EDWARD TABASH reviews Sam Harris’s Waking Up

CELEBRATING REASON AND HUMANITY December 2014/January 2015 Vol. 35 No.1

The Rise of Global Fundamentalism: Are Humanists Really ‘Winning’? LEAH MICKENS RONALD A. LINDSAY: The Pointlessness of Religious Morality Ophelia Benson | Russell Blackford Shadia B. Drury | Faisal Saeed Al Mutar 80% 1.5 BWR PD D/J 09 RYAN T. CRAGUN On the Evils of Santa Claus

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We are committed to the application of reason and science We believe in the cultivation of moral excellence. to the understanding of the universe and to the solving We respect the right to privacy. Mature adults should be of human problems. allowed to fulfill their aspirations, to express their sexual We deplore efforts to denigrate human intelligence, preferences, to exercise reproductive freedom, to have to seek to explain the world in supernatural terms, access to comprehensive and informed health care, and to look outside nature for salvation. and to die with dignity.

We believe that scientific discovery and technology We believe in the common moral decencies: altruism, can contribute to the betterment of human life. integrity, honesty, truthfulness, responsibility. Humanist ethics is amenable to critical, rational guidance. There are normative We believe in an open and pluralistic society and that standards that we discover together. Moral principles are democracy is the best guarantee of protecting human rights tested by their consequences. from authoritarian elites and repressive majorities. We are deeply concerned with the moral education We are committed to the principle of the of our children. We want to nourish reason and compassion. separation of church and state. We are engaged by the arts no less than by the sciences. We cultivate the arts of negotiation and compromise as a means of resolving differences and achieving mutual We are citizens of the universe and are excited by understanding. discoveries still to be made in the cosmos.

We are concerned with securing justice and fairness We are skeptical of untested claims to knowledge, in society and with eliminating discrimination and we are open to novel ideas and seek new and intolerance. departures in our thinking.

We believe in supporting the disadvantaged and the We affirm humanism as a realistic alternative to disabled so that they will be able to help themselves. theologies of despair and ideologies of violence and as a source of rich per sonal significance and genuine satisfaction We attempt to transcend divisive parochial loyalties based in the service to others. on race, religion, gender, nationality, creed, class, sexual orientation, or ethnicity and strive to work together for We believe in optimism rather than pessimism, hope rather the common good of humanity. than despair, learning in the place of dogma, truth instead of ignorance, joy rather than guilt or sin, tolerance in the place We want to protect and enhance Earth, to preserve of fear, love instead of hatred, compassion over selfishness, it for future generations, and to avoid inflicting needless beauty instead of ugliness, and reason rather than blind suffering on other species. faith or irrationality.

We believe in enjoying life here and now and in We believe in the fullest realization of the best and noblest developing our creative talents to their fullest. that we are capable of as human beings.

*by Paul Kurtz

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December 2014/January 2015 Vol. 35 No. 1

CELEBRATING REASON AND HUMANITY

20 The Rise of Global Fundamentalism: 32 Honest Atheism Are Humanists Really ‘Winning’? D. Cameron Webb Leah Mickens We are committed to the application of reason and science We believe in the cultivation of moral excellence. 37 In Praise of Statistics to the understanding of the universe and to the solving 24 In Defense of Scientism We respect the right to privacy. Mature adults should be Alexander Nussbaum of human problems. Mario Bunge allowed to fulfill their aspirations, to express their sexual We deplore efforts to denigrate human intelligence, preferences, to exercise reproductive freedom, to have to seek to explain the world in supernatural terms, access to comprehensive and informed health care, and to look outside nature for salvation. and to die with dignity.

We believe that scientific discovery and technology We believe in the common moral decencies: altruism, can contribute to the betterment of human life. integrity, honesty, truthfulness, responsibility. Humanist ethics is amenable to critical, rational guidance. There are normative We believe in an open and pluralistic society and that standards that we discover together. Moral principles are democracy is the best guarantee of protecting human rights tested by their consequences. from authoritarian elites and repressive majorities. We are deeply concerned with the moral education We are committed to the principle of the of our children. We want to nourish reason and compassion. separation of church and state. We are engaged by the arts no less than by the sciences. EDITORIAL LETTERS REVIEWS We cultivate the arts of negotiation and compromise 4 Religious Morality: Pointless, 19 as a means of resolving differences and achieving mutual We are citizens of the universe and are excited by 58 Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Worthless, and Utterly Subjective Without Religion understanding. discoveries still to be made in the cosmos. Ronald A. Lindsay DEPARTMENTS by Sam Harris

We are concerned with securing justice and fairness We are skeptical of untested claims to knowledge, 47 Church-State Update Reviewed by Edward Tabash OP-EDS ´ in society and with eliminating discrimination and we are open to novel ideas and seek new Rwanda’s Horror Twenty Years Later 7 Thirty Years Yule Free and intolerance. departures in our thinking. Edd Doerr 61 The Soul of the World, Tom Flynn by Roger Scruton We believe in supporting the disadvantaged and the We affirm humanism as a realistic alternative to 49 Faith and Reason Reviewed by Russell Blackford disabled so that they will be able to help themselves. theologies of despair and ideologies of violence and as a 8 The Dreams That Stuff Is Made Of C. S. Lewis: How the Atheist Academic James A. Haught Became the Lion of Christianity source of rich per sonal significance and genuine satisfaction 63 Atheist Awakening: Secular Activism Dale DeBakcsy We attempt to transcend divisive parochial loyalties based in the service to others. 9 The Roar of the Crowd and Community in America on race, religion, gender, nationality, creed, class, sexual by Richard Cimino and Christopher Smith, Ophelia Benson 52 Humanist Activism orientation, or ethnicity and strive to work together for We believe in optimism rather than pessimism, hope rather with a foreword by Martin E. Marty I’m an Atheist. Can I Be President? the common good of humanity. than despair, learning in the place of dogma, truth instead of Reviewed by Tom Flynn 11 Surprisingly Sensitive—Civility and Marcus J. Thompson ignorance, joy rather than guilt or sin, tolerance in the place Freedom of Speech We want to protect and enhance Earth, to preserve of fear, love instead of hatred, compassion over selfishness, Russell Blackford 53 Humanism at Large it for future generations, and to avoid inflicting needless beauty instead of ugliness, and reason rather than blind On the ‘Evils’ of Santa Claus POEM suffering on other species. faith or irrationality. 12 ISIS and the Future of Islam Ryan T. Cragun and the Arab World 31 Commute We believe in enjoying life here and now and in We believe in the fullest realization of the best and noblest Faisal Saeed Al Mutar by Jason Roberts developing our creative talents to their fullest. that we are capable of as human beings. 13 Vanquishing Evil OBITUARIES *by Paul Kurtz Shadia B. Drury 16 Gerald A. Larue, Humanist Laureate, 1916–2014 14 My Pleasures, My Vices Tibor R. Machan For a parchment copy of this page, suitable for framing, please send $4.95 17 Victor J. Stenger, Physicist to FREE INQUIRY, P.O. Box 664, Amherst, New York 14226-0664 15 Jesus, the Christian Seneca and Author, 1935–2014 Mark Rubinstein Editor Thomas W. Flynn Associate Editor Lauren Becker Managing Editor Andrea Szalanski Ronald A. Lindsay Editorial Columnists Ophelia Benson, Russell Blackford, Arthur L. Caplan, Greta Christina, Edd Doerr, Shadia B. Drury, Nat Hentoff, Tibor R. Machan, Faisal Saeed Al Mutar, Mark Rubinstein

Senior Editors Bill Cooke, Richard Dawkins, Edd Doerr, James A. Haught, Jim Herrick, Ronald A. Lindsay, Taslima Nasrin Religious Morality: Pointless, Worthless, Contributing Editors Roy P. Fairfield, Charles Faulkner, Levi Fragell, Adolf Grünbaum, and Utterly Subjective Marvin Kohl, Lee Nisbet

Assistant Editors Julia Lavarnway Mo Madden Literary Editor Cheryl Quimba Permissions Editor Julia Lavarnway Art Director Christopher S. Fix or a recent issue of Free Inquiry some prophet says God has said. To Production Paul E. Loynes Sr. (August/September 2014), I wrote ensure that subsequent generations an article discussing how morality have the benefit of these divine revela- Council for Secular Humanism has the objectivity that matters, tions, these secondhand statements are Chair Edward Tabash F without any reference to God or his typically set down in writing, and these Board of Directors R. Elisabeth Cornwell Kendrick Frazier commandments. To keep the article at writings assume the status of sacred Barry A. Kosmin a manageable length, I had to forgo dis- texts, for example, the Hebrew Bible Hector Sierra cussion of some interesting arguments. (a.k.a. the Old Testament), the New Leonard Tramiel Judith Walker One of the points I did not dwell upon Testament, and the Qur’an. Lawrence Krauss (Honorary) in the article is that reliance on God The problem is that once the prophet Chief Executive Officer Ronald A. Lindsay and his commandments as a moral has passed from the scene, it’s up to us guide actually makes morality more to interpret these texts. And the sacred Executive Director Thomas W. Flynn subjective; in fact, it makes morality texts of all three major monotheistic Associate Director Lauren Becker irredeemably subjective. You can jus- religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Director, Campus and tify anything and everything through Islam—are a hodgepodge of observa- Community Programs (CFI) Debbie Goddard religious texts. tions, comments, and thoughts that Director, Secular Organizations Let me expand on that point. It were set down at different periods of for Sobriety Jim Christopher seems to me an especially timely issue time and address a variety of different Director, African Americans for Humanism Debbie Goddard in light of President Barack Obama’s topics, often in contradictory terms. repeated assertions that “no God con- The Qur’an, which purports to have an Acting Director of Development (CFI) Jason Gross dones [the] terror” perpetrated by the advantage over the Hebrew Bible and

Director of Libraries (CFI) Timothy Binga fanatics of the Islamic State of Iraq the Christian New Testament because and Syria (ISIS). (See, for example, his it supposedly relies on one prophet Communications Director Paul Fidalgo speech to the United Nations General only, even acknowledges that it lends Database Manager (CFI) Jacalyn Mohr Assembly on September 24, 2014.) The itself to differing interpretations. In the Webmaster Matthew Licata president’s assertions present an inter- notorious Sura (chapter) 3, verse 7, the Staff Pat Beauchamp, Ed Beck, esting question. How do we know what Qur’an states: “It is He [God] who sent Melissa Braun, Shirley God has condoned or commanded? this Scripture down to you. Some of its Brown, Eric Chinchón, Roe Giambrone, Nora Hurley, Well, unless you’re a prophet who has verses are definite in meaning—these Paul Paulin, Michael Rupp, had the privilege of communicating are the cornerstone of the Scripture— Anthony Santa Lucia, Diane Tobin, Vance Vigrass directly with God or one of his angelic and others are ambiguous. The per- Executive Director Emerita Jean Millholland messengers, you must rely on what verse at heart eagerly pursue the ambi-

4 Free Inquiry December 2014/January 2015 secularhumanism.org guities in their attempt to make trouble ture depends largely on one’s preex- FREE INQUIRY (ISSN 0272-0701) is published bimonthly by the Council for Secular Humanism, a nonprofit educational and to pin down a specific meaning of isting beliefs. The religious have their corporation, P.O. Box 664, Amherst, NY 14226-0664. Phone their own: only God knows the true opinions about what’s right and wrong, (716) 636-7571. Fax (716) 636-1733. Copyright ©2014 by the Council for Secular Humanism. All rights reserved. No part meaning” (The Qur’an, trans. M. A. S. and these opinions shape and influence of this periodical may be reproduced without permission of Abdel Haleem, Oxford University Press, the interpretation of the relevant texts. the publisher. Periodicals postage paid at Buffalo, N.Y., and at additional mailing offices. National distribution by Disticor. 2004). It’s not the other way around. 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secularhumanism.org December 2014/January 2015 Free Inquiry 5 how clear the cited text may appear No problem. According to Carter, after slaughtering Protestants and vice versa to be; if you want to take a contrary prayerful consideration he came to real- because suddenly one morning some position, there’s always some way to ize that one has to distinguish between pope woke up and said, “My goodness, distinguish or creatively interpret your Paul’s statements of doctrine—which we’ve been misinterpreting Scripture opponent’s scriptural citation. are binding—and Paul’s statements of all along. We don’t have to burn here- A telling example of how one can advice—which are not binding. And tics.” Religious toleration in Europe and impose one’s views on an apparently how does one make that distinction? the Americas came about because of contrary text was provided, ironically, Carter is silent on this question (other the slow realization that it is more ben- by Yale law professor Stephen Carter, than his reference to prayer), but the eficial—and less costly—to cooperate who, a few years back, came out with answer is obvious: Paul’s statements and collaborate with people who hold a book titled The Culture of Disbelief of ignorable advice are whatever one different metaphysical views than it is (Anchor Books, 1994). The book’s doesn’t find congenial to one’s own to try to impose one’s views on them principal objective was to lament how outlook. Carter simply did what mil- by force. Morality is an institution for secular discourse was replacing reli- lions of believers have done before furthering human needs and interests, gious discourse about public-policy him and what believers do now. They and reasoning with each other about issues. According to Carter, one prob- cherry-pick those scriptural passages the best way to advance these inter- lem with the marginalization of reli- that support their position and explain ests and satisfy these needs is the only gious discourse is that without religious away contrary passages. reliable way to achieve the objectives validation, policy decisions lose their Because God says whatever we want of morality, one of which is to secure a authority because only God can serve him to say, he is no moral arbiter. peaceful, stable society. Instead, God is the ultimate ventrilo- The Qur’an is no more inherently quist’s dummy. We don’t even have to violent than the Bible (if you doubt worry about not having our mouths this, refresh your recollection by read- move. We move our mouths, and then ing about what happened at Jericho); we attribute what comes out of them nor are Muslims more belligerent than to God. Christians. Fanatics will become as rare “There is no scientific test, no To return to President Obama’s in the Islamic world as they are in the reference to undisputed histor- claims about ISIS: it is true that the West if and when the Islamic world ical facts, that will provide us vast majority of Muslims now reject the becomes more secular—when Muslims notion that Islam should be imposed by spend less time leafing through their with the basis for concluding force and that infidels must be slaugh- Qur’ans and listening to their imams that one theologian’s analysis is tered or forced into a subordinate sta- for guidance and more time talking to entitled to special deference.” tus. But one cannot argue against ISIS each other about this-worldly concerns, using the Qur’an or any other sacred such as how to make their societies text. That’s a fool’s game. For every more equitable and prosperous (hint: citation to the Qur’an to support the it would be enormously beneficial to claim that ISIS adherents have a per- make use of the intellectual capital of verted view of Islam, ISIS fanatics can women). put forward a contrary citation—or In the meantime, there’s no point in as a moral arbiter. Carter fails to explain even cite the same passage and inter- making pronouncements about what how we know which decision God has pret it differently. God supposedly commends or con- made on a policy question. Furthermore, to invoke God as support demns. Such statements persuade no In discussing how he developed for one’s position, as President Obama one. Furthermore, the reality is that his own views on the ordination of has done, not only obscures the reality of God can’t tell us what to do. We need women in the Episcopal Church, Carter how we actually arrive at our moral judg- to figure that out ourselves, using our unintentionally illustrates the limitless ments but impedes effective moral rea- reason and evidence about what poli- flexibility of Scripture. Carter obviously soning. Invoking God encourages people cies best serve human interests and wanted to believe female priests are to turn to their holy writ for answers, discussing these issues with each other permissible, but he was faced with this which is precisely what the fanatics say we in wholly secular terms. apparent difficulty: How does one get should do. To achieve around biblical passages such as Paul’s moral progress, we First Letter to the Corinthians, in which need to make explicit Ronald A. Lindsay is president and CEO of the Center for Inquiry. He is the esteemed apostle unequivocally our reliance on sec- also the author of The Necessity of Secularism: Why God Can’t Tell Us states that women should be silent in ular considerations. What to Do (Pitchstone, 2014), in which he develops at greater length the churches and subordinate to men? Catholics didn’t stop the arguments set forth in this editorial.

6 Free Inquiry December 2014/January 2015 secularhumanism.org Tom Flynn Op-Ed

Thirty Years Yule Free

was a subject in the world’s largest To the best of my knowledge, there Christmas since long before there was a child psychology experiment. So, in still isn’t. And at some level, this should Fox News. I began in 1984, so 2014 marks Iall likelihood, were you. It may be the worry us. my thirtieth year. most irregular experiment in history. What if being taught as a child From 1984 to 1991, I treated December In the United States, it’s been running to believe that Santa exists—that he 25 as just another day. I enjoyed free- for more than 150 years. Today, almost knows one’s every thought and behav- dom from compulsory gift-shopping, every child born in a Western country ior and visits every household in one tree-trimming, caroling, and workplace belongs to the experimental group. night bestowing year-end gifts without For all intents and purposes, there is no regard to parental desires and eco- control group. And no one’s keeping nomic status—is harmful? Think about track of the results. it. Parents encourage children to form I speak, of course, of the West’s an enormous emotional attachment “. . . Hundreds of millions of ongoing, if inadvertent, trial of the to an impossible figure who does children have grown up believ- effects of convincing children that they impossible things. Then, kids learn that are unceasingly observed by a powerful their parents—and everyone else in ing in Santa, and to this day intelligence that will reward them lav- their lives—were lying all along. Then, no one knows whether that is ishly, but only if they are good. puberty. What could go wrong? healthy, benign, or harmful.” God? No, Santa Claus. And I’m speak- Researchers get grants to study the ing—well, typing—with tongue slightly sex lives of obscure wild creatures and in cheek, if not laying a finger aside my the cultural predilections of Brooklyn nose. Still, hundreds of millions of chil- hipsters. Wouldn’t it be more beneficial dren have grown up believing in Santa, if the social sciences could finally tell holiday parties. A weekday Christmas was and to this day no one knows whether us, one way or another, whether the dependably my most productive work- that is healthy, benign, or harmful. In his effects of this whole Santa Claus deal day. It was great, but in 1992 I ruined it. breakthrough book, Parenting Beyond are naughty, nice, or negligible? I wrote an article in the Secular Humanist Belief, Dale McGowan and I squared off After all, if there’s even an off-chance Bulletin (SHB) titled “Confessions of on this subject (in a point-counterpoint that the Santa myth twists young minds, an Anti-Claus.” In the vocabulary of a that’s in the book on pages 85–90 but we live in a society populated almost later time, that essay went viral. I spent was mysteriously omitted from the table entirely by its victims. (For a related view, December 1992 doing nonstop radio of contents). I made the case that early see Ryan T. Cragun, “On the ‘Evils’ of interviews. A book contract followed. I belief in Santa Claus might predispose Santa Claus,” in this issue.) had five months to research and write children to accept implausible religious I’ve had numerous discussions what’s become (make of this what you teachings later in life. McGowan argued along this line over the years. As many will) my most popular book, The Trouble that childhood disillusionment upon dis- Free Inquiry readers know, I am secular with Christmas. Published in 1993, it’s still covering Santa is not real may prepare humanism’s resident Scrooge. I resolutely in print. children to more readily discard reli- disregard the Christian winter holiday The book traced the holiday’s his- gious beliefs later on. We each admitted season and, however quixotically, urge tory. Despite the festival’s pervasive that there was no hard research in sup- my fellow secularists to do likewise. I’ve port of either position. been fighting my one-person war on (Continued on page 41)

secularhumanism.org December 2014/January 2015 Free Inquiry 7 James A. Haught OP-ED

The Dreams That Stuff Is Made Of

he European Southern Obser­ Here are some random examples: Nobody really knows what sub- vatory—a fifteen-nation consortium Each cell of your body (except red atomic particles are. Sometimes they’re Tthat operates telescopes in Chile— blood cells) has about six feet of DNA objects; sometimes they’re waves. They recently released a photo of two galaxies tightly coiled into forty-six chromo- seemingly exist in several places at once. colliding. Here’s the stunner: it happened somes in its nucleus. Since the human They’re “the dreams that stuff is made seven billion years ago, but fast-traveling body has an estimated thirty-seven tril- of,” one physicist said. Some “virtual light reached planet Earth just now. To lion cells, each person contains perhaps particles” appear and vanish in a pure look at the image today is looking back- thirty billion miles of DNA. vacuum. ward in time through incredible eons. When you sit perfectly “still,” you’re Physicists Paul Davies and John Grib­ If you follow science, you may get an traveling vastly faster than a bul- bin wrote a book titled The Matter eerie sense that daily reality—people, let—1,000 miles per hour with Earth’s Myth, which contends that “materialism houses, cars, trees, air, earth, and all rotation (at the equator), 67,000 mph is dead.” They write: “Quantum phys- the rest—is just a shred amid a hugely with the planet’s orbit around the sun, ics undermines materialism because it greater array of existence. Philosopher- 486,000 mph with the solar system’s reveals that matter has far less sub- engineer R. Buckminster Fuller put it this whirl around the Milky Way galaxy, and stance than we might believe. . . . An an estimated 1.3 million mph with the extension of quantum theory, known as galaxy’s travel through the universe. (A quantum field theory . . . paints a picture bullet goes about 3,000 mph.) in which solid matter dissolves away, to When electrons come loose from be replaced by weird excitations and atoms, they can make spectacular light- vibrations of invisible field energy. In ning or the current flow that drives the this theory, little distinction remains “If you follow science, modern electrical age. In most atoms, between material substance and appar- electrons are placid because they’re ently empty space, which itself seethes you may get an eerie sense that paired in couples of opposite “spin” with ephemeral quantum activity.” daily reality … is just a shred (which doesn’t mean whirling). But iron Here’s a grabber: nearly all the amid a hugely greater array atoms have a few electrons that aren’t weight, or mass, of matter comes from paired, making each atom a magnet. protons and neutrons, which are com- of existence.” When all the atoms in a piece of iron posed of three quarks each. Yet the become aligned, it creates a magnet masses of three quarks add up to just 1 powerful enough to make maglev percent of the mass of a proton or neu- (magnetic levitation) trains hover above tron. New Scientist says theorists think rails. The spin of electrons is more pow- that actions of the strong nuclear force, erful than gravity. which binds quarks together, create 99 Einstein’s relativity is fully accepted percent of the mass. way: “Up to the 20th century, ‘reality’ today. But ask yourself: Can time really Atoms are as empty as the night sky. was everything humans could touch, slow down and dimensions shorten as If one were as big as a cathedral, its smell, see and hear. Since the initial pub- speed increases? nucleus would be the size of a grain of lication of the chart of the electromag- Einstein’s famed equation E=mc2 salt. Yet these voids form solid-seeming netic spectrum, humans have learned showed that matter and energy are matter, because their negative outer that what they can touch, smell, see interchangeable. The amount of matter electrons repel each other. and hear is less than one-millionth of that turned into energy at Hiroshima in When emptiness is squeezed from reality.” 1945 was smaller than a dime. (Continued on page 42)

8 Free Inquiry December 2014/January 2015 secularhumanism.org Ophelia Benson OP-ED

The Roar of the Crowd

have the bad luck to live in a city assumption that in America we’re all unconscious. At that point, the National whose football team won the Super supposed to share the enthusiasm for Football League suspended him indef- IBowl last February. In the run-up to American football. I dislike the social initely. Apparently they decided they that event, I learned (without wanting bullying aspect of it, just as I dislike the don’t actually want us to think they to) that the Seattle fans are famous for social bullying of public religiosity or almost sort of kind of approve of domes- being the noisiest and most disruptive nationalism or mass mourning when a tic violence as long as the woman can in the country and thus the best at movie star dies suddenly. eventually walk and talk again. rattling opposing teams during home If that were all, though, it would Rice held a press conference on games. The fans are famous for it, and just be one among my rich assortment May 23—after the assault, before all of us are expected to take pride of peeves. But it’s not all. Football is the appearance of the incriminating in it. Really?! It seems the opposite of not treated as just an enthusiasm or video—ostensibly to apologize to the sporting to me, and I find it disgust- an entertainment. It’s taken very seri- world. The trouble is, he never actually ing rather than a source of pride. But ously, as a shaper of character and a apologized for punching Palmer in the I’m an outlier; the fans started calling source of values: not just workplace themselves “the 12th man,” and during skills like discipline and teamwork, but the play-offs the city became a plague- Character. This is assumed more than zone of the number twelve—on shirts, argued for, in much the same way it’s “What’s so annoying . . . is the in the windows of cars and houses, on assumed that religion is a key source of crackpot assumption that giant banners on the sides of buildings, values and character. But what reason on flags flown over houses and office is there to think that football fosters everyone is wildly excited about towers. I was hoping “we” would lose good character? football when after all sport is the Super Bowl so that the wretched There is in fact a lot of history that only one branch of human twelves would go away, but no, we’ve seems to hint that football encour- been stuck with them ever since. When ages aggressive, entitled bullying, activity, and football is only the new season started a couple of which might fit an aristocratic notion one branch of sport.” weeks ago, there was an absolute orgy of the best sort of character, but no of football patriotism, with a down- one else’s. There is former Baltimore town celebration that clogged traf- Ravens running back Ray Rice, for fic for hours, more twelves sprouting instance, who was arrested in February head; he never actually mentioned it. everywhere, banner headlines in the 2014 for assaulting his then-girlfriend He spoke in generalities and the passive newspaper, and local television news Janay Palmer. A celebrity news website voice and the second person plural, but leading with football and then more posted a video of him dragging her he never said, “I punched Janay in the football. unconscious body out of an elevator; head and that was a horrifying thing What’s so annoying about it is the Rice was indicted by a grand jury on to do and I say to her right now: I am crackpot assumption that everyone third-degree aggravated assault, and so sorry I did such a terrible thing.” is wildly excited about football when as a result he was suspended for the Instead he talked about himself and after all sport is only one branch of first two games of the 2014 season. his personal growth. It’s staggeringly human activity, and football is only one Pause to gasp: Two whole games! narcissistic and oblivious and callous. branch of sport. I, for one, like the other That’s how football builds character, Did football make him like that? I football, a.k.a. soccer, and then there is is it? But then in September, a video don’t know, of course, and it would lacrosse, jai alai, bowls, darts, bocce. . . . surfaced that showed him punching There are many sports, and I dislike the Palmer in the head and knocking her (Continued on page 42)

secularhumanism.org December 2014/January 2015 Free Inquiry 9 Take action with us.

