden need through them up unto vile affections: for even abuse of authority become inevitable. In their desperate quest for respectabil- their women did change the natural A priest is ostensibly God’s representa- ity, Christian homosexuals have com- use into that which is against nature: tive in his parish. It should come as no pletely missed the advantage of find- And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned surprise that some priests will abuse ing themselves in a marginal position in their lust one toward another; that authority to obtain sexual favors. with respect to the rest of society. The men with men working that which Combine this with the Christian con- alienation and rejection to which gays is unseemly, and receiving in them- demnation of sexual pleasure in general have typically been subjected has a flip selves that recompence of their error side—the cloud has a silver lining so to which was meet” (Romans 1:26–27, and homosexuality in particular, and King James Version). we have an explosive situation that the speak: a unique opportunity to observe 3. Exodus International, http:// Catholic hierarchy can no longer hide. and criticize more objectively the major- www.exodus-international.org. Catholic apologists wring their hands ity from which we have been excluded; 4. One Nation Under God, a 1993 and condemn the gay “infiltration” of the a view from the outside, offering the film directed by T. Maniaci and F.M. Rzeznik. clergy, but their protestations are hypo- possibility of rethinking that which most critical. The high proportion of gay men people take for granted.

51 http://www.secularhumanism.org Oct./Nov. 2004 HUMANIST LIVING Creeping Humanism Pat Inniss

very so often I find myself agreeing with Epeople with whom I normally disagree. Recently, I have found myself in substantial agreement­ with many Christian fundamentalist preachers on one very important claim that they frequently make: Humanism is taking over. We humanists are winning. l y It’s not a clean victo- The defy their church and ry in the sense that legions of people have stood up and declared themselves support abortion rights. Institutions are humanists. Freethought­ groups around changing, too. In England, government the country haven’t been flooded by schools will now include humanism and new members. Corliss Lamont hasn’t atheism when youngsters are instruct- appeared on a postage stamp. Contrary “While humanism as a ed about religion. Courts in the United to some of the more fantastic claims, States and Canada have declared laws there is no humanist conspiracy con- concept is increasingly banning same-sex weddings illegal. trolling the media and education. And controversial and on the Considering the increasing acceptance church participation hasn’t taken any of gays, reduced ethnic and religious great hit. In fact, making a big deal margins of acceptability, discrimination, disregard for religious about one’s religious beliefs has become many humanistic values prohibitions against a variety of sexual almost de rigueur for American politi- practices and birth control, and the uni- cians seeking election to higher office. and indeed large portions versal teaching of science contradicting What I am talking about is the victory of the humanist worldview traditional religious doctrine, one can of humanistic values. While humanism easily see a trend, if not a stampede, as a concept is increasingly controver- have been widely adopted.” toward the humanist philosophy. sial and on the margins of acceptabili- The issue of gay marriage is perhaps ty, many humanistic values and indeed most exemplary of creeping humanism. large portions of the humanist worldview Recent polls in the United States have have been widely adopted. Some reli- shown that over half of all persons gious observers have referred to this as under thirty approve of gay marriage. “creeping humanism.” I think this is an Yet the churches seem to be about 90 apt term to describe the slow and, I hope, progress that humanism has made is evi- percent opposed. People are obviously inexorable triumph of humanism over tra- dent in the behavior of people who would leaving behind their moribund religious ditional religious worldviews. The fun- never call themselves humanists or even traditions in favor of adapting to the damentalists are correct: Humanism is admit being influenced by humanism. obvious reality of gay and lesbian peo- destroying many of the traditional val- There are a number of areas in which ple being, well, just people. Given half a ues that characterized Western civiliza- religious people routinely disregard the chance, the truths found in everyday life tion—sexism, racism, and homophobia moral advice of their leaders and instead will trump biblical proscriptions every are on the run. determine the proper course based upon values that appear to be humanistic. time. That is, for all intents and purpos- Pat Inniss is vice president of Seattle Among most in American society it is no es, humanism, which is now the moral Atheists and a board member of longer considered normal to be racist or lingua franca in much of the world. African Americans for Humanism. homophobic. Catholic lawmakers open- I am not going to say that humanism

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 52 is sweeping the boards and that its How does a minister in the matter of largely through necessity and practicality ultimate triumph is on even the distant a few years go from railing against the more so than as a result of any cam- horizon. There are, to be sure, areas of evils of “the homosexual lifestyle” to paigning on their behalf by the relatively concern to any humanist, particularly in welcoming gays into the church? It took small number of card-carrying human- the United States where we see many of the Catholic Church one century to come ists. While the influence of a number of the reactions to the events of September around to evolution and three centuries dedicated and talented humanists has 11, 2001, particularly the erosion of to admit its error in censuring Galileo. been invaluable in planting the seeds individual rights and privacy, weighing Some religions preached against slav- of progressive humanist thought, there against the ascendancy of humanism. ery, but the pernicious evils of racism is still something about humanism, if We also witness the continued attacks and anti-Semitism hardly qualified as one ignores the implications for religion, on humanism and the demonization of a sin until very recently. The amount of that almost sells itself. In religiously plu- the entire secular outlook, as well as ral cultures, the only alternative to the overt state-sponsored attempts to rein- incessant internecine fighting that still vigorate religion with measures such as characterizes many parts of the world is President Bush’s Faith-based Initiative. the adoption of what is, in virtually every- While we may be seeing the early thing but name, a humanistic approach to signs of a decline in conventional religi- “Although religion has for- the management of society. In much of the osity, belief in other varieties of mumbo developing world, such as India, plagued jumbo appears to be as strong as ever, ever been a wellspring of by crippling battles between sects, sec- if not more so. Indeed, humanism would bigotry and ignorance in ularism is an ideal many hold in great seem to be less in favor now than in past esteem. When secular governments, how- decades if one were to read only pro- virtually every society, ever flawed, have been replaced by gov- nouncements by politicians and preach- it can change, and it is ernments with strong religious influence, ers. But while focusing upon the atheistic the results have rarely been to the benefit aspects of humanism, the guardians of changing to meet its mar- of human rights. For the good of society, orthodoxy have let the rest of humanism ket.” religious authority must remain strictly into the chicken coop. The result has in the private realm. This is a humanist been that the most definitive social devel- tenet whose wisdom is now increasingly opments, those most closely associated accepted. with religious values and dogma, seem to Religion is by no means surrendering be breaking in favor of humanism. to humanism, and there is little prospect The amazing thing about such devel- time it takes religion to admit its errors that religion will go away anytime soon. opments as the drive toward increasing may be decreasing, but it’s still not hap- Although religion has forever been a respect for the rights of gays and lesbi- pening nearly fast enough to keep up. wellspring of bigotry and ignorance in ans is the speed at which these chang- Mean­while, far and wide, we see that virtually every society, it can change, es are taking place. It would be easy men of the cloth very frequently have and it is changing to meet its market. to point out that these improvements feet of clay, with religion being some- But religion is following, not leading, were long overdue, but, considering that how linked to crimes ranging from child humanism. This might even be how soci- these issues have been on the table for abuse to genocide. Religion is in serious ety evolves toward a more complete accep- generations, the progress that has been danger of becoming an irrelevancy in tance of humanism. By coopting values made in recent years in many Western shaping morality. from humanism, religion im­proves. This is countries is impressive. This rapid rate To humanism’s credit, its ideals have not only a victory for humanism;­ it is also of change has left religion in the dust. emerged into their current prominence a triumph for humanity.

In Memoriam: Dr. Indumati Parikh (1918–2004)

Dr. Indumati Parikh, medical doctor and the doyenne of India’s siastic follower of M. N. Roy. During those days, Indumati served Radical Humanist movement, has died in Mumbai, India. She was humanist organizations and the party as a silent worker. known as “Indu Tai” to many social workers in India. After the death of her husband, Indumati plunged into humanist Indumati served the poor in Mumbai’s suburbs. Among her cho- activism, emerging as a leader whose influence was felt all across sen causes were population control, personal hygiene, and other India. She was elected as president of the Indian Radical Humanist social issues. Seeing the devoted treatment that she offered to the Association and served in that capacity for several years. She downtrodden, visiting humanists often compared her with Mother raised funds toward establishing the M. N. Roy Center at Mumbai, Teresa. U.S. humanist leader Edd Doerr described her as a greater a rallying point for radical humanists. personality that Mother Teresa. Dr. Parikh attended many humanist congresses, touring across As a student, Indumati came into contact with humanists India and abroad. She was honored by the International Humanist and gravitated towards humanist reformer M. N. Roy’s Radical and Ethical Union (IHEU), whose co-president, Levi Fragell of Democratic Party in the early 1940s. She married Dr G. D. Parikh, Norway, called her a humanist heroine. who served as rector of Bombay University and was also an enthu- — Innaiah Narisetti