You can help promote science, reason, and secular values. Imagine a world where religion and pseudoscience do not influence public policy—a world where religion no longer enjoys a privileged position. The Center for Inquiry is working toward these goals and educating the public to use reason, science, and secular values rather than religion and pseudoscience to establish public policy. The Center for Inquiry advances its mission through advocacy, education, and outreach programs. No other organizations advance science and secularism on as many fronts as CFI and its affiliates, the Council for Secular Humanism and the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.

Donate today. When you make a donation to CFI, you become a member of a worldwide movement of humanists, skeptics, atheists, and freethinkers—all working together to promote the secular worldview and give voice to your values. Our major goals include: n Protecting the rights of nonbelievers n Advocating for science-based medicine n Sustaining and expanding the secular movement Make your most generous gift today, or request information on planned giving or making a bequest. To receive a brochure elaborating on what we are doing to achieve our important goals and how you can help, please complete and return the attached card or contact us at: Center for Inquiry Development Office PO Box 741 Amherst, NY 14226 1.800.818.7071 [email protected] www.centerforinquiry.net/donate Russell Blackford OP-ED

Surprisingly Sensitive—Civility and Freedom of Speech

e have many solid reasons to problem arises, however, when non- standing. While academic debates may support freedom of speech and state power—perhaps the power of an sometimes grow heated, a degree of Wexpression. (For brevity, I’ll use employer or perhaps that of individuals self-restraint is expected if they’re to be the phrase “free speech,” though I have with large media platforms—is used to productive. in mind not only spoken and written intimidate us into conformity or silence. Nor, however, am I the first com- words but also flag burning, mean- That can be almost as frightening as the mentator to notice that government ingful gestures, paintings and sculp- power of the state. enforcement of a standard of civility tures, clothing choices, and the whole Consider the power of employers would chill much impassioned or spon- human repertoire of expressive behav- to hire and fire. Generally speaking, taneous speech that is valuable in social ior.) Free speech is needed for robust employers have legitimate reasons to and political debate. For that reason, participation in democratic delibera- restrict how employees communicate tion, bold investigation in the sciences and present themselves in the work- and humanities, and our own self-de- place. Those reasons can relate to corpo- velopment and self-presentation. We rate image, the convenience of custom- need it, too, to challenge the authority ers and clients, workforce harmony, or “Free speech is . . . essential to of powerful organizations and institu- general business efficiency. Employees all our other freedoms enjoyed in tions that would tell us how to live our typically accept employment knowing lives. Thus, it’s essential to all our other that it involves some such restrictions. modern liberal democracies.” freedoms enjoyed in modern liberal In important ways, employers are not in democracies. the same position as the government. There are some situations where Still, even workplaces should not be limits on free speech can be justified. zones of total conformity. And what There might, for example, be a good about employers who reach beyond I’d be appalled if the government pro- case for restrictions on damaging lies the workplace, sometimes firing staff posed to limit merely uncivil, rather than about identifiable individuals or on for their off-the-job expression of, say, legally defamatory or seriously fraudu- fraudulent claims about commercially political or religious opinions? Such lent, speech. I’d be equally appalled if advertised products and services. All examples underscore the importance a college or university attempted to the same, the exceptions must not of free-speech values in numerous sit- impose the standards of an academic be permitted to undermine the rule. uations where the government is not seminar on the ordinary interactions Exceptional, distinctive, and compelling involved. involving its staff and students outside interests of some kind had better be the classroom. at stake whenever the state imposes ’m not the first commentator to no- There’s undoubtedly a place for limits on what we can say or how we Itice that at least some arguments for voluntary adherence to a standard of express ourselves. The resulting restric- free speech are primarily arguments civility. There are undeniably many sit- tions should be defined as narrowly as for protection of relatively civil speech, uations where hurtful or hostile speech practical to achieve the main purpose. the kind that might be acceptable in may disrupt the search for truth. Some Free speech is primarily about the an academic seminar. In such an envi- individuals who might have made use- operation of state power. We have ronment, personal attacks, indignant ful contributions can be cowed into every reason to fear government posturing, and expressions of contempt silence. Everyone’s attention might be interference with our ideas, artistic for other participants may detract from expression, and self-presentation. A a common search for truth and under- (Continued on page 43)

secularhumanism.org December 2014/January 2015 Free Inquiry 11 Faisal Saeed Al Mutar OP-ED

ISIS and the Future of Islam and the Arab World

Arab civilization, such as we knew they are projecting themselves as a “ratio- rights—are the true radical Muslims. it, is all but gone. The Arab world nal” and “liberal” influence. Those who oppose them, however today is more violent, unstable, frag- An August 14 Washington Post col- regrettably, are the mainstream. mented and driven by extremism— the extremism of the rulers and those umn by CNN’s Fareed Zakaria captures We have always been stuck in the in opposition—than at any time since one aspect of the region’s surreal dynam- mentality that extremists—more pre- the collapse of the Ottoman Empire a ics. It was titled, “The Fantasy of Middle cisely, individuals whom persons hold- century ago. Eastern Moderates”: ing liberal values would view as extrem- —Hisham Melhem, Lebanese jour- Senator Clinton was expressing what ists—can always be dismissed as a fringe nalist and currently Washington has become Washington’s new con- minority, as radicals whom no one likes bureau chief of Al Arabiya News ventional wisdom when she implied and who enjoy little support. But that is Channel, from his famous Politico . . . that “moderates” might have pre- not true in the Muslim world. In Muslim- article, “The Barbarians at Our vented the rise of the Islamic State. In Gates” fact, the United States has provided dominated countries, a great many peo- massive and sustained aid to the ple hold views that most in the West he quotation above is not the only moderates in the region. would consider extremist. grim assessment of today’s situation Remember, the Islamic State, That’s not to say, in any sense, that the formerly known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria on offer from Arab majority of Muslims are extremists. But T of Iraq and Syria, was created in Iraq writers and knowledgeable analysts of and grew out of that country’s the extremists are anything but a negligi- the Arab world. internal dynamics. Over the past ble minority. The images of the barbaric crimes decade, the United States helped Atheists and other religious skep- committed by the Islamic State of Iraq organize Iraq’s “moderates”—the tics can be executed in at least thirteen Shiite-dominated government— and Syria (ISIS) are nothing new for me. I giving them tens of billions of dol- nations: Afghanistan, Malaysia, Maldives, lived in Iraq during the first sectarian civil lars in aid and supplying and train- Mauritania, Nigeria, Pakistan (it has war, and though it’s been more than five ing their army. But, it turned out, nuclear weapons), Iran (it is trying to get years since I left, I still clearly remember the moderates weren’t that mod- nuclear weapons), Qatar, Saudi Arabia, erate. As they became authoritar- Somalia, Sudan, United Arab Emirates, the dead bodies that al-Qaeda and other ian and sectarian, Sunni opposition militias used to pile up in the streets. movements grew and jihadi oppo- and Yemen. Can anyone tell me what all Sometimes the bus that I took to go sition groups such as ISIS gained of these countries have in common? to my high school had to stop short of tacit or active support. This has been Also, which are the only countries in a familiar pattern throughout the the world that have no female elected the school. We students would have to region. For decades, U.S. foreign walk past the corpses—and sometimes policy in the Middle East has been officials or representatives serving in any on them—just to get to the building. to support “moderates.” The prob- public capacity? According to a 2009 Does that sound disturbing to you? lem is that there are actually very United Nations Department of Economic few of them. But that was only al-Qaeda! Imagine and Social Affairs report, they are Oman, what atrocities ISIS—which is considered I think we should redefine the terms Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen—all Gulf “extremist” by al-Qaeda—is committing moderate and radical when it comes to Arab states and, yes, all Islamic. today. the Muslim world. In my view, Muslim In a recent Pew Research study, 64 It is hard to imagine, but al-Qaeda reformers such as Maajid Nawaz and percent of Muslims in Egypt and Pakistan have become the new “moderates.” In Irshad Manji—activists who support LGBT said that they supported the death pen- the battles now wracking Iraq and Syria, rights, marriage equality, and women’s (Continued on page 43)

12 Free Inquiry December 2014/January 2015 secularhumanism.org Shadia B. Drury OP-ED

Vanquishing Evil

here was a pivotal moment in the parts of southern Turkey (known as to say, it hampers the ability to act history of the United States when ISIL). It is a dystopia of oppression and effectively in the world. For example, Tit went from aspiring to be a spe- misogyny. the United States could not amass an cial place that would provide refuge to In a speech to the United Nations effective coalition to fight ISIL, despite the oppressed to becoming an angel Security Council Meeting on Iraq the fact that there was no shortage of of God sent on a divine mission to van- (September 19, 2014), U.S. Secretary of countries eager and willing to put every- quish evil around the world. Whereas State John Kerry listed ISIL’s shocking thing they had into the fight, including the former is a laudable and attainable crimes—they have “executed captured their soldiers’ lives—these countries had goal, the latter is not. Vanquishing evil prisoners,” including the infamous money, trained armies, airpower, and cannot be the goal of any state or beheading of two American journal- much more. However, the United States empire for the simple reason that evil, ists. (But has not our ally Saudi Arabia violence, and injustice are the founda- beheaded people who were accused tion blocks of every state, not to men- of adultery, apostasy, and witchcraft? tion empires. And, is it not routine for this valued ally “Vanquishing evil cannot be All states have their foundation to stone homosexuals?) Kerry pointed the goal of any state or empire in force, usurpation, and injustice. out that ISIL has terrorized the popula- That includes the oh-so-exceptional tions of the territories it has conquered for the simple reason that evil, United States of America. The latter and has even killed children. (Is that violence, and injustice are the was founded on the abduction and not what American drones do every foundation blocks of every state, enslavement of Africans, the slaughter day in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, of Native Americans, and the usurpa- Yemen, and elsewhere?) Kerry was not to mention empires.” tion of land. Nor is it necessary to resort aghast that ISIL has expelled all but to history to appreciate the fact that their own coreligionists from the terri- America is not exactly a vessel of virtue: tory designated for their Islamic state. would have nothing to do with these just think of Guantanamo Bay, Bagram, (Has this not been the founding prin- motivated, enthusiastic, and seasoned Abu Ghraib, and countless secret “black ciple of the Zionist state since its incep- fighters. Why? Because this group was sites” around the world. Nevertheless, tion in 1948? Is this not the standard made up of those that United States has American politicians assume that it is operating procedure of the Jewish-only dubbed its “evil” enemies—Iran, Syria, their duty to vanquish evil wherever it settlements and Jewish-only roads in and Hezbollah in Lebanon. may exist and that failing to do so is a the West Bank? And, is Israel not the Instead, President Obama and his betrayal of their country. darling of all allies?) team opted for a coalition that included So, it is no wonder that President It is simply impossible to divide the France, Britain, Canada, and others. They Barack Obama found it hard to resist countries of the world into our friends offered advice, training, funds, airpower, the pressure to lead the fight against who are “good” and our enemies who but no ground troops. So, who will fight the latest manifestation of evil—a are “evil” without a colossal distor- this war for the weary Americans who group of delusional thugs aspiring to tion of both reality and the meaning have had enough of wars in the Middle establish an Islamic state in Iraq and the of words. This fiction not only distorts East? Well, the plan is to train the Levant, which includes Syria, Lebanon, reality; it impedes the intelligent for- Jordan, Palestine, Israel, Cyprus, and mulation of foreign policy—which is (Continued on page 44)

secularhumanism.org December 2014/January 2015 Free Inquiry 13 ADVERTISEMENT

Tibor R. Machan OP-ED

My Pleasures, My Vices

am not in the habit of airing my dirty to exercise very limited powers over the By with Judi Dench. Then there are laundry, so this will be a rare case of citizenry it is elected to serve. the detective programs from Sweden, Ithat. I feel the urge to confess that I Complicitness arises when one takes Italy, and France, mostly featured with have some guilty pleasures, ones that subsidies from government, accepts subtitles. actually have political implications. special treatment, or enjoys benefits You get the point, I am sure. These I am someone who wants strict that are only possible for governments are guilty pleasures all, programs pro- adherence to the ideas expressed in the to provide if they abridge proper lim- duced with stolen funds that the vic- Declaration of Independence—namely, its on their power. I have in mind, for tims of the theft might have instead that “to secure these rights [to Life, example, citizens gaining perks from used for their own purposes (which Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness], resources (grants, subsidies, and the could, of course, have included funding like) that governments obtain through some of the productions I find so enter- the extortionist practice of taxation. I taining). How can I justify this, given myself have obtained such perks, not my strict opposition to government unlike most others who receive govern- support of entertainment, science, and “It is offensive to me that gov- ment handouts in forms such as enter- culture in general? Well, that is a long ernments engage in innumerable tainment, research support, and more. story; but let me just say that I have For the most part, my involvement is long been opposed to the rip-offs that activities and pursue endless minimal: on occasion, I visit a govern- make all this possible and have consis- policies that have absolutely ment-funded museum or art gallery or tently advocated shutting down PBS nothing to do with securing our forest or beach. and NPR, which I consider on par with But I do readily accept the offer- the Soviet Union’s Pravda and Izvestia. basic rights.” ings of PBS—for instance, programs Indeed, one of my earliest contribu- produced in Europe, such as one of tions to The Freeman, then perhaps the my favorites, the television rendition only publication with a libertarian edi- of Georges Simenon’s Maigret crime torial stance, was a critique of govern- novels. I like much of the other enter- ment funding of the Olympic games! Governments are instituted among tainment that’s broadcast by PBS, such Given that the progress of liberty Men, deriving their just powers from as American Masters (which recently can often be slow, two steps forward the consent of the governed.” It is produced a wonderful program on and one back, I know not too many offensive to me that governments Mel Brooks, a truly brilliant comic, and other ways than these to fight mighty engage in innumerable activities and Woody Allen, the funny but also rather Leviathan. In time it may bear fruit. pursue endless policies that have abso- pathetic movie director and actor). But lutely nothing to do with securing our that is not all. I am also basic rights. One must do whatever one a fan of imports from Tibor R. Machan holds the R.C. Hoiles Chair of Business Ethics can to avoid becoming complicit in the the BBC, such as MI5 and Free Enterprise at Argyos School of Business and Economics abridgement of the limits on govern- or the reruns of some at Chapman University. He is the author of The Promise of Liberty ment authority spelled out in a state- very pleasant sitcoms (Lexington, 2009). ment that clearly restricts government such as As Time Goes

14 Free Inquiry December 2014/January 2015 secularhumanism.org Mark Rubinstein OP-ED

Jesus, the Christian Seneca

ome 6,341 words, comprising 7.5 what he says because he speaks for wrote nothing comparable. percent of the four biblical Gospels, God who commands us to obey him; Spresent lessons in which Jesus otherwise we will be condemned. Not Golden Rule allegedly speaks about morality—that only does Seneca avoid falling back on Jesus: “As ye would that men should do is, how people should behave toward this type of justification, he provides a to you, do ye also to them like- one another. Primarily based on these more profound and secular rationale. wise.” (Luke 6:31) words, Christians—and even many In this case, he goes much further than non-Christians—claim to admire Jesus Jesus, arguing that caring for others is as a great and original moral sage. central to the competitive success of But this evaluation does not hold humanity: “Take us singly, and what up, particularly if we consider the are we? The prey of creatures, their books, essays, letters, and sayings of the victims, whose blood is most delectable “Seneca didn’t just leave us Greco-Roman moralists: Cicero, Seneca, and most easily secured . . . no might pithy aphorisms; he wrote whole Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and Plutarch. of claws or teeth makes him [man] a books on charity, anger, forgive- Lucius Annaeus Seneca lived at about terror to others, naked and weak as the same time as Jesus. Seneca didn’t he is, his safety lies in fellowship. God ness, and other moral issues.” just leave us pithy aphorisms; he wrote [nature] has given him two things, rea- whole books on charity, anger, forgive- son and fellowship, which, from being ness, and other moral issues. Let’s com- a creature at the mercy of others, make pare Jesus’s words with those of Seneca. him the most powerful of all; and so he who, if he were isolated, could be a Seneca: “You must expect to be treated Loving One’s Neighbors match for none is master of the world” by others as you yourself have Jesus: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as (On Benefits 4:18:2). treated them.” (Epistles 94:43, thyself.” (Mark 12:31) “On the Value of Advice”) On Enemies Seneca: “There is no such thing as good Jesus: “Love your enemies.” (Matt. Inclusiveness or bad fortune for the individ- 5:43–44) ual; we live in common. And no Jesus: “For whosoever shall do the will of one can live happily who has Seneca: “We shall engage in affairs to the God, the same is my brother, and regard for himself alone and very end of life, we shall never my sister, and mother.” (Mark 3:35) transforms everything into a cease to work for the common question of his own utility; you good, to help each and all, to Seneca: While Jesus restricts this prin- must live for your neighbor, if give aid even to our enemies ciple to “whosoever shall do the you would live for yourself.” when our hand is feeble with will of God,” Seneca includes all (Epistles 48:2–3, “Quibbling age.” (On Leisure 1:4) of humanity: “So long as we Unworthy of the Philosopher”) draw breath, so long as we Evil As he appears in the Gospels, Jesus live among men, let us cherish Jesus: “Resist not evil.” (Matt. 5:39) typically tells us what but not really humanity.” (On Anger 3:43:5) how or why. We are to do or believe Because he does not agree, Seneca (Continued on page 45)

secularhumanism.org December 2014/January 2015 Free Inquiry 15 Obituary

Gerald A. Larue, Humanist Laureate, 1916–2014

erald A. Larue, a senior editor Kurtz and Professor Vern Bullough, as of Free Inquiry and a Laureate of “the globe-hopping brain trust of secular Gthe International Academy of humanism” in the Council’s early years. Humanism (a program of the Council for Dr. Larue took part in several Council Secular Humanism), died September 17, conferences, including “Science, the Bible, 2014, at the age of ninety-eight. and Darwin,” held in the centenary year Free Inquiry and the Council for of Darwin’s death in 1982, and he wrote Secular Humanism (then the Council for numerous articles for Free Inquiry and Democratic and Secular Humanism) were the Council’s newsletter for the Secular founded in 1980 by Paul Kurtz with the Family Network, Family Matters. He could support of distinguished advocates of write for academic audiences on issues secularism and Enlightenment values and in society (“Creationism: 500 Years of 1 “[Dr. Larue] came to special- critics of the religious fundamentalism Controversy,” FI, Summer 1982) or for chil- ize in examining religious myths, then arising to take control over public dren on how events in nature became the folk tales, and legends and life in the United States and elsewhere. “A basis for rituals and religious observances Secular Humanist Declaration,” published (“Happy New Year,” Family Matters, identifying the factual elements in the very first issue of FI, laid out their Winter 2003/04). His seventeen books United Church of Canada and served that could be substantiated, positions and principles. included the textbook, Old Testament Life congregations in Canada and the United Those principles included free inquiry, and Literature (Allyn and Bacon, 1968); especially by archaeological evi- States from 1945 to 1953. He obtained a the use of reason, separation of church Sex and the Bible (Prometheus Books, dence.” doctor of theology degree at the Pacific and state, religious skepticism, and more. 1983); and The Way of Ethical Humanism School of Religion in California, where A year later they led to the creation of (Centerline Press, 1989). he developed doubts about religion the first subgroup with the Council, the and became known as “Heretic Larue.” Dr. Larue was also the founding presi- Religion and Biblical Criticism Research He decided to leave the ministry: in dent of the Hemlock Society. He was the Project (later, the Committee for the an interview with the Orange County recipient of numerous awards, including Scientific Examination of Religion). Dr. Register, he said that the existence of Humanist of the Year in 1989 and a Larue was one of six signatories to the God was “an open question.” Life­time Achievement Award from USC. Project’s founding statement, published In 1958, he became professor of bibli- Flynn said Larue “had a strong regard for in the Spring 1982 issue of Free Inquiry. cal history and archaeology the University truth and limited patience for obscuran- Later, he was its president. The Project of Southern California (USC) School of tism. He had one foot in the real world not only conducted scholarly research Religion. His numerous archaeologi- and one foot in the ivory tower.” but debunked such “miracles” as weep- cal expeditions in the Near East further After retiring from the School of ing religious statues and sightings of the cemented his agnosticism. He came to Re­ligion, Dr. Larue taught for another Virgin Mary. specialize in examining religious myths, twenty-five years in the School of Ger­ Observers of Dr. Larue’s early career folk tales, and legends and identifying ontology. He retired from that in 2006 at would have been surprised at this later the factual elements that could be sub- the age of ninety to devote more time to turn of events. After receiving bach- stantiated, especially by archaeological his grandchildren. elor of arts and bachelor of divinity evidence. degrees from the University of Alberta, Tom Flynn, Council executive direc- — Andrea Szalanski, managing editor, Edmonton, he became a minister in the tor, described Dr. Larue, along with Paul Free Inquiry