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As Teresa herself openly acknowledged, The Myth and the Reality her work and that of the Missionaries of Charity is not about healing bodies, it is about saving souls. Teresa said, Bill Cooke “We are not nurses, we are not doctors, we are not teachers, we are not social workers. We are religious, we are reli- Mother Teresa: The Final Verdict, by Aroup Chatterjee (Kolkata, India: Meteor gious, we are religious” (p. 40). So the Books, 2003, ISBN 81--99248-00) 427 pp. Paper $14.99. squalor of the bodies is of less impor- tance than the effort through prayer for their souls. With this set of priorities in mind, it becomes understandable that o we really need another book on take about a hundred people, but is the nuns spend more time at prayer in Mother Teresa? For the answer rarely full. The men and women bil- the well-appointed and clean chapels Dto be yes, we would need some leted in Nirmal Hriday have their heads than tending to the relatively few people interesting new angle yielding a gen- shaved and sleep on camp stretchers the Order actually cares for. uinely new perspective. Fortunately, that date back to the First World War. A couple of times, Chatterjee seems with Aroup Chatterjee’s book Mother They are assigned a number and are to wander off track. He goes into a Teresa: The Final Verdict, we get just often treated poorly. And, as they die, lengthy excursus on the corruption sur- that. Chatterjee has two vital creden- almost all are baptized, with or without rounding many Nobel appointments, tials that make his work a worthwhile their permission. for instance. But he usually justifies contribution to the debate. First, he This, despite the flood of money and these digressions. The discussion on is intimately familiar with the part supplies of every kind that could trans- the No­bel situation, of course, is to give of Kolkata (once known as Calcutta) form the standard of care not only of the some context to Teresa’s own nomina- where the Missionaries of Charity are few people at Nirmal Hriday but across tion in 1979. There is also a long chapter situated, having grown up there and a far broader canvas. Much of the equip- on Kolkata itself, which, though very worked as a volunteer with the order. ment donated to the Missionaries of interesting, left one wondering what it Second, Chatterjee is a doctor and so Charity is sold or used inappropriately. was doing in a book on Mother Teresa. understands the medical issues in­volved The ambulances provided by foreign In fact, this chapter matters a lot. Chat­ in helping the poor in Kolkata. So, while charities for the mythical relief of des- terjee gives a history of the city, from Chatterjee’s writing and research skills titutes are actually used to ferry nuns the time when it was known as the are matched by other writers about around town. And a percentage of the Black Hole of Calcutta to the contem- Mother Teresa, none can match his huge sums of money Mother Teresa porary perception of the city—still a unique familiarity with the city in which attracted go to training priests and other fearsome hellhole where people die on the Teresa legend has been nurtured. specifically religious purposes rather the streets as a matter of course. One of the main impressions made by than the relief of poverty. No one has done more to cement the this book is how great the disconnect is The disconnect between fact and image of Kolkata as a teeming slum than between the propaganda and the truth. myth is just as apparent with regard to Mother Teresa and her boosters, but The image in the West is of a selfless education. In her interview with Malcolm few people have given any thought to order of nuns led by this diminutive Muggeridge (an early Teresa booster), the ruinous and self-fulfilling nature of heroine from the Balkans going around Teresa claimed that the Missionaries of these gloomy reports. Chatterjee calcu- Kolkata picking up the dying and the Charity educate “thousands” of destitute lates that the negative image of Kolkata destitute and taking them to its many children in Kolkata. The fact is that has cost the city $4.5 billion in lost hospitals, orphanages, schools, or other about two hundred children have a cou- revenue from tourism and investments charitable centers. In fact, the Missionaries ple of hours of tuition on the main build- that went elsewhere. How many millions of Charity has no hospital in Kolkata, ing’s roof and that much of that “edu­ of people could have been relieved of and neither do its nuns go around the cation” is spent learning the Catholic the need for charity had even a portion streets looking for destitute people to catechism. A blessed relief for them all, of that money actually arrived in the succor. The worst slum in the city does I’m sure. city? Elsewhere, Chatterjee criticizes not have so much as a soup kitchen Chatterjee offers two main reasons Mother Teresa for eclipsing other, far run by the Order. Its flagship operation for this disconnect between myth and more active charities in Kolkata, mak- in Kolkata, the hospice for the dying reality. On the one hand, there is the ing it hard for them to attract funds. known as Nirmal Hriday, employs no Western media’s myth machine, which Given the primitive level and quality of doctor, reuses syringes, has no refrig- loves a good story—a myth machine the support Teresa’s order provides in erated morgue, and enforces draconian sustained by the Catholic Church. But Kolkata, it would do the city a service rules about leaving one’s bed. It can the other reason for the disconnect is the by leaving altogether to allow other, better organized and more serious relief Bill Cooke is Transnational director of unwillingness of people, largely because efforts to receive some attention for its the Center for Inquiry–Transnational. of the media myth-making machine, to understand Mother Teresa’s­ real goals. more worthwhile activities.

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Not surprisingly, Chatterjee had beatification, found it difficult to cred- Teresa cannot be criticized in good faith trouble finding a publisher for such it Chatterjee with honest intentions. and that inconvenient facts are always an explosive book. The copy I read Predictably, Paul accused Chatterjee “out of context.” It is to be hoped that was published by the Indian publishing of quoting facts out of context, judging ad hominem attacks such as this will house Meteor, based in Kolkata. Neither with malicious intent, and being unable not deflect attention from this important is it a surprise that the Vatican high- to himself perform the good acts that book. Mother Teresa: The Final Verdict er-ups have been less than impressed. Mother Teresa did. lives up to its title. Father C.M. Paul, part of the group This criticism is unfortunate, to say overseeing Mother Teresa’s path to the least, because it assumes that Mother

concludes that Gandhi lied to the world A Critical Look at a and also concealed facts about his life in South Africa. The books note that Mr. National Hero Gandhi’s diary from his days in London consists of confessions and facts but that Mr. Mahadev Desai, a personal Innaiah Narisetti secretary of Gandhi and Manganial, a personal assistant, conspired to destroy the pages. Mr. Mahavevan gives details Gandhi: Behind the Mask of Divinity, by G.B. Singh (Amherst, N.Y.: of this conspiracy, which Gandhi was Prometheus, 2004, ISBN 157392-9980) 355 pp. Cloth $32.00. aware of but kept quiet. These books effectively document the time Gandhi spent in South Africa. After his return to India, Gandhi further developed his method of direct lbert Einstein said this about Africa was controlled by the British. social action based upon the principle Mohandas Gandhi: “Generations When he attempted to claim his rights called satyagraha, comprising courage, A to come will scarcely believe as a British subject, he was abused nonviolence, and truth. He believed that that such a one as this walked the earth and soon realized that all Indians in the way people behave is more important in flesh and blood.” South Africa suffered similar treatment. than what they achieve. Satyagraha This new critical investigation by G.B. Gand­hi would stay on in South Africa promoted nonviolence and civil disobe- Singh is an attempt at bringing the for twenty-one years, working to secure dience as the most appropriate methods Mahatma—or “Great Soul,” as Gandhi rights for Indian people there. for obtaining political and social goals. came to be known—down to earth. Mr. Mr. Singh’s book attempts to expose During his lifetime, Gandhi did not Singh presents the personal side of the racial prejudices of Gandhi and his like to be called either Mahatma or the Gandhi that is vastly underrepresented followers in South Africa and the some- father of the nation. But Gandhi’s true in Gandhian literature. times violent nature of his satyagraha greatness was in his ability to awaken Mr. Singh, who migrated from India movement there and asserts that facts a nation—politically—by speaking the and now lives in the United States, from that period were concealed as language that most Indians understood. researched Gandhi’s role in South Afri­ bio­graphers, in years to come, relied He mobilized India’s masses in the ca in the first decade of the twentieth primarily on Mr. Gandhi’s own writings struggle for freedom by representing century. Five out of the seven chapters rather than independent research. the spirit of revolt. in Mr. Singh’s book are devoted to the The author provides a lifeline for But he was also the patron saint of years between 1884 and 1914, when Gandhi and a select bibliography as the cult of Indian nationalism and tried Gandhi began practicing what would appendices. The book also comes with to mix politics with morality. He said la­ter become famous as satyagraha, three unusual caricatures of Gandhi: that the end doesn’t justify the means, his peaceful, nonviolent revolution. “Dawn of the New Gandhi,” “The Hindu but India’s nascent power politics ham- Gandhi studied law in London and Face of Gandhi the Avatar,” and “The strung even the Mahatma. returned to India in 1891 to practice as Christian Face of Saint Gandhi.” Gandhi miserably failed to achieve a lawyer. Two years later, in 1893, he While this aspect of Gandhi’s life is Hindu-Muslim unity, because both Hindu accepted a one-year contract to do legal not well known—even in India—there and Muslim attitude is tainted by ortho- work in South Africa. At the time, South have been some previous attempts doxy. Gandhi, essentially a political ani- by other authors to look at similar mal with some humanistic tendencies, Innaiah Narisetti, a humanist and a issues. T.K. Mahadevan, editor of succumbed to many fanatical beliefs. He writer, taught at university in India Gandhi Marg, a quarterly from Delhi, was a proponent of alternative medicines, and is chair of the International has published two books—The Year the need to protect the sanctity of cows, Humanist and Ethical Union’s com- of the Phoenix (1982) and Dwija: A protectionism, and wearing homespun mittee on child abuse by religions. Prophet Unheard (1977)—in which he clothes, and he actively opposed family

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planning. Co­lumbia University scholar, in reduc- would later die in a plane crash in Gandhi derived inspiration from ing the caste stigma that afflicted Taiwan during World War II, openly Henry David Thoreau’s Walden exper- India’s so-called Untouchables. This defied Gandhi, contesting and defeating iment in the United States and would push was subsequently enshrined in Gandhi’s chosen candidate for presiden- later become a key inspiration for the Indian Constitution, which made cy of the Congress party in 1938. Martin Luther King Jr.’s fight against the segregation and mistreatment of In his various writings, M.N. Roy, racial prejudices, further cementing his Untouchables a crime and punishable the well-known Indian humanist phi- myth. under law. But even today, a great deal losopher, exposed Gandhi’s fascist atti- But even Mahatmas need to be objec- remains to be done to really root out tud­es. Roy’s analyses of how India tively assessed. Attempts by authors this problem, especially in rural India. became free indicated that that freedom such as Mr. Singh to find the real Gandhi And that will depend on the continued stem­med primarily from the failure of are hampered by the immense body modernization of Indian society. (Dr. the British to sustain their colonies of fawning literature about the man— Ambedkar attempted to counter Hindu­ after the Second World War and Gandhi both from his own prolific writings and ism with Buddhism but failed to bring was just a catalyst. that of those closest to him. Mr. Singh Un­touchables into the fold of the latter Today, India’s younger generation de­serves credit for trying to shine a religion. He was disillusioned by his fail- hardly remembers Gandhi, paying trib- spotlight on a somewhat less vivid part ure to