16 Free Inquiry December 2014/January 2015 secularhumanism.org Obituary

Victor J. Stenger, Physicist and Author, 1935–2014

ictor J. Stenger, a physicist and the author of many popular books Von atheism and science, died at the age of seventy-nine on August 27, 2014, from an aneurysm next to his heart. Stenger was perhaps best known for his 2007 tome, God: The Failed Hypothesis (Prometheus Books), whose publication led to Stenger’s joining the ranks of New Atheist writers, which included Sam Harris, Daniel C. Dennett, Richard Daw­kins, and Christopher Hitchens. In response to criticisms of that book, Stenger insisted that “scien- tists are not dogmatically opposed to God. Instead, scientists are required by the very nature of science to go wher- ever the data lead.” Stenger was born on January 29, 1935. He received his BS in electrical engineering in 1956 from Newark College of Engineering and his MS in 1958 and a PhD in 1963 from the University of California, Los Angeles. He was a member of the Department of Physics at the University of Hawaii from New Atheism (2009), The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning (2011), God and the Folly 1963 to 2000. After his retirement from “An amazingly prolific writer, the University of Hawaii, he became of Faith (2012), and God and the Atom adjunct professor of philosophy at the Stenger published nearly a (2013). Stenger’s newest book, God and University of Colorado. At the time of book a year from the late 2000s the Multiverse: Humanity’s Expanding his death, he had been married to his through the present.” View of the Cosmos (Prometheus Books), wife, Phyllis, for more than fifty years. was published on September 9, 2014, just Stenger was associated with the Center two weeks after he died. Stenger was for Inquiry and its affiliated organiza- actively promoting the new book at the tions, the Council for Secular Humanism time of his death. Said Council for Secular and the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, Humanism President and CEO Ronald A. for many years. He was a fellow of both An amazingly prolific writer, Stenger Lindsay: “We’ll miss both his intellect and the Center for Inquiry and the Committee published nearly a book a year from the his intellectual integrity.” for Skeptical Inquiry and a frequent con- late 2000s through the present. Among tributor to both Free Inquiry and Skeptical these titles, all published by Prometheus —Julia Lavarnway, managing Inquirer magazines. Books, were Quantum Gods (2009), The editor, Skeptical Inquirer

secularhumanism.org December 2014/January 2015 Free Inquiry 17 From CFI President Ronald A. Lindsay An important and timely book about The Necessity of Secularism

Advance Praise for the Necessity of Secularism

“The Necessity of Secularism discusses one of the most vital issues facing America and the world, and it does so with the logic and respectful tolerance for differences that itself expresses the very spirit of secularism. No matter what one’s views on the existence of God, this is a unifying book. I can only hope that it will be read by all those for whom it is intended, which is, in a word, everyone.” — Rebecca Goldstein

“This is a first-rate book. If you want to understand why a secular state is so important, why it’s not the same thing as an atheist state, and why religious people should embrace, not fear, secularism, you should start with The Necessity of Secularism. Lindsay’s book is entertaining, passionate, and presents a beautifully clear and well-argued case.” — Stephen Law

“The Necessity of Secularism is a state-of-the-art defense of secular reasoning — in government, public debate, and moral deliberation. There’s erudition here, but always worn lightly, and with it goes a cool, precise, forensic style of argument that’s truly a pleasure to read.” — Russell Blackford

Available in print December 1 Also available as an ebook and audiobook

Published by Pitchstone Publishing www.pitchstonepublishing.com Letters

can be tested. Also, the only Regarding the “Nazis search (FI, October/November 2014)— reason we pursue science in the for Jews” conundrum: you’ll be which turns out not to be about first place is because we “value” delighted to know that Catholic parasites at all but about arthro- the practical results that it brings. dogma has again gasted us in pod-borne viruses and genetic This, too, is metaphysics. the flabber regions. Back in the engineering—begins with the 1950s when I was young and very curious assertion that “hel- John L. Indo the earth’s crust was still warm, I minths . . . and ectoparasites . . . Houston, Texas attended Loyola University in Los don’t seem to play any positive Angeles and was required to take role in nature: they simply prey a class in general and special eth- on the rest of it.” I would love ics. During one session, our Jesuit to know what constitutes, for instructor avowed that lying was Caplan, a “positive role in nature.” always wrong. In response, a veri- All animals eat. Hawks prey on table forest of upraised arms shot pigeons and voles. Wolves eat up, with their hands begging for deer and livestock, and they used The Ethics of recognition. When an elevated to eat people when they had Concealing Atheism hand was finally acknowledged, a chance. Oh yeah, what about the chosen student asked The Homo sapiens? What is our “pos- Re: “Is It Ethical to Conceal Your Question: “All right, you’re in a itive role in nature,” other than Atheism?” by Great Christina cabin deep in the Black Forest preying on the rest of it? Is Atheism Doomed? (FI, October/November 2014): I with a cellar full of Jewish refu- Nature doesn’t have any good would agree that “coming out gees that you’re hiding when, all or bad, positive or negative; it Re: “Is Atheism Doomed?” by is ultimately the right choice for of a sudden, a platoon of Nazi just is. Parasites usually don’t kill Russell Blackford, FI, October/ most people” but that it “makes storm troopers comes roaring up their hosts quickly or directly, November 2014: I do not think sense to hold off if the timing is on their motorcycles. They dis- but they reduce the hosts’ lifes- that atheism is doomed. In claim- bad.” Most of my friends already mount, goose­step up your front pans and reproductive success, ing otherwise, religious apol- know that I am an atheist and porch, and pound on our door. thereby controlling the popula- ogists frequently allude to the are completely accepting of it. You open your door and your tion and affecting the mix of spe- upsurge in religious fanaticisms Of course, their relationship with newfound uniformed guests ask cies in an ecosystem—just like all and cult-like behavior that we religious belief is rather strained, you pointblank: ‘Do you have any other predators. Whether this is have witnessed over the last so my anxiety toward full dis- Jews in your cellar?’ Now—what “positive” or not is impondera- three generations. Religious and closure was modest. My family, do you answer, ‘yes’ or ‘no’?” ble. Unfortunately for most other political fanaticisms have always on the other hand, are unaware Our instructor smiled gently species, humans have largely come in times of rapid change. of my atheism. All of them are and said, “Of course, I would say escaped this control. Caplan may When people lose their cultural staunch Catholics and, as a result, ‘no.’” personally find parasites icky, but moorings they become insecure my anxiety toward coming out to “Aha!” the whole class bel- they are no more or less “posi- and start embracing reactionary them as an atheist is extremely lowed. “So you would lie!” tive” than any other kind of crea- extremism in order to compen- high. With that same angelic smile, ture. sate for their existential dread. I have made horrible decisions our priestly mentor slowly shook Skeptics have always been M. Barton Laws, Assistant in my life, and because of those his head and said, “Noooo, that’s around also, although experienc- Professor decisions my relationship with not at all a lie. We’ve merely ing differing degrees of toler- my family was severely fractured taken the truth and carefully set Brown University School of ation according to the political for many years. I was afraid that it aside and fabricated an alter- Public Health climate at the time. it could never be repaired. Slowly, native in its stead. We call it ‘An Providence, Rhode Island However, I do believe that however, we began putting the Extreme Mental Reservation.’” human beings necessarily expe- pieces back together and mend- Since that time so long ago, rience a metaphysical com- ing that relationship. As much as whenever I’ve been caught in ponent in their psychological Arthur Caplan’s nosology is con- I would love to open up to them one of my frequent flights of makeup. Consciousness may be fused, and he mixes parasites about what is a big part of my fancy, I’ve always used that term. emergent from the brain pro- with vectors. The parasite is the life, I fear that my coming out cess, but it is not synonymous John Carver organism that causes illness. The would only serve to shatter that with it. Understanding our con- Chatsworth, California vector is the transmitter that still fragile relationship. sciousness becomes a metaphys- delivers the parasite to the host. Is it ethical to conceal my ical issue from which we cannot Various vectors can deliver para- atheism from my family? I would escape and remain intellectually sitic, viral, and/or bacterial infec- say that it is in this case. Is it right honest. This does not discredit Sending Parasites tions. that I still live in a world where I our advancing neuroscience at Helminths are parasites and feel that I have to? No. Packing all. We must organize our data not transmitters. Mosquitoes, with hypothetical constructs Adam S. Thomas Arthur Caplan’s essay “Science (metaphysics) before our ideas Salem, Oregon Finds an Answer for Parasites” (Continued on page 64)

secularhumanism.org December 2014/January 2015 Free Inquiry 19 The Rise of Global Fundamentalism: Are Humanists Really ‘Winning’?

Leah Mickens

everal weeks ago, I and about two dozen other people of uring the nineteenth century, the general consensus a nontheist persuasion attended a meeting of the local Damong elites in Asia, Africa, and Latin America was that Sfreethought association to hear a regional author speak freedom from European domination necessitated taking about his career as a writer of secular humanist e-books. Our certain Western ideas such as nationalism, public education, meeting place was Atlanta Freethought Hall, a structure that modern military technology, and skepticism toward tradi- had been a Primitive Baptist church in another life and now tional beliefs and authority figures and adopting them for use functions as a gathering place for Dixie’s heathen masses. in their respective cultural environments. The ways in which The idea of a former church being taken over by atheists these ideas would be implemented varied widely, as did the in the heart of the Bible Belt would normally have tickled my results. Mainland China, for example, experienced a tumultu- sense of irony. But as I listened to the talk, I thought about an ous twentieth century as it lurched from being an absolute article in The New York Times that I had read earlier in the day monarchy to a fascist-tinged republic to a utopian Maoist dic- about the enthusiastic reaction of Nigerians to the passing of tatorship before settling into its present technocratic autoc- racy headed by the Chinese Communist Party. While China’s experiments with modernization eventually “. . . While the West may be getting more secular, the led to economic success and rising superpower status, most developing-world countries experienced disap- rest of the world is becoming more, not less, religious— pointment with their experiments in secularization and the religions that are capturing the imaginations of and modernization, as secular elites failed to deliver the wretched of the earth are not liberal Anglicanism or on their promises of material wealth, international prestige, and military strength. When the appeal of Wicca but Islam and evangelical Christianity.” secular ideologies such as nationalism, socialism, and liberal democracy began to wane, the masses found solace in religion—especially Charismatic and Pente- costal forms of evangelical Christianity and Islam. a new slate of draconian antigay laws (I say “new” because What makes evangelical Christianity and Islam so attrac- homosexuality was already illegal in Nigeria). I wasn’t sure tive to those in the developing world? The popularity of which was more disturbing: the fact that the law denies LGBT Pentecostalism and Charismatic Christianity, in particular, people basic human rights or that so many Nigerians, espe- can be explained by the fact that the more than three billion cially in the Muslim North, were complaining that the laws people around the world who are forced to live on less than weren’t stringent enough. $2.50 a day are actively looking for miracles to brighten an Perhaps if I were of a more optimistic nature, I could have otherwise dire existence. Members of the global poor lack taken comfort in the proliferation of atheist groups such as access to evidence-based medicine, proper employment, the one I attended and in daring to hope that such groups and the ability to participate in the political processes of might one day help take down the seemingly impenetrable their respective countries. If they have access to education, fortress of religion that is the Deep South. But none of this it is probably affiliated with a church or another religious could hide the fact that while the West may be getting more organization. The chance that they will be able to improve secular, the rest of the world is becoming more, not less, reli- their lot is slim, while the probability of dying early is high. gious—and the religions that are capturing the imaginations The Charismatic or Pentecostal preacher promises to heal the of the wretched of the earth are not liberal Anglicanism or sick, make the crippled walk, and make the blind see—if only Wicca but Islam and evangelical Christianity. the audience is willing to have faith and fill up the collection

20 Free Inquiry December 2014/January 2015 secularhumanism.org The Rise of Global Fundamentalism: Are Humanists Really ‘Winning’?

plate. Because sickness and death are omnipresent in many for the country’s Wahhabi theocracy. Not only did the oil crisis developing countries, a bad outcome after a failed miracle is transform Saudi Arabia from an isolated backwater into the not as surprising or as much a cause of outrage as it would most influential Arab country, it also enabled the Wahhabist be in a Western nation. Charismatic/Pentecostal churches religious establishment to spread its religious views to Mus- also provide their congregants with a deep-seated need lims throughout the world via the Muslim World League and for catharsis. At these services, people who have to stoically its many affiliated organizations. In the Shia world, the unex- endure the indignities of being poor and marginalized can let pected elevation of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to power in out their frustrations in a socially acceptable fashion through Iran demonstrated that an Islamic movement could depose a speaking in tongues, being “slain in the spirit,” or simply sing- secular Western-backed regime. The rise of Saudi Arabia and ing and dancing in a lively communal atmosphere. Iran as regional powers in the 1970s led to increased Sun- Not only do the global poor suffer from material wants, ni-Shia tensions, as both countries claimed to be the only true they also fear the effects of the supernatural, especially of Islamic state. The Saudis sought to contain Iranian influence sorcery and witchcraft. While witchcraft ceased to be con- in the Persian Gulf by financing anti-Shia militants in Pakistan sidered a major social problem in North America after the and Afghanistan, while Iran funded Hezbollah in Lebanon seventeenth-century Salem witch trials, a belief in the ability and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. This newest phase of of malevolent humans to affect changes in the physical world the Islamic revival can be seen as a mutant variation of earlier via magic remains common in many parts of Africa, Asia, and third-world anti-imperialist movements, with the language of Latin America. To many denizens of the developing world, the ummah and jihad replacing that of the international pro- the reality of individuals practicing malevolent magic against letariat and class warfare; had many of the young men who unsuspecting innocents is as real a concern as child sexual are currently attracted to waging jihad been born during the abuse is for Westerners. Churches take advantage of this anxi- Cold War, they probably would have gravitated to revolution- ety by offering exorcisms, charms, prayers, and other products ary Marxist-Leninism rather than Islam. and services designed to protect their members against the supernatural onslaughts of Satan and his human minions. In addition to providing “protection” from “While China’s experiments with modernization supernatural predators, Christian churches that eventually led to economic success and rising superpower preach the “prosperity gospel” (the belief that the status, most developing-world countries experienced Christian life will lead to health and wealth) also promise a better earthly life for their congregants. disappointment with their experiments in secularization The prosperity gospel is particularly popular in the and modernization, as secular elites failed developing world, where the idea that positive to deliver on their promises. . . .” thinking and faith in God will lead to material bless- ings is a welcome alternative to the fatalistic accep- tance of a lifetime of poverty. While prosperity churches can empower people to better themselves through entrepreneurship and hard work, these institutions From the perspective of political leaders in the developing also breed get-rich-quick schemes and authoritarian pastors world, it is often easier to build a consensus through shared for whom the proverbial widow’s mite funds over-the-top religious values than by appealing to a common national lifestyles. identity that doesn’t exist. Nigeria, for example, is a country with more than four hundred ethnic groups and five hundred he popularity of Islam stems from a general revival of reli- languages. Prior to the formation of the Royal Niger Company Tgious sentiment throughout the Muslim world that has its in the early twentieth century, most of the ethnic groups that roots in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century pan-Muslim, comprise modern-day Nigeria lived in their own societies and anticolonialist nationalists such as Jamal al-Din Afgani, Rashid had little contact with one another. When Nigeria was under Rida, and Hassan al-Banna. However, politically minded Is- colonial rule, the British conferred economic and social favors lamic movements did not emerge as serious challengers to on Christian Nigerians at the expense of their Muslim and the secular political status quo until the 1970s. This renewed animist neighbors, setting the basis for many of the ethno-re- interest in Islam occurred among both the Sunni and the ligious conflicts that the country has suffered in the postco- Shia, albeit under different conditions. For Sunnis, the sudden lonial period. Despite the ethnic politics that undergird reli- windfall of oil revenues that Saudi Arabia received during the gious membership, Muslim and Christian groups aggressively oil crises of the 1970s appeared to be a sign of divine favor court new adherents, and it is not uncommon for Nigerians

secularhumanism.org December 2014/January 2015 Free Inquiry 21 to go back and forth between Christian, Islamic, and ani- or “forbidden,” possible envy at Western success can be trans- mist sects throughout their lives. The perceived capitulation formed into moral disdain. of many mainline Western Christian churches to the LGBT rights movement has given Nigerian Muslims an advantage his renewed sense of religious identity is not limited to in the religious wars, because they can frame their Christian TChristianity and Islam. Although India is officially a secu- opponents as being morally soft. The eagerness of Nigeria’s lar state, religious violence between Hindus, Muslims, and Christian community to pass antigay legislation can be seen Sikhs has been a problem since the establishment of the as part of a competition between Christians and Muslims to country in 1948 and its subsequent partitions into Pakistan show that they are the toughest on encroaching Western and Bangladesh. Penguin Books’ recent capitulation to the norms of human rights. Meanwhile, Muslims in northern demands of Hindu nationalists that Wendy Doniger’s The Nigeria have taken their anti-homosexuality sentiments one Hindus: An Alternative History not be released in India so as step further by instituting stoning for homosexuality, as per to avoid offending religious sensibilities illustrates the ability Sharia law. Christian and Muslim Nigerians might not be able of Hindu nationalists to shape discourse about the nature of to agree on how to divide resources, on what it means to be Indian identity. Though Westerners often perceive Buddhism Nigerian (as opposed to Hausa, Fulani, or Igbo), or on how to as the most peaceful of the world’s major religions, Buddhist- improve economic opportunities for the poor, but they can monk-led violence against Muslim minority groups has been all agree on the distastefulness of homosexuality and the increasing in Southeast Asia, particularly in Myanmar/Burma Western LGBT-rights movement. and Thailand. Orthodox Jewish groups such as Aish HaTorah, Project Genesis, and the Chabad Hasidic sect have been mounting aggressive recruitment campaigns to “Because sickness and death are omnipresent in convince their secular brethren to return to religious many developing countries, a bad outcome after a failed observance. While American ultra-Orthodox Jews tend to keep to themselves in segregated enclaves, miracle is not as surprising or as much a cause of their Israeli counterparts often engage in violent and outrage as it would be in a Western nation.” very public clashes with secular Jews over such issues as Sabbath observance, gender segregation in public facilities, draft-dodging, and widespread welfare de- The biggest advantage that religious movements have over pendency among ultra-Orthodox men who study religious secular movements is that by virtue of being faith-based, they texts full time rather than enter the workforce. don’t have to bring tangible benefits to their constituents. If Globalization has been an unexpected boon to religionists, a long-hoped-for miracle fails to materialize for adherents of in part because innovations in communications technology a Nigerian prosperity church, for example, the negative out- have facilitated the transmission of religious ideas at a rate that come can be blamed on a lack of faith or the caprices of God’s would have been unthinkable in the past. Although large reli- will. Religious movements can also redefine the meaning of gious organizations such as the Roman Catholic Church or the success in a way that enables them to maintain their hold network of Islamic universities were already transnational insti- on their followers even when adherence to the religion in tutions before these innovations, in the pre-Internet world only question does not lead to increased power and prestige in the high-ranking clerics would have had the resources to engage in conventional sense. Economist Jean-Paul Carvalho notes that regular communication with their coreligionists in other coun- pride in the moral rigor of Islam helps individuals in Muslim tries. With the Internet, rank-and-file members of the Church lands to cope with the cultural and economic stagnation of Militant, universal Ummah, or global sangha can discuss the their societies vis-à-vis the West. The most obvious example of minutiae of their respective belief-systems with fellow believers this is the Taliban, for whom the prospect of living in the same wherever they might live. While atheists tend to think that the manner as the prophet Muhammad and his companions easy availability of skeptical information on the Internet will is considered more important than improving the material help break the spell of religion and dogma, more often than health and well-being of the Afghani people. This belief in not the opposite is true; people who are already inclined toward the moral superiority of religious believers in the developing conservative interpretations of religion use the Internet to create world versus the degeneracy of the West is found among their own virtual enclaves in which they never have to confront a Christians in the developing world as well, with African minis- dissenting opinion and can be encouraged by their coreligionists ters such as Peter Akinola trumpeting the “purity” of African to further separate themselves from secular norms and values. Christianity for its unwillingness to capitulate to the demands For religionists who aren’t content to keep their rhetoric in of the LGBT movement as many Western churches have. By the virtual world, the relative ease of international travel allows redefining political, economic, and social freedoms as “sinful” them to hobnob and even plot with their confrères about how

22 Free Inquiry December 2014/January 2015 secularhumanism.org The Rise of Global Fundamentalism: Are Humanists Really ‘Winning’?

to put their beliefs into action. While the transnational character sider it more “modern” and “Western” than indigenous religious of the jihadist movement has received much attention in the traditions and therefore more appropriate for a twenty-first-cen- post 9/11 world, the exportation of the American culture wars tury society. by evangelicals has not. American evangelicals have helped to bring schools, hospitals, and social services to many underserved hen examined against a global backdrop of religious reviv- African communities, but they have also bequeathed to the Walism and renewed evangelistic vigor, the reach of secular beneficiaries of their aid a toxic obsession with homosexuality. humanism seems feeble in comparison. However, humanism’s International Christian organizations such as World Vision, Bread marginal status in 2014 does not necessarily correlate into a for Life, and Uganda Partners use their extensive network of similarly dire future. Who living during the reign of Augustus churches, ministers, and media outlets in Africa to spread the Caesar could have imagined that an obscure Jewish apocalyptic message that the LGBT-rights movement seeks to harm African cult would become the official religion of the Western world in families and children. The ties between American conservatives less than 350 years, developing into a powerful transnational or- and African Christians are particularly ironic given that the for- ganization that would suppress the classical Olympics, extinguish mer supported colonialism, imperialism, and apartheid in the the flames that the Vestal Virgins had lovingly tended for nearly twentieth century. Yet conservatives now claim that it is really a millennium, raze the sacred groves of the druids, and dismantle the LGBT-rights movement that is making imperialist demands the elaborate temple complexes of Isis and Amun-Ra? Perhaps on Africa! Similarly, the outrage from the West over a new law we humanists are transitional figures like Augustine of Hippo, scapegoating the LGBT community in Russia has not extended described by historian Thomas Cahill as being the last classical to leaders of the American Family Association and the Family man and the first medieval man; we stand between the era of Research Council, who were invited by the Russian Duma to help Christendom and a future whose exact character cannot yet craft the anti-homosexuality law in question. While one would be ascertained, rejecting much of our Judeo-Christian heritage think that the people of Nigeria, Russia, and Uganda would have while still being undeniably influenced by it. more pressing matters with which to concern themselves than Despite the barbaric resurgence of fundamentalism and anti- the persecution of an unpopular minority, the breathless hyste- rationalism, we secular humanists should build the foundations ria of American evangelicals on culture-war issues has made the of a kinder, more rational future in whatever ways we can. And suppression of homosexuality more important than tackling real who knows? Maybe my local freethought group will be the seed economic or political change. While some observers call it pater- of a transnational freethought network. One can only hope. nalistic to blame the current spate of antigay legislation in Africa Sources on American evangelicals, it would be foolish not to think that Gardam, Tim. “Christians in China: Is the Country in Spiritual Crisis?” African ministers fighting their own culture wars against Islam BBC News Magazine, September 12, 2011. Accessed March 3, 2014, wouldn’t welcome an influx of cash and personnel from their at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14838749. American peers. Hundal, Sunny. “Hindu Nationalists Are Gaining Power in India—and Silencing Enemies Along the Way.” The Independent, February 26, This renewed sense of religious fervor is not just confined to 2014. Accessed March 3, 2014, at http://www.independent.co.uk/ the poorest nations in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East; news/world/asia/hindu-nationalists-are-gaining-power-in-india- it is also occurring in middle-income and wealthy nations in and-silencing-enemies-along-the-way-9155591.html. Kapya, Kaoma. Political Research Associates. “Globalizing the Culture Asia. Although Buddhism and Confucianism are the traditional Wars: U.S. Conservatives, African Churches & Homosexuality.” Last religions of the Korean peninsula, Christianity, particularly in its modified 2009. Accessed February 22, 2014, at http://www.public evangelical form, has made significant inroads into South Korean eye.org/publications/globalizing-the-culture-wars/pdf/africa- full-report.pdf. culture. The Yoido Full Gospel Church in Seoul, South Korea, is Nossiter, Adam. “Wielding Whip and a Hard New Law, Nigeria Tries the world’s largest church with a membership of over one mil- to ‘Sanitize’ Itself of Gays.” The New York Times, February 8, 2014. lion people. To put this in perspective, there are probably more Steinberg, Guido. 2009. Jihadi-Salafism and the Shi’is: Remarks about the Intellectual Roots of anti-Shi’ism. Global Salafism: Islam’s New people in the Yoido Full Gospel Church on any given Sunday than Religious Movement, edited by Roel Meijer. New York: Columbia there are in every church in Western Europe combined. University Press. South Korean pastors are also active in propaganda efforts against the North Korean regime and in resettling defectors from the North into South Korean society. Christianity also enjoys increasing popularity in neighboring China, notwith- Leah Mickens has degrees in library science and digital media. She has standing that China is officially an atheist country. The Chinese conducted research at major repositories of Southern U.S. history, some government estimates that there are an estimated twenty-five of which formed the basis for her last article for Free Inquiry, “We’ve million Christians in mainland China, although independent Come This Far—in Spite of Faith: Debunking the Myth of Civil Rights as a scholars agree that the actual number is much higher. Protestant Church Movement” (June/July 2014). Christianity appeals to the rising middle classes in Asia who con-

secularhumanism.org December 2014/January 2015 Free Inquiry 23 In Defense of Scientism Mario Bunge

y “scientism” I mean the thesis that all cognitive prob- of the French Enlightenment. And both word and concept lems are best tackled by adopting a scientific approach, occurred in other contexts—particularly in religious propa- Balso called “the scientific method,” “the spirit of science,” ganda, where it was used pejoratively. and “the scientific attitude.” While most contemporary phi- In a 2013 article, Peter Schöttler reported that at the turn losophers reject scientism, arguably all scientists practice it, of the twentieth century, the words science and scientism even if they have never encountered the word. This article were usually accompanied by the following epithets in the offers a defense of a particular kind of scientism: the view relevant French literature: abstract, antireligious, bankrupt, that science is the truest and deepest kind of knowledge of cold, dogmatic, exaggerate, false, gross, heavy, laïc, lame, nature and society. materialist, narrow, pedantic, positivist, pretentious, rational- ist, socialist, stupid, and vulgar—as well as Durkheimian and German. A contemporary study might yield a similar result: after one century, science and scientism continue to be two of the bêtes noires of obscurantists. Scientism has often been equated with pos- “This article offers a defense of a particular kind of itivism, in particular Comte’s. While it is true scientism: the view that science is the truest and deepest that Comte asserted that sociology (a word he kind of knowledge of nature and society.” coined) can be rendered scientific, he made no contributions to doing so. Nor did he appreciate Condorcet’s essays in mathematical social sci- ence. Moreover, Comte believed that sociology and biology should test their hypotheses by comparison rather than experiment. Worse, in Scientism, Anti-scientism, and Hemi-scientism line with the phenomenalism of Hume and Kant, Comte (and later Ernst Mach) condemned all talk of atoms, the interiors of The set of people who have written about science can be split stars, intentions, and other items that do not appear to human into three groups: scientistic, anti-scientistic, and hemi-sci- senses by means of outward appearances. On this view, all entistic. For example, the polymath Nicolas Condorcet, the there is (or at least all that can be known) is appearance (to psychologist and sociologist Jean Piaget, and the sociologist someone). (For this reason, the learned Émile Meyerson missed Robert K. Merton belong in the first group, while Hegel, no occasion to criticize Comte.) Even so, until recently, posi- Nietzsche, and Heidegger belong in the second. Finally, the tivism was kept alive by behaviorist psychologists such as B. F. group of hemi-scientistic thinkers includes Kant, Marx, and Skinner, who studied behaviors alone because motives, inten- the logical positivists. All of these latter thinkers praised tions, and subjective experience were considered unknowable. science, in particular its rationality and universality, while Too many nuclear physicists also paid lip service to this naïve remaining attached to antiscientific dogmas: phenomenalism concept—even while they devoted themselves to the explora- in the cases of Kant and the logical positivists and Hegel’s tion of imperceptible things. hermetic dialectics in the case of Marx. Friedrich Hayek—who, in line with the Austrian tradition, The word scientism was popularized by the embryologist disliked the French Enlightenment—ignored classical defini- Félix le Dantec circa 1912. By 1939, it had received a clear defi- tions of scientism. In its place he offered his own idiosyncratic nition in André Lalande’s classical Vocabulaire. However, the definition: for him, scientism would be “the attempt to ape concept had been hatched much earlier by the radical wing the natural sciences” in social matters. This malicious concept

24 Free Inquiry December 2014/January 2015 secularhumanism.org of scientism is the one that has prevailed in the humanities, react not to external stimuli but to the way they “perceive” particularly since the postmodernist counterrevolution that them. Therefore, Condorcet’s scientism was not naturalistic: started about 1950 and recruited those left behind by the he knew that machines and social systems, though material rapid progress of science, as well as those who blamed science rather than spiritual, were artificial or man-made, hence, just for the sins of the “establishment.” To understand this radical as unnatural as science, ethics, and the law. (Note that I distin- change in the evaluation of scientism, we must take a closer guish naturalism from materialism. Whereas naturalism holds look at its historical background, as well as at the reaction it that all existents are natural, materialism includes in reality elicited. artificial things and processes, from building to computing to managing. So, while naturalism, strictly defined, is reduction- Enlightenment Scientism ist, materialism may make room for emergence, hence, for Along with secularism, egalitarianism, humanism, and materi- “hierarchical” [multilevel] worldviews.) alism, scientism was a component of the views popular among Similar views were put forth by Condorcet’s philosophical members of the radical wing of the French Enlightenment, comrades-in-arms, in particular d’Holbach, who treated the including Denis Diderot; Claude Adrien Helvétius; Thiry two branches of factual science in two different volumes: d’Holbach; Julien Offray de La Mettrie; Anacharsis Cloots; Système de la nature (1770) and Système social (1773). This Condorcet; Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, count of Mirabeau; and scientism was methodological, not ontological, which is why Sylvain Maréchal. This strand was at odds with both the it is wrong to call it “methodological naturalism” the way Karl moderate wing of the same vast movement (including Jean-Baptiste le Rond d’Alembert, Montesquieu, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Anne- Robert-Jacques Turgot, and Voltaire) and the far smaller and paler Scottish Enlightenment, “Friedrich Hayek . . . ignored classical definitions of scientism. embodied by David Hume, Adam Smith, and Francis Hutcheson. (Jonathan Israel has In its place he offered his own idiosyncratic definition: written eloquently of the vast differences for him, scientism would be ‘the attempt to ape the between the two French wings.) natural sciences’ in social matters. This malicious concept of Whereas the above-mentioned French rad- icals were revolutionaries both philosophi- scientism is the one that has prevailed in the humanities. . . .” cally and politically—albeit of the armchair kind—the Voltaireans and the Scots were reformists. In particular, they did not share the atheism and republicanism of the French radicals. Nor did they approve of the scientis- tic manifesto contained in Condorcet’s reception speech at Popper did in 1960. (Incidentally, the French Enlightenment the French Academy in 1782. There, Condorcet declared his was a particular blind spot of Popper’s, as it tended to be for the trust that the “moral [social] sciences” would eventually “fol- entire Austrian cultural tradition to which Popper belonged. low the same methods, acquire an equally exact and precise Austria had, after all, missed the Renaissance, the Reformation, language,” and “attain the same degree of certainty” as the the Scientific Revolution, and the Enlightenment; only in the physical (natural) sciences. Condorcet did not merely praise mid–nineteenth century did it leap from the Middle Ages to scientism: he practiced it by founding mathematical political its own Industrial Revolution and a “Late Enlightenment” science. (It is worth noting that the students of this discipline marked by such figures as Bernard Bolzano, Gregor Mendel, still discuss Condorcet’s theory of voting.) Mach, and Ludwig Boltzmann.) Condorcet’s scientism did not involve the sort of ontologi- The Vienna Circle, which operated from 1929 to 1936, cal reductionism we have seen exemplified in recent years by adopted all of the principles of the radical wing of the French sociobiology, evolutionary psychology, neuroeconomics, and Enlightenment except for materialism: it remained shackled the rest of the purely programmatic “neuro-hype.” Unlike to the phenomenalism of Hume, Kant, Comte, and Mach. Condorcet, these latter-day projects ignore the fact that we In addition, with the exception of Otto Neurath, the Circle’s sculpt our brains as we learn and that all social norms are members were indifferent to social science, which on the made, not found. Of course, mind and society must be stud- whole paid at least lip service to the Enlightenment’s scien- ied scientifically—but not as if they were just as natural and tistic tradition. physical as, say, hearts. Meanwhile, the standard economic theorists—in particu- In the same lecture, Condorcet noted that in the “moral” lar Carl Menger, Frank Byron Jevons, Léon Walras, and Alfred (social) sciences, “the observer himself forms part of the Marshall—had practiced scientism in the pejorative sense of society that he observes.” Therefore, presumably, he would the word: their scientism is best described as “mock science.” have welcomed the so-called Thomas theorem, according to They produced a voluminous body of work—namely, neo- which in social matters appearance is reality, in that people classical microeconomics—bristling with symbols that intimi-

secularhumanism.org December 2014/January 2015 Free Inquiry 25 dated nonmathematicians but were not mathematically well of the practitioners of “interpretive sociology,” reflecting defined or empirically supported. In particular, the members the subtitle of his 1921 magnum opus, Wirtschaft und of this school did not subject their hypotheses to empirical Gesellschaft: Grundriss der verstehende Soziologie. Elsewhere, tests the way Daniel Kahneman and the Zürich group of Weber identified himself explicitly as a follower of Dilthey. experimental economists have been doing in recent years— But, at least since his admirable defense of objectivism or real- alas, with bad results for economic orthodoxy. ism (1904), Weber tried to practice the scientific method. In a 1907 article, he subjected historical idealism to a devastating Counter-Enlightenment Anti-scientism attack; by 1924, he had even proposed a materialist explana- The German philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911) tion of the decline of ancient Rome. wrote an 1883 anti-scientism manifesto that proved to be In short, Weber began his sociological career as an oppo- hugely influential. Heavily indebted to both Kant and Hegel, nent of scientism, only to become an occasional if inconsistent Dilthey’s work had both an ontological and a methodological practitioner of it. By contrast, his rival, Émile Durkheim, was all component. The former consisted in the thesis that every- his life a vocal defender—and a consistent practitioner—of thing social is geistig (spiritual, moral) rather than material. scientism. As such, he would be the object of much of the Its methodological partner is obvious: the social studies harsh anti-scientistic rhetoric of his time. are Geisteswissenschaften (spiritual sciences), hence deserv- But back to Wilhelm Dilthey and the long, strange after- ing a method of their own. Dilthey dubbed this method life of his ideas. Hermeneutics, or textualism, emerged from Dilthey’s theses that (1) everything social is spiritual or cultural and (2) that the hub of social life is the production and circulation of symbols, which should be interpreted the way theologians interpret cryptic scriptures. That is “Condorcet did not merely praise scientism: he practiced why his main followers—Claude Lévi-Strauss, it by founding mathematical political science. Paul Ricoeur, and Charles Taylor—held that (It is worth noting that the students of this discipline societies are “languages or like languages.” Hence, the study of society should concentrate still discuss Condorcet’s theory of voting.)” on the symbolic and aim at catching “mean- ings,” whatever these may be. (In colloquial German, Deutung [interpretation] may denote either sense or intention—an equivocation that facilitates jumping from the goal of an agent to the meaning of his or her utterances and Verstehen—comprehension, or interpretation—in contrast to actions. Similarly, obscurantist is the ritual invocation of Franz explanation in terms of mechanisms and laws. Brentano of “intentionality” fame, just because he confused According to Dilthey, Verstehen consists in the intuitive “reference” or “aboutness” with “intension” [or sense, or con- or empathic “understanding” of an actor’s mental processes. notation] and “intention” in its psychological sense.) The tacit reasoning underlying Dilthey’s view is this: according But of course if one focuses on words rather than on basic to vulgar opinion, history is the doing of great men—mostly needs and vested interests, one can never understand why strongmen and geniuses. Hence, one must empathize with people work, cooperate, or fight. No wonder hermeneutics them or put oneself in their shoes if one hopes to understand had nothing to say about the main social issues of our time, events. According to Dilthey, Verstehen consists in empathy from oil wars to the vanishing of jobs, from the rise of China or fellow feeling (mit-gefühl); Max Weber used the same to the decline of empires. term with a slightly different emphasis, defining Verstehen as Worse, hermeneutics has diverted the attention of stu- guessing intentions or goals. dents of the social from deeds to words—for example, from Given this view, it is understandable that Dilthey argued politics to political narrative. It has thus been an important for the necessity of doing verstehende (interpretive) or ingredient of the obscurantist movement known as “post- “humanistic,” rather than scientific, studies of the social. Of modernism”—rightly criticized as so much pompous and course, neither Dilthey nor his followers suspected that the empty verbiage by Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt in their problem of “inferring” (actually, guessing) mental states from masterful Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its observed behavior is an inverse problem and, as such, one for Quarrels with Science (1994). By contrast, a social science that is scientistic in the sense which no algorithms are available, so that any proposed solu- that I champion—one focused on groups rather than individ- tion to it is speculative, as I observed in my 2006 book Chasing uals and armed with statistics instead of literary metaphors— Reality. Just think of the various ways a wink or a street riot should have much to say about those huge social events. As can be “interpreted!” Hans Albert observed in 1988, hermeneutics is sheer bookish It is usually assumed that Weber was the most famous escapism and as such utterly useless to social scientists.

26 Free Inquiry December 2014/January 2015 secularhumanism.org The Science Wars above that philosophical fray, and few if any scholarly jour- Scientism presupposes the strict conception of science that nals have published articles either for or against science and Robert K. Merton, the father of the sociology of science, scientism. What a contrast with the earlier science war that proposed in his classic paper “Science and the Social Order” culminated in the trial of Galileo or with the fight waged by (1938). Merton argued that the peculiarities of basic science Enlightenment thinkers and Darwinians against the ruling are disinterestedness, universality, epistemic communism, ideas of their respective times! and organized skepticism—not the doubt of the isolated Testing Anti-scientism researcher but the critical scrutiny of a whole community. How has the interpretive or humanist approach fared? Let us Merton’s view of science prevailed until Thomas Kuhn evaluate the pivotal contentions of the anti-scientism move- and Paul Feyerabend launched their slogan “Anything goes!” ment, from Dilthey’s Verstehen to mid–twentieth-century Michel Foucault and his followers (in particular, Bruno Latour) hermeneutics. issued their own outrageous thesis: “Science is politics by 1. The supposed natural/cultural dichotomy was stillborn. other means.” Indeed, even when Dilthey proclaimed this dichotomy in Both obscurantist groups avoided using words such as 1883, a number of hybrid sciences had already come into knowledge and truth. They denied that scientific research was existence, notably human geography, psychophysics, epide- primarily the search for objective truth, claiming instead that miology, and demography. Not long after, still further hybrid it sought riches or power. They also denied that scientific con- sciences emerged, among them medical sociology, physiolog- troversies, though sometimes distorted by political authority, ical psychology, developmental cognitive neuroscience, social are never terminated by it. In reality, of course, eventually cognitive neuroscience, and socioeconomics. truth wins out. When it does not, scientific research grinds to For example, explaining such bottom-up processes as a halt. This is why those who wish to gain power go into pol- Puberty → Altered feelings → Changed social behavior and itics or business, not science. But obvious truths such as these top-down ones such as Subordination → Higher corticoid have no place in the fantasy worlds of the postmodernists. level → Lower immunity call for the merger of neuroscience, The ideas that science is merely the handmaiden of polit- cognitive neuroscience, and sociology (see figure 1). ical power and that scientists work primarily to attain power are preposterous. For one thing, scientists are motivated by curiosity, as Aristotle said, and by peer recognition, as Merton added. But they usually avoid assuming power positions because these can destroy their scientific agendas. Second, science tends to empower people other than scientists: tech- nologists, managers, statesmen, and others. Third, the power elite can nurture or starve science, but it cannot produce it, for scientific ideas are born in well-trained brains working in favorable environments, not in state offices. In short, the main direction of flow between the two activities in question is Science → Power, not the reverse. However, on rare occasions, politics has fought science and even overpowered it. Suffice it to recall the early Christians’ Figure 1. The merger of a biological science, a biosocial one, and a social assault on pagan culture, in particular Greek science; the one—a clear breach of the natural/cultural divide decreed by anti-sci- radical politics of the Jacobins, buttressed by the adoption of entism. Rousseau’s exaltation of “feeling” over reason; the successful Nazi penalization of scientism, banning social research and rejecting abstract theories on the grounds that they were The preceding examples should refute the charge that Jewish; the Stalinist attempt to pass off its own outdated scientism involves reductionism, such as in physicalism or biol- and distorting ideology as scientism, while rejecting scientific ogism. On the contrary, when accompanied by a science-ori- novelties such as genetics, the synthetic theory of evolution, ented ontology such as the author’s (see my The Furniture general and special relativity, quantum physics, and sociol- of the World and A World of Systems), scientism favors the ogy; and the youth counterculture, which erupted violently in merger or convergence of different disciplines rather than the Parisian student revolt in May 1968, combining hedonism a simplistic leveling down. (I argued this in my Emergence with rejection of the Establishment and, in particular, the and Convergence.) The reason is that a scientific worldview scientific method. is systemic rather than either individualistic or holistic, a clear Finally, the so-called science wars, which have raged since suggestion that the frontiers among disciplines are partly Kuhn published The Structure of Scientific Revolutionsin artificial. In any event, the emergence of the biosocial sciences 1962, have engaged a great number of scientists, journal- shows that the nature/culture wall erected by the interpretive ists, and ideologues both on the traditional Right and the or humanistic school obstructs the advancement of science. new Left. Regrettably, most philosophers have kept safely 2. The Verstehen method has proven fruitless. Indeed, no

secularhumanism.org December 2014/January 2015 Free Inquiry 27 interpretive (or humanistic) student of society has ever come The Philosophical Matrix of Scientific Research up with true conjectures about any important economic, Most philosophers take it for granted that science and philos- political, or cultural process, such as the rise and corruption ophy do not intersect: that scientists start from data, or from of democracy. Max Weber, the most eminent member of the hypotheses, which they handle without any philosophical school, missed most of the epoch-making events of his time: preconceptions. A glance at the history of science should the rise of democracy, trade unionism, colonialism, corpo- suffice to indict this thesis as a myth. A quick examination of a rations, science, and technology—along with the decline of few open problems will corroborate this harsh verdict. religion. (After all, he fathered the sociology of religion, not Let us imagine how a scientist would tackle an open prob- of science.) Nowadays, the writings of members of this school lem such as (a) whether “dark matter” and “dark energy” are published only in marginal journals. defy all known physical laws; (b) which, if any, acquired However, a few students of society in the humanist camp characteristics are heritable; (c) whether some animals can be have produced some insightful work. Suffice it to recall the in conscious states; (d) how to manage social systems, such brilliant essays of Norberto Bobbio, Albert O. Hirschman, as business firms and armies, in a rational fashion; and (e) and Thorstein Veblen. For their part, Bronislaw Malinowsky, whether the law and the courts can and should use scientific Margaret Mead, Clifford Geertz, and Napoléon Chagnon evidence in addition to traditional methods and procedures. have written highly readable, if hotly disputed, descriptions Would our hypothetical scientist refuse to investigate of certain exotic practices. However, their conclusions have these problems, joining Chomsky and his new fellow “myste- been criticized, and not one of these writers was particu- rians” (radical skeptics) in holding that matter and mind are larly interested in ordinary life, aside from sex: their subjects mysterious and will forever remain so? Would he or she jump seemed to subsist on thin air. (See Bruce G. Trigger’s Artifacts into medias res instead of starting by reviewing the relevant and Ideas [2003] for an explicitly realist and materialist coun- background knowledge? Would he or she fantasize about terbalance.) anomalous events and abnormal or even supernatu- ral powers or filter out spiritualist fantasies? Would he or she remain satisfied with compiling lists of appear- ances or symptoms or conjecture possible patterns and their underlying mechanisms? Would he or she “The Vienna Circle, which operated from 1929 to 1936, remain satisfied with hunches or seek empirical cor- roboration? Would he or she confine attention to the adopted all of the principles of the radical wing of the object of his or her research or place it into its context French Enlightenment except for materialism: or wider system? Finally, would he or she dismiss out it remained shackled to the phenomenalism of Hume, of hand all concerns about the possible harmful effect of any resulting findings? Kant, Comte, and Mach.” Admittedly, all of the previous questions are loaded. But this is the point of our exercise: to sug- gest that genuine scientists do not investigate the first guess that comes to mind, just as they do not question all antecedent knowledge. Let us see how a pro-sci- entism student is likely to tackle the five problems To see modern social studies at their best, one must look at listed above. the work of anthropologists, archaeologists, sociologists, and 1. Is “dark matter” anomalous or just little-known matter? historians of the scientistic persuasion. Examples include the The only way to find out whether it exists and if it does, what Annales school, Gunnar Myrdal’s monumental and influential it is, is to use the known theoretical and experimental tools to American Dilemma, the inventory of archaeological pieces catch samples of it and try to detect some of its properties. At done before their drowning by the Aswan High Dam, and the time of writing, this is a “hot” question, and there is grow- the massive study The American Soldier. The publication of ing consensus that dark matter is the debris left by cosmic rays the latter work in 1949 elicited the anger of the humanistic when going through ordinary matter, rather than tiny black school, but it also marked the coming of age of the scientific holes as had been conjectured earlier. Stay tuned. strand of American sociology, with Robert Merton at its head 2. Was Lamarck right after all? In recent years, genetics and and the American Sociological Review as its flagship. evolutionary biology have been enriched with epigenetics, Why has anti-scientism failed? Arguably, it failed because it the newest branch of genetics. This has shown conclu- condemned the scientific method, which has characterized all sively that some experiences, such as maternal nurturing (or scientific endeavors since the scientific revolution. Moreover, neglect), cause the methylation of DNA molecules, a heritable when tackling new cognitive problems, every contemporary chemical change. However, this discovery did not vindicate investigator takes scientism for granted, as will be argued Lamarck: it only showed that the Darwinian mechanism (vari- below. ation-selection) comes in more than one version.