eradicate untouchability.) ute on his birthday and the anniver- of Gandhi’s life. Gandhi and the role he played in sary of his death. Political parties of Despite his deep-rooted beliefs, Indian independence was a matter of all hues, including the ruling Hindu- Gandhi was evolving even in his last some debate even during his lifetime, fundamentalist Bharatiya Janata Party, days. He began pleading for separation and several prominent Indians opposed invoke Gandhi’s name for their benefit, of state and religion and pushed for his views on many issues. Rabindra­nath even as they refuse to follow his prin- changes in India’s rigid caste system Tagore, a Nobel laureate for literature, ciples. Gandhi lives on in stories and (in articles in Harijan magazine during refused to oblige Gandhi, who had called myths, and Mr. Singh fears that Gandhi 1947). He sought decentralization of for burning all foreign-made cloth in favor has become­ a modern-day god. power and, despite being closely asso- of homespun clothing. Even Jawaharlal Despite his imperfections, chroni- ciated with the Congress party that Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister and cled previously by Mr. Mahadevan and would rule India for decades after that a close confidante of Gandhi in the strug- now by Mr. Singh, Mr. Gandhi’s role in country gained independence in 1947, gle for India’s freedom, criticized Gandhi India’s independence and his influence even pleaded for disbanding that party. for saying that an earthquake in north- over others, such as Martin Luther King Gandhi succeeded to some extent, ern India was the result of sinful behav­ - Jr. and Nelson Mandela, is good reason along with Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, a ior. And Subhas Chandra Bose, who for history to acknowledge

ious regarding the fundamentally reli- More Blather from Bill gious character of both Judaism and Christianity. Judaism, in its most tradi- tional form, is founded on the exclusive Hector Avalos allegiance to a god, whose name is usu- ally transcribed by scholars as Yahweh, and to the validity of the Law of Moses. Who’s Looking Out for You?, by Bill O’Reilly (New York: Broadway Books, Philosophy does not get more religious 2003, ISBN 0-7679--1379-5) 214 pp. Cloth $24.95. than this. Since Judaism sees the Law of Moses as still in force, and Christians do not (see Ephesians 2:15), then even ill O’Reilly, host of Fox News’ media (chapter 8). talking about a “Judeo-Christian” philos- The O’Reilly Factor, is now a Being a biblical scholar, I was most ophy is akin to speaking of a “Marxist- Bhousehold name and a best-sell- interested in Chapter 5 (“God Help Us”), Capitalist” philosophy. In his book, Jews ing author.­ In his most recent book, which centers on religion. Therein, and Christians: The Myth of a Common Who’s Looking Out for You?, O’Reilly O’Reilly returns to his perennial claim Tradition (1991), Jacob Neusner, one of provides ten chapters on various issues, that, “The United States was founded on the foremost scholars of Judaism today, ranging from folk music (chapter 1) Judeo-Christian philosophy, not a par- goes so far as to characterize the “Judeo- to problems with the Immigration and ticular religion” (p. 118). Our Constitution­ Christian” concept as a “lie.” Naturalization Service (chapter 3) to forbids favoring a particular religion, but Nor is O’Reilly very knowledgeable coverage of minority issues by the our government can favor a “philosophy.” about what the Ten Commandments More specifically, he lauds the use of the actually say. He tells us, “Americans Hector Avalos is associate professor Ten Commandments­ as the basis of our must behave according to an estab- of Religious Studies at Iowa State legal philosophy. lished moral code, and they chose the University. Apparently O’Reilly is blissfully obliv- Ten Commandments as a good model”

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(p. 118). But from a traditional Jewish man­kind for self-government . . . to In the end, O’Reilly does not seem to viewpoint, our American government and sustain ourselves according to THE be bothered by all of these complexities. Christianity are based on systematically TEN COMMANDMENTS” (p. 117). And To quote O’Reilly himself, “Here’s a destroying the Ten Commandments.­ For every good historian knows, of course, good example of my intellectual lazi- example, are we to believe that O’Reilly that this quotation is not found in any ness” (p. 196). To be fair, he was refer- (or our government) actually follows the authentic writings of Madison, but ring to his missed opportunities as host Sabbath commandment (Exodus 20:9–11) appears in conservative revisionist liter- of Inside Edition. But, on balance, this whose violation merited the death pen­ ature (e.g., David Barton’s The Myth of sentence also sums up well O’Reilly’s alty (Exodus 31:15)? Resting on Sun­day, Separation [Aledo, Texas: Wallbuild­ ­ views on the Bible and religion found in the first day of the week, rather than on ers, 1992] p. 120). his latest book. Saturday, the seventh day of the week, O’Reilly omits the better attested would also be a violation. If “Thou shalt opinion of Thomas Jefferson. In a let- not steal” (Exodus 20:15) has any mean- ter (February 10, 1814) to his friend ing, has Mr. O’Reilly forgotten that this Thomas Cooper, Jefferson discussed at country was founded on systematically length whether the Ten Commandments Early Mormon Documents, volume 5, Dan stealing Native American land? formed part of our Anglo-American legal Vogel, ed. (Salt Lake City, Utah: Signature And while O’Reilly believes that fear tradition. Jefferson replied, in part: “We Books, 2003, ISBN 1-56085-170-8.) 