28 Free Inquiry December 2014/January 2015 secularhumanism.org 3. Can animals be in conscious states? The popular liter- to constitute no less than the philosophical matrix of scientific ature, starting with Aesop, is full of anecdotes about con- research: see figure 2. sciousness in animals of various species. But anecdotes are not hard scientific data. Some of the best such data have recently been obtained by effecting reversible thalamic and cortical inactivations—delicate interventions that are beyond the ken of the “humanistic” psychologists. It turns out that there is mounting evidence for the hypothesis that animals of various species can be conscious. 4. Can social systems be scientifically managed? Operations research, the most sophisticated phase of management sci- ence, was born overnight from the work of a multidisciplinary team assembled at the beginning of World War II by the British Admiralty to confront the great losses German subma- rines were then inflicting on the merchant navy transporting food and ammunition to England. The problem was to deter- mine the optimal size of a naval convoy. The mathematical model built by the team, led by physicist Patrick Blackett, showed that size to be middling: large enough to justify air Figure 2. The philosophical matrix of scientific progress. From Mario Bunge, Matter and Mind (2010). coverage but not so large as to invite a great concentration of enemy submarines—a result that must have disappointed the economists who loved to maximize. The navy accepted If scientific research presupposes the above-mentioned this result—obtained by newcomers to military strategy but philosophical theses that habitually accompany scientism, not to science and mathematics—and naval losses decreased then this view does not oppose the humanities, as is often significantly. This result encouraged business experts to con- claimed. What the proponents of scientism oppose is the anti- struct mathematical models for similar problems, such as scientific stance adopted by Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, finding the optimal size of inventories. Thus, scientism scored Dilthey, Bergson, Husserl, Heidegger, the Frankfurt School, another victory over the traditional or humanistic party, this and the structuralists, hermeneuticians, and postmodernists 6 “Weber began his sociological career as an opponent of time in the field of sociotechnology. from Althusser to Derrida and Deleuze. Do these enemies scientism, only to become an occasional if inconsistent practi- 5. Can the law become scientific? In recent years, criminol- of rationality deserve to be called “humanists” if we accept tioner of it.” ogy and jurisprudence, as well as their practice in the courts of Aristotle’s definition of “man” as “the rational animal”? law, have benefited from biology, psychology, and sociology. Indeed, DNA testing is now admissible in the courts, juvenile Pseudoscientism criminal justice is slowly changing for the better as we learn It is well known that anything can be faked. The main reason that the adolescent frontal cortex is not yet fully mature, and is that the gullible by far outnumber skeptics. Besides, fakeries criminal law as a whole is changing as the social causes of are often more profitable than the genuine articles. This holds crime are being unveiled and techniques of rehabilitation are even for science: witness the commercial success of psycho- being perfected. All these are accomplishments of scientism. analysis and alternative medicine. Indeed, all five of these problems are currently being inves- As with science, so with scientism. Pseudoscientism is the tigated on the scientistic assumption that the scientific method practice of parading pseudosciences as genuine sciences just is the royal road to objective truth and efficiency in any scien- because they wear some of the accoutrements of science—in tific or technological field. Moreover, in all five cases more particular the conspicuous use of mathematical symbols— than scientism is being presupposed: realism, materialism, while lacking its peculiarities, in particular compatibility with systemism, and humanism too are being taken for granted, as antecedent knowledge and concern for empirical testing. I noted in my 2012 book Evaluating Philosophies. For instance, Pseudoscientism is particularly harmful when allied with the study of animal consciousness assumes (a) the realist political power: witness the fight of Soviet philosophers hypothesis that the processes in the experimental animals are against “bourgeois” science and the reputation that the real, rather than figments of the experimenter’s imagination; accountant Robert McNamara, the U.S. Secretary of Defense (b) the materialist thesis that mental states are brain states; (c) in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, gained for the systemic principle that the problem under study, like all of guaranteeing that his team would win the Vietnam War the big questions, is part of a bundle of problems to be tack- because they would wage it “scientifically.” What he called led anatomically as well as behaviorally; and (d) the humanist “scientific warfare” was computer programming using theo- injunction to respect animal welfare—which in turn suggests ries that looked scientific but actually were not. refraining from prodding at random the animal’s brain just to Decision theory and game theory were key pieces in see what happens. McNamara’s intellectual tool kit. These theories presuppose I suggest that all of the four above principles join scientism the individualist notions that society is a collection of free

secularhumanism.org December 2014/January 2015 Free Inquiry 29 individuals driven by personal interest, imbued with the compatibility with other items in the fund of antecedent ability to estimate both the probability and the utility of the knowledge, as I observed in my 1967 Scientific Research. outcome of every possible course of action, plus the capacity Besides, unlike superstition, ideology, or hit-and-miss spec- to figure out the best strategy to maximize the product of ulation, science can grow exponentially through the well- both numbers. There is no science in any application of these known mechanism of positive feedback—where some of the theories to politics, because (a) the individuals it postulates output is fed back into the system, such as interest flowing are imaginary; (b) what matters in politics is not the isolated back into a savings account. But of course, the continuation individual but the social group or system; and (c) the numbers of this process requires that a nation spend close of 3 percent involved in these calculations are all invented, and experi- of GDP on research and development, something that politi- ment with real people has not confirmed the maximization cians sold on anti-scientism won’t support. conjecture. This applies, in particular, to research in political science, which the National Science Foundation ceased to sup- port following a restriction on “wasteful” spending imposed by the U.S. Senate in 2013. (Is it not emblem- atic that Condorcet, a great political scientist and the author of the first scientistic manifesto, took his own life to avoid being guillotined by the sanguinary “Merton argued that the peculiarities of basic Robespierre, a fan of Rousseau’s, who had preferred science are disinterestedness, universality, feeling to reasoning?) epistemic communism, and organized In short, adherence to scientism has been repaying handsomely, economically as well as culturally, skepticism—not the doubt of the isolated researcher whereas betting on anti-scientistic dogmas threatens but the critical scrutiny of a whole community.” the growth of knowledge that has been ongoing, albeit with some temporary setbacks, since the time of Galileo, Descartes, and William Harvey. Acknowledgment I thank Tom Flynn for his constructive criticisms.

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Mario Bunge is the Frothingham Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at McGill University and a Laureate of the International Academy of Jason Roberts has degrees in automotive mechanics and English, as Humanism. Over the course of his long and distinguished career, he has well as a master’s in counseling. He lives with his wife and two dogs in received sixteen honorary doctorates and four honorary professorships. He Spartanburg, South Carolina, where he works at a state-managed mental has won numerous awards and is a member of several professional soci- health facility. He is also currently a volunteer facilitator for Recovering from eties. Dr. Bunge’s writings include eighty books and four hundred articles, Religion, and he hosts a monthly dinner called called “The Conversation” including several for Free Inquiry. for religious and nonreligious individuals.

secularhumanism.org December 2014/January 2015 Free Inquiry 31 Honest Atheism D. Cameron Webb

s atheists, we hear it all the time: how miserable our lives I have a short response and a long response to Linker and must be, how utterly devoid of meaning and purpose. to all wishy-washy believers who believe, like him, that an AWithout the promise of eternal life, without knowing honest appraisal of atheism must lead to a tragic and point- that our lives are intrinsically important to the machinations less existence and that atheists deliberately ignore or distort of a creator god, we must agonize daily, endlessly, under that fact. Each response is detailed below. Take whichever the weight of crushing despair and pointless suffering. This one you want. They are both honest. notion was recently brought into sharp focus in a piece writ- ten for The Week magazine by Damon Linker. Asking “Where The Short Response are the Honest Atheists?” under the guise of reviewing A. C. “Yeah, so?” Grayling’s book The God Argument, Linker articulated what The Long Response millions of Americans simply take as brute fact: Okay, that short response may have been a bit smart-ass, but The style of atheism rehearsed in these books has reached if you look hard enough, there’s an undercurrent of brutal a dead end. It’s one thing to catalogue the manifest faults within this or that religious tradition, which the new atheists honesty in it. Actually, you needn’t look that hard. The brutal have ably done. It’s quite another to claim, as these authors honesty is this: “Atheism is most likely true. What difference also invariably do, that godlessness is not only true but also does it make if it’s tragic?” unambiguously good for human beings. It quite obviously is Even if you grant Linker’s ridiculous premise, “Yeah, so?” is not. If atheism is true, it is far from being good news. Learning a perfectly valid rejoinder. Yeah, Mr. Linker, atheism is utterly that we’re alone in the universe, that no one hears or answers tragic. So? What, I’m wondering, is the next step in this line our prayers, that humanity is entirely the product of random of reasoning? That because it’s tragic, we should . . . what, events, that we have no more intrinsic dignity than non-hu- exactly? Ignore it? Pretend it doesn’t exist and hope it will go man and even non-animate clumps of matter, that we face away? Stick our fingers in our ears and cry “La la la, I can’t hear certain annihilation in death, that our sufferings are ultimately pointless, that our lives and loves do not at all matter in a you” like children? Have faith in its complete opposite and larger sense, that those who commit horrific evils and elude hold fast to that faith despite any evidence—despite, in fact, a human punishment get away with their crimes scot free—all ton of contradictory evidence? What exactly is being implied of this (and much more) is utterly tragic. here? That we should only accept truths that make us feel Since atheists, agnostics, secular humanists, freethinkers, good? That truth, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder? and the like aren’t popping off by the millions each day and That it can be tossed aside if it’s inconvenient or troubling? putting bullets in their heads, there is obviously a major Those of us on the political Left are more than familiar disconnect here. Why can a smart and educated man such with the antiscience, anti-evidence, anti-truth know-nothings as Linker believe it to be “quite obviously” the case that an on the political Right and how their minions have infiltrated honest appraisal of atheism leads to an “utterly tragic” exis- every level of every political and educational institution in this tence, whereas nonbelievers, almost without exception, find country. What we’re sometimes loathe to admit, though, is their lives to be anything but? I’ve been watching and writing that this same disease infects a good percentage of the liberal about the interaction between believers and nonbelievers Left. The idea that evidence and facts and truths can be tossed Andy Norman is a professor of philosophy at Carnegie Mellon University. for a long time, and without question this is what flabber- aside merely because they don’t feel right or don’t support He writes and speaks on the philosophy of humanism, the foundations gasts theists the most about atheists: that we can somehow the idea that we’re special or cause us to feel uncomfortable of ethics, and the teaching of wisdom. In addition to Free Inquiry, his function day-to-day without the certitude of knowing that is not a conservative, right-wing, Christian-only ailment. This work has appeared in Essays in the Philosophy of Humanism and several our lives are cosmically important and will end in an eternity disease can infect anyone in any political, socioeconomic, or scholarly journals. of bliss if only we are good enough, or faithful enough, or religious group. Ignoring inconvenient truths has somehow strong enough, or obedient enough, or fearful enough, or eat become the new normal. the correct foods, or sleep with the correct people, or practice Atheists have never been particularly good at following the correct traditions, or follow the correct rules. Otherwise, norms or conforming to the will of the majority, so it’s easy they figure, what’s the point? to see why we aren’t similarly blinded. For atheists, truth is

32 Free Inquiry December 2014/January 2015 secularhumanism.org paramount. Whether or not that truth is warm and fuzzy is the fact that there are no gods out there, or countless gods irrelevant. We see and accept the world as it truly is, not how that don’t reveal themselves, have any effect on whether or we wish it to be. You say we’re alone in the universe? Yeah, not I feel lonely? Not one bit. Nor should any of this affect so? You say no one hears or answers our prayers? Yeah, so? you, unless, that is, the only reason you don’t feel empty and That we face certain annihilation in death? Yeah, so? What lonely is because you assume there is a God out there who difference does it make, as long as it’s the truth? takes a direct interest in your well-being and who created Isn’t it better to live in a world where the truths are known you for a special purpose—in which case, it is your life that is and accepted than to live in a make-believe world where utterly tragic. truths are tossed aside as too scary or depressing? Look, it’s There’s only one certainty here: We’re here and we have a big dark empty universe out there. You are a mote of dust each other. Why isn’t that enough? suspended in that vast emptiness. Your life is barely a blip in If atheism is true, no one hears or answers our prayers. the endless reach of celestial time. When you are gone, the If atheism is true, it is certainly true that no god hears or universe won’t care, won’t blink, won’t even notice. As far as answers our prayers. Is this utterly tragic? Many liberal the universe is concerned, your existence is no more conse- theologians will fully admit that the purpose of prayer isn’t quential than that of a turnip. But again: Yeah, so? Just deal literal. If you pin them down, they’ll say that “no one” really with it. Accept it as it is, and get on with your life. Atheists do expects a god or gods to actually hear those wishes and alter this without thinking, and it’s an endless source of bafflement the natural course of the universe for them. Prayer, they say, to us that educated theists can’t do the same. is more internal and more for the psychological benefit of Each of Linker’s “quite obvious” points about atheism’s the person doing the praying, so it’s difficult to see how this “utterly tragic” conclusions deserves a response in turn. can be utterly tragic. Those people who pray and expect real Mine are below. I hope when I’m done that he and similarly answers from real gods are either seriously deluded or, one minded theists will perhaps consider the notion that atheism, far from being the tragedy they assume it to be, is actually a moral, honest, and even comforting worldview. Oh, and it’s almost certainly true, too. But I’ll be generous and leave “. . . This is what flabbergasts theists the most about that “if” in there. atheists: that we can somehow function day-to-day with- Let’s begin. If atheism is true, we’re alone in the universe. lf out the certitude of knowing that our lives are cosmically atheism is true, that says absolutely nothing about important and will end in an eternity of bliss if only we are whether or not we’re alone in the universe, unless good enough, or faithful enough, or strong enough. . . . you equate being alone with being without God or gods. It’s unclear what Linker means by it. If he Otherwise, they figure, what’s the point?” somehow thinks that atheism leads to believing that the only life in the entire universe exists on this one planet, then he’s simply—and spectacu- larly—mistaken. If he means that no God implies we’re alone, would think, seriously depressed, since deafening silence is all then he’s just suffering from some muddled thinking. they ever get in return. Billions of people on this planet know Here’s a thought experiment: picture a universe full of exactly what it’s like to have no god hear or answer their deities. Gods everywhere. Or, if you prefer, picture a universe prayers, because they experience it daily. I guess you’d have with just one deity who’s omnipresent. There’s just one catch: to ask them if they think this is utterly tragic. these gods (or god) cannot be visible. They must remain hid- And let’s not forget how uncommonly arrogant prayers den, outside the realm of human inquiry. You can’t touch can be before we bemoan the fact that no one hears them. them, feel them, talk to them (in a two-way conversation, For what is prayer if not an appeal to the Grand Mover to anyway), analyze them, investigate them, or verify that they move things around in precisely the right way to benefit you exist in any manner. They take no interest in human affairs and not the poor schmuck down the street? “Please, God, and, even if they did, you’d have no way of knowing. Now, heal my sick husband, or wife, or child—oh, and by the way, picture another universe with no gods, but populated with if you could move that to the top of the list and ignore the beings who pretend that gods exist. Tell me: What’s the differ- hundreds of thousands of children being raped by pedo- ence? Do you feel alone in one and not the other? philes or dying of starvation or needlessly suffering from all If atheism is true, there are no gods. The universe, on the those natural disasters and diseases that you created, well, other hand, may be teeming with life, perhaps intelligent life that would be swell!” That fact that no “one” out there hears like us. Given the vast distances involved, though, it’s highly and answers arrogant rot like that seems to me indicative of unlikely we’d ever meet that life or interact with it in any way. a perfectly just and moral universe. A universe where people Does the fact that alien life is out there, or not out there, have suffer and die, or thrive and prosper, based on the whims of any effect on whether or not I feel lonely? Not one bit. Does a capricious deity who’s influenced by the quality or quantity

secularhumanism.org December 2014/January 2015 Free Inquiry 33 In previous issues I have presented examples of cases against Christianity which I am confident will more effectively arouse the attention and interest of those on the weak end of the faith curve than longer more sophisticated efforts. They are short, in plain language, and use the Bible, tenets of the faith and common sense to prove the case. I hope secular humanists will see their value, organize and find a way to use the most promising print media to take cases like this to the public. Here is another.

O BEAUTIFUL STAR OF BETHLEHEM ?

ITS FAILURE CAUSED THE SLAUGHTER OF EVERY MALE BABY UNDER TWO IN BETHLEHEM AND VICINITY

Surely that the star appeared and the wise men knew to follow it • can do anything; and knows everything which has ever to find the baby Jesus, was a miracle. How could they have pos- happened or will ever happen; sibly known without one? • and who is a loving, just and merciful father So why did the miracle lead them to Jerusalem, the wrong town — and much worse — to Herod, who only became aware of the — would deliberately cause such an unjust and fatal miracle? birth of a potential rival after the wise men inquired about the newborn King of the Jews? It was then and only then that Herod Is there no escape from the unhappy moral conclusion that God resolved to kill Jesus. knowingly caused the slaughter of innocents? Yes, there is a way, simply choose to believe the other divinely inspired account of Herod told the wise men in effect, “Go to Bethlehem, find his birth, the truth as reported in Luke, which is entirely different. Jesus, and then return to me so I can go and worship him too.” This time the star took the wise men unerringly, not just to There, it is shepherds tending their flocks who were told by an Bethlehem, but to the very house — not to a manger — of Mary angel that they would find Jesus lying in a manger — not a and Jesus! (Matthew 7:10) There, in yet another miracle, the house — which they did. In Luke’s account there is no star of wise men were warned in a dream not to go back to Herod. Bethlehem, no Herod, and best of all, no slaughter of every innocent male baby in and around Bethlehem! Herod, furious that he was not obeyed, then decreed that every boy in Bethlehem and its immediate vicinity, age two and under, Is it not strange that the divine inspiration of Matthew be put to death. and Luke should be so diametrically different?

Why wasn’t the miracle of the star accurate enough to The need to choose which story is the true one is all the lead the wise men directly to baby Jesus in Bethlehem, in proof needed that the Bible was entirely man-made; the first place? Then Herod would not have known about which explains why it is riddled by absurdities, historical his birth; and there would never have been a slaughter of errors and outright contradictions such as these com- the innocents. pletely different accounts of the birth of Jesus.

Does this not suggest that it was God’s intention that the And its being man-made fully explains the greatest babies be slaughtered? He surely knew they would be. In contradiction and impossibility of all — that a loving, just fact, the Bible says it was so prophesied: and merciful father will consign most of all humanity to eternal punishment forever. When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him; and assembling all the chief priests and Enter ye in at the narrow gate: for wide is the gate, and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many was to be born. They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea; for there are who go in thereat. How narrow is the gate, and so it is written by the prophet: And you, O Bethlehem, in strait is the way that leadeth to life: and few there are that the land of Judah, are by no means least among the find it! (Matt 7:13-14) rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who will govern my people Israel.” (Matthew 2: 3-6) Just two groups, many to eternal suffering and only a few to salvation — the arithmetic of hell! It is possible, with words meaning to us what they do, that a God who —

34 Free Inquiry December 2014/January 2015 secularhumanism.org of the pleas to him/her/it would be the true definition of an again I find myself saying that if purpose and meaning come to utterly tragic world. you only as the result of believing that your existence is integral If atheism is true, humanity is entirely the product of random to the workings of the universe, or that a better life awaits you events. This is simply incorrect. If atheism is true, there was beyond the grave, then you are either (1) an arrogant jerk or no Designer or Creator and humanity is the product of both (2) sadly devoid of self-worth, in which case it is your life that is random events and nonrandom natural processes such as bio- empty and meaningless. And that is utterly tragic. logical selection, gravitational attraction, chemical reactions, If atheism is true, those who commit horrific evils and elude nuclear fusion, and so on. That Linker thinks this is utterly tragic human punishment get away with their crimes scot-free. This is is baffling. In effect, he’s saying that our lives and the myriad where the short answer is the best answer: Yeah, so? aspects of those lives—the birth of our children, marriage, sex, I’m wondering what the alternative is here. What exactly friends, music, poetry, books, compassion, love, forgiveness, does a theistic worldview buy you? Hell? Eternal damnation? charity, baseball games, theater, good food, good wine, good Really, Mr. Linker? Eternal punishment is the answer that avoids conversation—are rendered utterly meaningless unless they utter tragedy? Wow. Personally, I can’t think of anything more were the product of a deliberate creation by an unknow- tragic than a universe lorded over by some unknowable deity able deity. Linker cannot seem to find beauty or purpose or who would damn to hell for all eternity those who he/she/it meaning in the world unless our lives are deemed cosmically deems to have violated some unknown and unknowable law. important by virtue of the fact that they were created with a What person in his or her right mind would think this was a special purpose by an all-powerful being. And yet, laughably, just universe or actually believe in—let alone worship—the he accuses atheism of leading to a tragic existence. deity responsible for that universe? Can anyone not in the grip If atheism is true, we have no more intrinsic dignity than of religious insanity seriously think that an appropriate pun- nonhuman and even non-animate clumps of matter. If atheism ishment for even the most heinous of human crimes is eternal is true, there was no Designer or Creator to bestow special torture with no hope of salvation? status on humans. We live and die just like every creature on Sorry, Mr. Linker, but I’ll pass. I’ll take the “utter tragedy” of the planet. We don’t have souls, but unlike most other life- criminals getting away “scot-free.” (Other than the fact that forms, we have a higher consciousness that allows us to fully they’re dead, of course.) The alternative is just too hideous to experience our lives and our surroundings. That may not mean contemplate. we have an intrinsic dignity that separates us from jellyfish or If atheism is true, we face certain annihilation in death. I’ve rocks, but we certainly have intelligence and consciousness saved this one for last because this is crux of it. All of the other that do so. How, exactly, is this utterly tragic? stuff is window dressing. Religions owe their existence to our What does it even mean to have intrinsic dignity? Dignity is fears of death and the unknown. lf we were not aware of our earned; it’s not magically imparted by a unique string of DNA own mortality, or if we were immortal, we would have no gods or a big bogeyman in the sky. Of course, a human has no more and no religions and the world, presumably, would be a better intrinsic dignity than an artichoke. So what? What we have as place. There is no other reason for intelligent, educated people conscious beings is the potential to earn a modicum of dignity in the twenty-first century to literally believe in, or claim to in our lives as a result of our choices and actions. An artichoke believe in, preposterous notions such as resurrections, virgin can’t do that. A mealworm can’t do that. If you have to look to births, transubstantiation, immaculate conceptions, and so on the universe to find a reason for living, or if your life must have unless they think these beliefs will buy them a one-way ticket some intrinsic worth in order for you to find it worthy, then I to life eternal. So this is what it boils down to. Because if athe- pity your sad and miserable existence. ism is true, we do indeed face certain annihilation in death. Or If atheism is true, our sufferings are ultimately pointless and . . . wait a minute. Do we? our lives and loves do not at all matter in a larger sense. If athe- There’s certainly no evidence to suggest that anything else ism is true, everything is ultimately pointless. Nothing matters is true. Religious musings about heaven and hell are little more in a larger sense. Time will wipe all of us from existence. Indeed, than gibberish, and there’s no scientific evidence whatsoever it will probably wipe the universe from existence. Unless we’re to support the notion of consciousness after brain death. On part of some lab experiment by an advanced race of alien the other hand, the universe is about 13.6 billion years old, beings in which our actions are being recorded and used as which means all of us were not among the living for 13.6 bil- the basis for another round of experiments, of course nothing lion years before somehow popping into being. Every day, just matters “ultimately” or “in a larger sense.” You’d have to be on this planet, millions of life-forms are coming into existence, a complete fool, though, to think that this means your life is and some of these will hit the cosmic jackpot in that they’ll pointless or doesn’t matter. Our lives matter simply because not only experience life but consciousness as well. “Certain they matter to us and to those who love us. Our lives have annihilation,” in other words, is being annihilated all around meaning and purpose every time we strive toward a wor- us, every day. When we return to that state of nonexistence in thy goal. This theistic notion that we have to have ultimate a few hours or days or years or decades . . . well, who knows? purpose in order to find local purpose, or that our lives must Our consciousness will certainly cease with the death of our mean something to the universe in order for them to mean brains. Our lives will certainly come to an end. But certain anni- something to us, is certifiable nonsense to an atheist. And once hilation? Forever? Your guess is as good as mine.

secularhumanism.org December 2014/January 2015 Free Inquiry 35 I struggle with this, simply because I can somewhat appre- Just writing the above paragraph has made me a little ciate and grasp the utter improbability of my own existence uneasy. I keep expecting a horde of “real” atheists to come in the first place. It is natural, therefore, to wonder: Why me? barging through my door at any minute to confiscate my athe- Why now? Why, when there are infinitely more ways of being ist membership card and beat some sense into me. If there’s dead than alive, am I alive? Why, when there are millions more one thing atheists seem to take pride in, it’s their ability to ways of being alive and unconscious—as an ant, or a wasp, or shrug off, with zero equivocation, that “certain annihilation” a sea snake, or a slug—am I alive and conscious? Why, when brick wall they’re speeding toward: “Look how strong I am, there are so many more ways of being alive and conscious and how confident, how utterly without care that I will someday miserable—starving to death, dying of pitiless disease, being die and be gone forever!” Or too often they think the corollary: raped and tortured, enslaved to a lunatic, and so on—am I “Look at those weak-minded theists over there cowering in the anything but miserable? Why, when there were so many other face of death and the unknown and making up their sad little times to be alive, and so many other places, did I happen to fairy tales. How pathetic!” I do it, too, I admit. We all do. But pop into existence in 1963 in the richest country on the planet? here’s the thing, and it’s the only thing Linker has valid point Why am I alive at all, now, as a human, in the twenty-first about: atheists will never win the war with theists with only century: white, male, upper middle class, wanting for nothing, “certain annihilation” in their back pockets. It may not be an never having experienced poverty, sickness, discrimination, or utter tragedy that our lives will be forever extinguished (we’d physical impairment or mental, physical, or sexual abuse? Not have to be pretty arrogant to believe that), but it can be utterly only am I a cosmic freak in the sense that the universe is virtu- terrifying if you think about it too long. And that’s not going to win any converts to atheism. Most people would rather believe in absurd fantasies told by con artists and liars than believe that their existence “What exactly is being implied here? That we should only will be permanently annihilated. So where does that leave an honest atheist? accept truths that make us feel good?” It’s simple, I think. Admit that you don’t know squat about what happens after we die. None of us do. “If atheism is true, we face certain anni- ally 100 percent nothingness and intelligent life is exceedingly hilation in death” turns out to be spectacularly untrue, because rare, but I am also a freak of earthly nature, where virtually nothing in this realm is certain. Atheists and theists alike have all life has no idea it’s alive and the small fraction that does is no idea what they face. Annihilation is no more guaranteed far more likely to suffer a miserable existence than to enjoy a than the gibberish spouted by the Pat Robertsons of the world. life of ease. If this life is truly it, forever, end of story, “certain We just don’t know. That doesn’t mean we have to take seri- annihilation” and all that, then I hit the mother of all Powerball ously every crackpot invention of the afterlife dreamt up by jackpots. I’m talking a planet-sized celestial wheel with a hell every lunatic who ever walked the earth; in fact, we can dismiss of a lot more than fifty-nine numbered balls inside. And that is them all and be on solid footing. What we can’t do, though, is a source of endless bafflement to me. It just doesn’t compute. subscribe to unproven suppositions such as certain annihilation I see two options. One, I’m suffering from a run-of-the-mill is all that awaits us, because then we’re falling into the same anthropic conceit, and I really did hit the big lotto in the sky. faith-based trap. If atheists were united in that sentiment I’m here; I’m lucky; I get to enjoy it for a few years, and then it’s and wrote about it more commonly, more forcefully, more over. End of story. Thanks for playing. That’s certainly the most truthfully, people like Linker would, I think, come around. As I rational choice. There’s nothing—not one shred of evidence, hope I’ve shown above, all of his other objections to atheism anywhere—to suggest anything otherwise. were little more than ill-informed speculation wrapped up in Two, I was simply lucky this time, there is an endless stream human-centered arrogance, which I suspect he already knows. of times behind me and in front of me, and the wheels on So the only thing that really matters is, can honest atheists offer the bus go round and round. Not saying necessarily that “I” anything in place of certain annihilation? And the answer is, we will get to experience life again, only that life will continue, can. We can offer total ignorance. Utter cluelessness. A shrug and consciousness will continue, and what do any of us know of the shoulders and an honest “I have no friggin’ idea.” about what that means? If I’m fortunate enough to die in rel- In other words, exactly what honest theists can offer— ative calm and peace and with some modicum of my common honesty. sense still intact, I’m probably going to be thinking something along the lines of “See you in the next life.” That doesn’t mean I believe in reincarnation (I don’t) or I believe there will be an “I” or a “you” in a “next life” (I don’t). It’s simply my way of acknowledging that my mind cannot fully surmount the vast D. Cameron Webb is the author of Despicable Meme: The Absurdity and improbability hurdle of my own existence without at least a Immorality of Modern Religion (2013, available for iBooks, Kindle, Nook, small tip of the hat to the possibility of something else. and other e-readers). He lives with his wife and children in Colorado.

36 Free Inquiry December 2014/January 2015 secularhumanism.org In Praise of Statistics Alexander Nussbaum

ambling, drinking, and sex! Sounds like fun. Yet each of overwritten with Christian prayers and thus only surviving the these was intimately involved with the creation of what cultural frontal lobotomy of the Dark Ages because it was Gstudents consider to be one of the most grueling courses turned into a prayer book—revealed that Archimedes was on of their college career: “sadistics,” er, I mean statistics. But the verge of inventing calculus 1,900 years before it finally without statistics there could be no science and no skepticism. occurred. For all intents and purposes, statistics was invented Statistics and evolution are so interconnected that modern yesterday, in the last decade of the nineteenth century. Why statistics could not have taken shape without the prior dis- so late? Statistics is the study of randomness by utilizing prob- covery of evolution, which helped legitimize and secularize ability, and randomness is a difficult concept for humans who randomness; the modern theory of evolution could not have evolved to perceive meaning and order in their environment been formed without understanding statistics. to cope with. Probabilistic thinking is an inherently new way There is neither informed skepticism nor secularism with- of cognition, requiring a worldview that allows for random- out acceptance of the scientific method. Otherwise, those ness. Statistics as a field of inquiry depends on different rea- who doubt the Holocaust, evolution, the Moon landing, or immunization would be legitimate skeptics. Science is a method, not a body of information, and it is the only method that provides knowledge about “. . . Modern statistics could not have taken shape empirical reality. Its motto is “show me the data,” but only statistics gives data mean- without the prior discovery of evolution, which ing. Statistics is the language of proof in helped legitimize and secularize randomness.” science. As put by historian Theodore Porter: “Statistics has become known in the twenti- eth century as the mathematical tool for ana- lyzing experimental and observational data. Enshrined . . . as the soning than mathematics, which is a purely logical enterprise. only reliable basis for judgments such as the efficacy of medical As Baranoff, Brockett, and Kahane expressed in a recent procedures or the safety of chemicals, and adopted by business business statistics text: “It’s hard for us to imagine that only for such uses as industrial quality control . . . statistical analysis has a few centuries ago people did not believe even in the exis- also come to be seen in many scientific disciplines as indispens- tence of chance occurrences or random events or in accidents, able for drawing reliable conclusions from empirical results. . . . much less explore any method of quantifying seemingly Not since the invention of calculus, if ever, has a new field of chance events. Up until very recently, people have believed mathematics found so extensive a domain of application.” that God controlled every minute detail of the universe. This Statistics offers the route out of mental slavery. belief rules out any kind of conceptualization of chance as a regular or predictable phenomenon.” Only Yesterday That belief would also rule out experimentation and thus The mournful cry of psychology majors who have to take sta- science. Without the concept of randomness, it is impossible tistics is, “Oh, no, it’s math!” Statistics is indeed mathematics, to do an experiment, because experimental proof comes but it is very different from other areas of math. down to seeing how the results of a procedure differ from Sophisticated mathematics is extremely ancient. An ancient what randomness would produce. If one believes the out- parchment showing the work of Archimedes—ironically, come of any procedure is due to the will of God, there is no

secularhumanism.org December 2014/January 2015 Free Inquiry 37 point in experimentation. Indeed, that is why the concept of The Casting of Lots science is so foreign to the vast majority of human cultures Gambling is very ancient. If humans were rational, it would and history. After all, quoting Baranoff, Brockett, and Kahane have led us to understand probability long ago, but the tools again, “If all things are believed to be governed by an omnip- of gambling were never distinct from the tools of divination, otent god, then regularity is not to be trusted, perhaps it can and for thousands of years no one saw the mathematical even be considered deceptive, and variation is irrelevant and basis of probability behind games of chance. Dice evolved illusive, being merely reflective of God’s will.” from using the multisided astralugus (heel) bones of sheep Mathematically, the capacity to deal with randomness was and other domesticated animals. Indeed, these bones were beyond Ionian pre-science. In ancient Greece, a highpoint of used in both gambling and divination in many cultures and civilization not reached again for about 1,700 years, uncer- locations since the Neolithic pre-5000 BCE. Bones were first tainty meant not knowing what the gods intended to do. turned into six-sided dice more than four thousand years ago, The ancient Greeks could understand randomness or luck and yet dice are still called “bones” in slang. as whims of petty gods or even chance events as too trivial In addition to their frivolous use in gambling, dice were for gods to worry about, but the notion that random events used for a far more important and noble purpose: to reveal could be quantified was a mode of thought impossible for the will of the gods. Both the ancient Greeks and Romans them. For example, the ancient Greek philosopher Diodorus used dice for divination; the Roman goddess Fortuna was Cronus argued that if something did not happen, it was in believed to determine the outcomes of games of chance. effect never possible! Today, some gamblers have another name for her: “Lady Luck.” Events that secularists in the modern Western world attribute to chance are attributed every- “Statistics is the study of randomness by utilizing where else and always to divine will. Thus, we probability, and randomness is a difficult concept for still have the I Ching, tarot cards, tea leaves, and bibliomancy. humans who evolved to perceive meaning and order Bibliomancy, picking a selection at random in their environment to cope with.” from a book to communicate with God, is endemic to cultures that have holy books. (That means most of them.) Adherents of Chabad, the largest sect within Orthodox Judaism, use the writings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, considered by them as An evolved cognitive fallacy is the attributing of meaning Melech HaMoshiach (King Messiah), in this manner in order to and significance to coincidences. The concept of randomness continue “communicating” with him though he died in 1994. was alien to ancient thought. Indeed, it remains alien to all Proverbs 16:33 says: “We may throw the dice, but the Lord but a tiny strand of recent Western thought. Replacing prov- determines how they fall.” The casting of lots to reveal God’s idence with random chance was necessary for science and will occurs over seventy times in the Old and New Testaments. progress. Lots is sometimes translated as dice and must have been some- What chance did any study of probability have after the thing at least similar. To the extent that one believes God wrote rise of Christianity, when mathematics itself was suspect? St. the Bible, one is forced to conclude that God approved of this Augustine warned, “The good Christian should beware of method for learning his will. mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. By the way, Deuteronomy 25:19 mysteriously commands The danger already exists that the mathematicians have that “Amalek” be wiped out. Medieval sages, whose writings made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to are taken as the word of God by Orthodox Jews, explain why. confine man in the bonds of Hell.” As put by a rabbi in an online sermon: “Amalek believed in Of course, a main use of mathematics at the time was for randomness. . . . This is why they must be obliterated from the a purpose that is still carried on by newspapers today, to their face of the earth.” disgrace: astrology, hence Augustine’s reference to prophecy. But the result of this attitude was summarized by mathemat- Gambling, Drinking, and Sex ics historian Morris Kline: “From the years 500 to 1400 there I promised gambling, drinking, and sex; let us begin with was no mathematician of note in the whole Christian world.” gambling. Games using dice went on for thousands of years As Matthew 10:29 states, “Are not two sparrows sold for a without anyone seeing the mathematical basis of probability copper coin? And not one of them falls to the ground apart behind them. The reason, as we’ve seen, is that there was no from your Father’s will.” This mode of thought makes science concept of randomness; the outcome of all events was seen and experimentation worthless and out of the question. as predetermined by God. Indeed, theists are forced into more sophisticated theologies This default mode of human thought is diametrically in order to engage in science. Statistics did not present a opposed to scientific thinking. So it is quite possible that if mathematical difficulty but rather an ideological impossibil- humans lacked an evolved predilection toward gambling ity, before the advent of modern secularism. addiction, there would be no science. The study of probabil-

38 Free Inquiry December 2014/January 2015 secularhumanism.org ity as a serious area of mathematics began only because of beer. The Guinness Brewery was among the first to ensure gambling. But it was not until the very end of the Renaissance quality control and consistency in its products; it hired a that mathematicians even turned their attention to gambling young chemist named William Sealy Gosset (1876–1937) in games. The Chevalier de Méré (an intellectual, writer, and 1899. He was required to make decisions about the quality of self-promoted “nobleman”) was a big-time dice gambler; he huge batches of barley, malt, and hops when he was able to began to dabble in the mathematics behind the games hop- test only small samples. Gosset proved up to this task, which ing to find an “edge.” before the dawn of the twentieth century would have been The game that wound up costing de Méré dearly was the deemed logically impossible. In 1908, under the pseudonym following: he would roll two dice twenty-four times and bet “Student,” Gosset published the t-distribution and t-test, even money on getting at least one double six. He figured the methods still taught and used today. following: There was a one-in-six chance that one dice would Sir Ronald Fisher (1890–1962), one of the founders of be a six and a one-in-six chance that the other would be a six, the modern evolutionary synthesis, solved the so-called so there was a one-in-thirty-six chance that both would come “blending problems” by combining Darwinian evolution with up six. Since he was rolling the dice twenty-four times, the Mendelian genetics, producing such innovations in statistics chances of winning should be twenty-four out of thirty-six or as the Analysis of Variance, still the basic statistical procedure two out of three, a sucker bet for his opponents. But it was de employed in this area. Fisher contributed to the Wright-Fisher Méré who was the sucker. What could have gone wrong? In statistical model of genetic reproduction. Sir Francis Galton 1654, he turned for help on this to one of the greatest math- (1822–1911), the father of statistics, invented the concept of ematical minds of history, Blaise Pascal. Pascal quickly spotted correlation to study the idea of inherited variation, vital to a de Méré’s error. Warming to the subject, he consulted with another math genius, Pierre de Fermat. The formal study of probability was born! What went wrong for de Méré? He was right that the chances of getting a double “If one believes the outcome of any procedure is due to the will six when tossing two dice is one in thirty-six, of God, there is no point in experimentation.” and he was right that on average one should have two double sixes per three times of playing the game. But he neglected to take into account that sometimes twenty-four spins would produce more than one double six but result in theory of a rather famous cousin of his, Charles Darwin. Sex, only one win. The probability of not rolling a double six in of course, is one of nature’s ways to produce reproduction twenty-four rolls is (35/36)^24 or about 50.86 percent. Thus, with variability, the mechanism used to recombine genes and his chances of winning were 49.14 percent. Inadvertently, produce mutations. he had been giving his opponents a slight edge; probability The pioneers of statistics, working in the last decade of the always wins in the end, and that slight edge was enough to nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth, cause him large losses over time. inhabited the United States or England, societies that were This is exactly how casinos work; the bank has a slight the freest ever until that time and still freer than 90 percent advantage, and in the long run that’s enough to make them of the world today. That is no coincidence. money-printing operations. For example, in roulette the house Gambling, drinking, and sex—there would be no science has a 5.26 percent advantage. Card-counters are banned in without them! blackjack because they can have the advantage over the bank. A casino will never tolerate that. Note that if only a few peo- The Patterns of Randomness ple had only a bit of extrasensory perception (ESP), Las Vegas Statistics studies the patterns produced by randomness and mea- would be back to the desert it was before Bugsy Siegel got sures uncertainty. G. A. Barnard characterized as the central idea there. Casinos are multibillion-dollar experiments that demon- of Gosset’s and Fisher’s work as being that “uncertainty may be strate conclusively that ESP is absolute bunk. capable of precise quantitative assessment.” The contributions of Pascal and Fermat have been termed Flip a coin; whether it comes up heads or tails is random. If in the Baranoff, Brockett, and Kahane textbook “a very you continue flipping the coin, in the long run we expect the distinct departure from the previous conceptualization of results to be heads half the time and tails half the time. If you flip, uncertainty that had all events controlled by God with no say, thirty coins at a time or, say, five thousand times and record humanly discernable pattern. In the Pascal-Fermat frame- how many heads occurred, you will wind up with (in addition to work, prediction became a matter of counting that could be carpal-tunnel syndrome) what is for practical purposes a normal done by anyone.” distribution, the classic bell curve. Anything that depends on lots Time for a drink. Perhaps the greatest single achievement of random factors will end up normally distributed. Every normal of statistics, the ability to make decisions about populations distribution is identical in the percentages of the population from small samples, was achieved in the quest to make better found between standard deviations.

secularhumanism.org December 2014/January 2015 Free Inquiry 39 Galton wrote of the normal distribution: “I know of we find in Darwinian evolution and human brains. . . . The scarcely anything so apt to impress the imagination as the patterns we observe in nature, by which we find intelligibility wonderful form of cosmic order expressed by the ‘Law of in the world, are often the direct consequence of underlying Frequency of Error.’ The law would have been personified disorder.” by the Greeks and deified, if they had known of it. . . .The Chance is blind and random and thus entirely dependable in huger the mob, and the greater the apparent anarchy, the the long run. That is the secret of statistics. Faced with random- more perfect is its sway. It is the supreme law of Unreason. ness, it (seemingly paradoxically) uses chaos to make marvelous Whenever a large sample of chaotic elements are taken in sense out of our universe—as only statistics can do! hand and marshaled in the order of their magnitude, an Further Reading unsuspected and most beautiful form of regularity proves to Baranoff, E., Brockett, P., Kahane, Y. 2009. Risk Management for have been latent all along.” Enterprises and Individuals. Flat World Knowledge. Randomness is the law of the universe. Richard Dawkins Barnard, G. A. “Fisher’s Contribution to Mathematical Statistics.” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 126, 1963. stated with his typical bluntness, “The universe we observe Dawkins, Richard. 1996. River Out of Eden. New York: Basic Books. has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at Edis, Taner. “Is The Universe Rational?,” Free Inquiry, February/ bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but March 2010. Kline, M. 1953. Mathematics in Western Culture. New York: Oxford blind, pitiless indifference.” This seems indisputable. It is not University Press. by itself proof there is no God or gods, but it is clear that if Newman, J. R., ed. 1956. The World of Mathematics. New York: Simon and Schuster. God exists, he/she/they is/are playing dice with the universe. Porter, T. The Rise of Statistical Thinking, 1820-1900. 1986. Princeton, In fact, randomness is the essential building mechanism of N.J.: Princeton University Press. the universe we know. As Taner Edis writes: “Indeed, physi- cists today have become accustomed to thinking of physical order as inseparable from disorder—from sheer randomness. Alexander Nussbaum is adjunct full professor in the Department of For example, quantum mechanics, the most fundamental Psychology at St. John’s University and on the board of advisers of description of nature we have, allows us to calculate proba- Analytic MedTek Consultants LLC. He is a contributor to a textbook and bility distributions. . . . In modern science, randomness is not has published two previous articles in Free Inquiry, as well as articles in just a quirk confined to fundamental physics. It is in fact the other publications. best source of novelty—the raw material for the creativity

“ e best way to explain natural selection is with the image of a tree… Evolution dictates that things generally get adorned as they evolve… Religion is a human pursuit that can be explained in the Darwinian framework… Religious people are really just participating in the evolution they deny…”

An atheist history of religion By Thomas dugan

You will stop and go, “Hmmm.” And you will laugh. Out loud. Available at outskirtspress.com or Barnes & Noble.