576 pp. of a higher power encourages “civility on may say they are not because they never Cloth $44.95. a mass scale,” he overlooks the fact that were made so by legislative authority.” the Ten Commandments applied mainly It is here that O’Reilly misses the This volume completes this series of to fellow members of the Israelite cov-­ fundamental difference between the source books about the early years of -enant­ community. Out­siders were fair Ten Commandments and our Consti­ America’s fastest-growing native-born game for complete extermination (see tution. The Ten Commandments out- religion. As such, these books repre- Deuteronomy 7:1–2), including women lined an exclusive relationship between sent the most authoritative compilation and children (see Joshua 6:21 and 1 one group and one deity. The deity, as of the origins of Mormonism and its Samuel 15:1ff). master, dictates the rules to his favored prophet Joseph Smith. They are indis- O’Reilly’s knowledge of early Amer­ group of vassals. The first three words pensable to both historians and critics ican legal history is even less impres- (“We the People. . .”) of the Preamble to alike and are published by Signature sive. For example, on p. 117 he quotes our Constitution­ show how diametrically Books, an independent company with a James Madison as follows: “We have opposed­ our legal system is to that of the remarkable record of competence and staked the future of all of our politi- Ten Commandments. It is the difference integrity in its field. cal institutions upon the capacity of between theocracy and democracy. —Paul Kurtz

(Letters cont’d. from page 9) and/or lower wages should result. 2004). I think the idea that religion is a This would be true unless each new “mind virus” has been around for some system. I know, and agree, that our pres- individual, simply by existing, gen- time—a quick Google of “meme reli- ent system is the best there is and has erates enough economic demand to gion” highlights this. But what Dawkins been remarkably successful. But it is not swell the amount of work to be done by brings to the table is an emphasis perfect, and in this area it surely needs the same amount that he or she swells on evolution and the way a characteris- improvement. the labor force, which strikes me as tic that aids survival in one environment Of course, such an improvement unlikely. (Even then, adding people can be co-opted, for better or worse, would not solve the population problem. surely wouldn’t increase the supply in another environment. Dawkins also But we do need to have the correct infor- of material, so overpopulation should takes the next critical step of making mation when we think about it. exert upward pressure on commodity predictions that would prove or dis- Karl E. Balliet prices, another net economic drag.) I’d prove his model. Bedford, Virginia welcome hearing from any economists I would like to add two more, half-se- among our readers. Has excess popu- rious, half-humorous predictions to this Tom Flynn replies: lation been studied as a possible drag list: (1) Religious belief will increase­ with on the U.S. economy, and, if so, what intelligence because intelligence is a mea- I’m an armchair philosopher, not an has been learned? sure of the ability to remember what is economist. But Mr. Balliet’s list of taught (hence the paradox of the deep- “work to be done, material available ly religious intelligent person); and (2) to do it, and people available to do The Miracle of Religious belief will decrease with cre- the work” seems to catalogue inputs ativity because creative people are able to essential to any economy. (I’d prob- Religion think beyond what they have been taught ably add technology to the list.) All (hence the eternal divide between the other things being equal, if one input I really enjoyed Richard Dawkins’s two- religious Right and the Hollywood Left). goes out of balance—in this case, too part article “What Use Is Religion?” (FI, Bill Hahm many people—higher unemployment June/July 2004 and August/September Bloomington, Illinois

57 http://www.secularhumanism.org Oct./Nov. 2004 Richard Dawkins presents the interest- The lack of known causes of important us well. I say “Yay!” for both its socialis- ing thesis that the well-nigh universal phenomena is one of the most common tic and capitalistic components. I’m not inclination to religious belief need not be reasons offered for the existence of God. embarrassed by either. explained on the basis of a quondam evo- From a Darwinian viewpoint, this Richard S. Russell lutionary advantage perhaps gone awry incorrect attribution of cause to a godly Madison, Wisconsin but possibly rather as the unintended entity is usually harmless to an individ- consequence of some otherwise adaptive ual (although religion can lead to signif- Paul Kurtz responds: trait. This proposal is appealing, but I icant harm to others). Misattribution of must quibble with the specific sugges- a cause poses a survival threat only if There is some confusion about the tion he gives for what this adaptive trait it prevents finding the true answer to meaning of the terms socialism and might be. (Professor Dawkins admittedly a question and if knowing that answer libertarianism. Socialism was widely takes pains to point out that his hypoth- has survival value. used to mean that the means of pro- esis is not wedded to any specific trait.) Religions are widespread, according duction and distribution should be His suggestion, namely that the to this hypothesis, because they are a nationalized, i.e., owned and man- clearly adaptive trait of children to side effect of a search for causality and aged by the government. Communists believe whatever grown-ups tell them are persistent because they are usually considered this to be a form of “eco- makes them ready receptacles for reli- “harmless” to Darwinian survival. nomic democracy,” although their gious dogma, is sound as long as we Anthony C. Lunn governments were soon transformed confine ourselves to children. However,­ Princeton, New Jersey into totalitarian regimes. Democratic although he doesn’t say so, Dawkins socialists, on the other hand, believed clearly intends the consequences of that political democracy and liberty this characteristic to continue through Embrace Your were essential and should never be ad­ulthood. But adults seem to have no compromised. problem in abandoning other firmly held Inner Socialist The term socialism is used as a