40 Free Inquiry December 2014/January 2015 secularhumanism.org Tom Flynn Thirty Years Yule Free continued from p. 7

Christian aura, almost nothing about recent Pew study in which 72 percent Prong two: Given society’s inability Christmas is uniquely Christian; indeed, of respondents agreed that religion to take serious action to end global the only Christmas tradition with no is losing influence in American life, it warming, it seems unlikely that any hol- pagan antecedent seems to be the seems clear that atheists and humanists iday rooted so heavily in the snows of idea of midnight Mass. Countless later no longer need to sit out Christmas for winter can long endure. In a couple of holiday traditions hail from post-Chris- the sole purpose of making sure every- generations, people will regard those tian sources, many of them commer- one knows we exist! Currier and Ives lithographs of Gilded cial. (Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer That said, as I reread the 1992 SHB Age New Yorkers skating on a frozen started out as a promotion for that column that started it all, some passages Central Park Lake as icons of a long- merchant of yesteryear, Montgomery still ring true for me. Opposing the view lost, magical time. And how much trac- Ward.) Yet there’s no avoiding the par- that pagan traditions such as the winter tion will the Santa myth maintain when adox of the holiday; all of its parts, solstice can be more appropriate for most people know the North Pole as a sacred and secular, do end up sub- humanists than traditional observances crowded year-round shipping lane? merged in that Christian aura, with with Christian themes, I insisted, “Many For all its scale and ubiquity, I still think the perverse result that the ubiquity Christmas traditions aren’t Christian. But Christmas may be nearing its dump-by of a holiday with precious little purely they’re still bogus. . . . Secular humanists date. And I still think atheists, secular Christian content is nonetheless almost should view the fruits of any super- humanists, and other freethinkers have universally interpreted as justifying stition system, Christian or otherwise, something to gain by being enthusias- Christianity’s crushing dominance over with equal disfavor.” Later in the col- tically engaged in that process. And so I the last six weeks of the calendar year. umn I observed, “‘Going along’ with wish you a happy whatever you will, or In my view, humanists who like to pre- Christmas promotes a myth of consen- won’t, be celebrating this December 25. tend that the holiday is really secular (or sus in American culture that serves the It’s a Thursday, so I’ll be behind my desk that it is becoming more secular) over- fundamentalist agenda.” You’ll hear at the Center for Inquiry. look the extent to which Christmas’s that confirmed the next time some wag After all, it’s not the birthday of any- popularity helps to prolong the mar- on Fox News prates, “Christian, Jewish, one I know. ginalization of not just the nonreligious Muslim, atheist—on December 25 we References but of all non-Christians. And so—sor- all celebrate the birth of the Prince of Flynn, Tom. “Confessions of an Anti-Claus.” ry—I can’t help sniffing hypocrisy when Peace.” Um, no, we don’t. Secular Humanist Bulletin, Winter 1992. nonreligious folks “keep Christmas.” At speaking gigs, I’m sometimes ——— . The Trouble with Christmas. Buffalo, I’ve been practicing that view for asked to name the most important N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1993. Now dis- argument against the holiday season tributed by the author. thirty years and preaching it for twen- McGowan, Dale. Parenting Beyond Belief. New ty-two. Over that time, there have that hadn’t occurred to me when I York: Amacom, 2007. been some welcome changes. When I wrote that SHB column. It’s probably a Pew Research Religion and Public Life Project. two-pronged argument against invest- “Public Sees Religion’s Influence Waning.” wrote The Trouble with Christmas, most Washington, D.C.: Pew Research Center, unbelievers were still profoundly clos- ing too heavily in the winter solstice September 22, 2014. eted. We were so good at keeping our (yes, that again). Prong one: We live in heads down that all too often we rein- an increasingly global society, and sol- Correction forced our own marginalization. For stices have a consistent meaning only In my editorial last issue, I stated that that reason, I spilled much ink arguing in one temperate zone at a time. (While Americans United for Separation of that forthrightly boycotting Christmas we north-temperate types are applaud- Church and State (AU) withdrew its would be a great way to make our- ing the approaching end of winter, our support of the Religious Freedom selves more visible and our fellow citi- counterparts in mid-southern latitudes Restoration Act (RFRA) prior to its zens more conscious of our true num- are dismayed that summer soon will passage by Congress. AU supported RFRA bers. I still think it could have been an end. And solstices don’t mean much of throughout the legislative pro­cess and still effective strategy. But we don’t need anything if you live in the tropics.) It’s supports it today. I regret the error. it any more. Our movement has found chauvinistic to imagine that a festival —Tom Flynn other ways to push unbelief out of the based upon a solstice can long satisfy closet and onto society’s center stage. a global culture. To that From the New Atheists to President realization, which made Tom Flynn is the editor of Free Inquiry, the executive director of Barack Obama’s shout-out to the non- it into the 1993 book, I the Council for Secular Humanism, and the director of the Robert religious in his first inaugural, from would add a companion Green Ingersoll Birthplace Museum. the new Openly Secular campaign to a of more recent vintage.

secularhumanism.org December 2014/January 2015 Free Inquiry 41 James A. Haught The Dreams That Stuff Is Made Of continued from p. 8 atoms—when intense gravity com- “The information in the DNA mole- ural gods, devils, heavens and hells of presses a collapsing star into a pulsar, a cule in every cell would fill a thousand religion—purely fictitious, as far as any solid mass of neutrons—the substance 600-page books.” honest observer can learn—when sci- weighs ten million tons per thimbleful. What conclusion can be drawn from ence reveals greater enigmas. Astounding. all this? Here’s mine: science shows that To show the mysteries of existence, Ted reality is amazing, baf- Webb, a Unitarian minister in California, fling, incredible, bizarre, James A. Haught is the editor of the Charleston Gazette. He is the cited these statistics in a sermon: seemingly miraculous. I author of Fading Faith: The Rise of the Secular Age (Gustav Broukal “Your body and mine make 300 mil- can’t imagine why anyone Press, 2010) and a senior editor of Free Inquiry. lion new cells every minute.” would need the supernat-

Ophelia Benson The Roar of the Crowd continued from p. 9 be absurd to conclude that it did. But futures. people within them, use that power it does seem fair to say that football There is the notorious Steubenville, and status to protect themselves at the failed to make him not like that. Given Ohio, rape case, in which a high- expense of underlings and outsiders. that football is so touted as a source school girl who was passed-out drunk I suppose I shouldn’t be shocked of Character, I think it’s worth paying was stripped and sexually assaulted by any of this. It’s all obvious and pre- attention to failures of this kind. by other high-school students who dictable enough: of course high status And they’re not rare. There’s a long recorded their actions and shared the tends to confer immunity from the book that covers one example: Our videos on Twitter. Two of the students social pressure and sanctions that keep Guys, by Bernard Lefkowitz, about a were convicted of the rape of a minor; the rest of us in line. Of course peo- group of popular high-school football they were both football players. One ple who have high status exploit that players and wrestlers who lured a girl of them is now back on the team, after fact. Of course humans have always serving a year in a juvenile detention thought that important people should facility. have extra freedom of action, so that There is Jerry Sandusky, assistant they can exercise their importance. football coach at Pennsylvania State Homer starts The Iliad with aristocrats University, who was found guilty in behaving badly, and not much has “. . . In America we’re all 2012 of forty-five counts of sexual changed. We set up institutions to try abuse of children. An investigation con- to organize and channel some of these supposed to share the enthu- ducted by former Federal Bureau of forces, but then the institutions them- siasm for American football. I Investigation Director Louis Freeh and selves develop some of the arrogance dislike the social bullying aspect his law firm reported that university and refusal to be accountable that the officials had known about allegations top people have always had. Football of it, just as I dislike the social of child abuse by Sandusky as early as and the cult that surrounds it are an bullying of public religiosity. . . .” 1998 and had failed to do anything unpleasantly strong example of the about them. process. Football isn’t alone in showing this Given all that, and more—such as pattern. Many institutions have chronic the concussion issue and the NFL’s long-running problems of sexual abuse attempts to minimize and deny it—I that is concealed or dismissed—the refuse to treat football as any kind Catholic Church, the military, univer- of sacred cow. I hope the Seattle sities. They all deal with it in-house Seahawks lose every game and all the with mental retardation, a former class- instead of via law enforcement, and “12” flags disappear. mate of theirs, into a basement rec they are all now dealing with expo- I look forward to your letters. room and raped her with a broom sure of the festering results. Institutions handle and a baseball bat. Many of the have power and status, people in their upscale suburban town and important people Ophelia Benson is the editor of the website Butterflies and Wheels. were sympathetic to the rapists and within institutions have Her books include Does God Hate Women? (with Jeremy Stangroom, angry at their victim—they were stars, power and status. Both Continuum, 2009). they were talented athletes, they had institutions, and the

42 Free Inquiry December 2014/January 2015 secularhumanism.org Russell Blackford Surprisingly Sensitive—Civility and Freedom of Speech continued from p. 11 distracted from the inquiry at hand. On the wording that should merit any very criticism—perhaps, on occasion, even that basis, I support the voluntary prac- harsh response. Perhaps its most worry- rather uncivil criticism if the initial incivil- tice of civility as a general rule, while also ing statement is the following: “Simply ity is especially reckless and extreme. All acknowledging that there can be occa- put, courteousness and respect in words that, however, is normally a judgment sions for aggressive denunciations—and and deeds are basic preconditions to for individuals to make. It should not be that, alas, we must all make judgment any meaningful exchange of ideas.” made by the government or by bodies calls in the varied situations in which Here, Dirks overstates his case. Courtesy such as universities (whether publicly or we find ourselves. Aggressive language and respect may well assist the mean- privately established). toward individuals may frequently be ingful and productive exchange of ideas out of line and merit harsh criticism, but in most situations. Their absence may t should—or so I’d have thought—be I don’t want the case-by-case judgments detract, in far too many circumstances, Iobvious that freedom of speech (espe- about this, some of them difficult and from making intellectual progress. But it cially freedom from the coercive power subtle, to be made by state officials. overreaches to claim that courtesy and of the state) and civility in discussion respect “are basic preconditions for any and debate (in most circumstances, ne recent contretemps about these meaningful exchange of ideas.” best adhered to voluntarily) are both of Oissues involved Nicholas Dirks, chan- Fortunately, Dirks clarified his posi- great importance. They can sometimes cellor of the University of California, tion in a follow-up email about a week be in tension, but, as Dirks emphasized Berkeley. On September 5, 2014, Dirks later. He stated plainly that he does not in the debate at Berkeley, they are nor- sent an e-mail to the campus commu- propose any constraint on free speech mally complementary values. nity to mark the fiftieth anniversary of or compromise of academic freedom. For all that, this cluster of issues presses the Free Speech Movement. This com- This was a useful clarification, and there, people’s buttons. The current social cli- munication might seem a halfhearted I think, the matter should rest. While mate in most Western countries is one of celebration of free speech, since much Dirks’s statements may not be ideal, he great sensitivity about speech that causes of it discusses where to draw lines be- did not at any point show serious hostility offense, but it’s also a climate in which tween constitutionally protected and to the idea of free speech, and he was wounding feelings and harming reputa- unprotected speech, the danger of of- correct at least to this extent: adherence tions are the cherished tactics of many fensive or aggressive speech chilling to standards of civility can complement political activists. None of that is likely to others’ contributions to debate, and free speech in the pursuit of truth, rather change soon. We can expect many more other nuanced, though important, is- than requiring trade-offs, since they are controversies about the nature, value, sues. Arguably, Dirks chose the wrong justified by some of the same deeper and role of civility and how it relates to emphasis at a time of celebration—per- values. free speech. haps these subtleties could have been Incivility violates an left for another occasion. important, though not over- Russell Blackford is a conjoint lecturer at the University of Yet, even this is a matter of judg- riding, value. It can be an Newcastle, Australia, and a regular columnist for Free Inquiry. ment. A case could also be made that enemy of rational inquiry His most recent book is Intelligence Unbound: The Future of the e-mail was thoughtful and timely. and intellectual progress, Uploaded and Machine Minds, coedited with Damien Broderick Even if I disagree with that, I see little in and it may often merit harsh (Wiley-Blackwell, 2014).

Faisal Saeed Al Mutar ISIS and the Future of Islam and the Arab World continued from p. 12 alty for leaving Islam. We are talking the way. But some of them spend too so. Because at the end of the day, it is not about millions of people, not just a fringe much time debating or attacking critics me, not my friend Islam critic Ali A. Risvi at minority, whom most Westerners would of Islamic extremism and too little time The Huffington Post, nor anyone else who rightly label “extremist.” focusing on the Islamic extremists them- is critical of Islamic extremism who is Radical Muslims have come in signifi- selves. spewing violence into the world. cant numbers from Pakistan, Afghanistan, No one needs to con- and even Britain and the United States to vince me that Islam is a reli- Faisal Saeed Al Mutar is an Iraqi-born writer, public speaker, fight with ISIS. How many Muslims have gion of peace and that it is web designer, and social activist now living in the United States. traveled to Iraq or Syria to fight against opposed to violence. I only He is the founder of the Global Secular Humanist Movement and ISIS? wish that someone could Secular Post. Al Mutar is a community manager at Movements. Let me be clear: I support Western convince ISIS, al-Qaeda, and org, a division of Advancing Human Rights. progressives, liberals, and moderates all their supporters that that is

secularhumanism.org December 2014/January 2015 Free Inquiry 43 Shadia B. Drury Vanquishing Evil continued from p. 13

“moderate” Syrian opposition. This is because there can be no “reasoning knew that every enemy was potentially a ragtag group of Syrian professors, or negotiation with this random evil,” a valuable ally in the unforeseeable doctors, dentists, and farmers who are as President Obama maintained, is un- future. Even though they had a very opposed to the tyranny of Bashar al-As- wise. After all, ISIL provides electricity, large army, they were reluctant to use sad in Syria. These are people who know food, and other essentials to the Sun- it. They kept a low profile while ene- nothing about fighting. Nevertheless, it nis it protects from the Shia militias mies were busy fighting one other. will be their task to defeat ISIL and unleashed by the American-supported It would never occur to them to lead then turn their guns on Assad and his government of Iraq. To destroy ISIL, U.S. a campaign of extermination against well-trained army and air force, to say air strikes have targeted not only the oil ISIL in Syria, where so many unsavory nothing of his chemical weapons. They fields that provide funds but the grain groups, who were busy with infighting, will be joined by the Iraqi army, which elevators—clearly, a war crime that will are now united in their determination the Americans have been training for inspire more hatred for the Americans to attack the United States. over a decade with no apparent results. and more recruits for ISIL. In the face of threats, the United These two groups, along with the Kurds It is certainly the case that the medi- States should take a page out of the in northern Iraq, will be the “boots on eval brutality of ISIL shocks the sensi- playbook of the Byzantines and keep bilities of those accustomed to modern a low profile. Granted, this is hard for technological violence, which is seen a superpower, but it is not impossi- only through the aesthetic prism of the ble. When a foolish and warmongering “It is simply impossible to divide mainstream media. For example, CNN opposition demands to know what the presents American brutality as if it were strategy of the government is in deal- the countries of the world into a show of lights that fills the sky as the ing with the newest threat, the official our friends who are ‘good’ bombs are launched, but it assiduously line should be, “We have no strategy.” and our enemies who are ‘evil’ protects its audience from the ghastly The stupid party will no doubt fill the consequences of what happens when airwaves with outrage at such incom- without a colossal distortion the bombs land. Foreign networks—to petence, vacillation, and lack of lead- of both reality and the meaning name one, Al Jazeera—have no qualms ership. All the while, the drones are of words.” about displaying the severed heads targeting the menace. But alas, there is and limbs of children and unarmed too much stupidity and no one with the civilians caused by American bombs. spine to stand up to it. So, the difference between the United Moreover, it is not prudent to over- States and ISIL is not a moral difference estimate the danger. It is shrewder the ground.” To make matters worse, but a technological one. to be dismissive. Secretary of Defense this collation is characterized not only By demonizing those who are in the Chuck Hagel’s declaration that ISIL is a by incompetence but also by very poor best position to fight ISIL, President threat “beyond anything that we have optics. The specter of United States, a Obama relinquished the chance to deal ever seen” is a gross exaggeration for a neocolonial empire, leading a coalition adequately with the latest menace. It group with no air force and no weap- of old colonialists (Britain and France) is not prudent to demonize or alienate ons of mass destruction. Exaggerating and their friendly autocrats can only any enemy—even one as odious as the threat flatters enemies and makes incite the very resentments that groups ISIL—because there is bound to come a them more daring. such as ISIL exploit. time when an even more abhorrent foe Finally, it behooves the United States will emerge, in which case ISIL may be to accept the fact that global dominance o, what is a superpower to do when the perfect antidote. alone is sufficient to inspire hatred. So a Sit is confronted with a clear manifes- This was never better understood plethora of enemies should be expected tation of evil and tyranny in the world? than by the Byzantine Empire, the lon- as the norm, not the exception. But First and foremost, it must not pretend gest-lasting empire in history (330– American naïveté leads to peculiar to be so high and mighty, so pure and 1453 CE). In his masterful work, The expectations—only Americans expect to untainted. A language of restraint is Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire, dominate the globe and be loved at the absolutely necessary. Thundering that Edward Luttwak attributed its longev- same time. The result is that Americans the enemy will be chased “to the gates ity to its ability to contain, distract, are inclined to be shocked and alarmed of hell,” as Vice President Joe Biden put obstruct, and manage its enemies. The at having inspired such implacable it, is not helpful. Claiming that ISIL is a Byzantines would never be foolish enmity. They are inclined to regard such “cancer” and a “scourge” on the face enough to denounce their enemies as enmity as perverse—something akin to of the earth that must be exterminated unfit for reasoning or negotiation; they Satan’s resentment of God.

44 Free Inquiry December 2014/January 2015 secularhumanism.org So, am I suggesting a cold and cal- less charitable. They regard the evils it has mushroomed into a plethora of culating foreign policy, free from any of drone warfare, targeted assassina- franchises—ISIL, al-Nusrah, al-Shabaab, moral considerations? Yes and no. I tions, Hellfire missiles, napalm, cluster Boko Haram, Jemaah Islamiya, and am rejecting moralism as an ineffective bombs, white phosphorus, and nuclear more. and hypocritical basis for foreign policy. It must be noted that the aspirations Instead, I am endorsing a foreign policy of ISIL are as moralistic and unrealistic rooted in prudence, not morality. And as those of the United States. For it is while the two are distinct, they are not “. . . The medieval brutality foolish to establish a state exclusively mutually exclusive. It is not prudent to for Sunni Muslims (while killing all do more harm than is absolutely nec- of ISIL shocks the sensibilities unrighteous apostates and unbeliev- essary to accomplish the goal of any of those accustomed to modern ers) in a land populated by Shiites, and every state—controlling its terri- technological violence, Christians, Kurds, Alawites, Jews, and others. So, even if ISIL manages to cre- tory and keeping its citizens safe from which is seen only through foreign attack. That is not the same as ate an Islamic state, the moral cost of defeating evil in the world. Moralism the aesthetic prism of the this unrealistic venture is bound to dis- makes political goals unrealistic; and mainstream media.” credit it. This why the best policy is to when the goals are unrealistic, the watch it self-destruct. It is high time for moral cost of achieving them is bound the West to leave these people alone to to be too great, which in turn inspires fight their own battles and make their hatred, contempt, and animosity. own history. The moralism of American for- weapons as the defining elements of eign policy makes its goals unrealistic, a hypocritically moral- which in turn leads it to commit more istic empire. As a result, Shadia B. Drury is Canada Research Chair at the University atrocities than is necessary. Of course, the United States creates of Regina in Canada. Her books include Leo Strauss and the Americans are inclined to dismiss their more enemies than it can American Right (1997), Terror and Civilization (2004), and own evils as “mistakes” that are simply subdue. After thirteen Aquinas and Modernity (2008). She is currently working on a at odds with their values and princi- years of war, al-Qaeda book titled Chauvinism of the West. ples, but more impartial observers are has not been destroyed;