bug- childish beliefs such as Santa Claus aboo by its critics and is considered a and the tooth fairy. Mankind appears In the August/September 2004 issue, let- moral ideal by its proponents. But to have been able to shed antiquated ter-writer Steven Walk quotes the stan- these express the ideological battles secular notions, but at best outmoded dard libertarian position that taxation of the past, for the social democratic religious beliefs only morph into other is theft, government is Satan, yada yada parties in Europe and throughout religious beliefs. yada, and therefore the humanist con- the world have largely abandoned Unfortunately, there seems to cern for fairness leads inevitably to the nationalization, and have defended be something qualitatively different evil of socialism. And, for some reason, mixed economies and the democratic between­ religious and secular beliefs in Paul Kurtz, in his response, feels com- society. our ability to give them up, whether as pelled to deny the label! Kurtz writes: The term libertarianism has been maturing individuals or collectively. “If taxation is impermissible, [then] how used to defend political liberty (civil Craig Stephan does one pay for the common defense, liberties), economic liberty (free mar- Ann Arbor, Michigan fire and police protection, the building kets), and moral liberty (autonomy of of bridges and highways? Surely in a the individual in the private sphere). democratic society, the people can vote Economic libertarians are critical of I agree with Richard Dawkins that a to pay for these services . . . without cat- excessive government regulation and direct Darwinian survival value of reli- egorizing them as ‘socialism.’” taxation; and they defend free enter- gions is hard to envisage. It does seem Oh, come off it, Paul. Of course this is prise as a powerful engine of econom- plausible that religion may well be a socialism, by any reasonable definition ic growth. Extreme libertarians wish mere side effect of another behavior that of the term. And so what? What are you to go further, when they reject all tax- has actual Darwinian survival value. ashamed of? Or afraid of? ation “as theft” and any regulation by One possible such behavior is Our society has chosen to provide the democratic state as “unjust.” a strongly evolved tendency to seek a minimum level—a floor or safety net I don’t see why we can’t bring understanding of events and causal- if you will—of the basic necessities of together both moderate approaches:­ ity. This has obvious survival value. life for all its citizens. Thus we all chip namely, encourage economic incen- Hu­mans’ ability to think, reason, and in, each according to her or his ability tives, free markets, and free trade seek causation greatly increased our to pay, for the aforesaid services, plus (unburdened by excessive regulation success as hunter-gatherers and avoid- water, the legal system, mail delivery, and taxation), yet at the same time ers of predation. and education (but not yet, regrettably, defend the moral principles of fair- However, the determination of the for housing or health care), which are ness, equity, and social justice, which true cause of complex phenomena can then available to all, according to need. include some regulation and taxa- be difficult or impossible. What caused Classic Marxist socialism. But only for tion for the public good. Perhaps we that earthquake (so that we avoid the the purpose of building the solid, soci- should call this “humanistic capital- next one)? What determines when it will ety-wide foundation atop which barely ism” or “libertarian social democ­ rain? Where did we come from? Where bridled capitalism runs wild to provide racy.” I think that secular humanism will we go when we die? When a cause all the stuff and services a modern soci- is encompassing enough to embrace or explanation is too hard to determine, ety may not need but wants in a torrid both points of view: libertarianism humans the world over postulate inter- ferment of free enterprise. and social democracy. vention by unseen, mysterious, entities. It’s a mixed economy, and it’s served

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 58 erer of “Lucy”) (USA) Sergeí Kapitza, chair, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology; vice president, Academy of Sciences (Russia) George Klein, cancer researcher, Karolinska Institute, Transnational INTERNATIONAL ACADEMY OF HUMANISM Stockholm (Sweden) ACADÉMIE INTERNATIONALE D’HUMANISME György Konrád, novelist, sociologist; cofounder, Affiliates of the The Academy is composed of nontheists who are: (1) Hungarian Humanist Association (Hungary) devoted to the principle of free inquiry in all fields of Sir Harold W. Kroto, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry (UK) human endeavor; (2) committed to the scientific out- Ioanna Kuçuradi, secretary general, Fédération look and the use of reason and the scientific method in Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie (Turkey) acquiring knowledge about nature; and (3) upholders of Paul Kurtz, professor emeritus of philosophy, State humanist ethical values and principles. University of New York at Buffalo (USA) Gerald A. Larue, professor emeritus of archaeology and HUMANIST LAUREATES biblical studies, University of Southern California at Pieter Admiraal, medical doctor (Netherlands) Los Angeles (USA) Shulamit Aloni, former education minister (Israel) Thelma Lavine, Clarence J. Robinson professor of phi- Ruben Ardila, psychologist, National University of losophy, George Mason University (USA) The Center for Inquiry–International­ Colombia (Colombia) Richard Leakey, author and paleo-anthropologist is affiliated with the following Kurt Baier, professor of philosophy, University of (Kenya) organizations around the world: Pittsburgh (USA) Jean-Marie Lehn, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry (France) Etienne-Emile Baulieu, Lasker Award for Clinical Jolé Lombardi, organizer of the New University for the Asia Medicine winner (France) Third Age (Italy) Indian Rationalist Association, Baruj Bonacerraf, Nobel Prize Laureate in Physiology or José Leite Lopes, director, Centro Brasileiro de Medicine (USA) Pesquisas Fisicas (Brazil) New Delhi, India Sir Hermann Bondi, professor of applied mathematics, Paul MacCready, Kremer prize-winner for aeronautical Atheist Centre, Vijayawada, India King’s College, University of London; Fellow of the achievements; president, AeroViroment, Inc. (USA) Royal Society; Past Master of Churchill College, Adam Michnik, historian, political writer, cofounder of Europe London (UK) KOR (Workers’ Defense Committee) (Poland) Instytut Wydawniczy “Ksiazka i Prasa” ul, Elena Bonner, author, human rights activist (Russia) Jonathan Miller, OBE, theater and film director, phy- Warsaw, Poland Jacques Bouveresse, professor of philosophy, Collège sician (UK) Russian Humanist Society, de France (France) Taslima Nasrin, author, physician, social critic Paul D. Boyer, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry (USA) (Bangladesh) Moscow, Russia. Vern L. Bullough, distinguished professor, University of Conor Cruise O’Brien, author, diplomat, University of Serbian-American Center, Southern California (USA) Dublin (Ireland) Belgrade, Serbia. Mario Bunge, Frothingham Professor of Foundations Jean-Claude Pecker, professor emeritus of astrophys- and Philosophy of Science, McGill University ics, Collège de France, Académie des Sciences South and Central America (Canada) (France) Asociación Mexicana Etica Racionalista Jean-Pierre Changeux, Collège de France, Institute Steven Pinker, professor of brain and cognitive sci- AC, Pasteur, Académie des Sciences (France) ence, MIT (USA) México City, México Patricia Smith Churchland, professor of philosophy, Dennis Razis, medical oncologist, “Hygeia” Diagnostic­ & University of California at San Diego; adjunct pro- Therapeutic Center of Athens S.A. (Greece) Asociación Ediciones de la Revista fessor, Salk Institute for Biological Studies (USA/ Marcel Roche, permanent delegate to UNESCO from Peruana de Filosofía Aplicada, Lima, Canada) Venezuela (Venezuela) Perú Sir Arthur C. Clarke, author, Commander of the British Max Rood, professor of law; and former Minister of Empire (Sri Lanka) Justice (Netherlands) Middle East Bernard Crick, professor of politics, Birkbeck College, Richard Rorty, professor of philosophy, University of The Institute for the Secularization of University of London (UK) Virginia, Stanford University (USA) Islamic Society (ISIS) Richard Dawkins, Charles Simonyi Professor of Public Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., professor of history, City www.secularislam.org Understanding of Science, Oxford University (UK) University of New York (USA) José M. R. Delgado, professor and chair, Department Léopold Sédar Senghor, former president of Senegal; Averroes and Enlightenment of Neuropsychology, University of Madrid (Spain) member of the Académie Française (Senegal) International Association, Daniel Dennett, director of the Center for Cognitive Jens C. Skou, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry (Denmark) Cairo, Egypt Studies, Tufts University (USA) J. J. C. Smart, professor emeritus of philosophy, Jean Dommanget, Belgian Royal Observatory Australian National University (Australia) Africa (in cooperation with African- (Belgium) Wole Soyinka, Nobel Laureate, playwright (Nigeria) Americans for Humanism) Umberto Eco, novelist, semiotician, University of Barbara Stanosz, professor of philosophy, Instytut Action for Humanism, Ogun State, Nigeria Bologna Wydawniczy “KsiÅÛka i Prasa” (Poland) Rational Centre, Accra, Ghana Paul Edwards, professor of philosophy, Brooklyn Jack Steinberger, Nobel Laureate in Physics (USA) College, City University of New York (USA) Svetozar Stojanovic,´ director, Institute for Philosophy The Uganda Humanist Association, Luc Ferry, professor of philosophy, Sorbonne University and Social Theory, University of Belgrade Kampala, Uganda and University of Caen (France) (Yugoslavia) Antony Flew, professor emeritus of philosophy, Reading Thomas S. Szasz, professor of psychiatry, State University­ Oceania University (UK) of New York Medical School, Syracuse (USA) New Zealand Association of Rationalists Betty Friedan, author, founder, National Organization Sir Keith Thomas, historian, president, Corpus Christi & Humanists, Auckland, New Zealand for Women (NOW) (USA) College, Oxford University (UK) Yves Galifret, professor emeritus of neurophysiology at Rob Tielman, professor of sociology, Universiteit voor International the University P. and M. Curie; general secretary of Humanistiek, Utrecht; former copresident, International­ International Humanist & Ethical Union, l’Union Rationaliste (France) Humanist and Ethical Union (Netherlands) London, Great Britain Johan Galtung, professor of sociology, University of Lionel Tiger, professor of anthropology, Rutgers—the Secular Organizations for Sobriety (SOS), Oslo (Norway) State University of New Jersey (USA) Murray Gell-Mann, Nobel Laureate; professor of phys- Mario Vargas Llosa, author (Perú) Los Angeles, United States ics, California Institute of Technology (USA) Simone Veil, former Minister of Social Affairs, Health, Adolf Grünbaum, professor of philosophy, University of and Urban Affairs (France) Pittsburgh (USA) Gore Vidal, author, social commentator (USA) Jürgen Habermas, professor of philosophy, University Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., novelist (USA) of Frankfurt (Germany) Mourad Wahba, professor of philosophy, University Herbert Hauptman, Nobel Laureate; professor of of Ain Shams, Cairo; president of the Afro-Asian Edward O. Wilson, Pellegrino University Professor, the biophysical science, State University of New York at Philosophical Association (Egypt) Buffalo (USA) Steven Weinberg, Nobel Prize winner; professor of Alberto Hidalgo Tuñón, professor of philosophy, physics, University of Texas at Austin (USA) Universidad de Oviedo (Spain) George A. Wells, professor of German, Birkbeck Donald Johanson, Institute of Human Origins (discov- College, University of London (UK) Agassiz Museum, Harvard University (USA)