Mark Rubinstein Jesus, the Christian Seneca continued from p. 15

“Kindly remember that he relief to another’s tears, but abundance; but she of her want whom you call your slave will not add his own; to the did cast in all that she had.” sprang from the same stock, is shipwrecked man he will give (Mark 12:44). smiled upon by the same skies, a hand, to the exile shelter, to Seneca: “If benefits consisted, not in the the needy alms; he will grant to and on equal terms with your- very desire to benefit, but in self breathes, lives, and dies. a mother’s tears the life of her things, the greater would be It is just as possible for you to son, the captive’s chains he will the benefits. But this is not see in him a free-born man as order be broken, he will release true; for sometimes we feel for him to see in you a slave.” the gladiator from his training. under greater obligations to (Epistles 47:10, “On Master and . . . The wise man, therefore, one who has given small gifts Slave”) will not pity, but will succor, out of great heart, who ‘by his will benefit, and since he is spirit matched the wealth of Charity born to be of help to all and kings.’ . . . And so what counts Jesus: “Sell whatsoever thou hast, and to serve the common good, is, not what is done or what give to the poor, and thou shalt he will give to each his share is given, but the spirit of the have treasure in heaven.” (Mark thereof. . . . Whenever he can, action . . . the intention of the 10:21) he will parry Fortune’s stroke.” giver or doer.” (On Benefits (On Mercy 2:6:1–3) 1:7:1; 1:6:1) Seneca: “All else . . . he will gladly do with a lofty spirit; he will bring Jesus: “For all they did cast in of their Jesus: “Let not thy left hand know what

secularhumanism.org December 2014/January 2015 Free Inquiry 45 thy right hand doeth.” (Matthew seemly for a ruler than the ing; otherwise he will hate himself. Let 6:1–4) quality of mercy, no matter him reflect how many times he offends in what manner or with what against morality, how many of his acts Seneca: “And so all moralists are united justice he has been set over stand in need of pardon; then he will upon the principle that it is other men. . . . This quality is be angry with himself also. For no just necessary to give certain bene- the more beautiful and won- judge will pronounce one sort of judg- fits openly, others without wit- derful, the greater the power ment in his own case and a different nesses . . . on the other hand, under which it is displayed.” one in the case of others.” (On Anger those that do not give promo- (On Mercy 1:19:1) 1:14:2) tion or prestige, yet come to the rescue of bodily infirmity, Seneca eclipses Jesus in another of poverty, of disgrace—these way. Although Jesus supposedly pre- should be given quietly, so “Seneca devotes an entire dicts the immediate future, he fails that they will be known only book of about 124 pages to the badly in the longer term: his projected to those who receive the ben- subject of anger, providing “Kingdom of Heaven” has not arrived. efit. Sometimes, too, the very Seneca had his own apocalyptic visions, man who is helped must even recipes to prevent or allay but with true prescience, drawing from be deceived in order that he anger, that ‘most hideous and a worldview alien to the Gospels, he may have assistance, and yet frenzied of all emotions.’ . . .” predicted a different sort of kingdom not know from whom he has that did happen: “The time will come received it.” (On Benefits 2:9:1– when diligent research over very long 2:10:1) In the year 55 or 56, Seneca optimis- periods will bring to light things which tically wrote On Mercy for the benefit now lie hidden . . . this knowledge will Anger of his eighteen-year-old student, Nero, be unfolded only through long succes- Jesus: “Whosoever is angry with his the new emperor of the Roman Empire. sive ages. . . . There will come a time brother without a cause shall He advises the youthful ruler that he when our descendants will be amazed be in danger of the judgment.” should keep “sternness . . . hidden, that we did not know things that are (Matthew 5:22) but mercy ever ready at hand” (1:1:4). so plain to them” (Natural Questions Seneca reasons that mercy extended 7:25:4–5). Seneca devotes an entire book by the powerful has double force: by of about 124 pages to the subject of virtue of their power, mercy can be ll of this begs the obvious question: anger, providing recipes to prevent or more significant, yet in the short run, If Seneca is the more profound allay anger, that “most hideous and A they have less to gain than others by thinker, why today is Jesus so wildly frenzied of all emotions” (On Anger extending it. popular and Seneca seldom heard (1:1:1). Still, he appreciates Aristotle’s One might argue that a habit of about? I have yet to hear anyone ask: earlier observation that anger, like revenge establishes a reputation that “What would Seneca do?” The full an- many emotions, can be “a spur to vir- one is not to be trifled with. Instead, swer is complex, but one obvious rea- tue” (On Anger 3:3:1–2). Seneca argues that in the long run a son comes from framing. As matchless Lust consistent policy of extending mercy a writer as he is, Seneca’s essay format is the surest way for an emperor to cannot compete against that of the Jesus: “Whosoever looketh on a safeguard himself: “Such a prince, pro- Gospel formula, with its cleverly worded woman to lust after her hath tected by his own good deeds, needs aphorisms and stories and parables committed adultery with her in no bodyguard” (On Mercy 1:13:5) for spoken by an extraordinary, rejected, his heart.” (Matt. 5:28) “there is nothing more glorious than a and sympathetic hero who, unlike Sen- prince who, though wronged, remains eca, exemplified his teaching by his Seneca, while objecting to physical unavenged” (On Mercy 1:20:3). conduct. adultery, doesn’t consider going this far. Judging Others Forgiveness Jesus: “Judge not, that ye be not judged.” Jesus: “Forgive, and ye shall be (Matt. 7:1–2) forgiven.” (Luke 6:37) Mark Rubinstein is a retired professor of finance at the Seneca: “It will be impossible for one to Seneca: “No man sense will University of California at Berkeley. to imagine anything more hate the err-

46 Free Inquiry December 2014/January 2015 secularhumanism.org Church-State Update

Rwanda’s Horror Twenty Years Later Edd Doerr

wenty years have elapsed since in Rwanda killed thousands of Tutsi. planning in the overpopulated country. the horror of the Rwanda massa- In April 1972, an unsuccessful Hutu Prunier adds: “Although . . . there were Tcre, in which half a million to one uprising in Burundi resulted in many admirable acts of courage among ordi- million people—about 10 percent of thousands of deaths on both sides. nary Christians [during the genocide] the population of this small central The story is well told by Thomas Patrick the church hierarchies were at best African country—were killed in just a Melady in his 1974 book, Burundi: The useless and at worst accomplices in the few months. This bears looking at now, Tragic Years (Orbis Books). Melady, a genocide.” because a major factor in the tragedy history professor by profession, was Before the dust began to settle on the was human overpopulation—a global U.S. ambassador to Burundi when the Rwanda genocide, the United Nations problem that threatens all of us. violence broke out. He mentions the population conference convened in Cairo Rwanda and its virtual twin coun- high birthrate and overpopulation but in 1982. There was apparently very little try, Burundi, are each about the size only very briefly. (Melady, a Catholic, of Maryland. Their populations are was next named U.S. ambassador to both mainly ethnic Hutu (two thirds Uganda and from 1989 to 1993 was U.S. in Rwanda and over 80 percent in ambassador to the Holy See [Vatican], Burundi) with a strong Tutsi minority appointed by President George H. W. (about 14 percent in Burundi and Bush. I have commented, most recently “. . . The country’s population slightly higher in Rwanda). The Hutu in a letter published in the liberal grew from 1.6 million in 1934 settled the two countries earlier, but National Catholic Reporter, that every to 7.1 million in 1989.” the Tutsi became dominant in both; it U.S. ambassador to the Vatican since was rather like the Tutsi were the upper President Ronald Reagan opened dip- class and the Hutu the peasants. lomatic relations with that religious Germany ruled both countries body in 1984 has been a Catholic. That late in the nineteenth century, but appears to conflict with Article VI of the Belgium took over during World War U.S. Constitution, which bars religious comment about the tsunami of blood- I and ran them until independence in tests for public office.) shed hundreds of miles to the south. 1962. Catholic missionaries moved in The Rwanda “genocidal violence I could find only this from conference during the European occupations, so of the spring of 1994 can be partly participant Mary Gore (then the wife of that today Rwanda is about two-thirds attributed to that population density,” Al Gore): “Rwanda is a tragedy and a Catholic, and Burundi is over four-fifths wrote French historian and Africa spe- warning. It is a warning about the way Catholic. The European-Catholic occu- cialist Gerard Prunier in his comprehen- in which extremists can manipulate the pations did nothing to alter the unsta- sive book on the matter, The Rwanda fears of a population threatened by ble balance between Hutu and Tutsi. Crisis: History of a Genocide (Columbia its own numbers and by its massive Birthrates in the two countries have University Press, 1995), after showing poverty.” It was at the Cairo conference long been among the world’s highest. how the country’s population grew that U.S. population scientist Stephen The Hutu and Tutsi have never got- from 1.6 million in 1934 to 7.1 million Mumford distributed copies of the ten along very well. The Hutu gener- in 1989. Prunier also notes that “The National Security Study Memorandum ally resented Tutsi domination, while church also had a monopoly on edu- 200 (NSSM 200) report on overpopu- the Tutsi worried what might happen cation” and “By 1931 . . . Catholicism lation and related issues that had been to them if the Hutu ever dominated. became the quasi-official religion,” ordered by President Richard M. Nixon The 1962–63 “genocide” by the Hutu which undoubtedly discouraged family and completed under President Gerald

secularhumanism.org December 2014/January 2015 Free Inquiry 47 Ford in late 1975 but then mysteriously biodiversity shrinkage, rising consump- “classified” and buried for fourteen tion levels, and sociopolitical instability years, after which Mumford unearthed and violence, much of which was pre- and published it. (To my knowledge, dicted by the NSSM 200 report. That I am the only person who published report recommended universal access Statement of Ownership, reviews of Mumford’s 1996 book, The to contraception and the legalization Management, and Circulation Life and Death of NSSM 200: How the of abortion. Destruction of Political Will Doomed Democrats in the United States Date of filing: September 24, 2014 a U.S. Population Policy [Center for have generally favored moving in that Title: FREE INQUIRY Research on Population and Security], direction, but Republicans, conser- Frequency of issue: Bimonthly Complete mailing address of known office of publication: in the Voice of Reason (the journal of vatives, and the religious Right have FREE INQUIRY, P.O. Box 664, Amherst, NY 14226-0664 Complete mailing address of headquarters or general business office of Americans for Religious Liberty), in USA been opposed. We know that equal- publisher: same as above Today magazine, and in my column in izing education and rights for women Complete mailing address of headquarters of publisher: Council for Secular Humanism, P.O. Box 664, Amherst, The Humanist.) would go a long way toward lowering NY 14226-0664 Scientist Jared Diamond devoted a birthrates, but religious fundamental- Editor: Thomas Flynn, P.O. Box 664, Amherst, NY 14226-0664 Managing Editor: Andrea Szalanski, P.O. Box 664, Amherst, chapter in his 2005 book, Collapse: ists of all sorts have stood in the way. NY 14226-0664 How Societies Choose to Fail or Religious leaders—the Vatican and the Owner: Council for Secular Humanism Known bondholders, mortgagees, and other security holders: None Succeed (Viking), to the Rwanda geno- bishops, Protestant fundamentalist cide (“Malthus in Africa: Rwanda’s preachers, Hasidic and Islamic leaders— Genocide”). The 1994 massacre was have blocked progress. Thoughtful triggered in April of that year by the Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Aver. no. copies No. of each issue during copies shooting down of a plane in which the humanists, and others favor progress preceding single issue 12 months Aug.Sept. presidents of both Rwanda and Burundi and need to bring pressure to bear on 2014 were killed; the crime was never solved. those in power. a. Total no. copies printed (net press run) 23,040 21,139 Diamond writes: “While the killings Let me recommend Alan Reisman’s b. Paid circulation by mail and outside were organized by the extremist Hutu 2013 book, Countdown: Our Last Best the mail 1. Paid Outside County 15,280 14,835 government and largely carried out Hope for a Future on Earth (Little, 2. Paid In-County Subscriptions 0 0 by Hutu civilians, institutions and out- Brown) for its astonishingly compre- 3. Paid distribution outside the mails including sales through dealers and carriers, siders from whom one might have hensive and wide-ranging coverage of street vendors, and other paid distribution outside USPS 2,004 1,838 expected better behavior played an climate change and overpopulation. 4. Paid distribution by other classes of mail important permissive role. In particular, We inhabitants of planet Earth will through the USPS 22 2 c. Total paid distribution 17,306 16,675 numerous leaders of Rwanda’s Catholic either control our numbers humanely d. Free or nominal rate distribution by mail Church either failed to protect Tutsi and intelligently or Mother Nature will and outside the mail 1. Outside County 504 493 or else actively assembled them and do it for us in a very unpleasant way. 2. In-County 0 0 turned them over to killers.” The UN Finally, a report in The Economist 3. Other classes mailed through the USPS 437 440 4. Free distribution outside the mail 213 211 and the French and U.S. governments (U.K.) on August 23 noted that Africa’s e. Total free or nominal rate distribution 1,154 1,144 did nothing. Diamond cited Prunier’s population is expected to double to 2.4 f. Total distribution 18,460 17,819 g. Copies not distributed 4,580 3,320 quote of a Tutsi survivor: “The people billion by 2050, 2.2 billion of those in TOTAL (Sum of f and g) 23,040 21,139 whose children had to walk barefoot to the sub-Sahara. With the Sahara desert Percent paid 93.75% 93.58% school killed the people who could buy slowly spreading southward, deforesta- shoes for theirs.” tion continuing, and barbarous fanatics such as Nigeria’s Boko Haram (educa- o here we are in 2014. Since 1945 tion = sin) running loose, we may well Sworld population has tripled to see more Rwandas. well over seven billion and promises to continue expanding to about nine billion by 2050. Climate change is all too real, and overpopulation is con- tributing enormously to CO2 increase in the atmosphere, Edd Doerr, president of Americans for Religious Liberty global warming, environ- (arlinc.org) and former president of the American Humanist­ mental degradation, resource Association, is the author of over 3,500 published books, sec- depletion, soil erosion and tions of books, articles, columns, book and film reviews, trans- nutrient decline, deforesta- lations, letters, short stories, and poems. He has made over tion, desertification, freshwa- two thousand speeches and radio and television ap­pear­ances. ter shortages, sea-level rise,

48 Free Inquiry December 2014/January 2015 secularhumanism.org Faith and Reason

C. S. Lewis: How the Atheist Academic Became the Lion of Christianity

Dale DeBakcsy

hy do atheists become Christians? in 1898. His father was religious, but and it sent Lewis on a lifelong quest Usually the answer is something his teachers and confidants had read for a replacement mother figure. He Was prosaic as fear or as human enough of their Feuerbach and sam- eventually found her in his teen years as loneliness. On occasion though, the pled sufficiently from the new field of in the form of a woman two decades boundary between a life of reasoned comparative religion to take it as a given his senior who would be both lover and disbelief and one of earnest worship that Christianity was one voice among mother to him. is elusive, and the shift happens over many, or as Lewis himself put it, “The Lewis’s desire for motherly attention time in several complex, psychologically impression that I got was that religion overrode all other considerations and fraught stages. By peering into the lay- in general, though utterly false, was a kept him firmly in an atheism of conve- ering of such moments, we can learn natural growth, a kind of endemic non- nience, at first. That same mother-yearn- much about the mentality of nonbelief sense into which humanity tended to ing would, in the long term, have its and how better to weather our own blunder. In the midst of a thousand reli- part in pushing him into Christianity, the storms and temptations. gions, stood our own, the thousand and merely earthly Mrs. Moore never quite C. S. Lewis was for the first thirty-one first, labelled True. But on what grounds measuring up to the ideal of mother- years of his life a determined atheist could I believe this exception?” hood he had built up in a decade of in the best Victorian tradition. But he In spite of spending three decades in youthful loneliness. lurched ultimately into the arms of the attempt, he would never adequately Christianity and became its most earnest answer this question of his youth. (This defender. To understand how that hap- is one of the most difficult things to “C. S. Lewis was . . . a determined pened, we have to first realize that the understand when reading the memoirs atheist in the best Victorian age of Victoria was also very much the of former atheists—how they are able tradition. But he lurched age of atheism. The arrival of German to continue in their belief in spite of biblical criticism in the mid-nineteenth failing so markedly in confronting the ultimately into the arms of century released a torrent of fervent most basic questions from their period Christianity, becoming its most unbelief across the British Isles that rose of skepticism.) earnest defender.” to an irresistible pitch with the coming The answer is, of course, that it’s not of Charles Darwin. It was the time not about the arguments. It’s about the only of George Eliot and John Stuart willingness of an individual to accept Mill, of Richard Congreve and Harriet the idea that what he or she wants The loss of his mother in itself, how- Martineau, but of the droves of follow- to be true is true. That willingness is ever, would not have been enough ers who inundated them all with letters directly proportional to the strength to push him to belief. No, it was a asking for advice about how to live in a of one’s desires as against the force desire based in the strongest of human world without God. of one’s intellectual commitment. For chemicals—guilt—that performed that The amazing thing was that, unlike Lewis, desire was, from an early age, his office. While Lewis was off at college, the twentieth century—which mourned guiding light. his father fell deeper and deeper into its loss of faith in volume upon volume alcoholism and could not be stirred to of overwrought idealization—the nine- t the age of eight, his mother died. leave his home even to see Lewis off teenth was much more in tune with AHis father, crushed by the loss, sent to war in 1917. The bitterness over his our own current sense of excitement Lewis and his brother to boarding father’s continued emotional neglect— over the possibilities of a world freed school, leaving them to deal with their expressed in scathing letters to his from myth. This was the intellectual grief amongst strangers as best they brother Warren—was made doubly climate into which C. S. Lewis was born could. It was a devastating decision, keen when paired with fiscal resent-

secularhumanism.org December 2014/January 2015 Free Inquiry 49 ment. The fact that his father’s financial Tolkien and other Oxford acquaintances expression which I regard as inessential support was the only thing that allowed worked on Lewis over the next two . . . but then, what will drop away from him to lead his ideal scholarly life with years, feeding him their own over-elo- the ‘real meaning’ under my treatment his lover/mother stand-in became a quent but under-rigorous thoughts on will precisely not be the miraculous. It defining dynamic of his life, and it blew why, after all, it was intellectually all is the core itself, the core scraped as up in his face in 1929 when his father right to admit the truth first of myth, clean of inessentials as we can scrape suddenly died. and then, that wall broken down, of it, which remains for me entirely mirac- Lewis attempted to downplay that Christian mythology. ulous, supernatural—nay, if you will, moment in his memoirs, likewise his ‘primitive’ and even ‘magical.’” attachment to Janie Moore. As Lewis ewis, stuck in a relationship that never Myth is truth, and magic is real. scholar A. N. Wilson charitably notes, “by Lquite filled the gaps of his childhood Christianity is what allowed Lewis to the time he came to write Surprised by loss, racked with guilt about his relation- finally believe in this, the greatest yearn- Joy, his way of looking at himself had ship with his departed father, and hun- ing of his heart, while also clearing up become so idiosyncratic that he was not gering for the ideal of a lost age, was the whole matter of his lost parents and able to see the significance of these two easy prey at that point. His intellect was the associated swirling emotions. There relationships in his religious, as well as powerful, but his desires were several was too much to be gained by letting his whole emotional, development.” But orders of magnitude more so, and it was himself fall into the arms of Christianity the feelings of guilt were profound, only a matter of time before the former and only cold intellectual virtue to be gave way. From there, the causal chains had in resisting. were forged. What he wanted to be true Of course, he would go on to insist “. . . Unlike the twentieth became what he felt to be true—which that his decision was actually quite century—which mourned its became, through the neat mechanism intellectually consistent, and his books loss of faith in volume upon of myth veneration, what was true. are still quoted as the great examples Of course, Lewis fundamentally knew of intellectually consistent Christian volume of overwrought idealiza- that he had taken a dreadful intellectual thought. He tried, with bluster and bul- tion—the nineteenth was much shortcut; much of his later writing is lying eloquence, to pound his ideas into more in tune with our own cur- wrapped up in the cause of throwing the shape of something mildly rigor- us off the scent. Besides giving glaringly ous. His attempts, only just adequate at rent sense of excitement minimal coverage to the death of his the time, appear irresponsibly clumsy over the possibilities of father and his decades-long romance, now. The Moral Law argument (we a world freed from myth.” he also is at pains to continually assert have a sense of right and wrong, and, how hard acceptance of Christianity therefore, God exists) was inadequate is in its first stages, how much it is enough in 1943, when he made it the against what one wants most. In order centerpiece of Mere Christianity in the and the desire for a return to an ideal- to obscure the desire-laced origins of face of mounting biological, psycho- ized childhood was irresistible. When it his own belief, Lewis protests a bit too logical, and philosophical insight into came time to sell their father’s house, much about how anti-desire one’s first the sources of man’s morality. Today, it Lewis and his brother could not bear steps in Christianity are, how they are reads as just astoundingly wrong, given the idea of their childhood toys going about renouncing one’s mere wants in everything we have learned since about into a strange child’s hands, so they the face of fundamental moral good. primatology, neurology, and genetics took the psychologically illuminating That was not the case with Lewis, as he (though that hasn’t dissuaded modern step of burying them in the backyard of was most likely aware, but the danger to apologists such as William Lane Craig their father’s home. For the rest of his his Christian apologetics was such that from reverentially trotting it out in life, Lewis would be obsessed with chil- he was forced to keep his true origin substantially the same form as Lewis dren’s literature and indeed anything story concealed. debuted it.) that evoked the possibility of return to a The lad who read medieval epics It would have taken a small act of romanticized past. and Norse sagas and swooned to their imagination to find alternate expla- It shouldn’t surprise us, then, that simple codes could not live with the idea nations for the phenomena Lewis cat- shortly after his father’s death (the that they were all merely stories—there alogued, but he was at a point—his same year, 1929, according to Wilson, had to be fundamental truth there, and psychological need for Christianity to or 1930, according to McGrath), Lewis not just human truth but universal and be true so overwhelming—that he was also declared himself at last a believer miraculous truth. In explaining his belief unwilling to make any imaginative leaps in God. He was supported in his devel- in the truth content of miraculous reli- that he couldn’t easily dismiss. And that oping Christianity by J. R. R. Tolkien, who gion to an imagined skeptical reader, is the great irony—the man who entered shared Lewis’s fascination with myth Lewis states: “I am going to distinguish Christianity in order to bathe once more and his gut feeling that those myths between the ‘core’ or ‘real meaning’ of in what he took to be the wellspring of contained the real truth of the world. [religious] doctrines from that in their human imagination and creativity had

50 Free Inquiry December 2014/January 2015 secularhumanism.org to cut his own imaginative capacities to But it was not, in spite of all his over- Further Reading tatters to do so. bearing posturing to the contrary, an There is no shortage of books about C. S. To join the Christian fold required intellect-derived Christianity in the least. Lewis out there, but most are written by evangelicals or others of their spiritual ilk sacrificing what could be the case for It was the long-delayed cry of a small attempting to whitewash his psychological what ought to be the case. And when boy who wanted to be safe and secure quirks to portray a story of true Christian con- you trade could for ought, it infects at last in a better world that surely, version (Devin Brown’s A Life Observed being but the most recent). The source I quoted irrevocably the scope of your imagina- surely must exist. In light of that it is, I above, A. N. Wilson’s C. S. Lewis: A Biography tive process. Go ahead, pull your copy think, a generally good thing that main- (W. W. Norton and Company, 2002), is a of The Chronicles of Narnia off the shelf stream atheism, when evaluating the psychologically astute work that gives Lewis credit for his intellectual abilities while also now. What you’ll find there is a man of content of religious life, is including recognizing his myriad foibles and so is a tremendous fancy engaged in the act considerations of the neuroscience of great starting point for anybody interested of bludgeoning it until it fits the mold intellectual addiction along with its tra- in plumbing the depths of Lewis’s conversion process. of “ought.” ditional tools of philosophical argumen- tation. When we use all of these t has been fifty years since the death approaches to understand extreme Iof C. S. Lewis, and in many ways his cases in which psychological successor has yet to be found. That mix- need rushes and over- ture of scholarship with élan, whimsical whelms the ramparts of rea- Dale Debakcsy contributes regularly to The Freethinker, The yearning with intellectual inflexibility, son, we clear the way not New Humanist, Philosophy Now, and American Atheist maga- is still the wellspring for much popular only for a better understand- zine. He is also the writer and artist for the weekly atheist web American theology. His thoughts con- ing of the religious mind but comic The Vocate and is the coauthor, with Geoffrey Schaeffer, tinue to be treated as the last word for a better nourishing and of the graphic novel Light Opera and Heavy Consequences and when it comes to Christianity being an support of our own human- the upcoming A Collective of Unconscionables. intellectually defensible position. ist community.

secularhumanism.org December 2014/January 2015 Free Inquiry 51 Humanist Activism

I’m an Atheist. Can I Be President? Marcus J. Thompson A Teenager Contemplates His Political Future

y name is Marcus; I am sev- urged to change the name of our club ident. An overwhelming 33 percent enteen years old, and I attend to the Atheism and Religion Society so answered “honesty/straightforward.” Mone of the most prestigious sec- as not to discourage religious students When confronted with public pressure ondary schools in the United States. from attending meetings. In the end, over race and religion in the mod- Growing up with every mark of priv- the strategy backfired; the club was ern political era, successful presiden- ilege has instilled in me the mind-set rejected by the administration on the tial candidates have been open about that I can achieve anything if I work grounds that the school already had addressing the public’s prejudice. hard enough. But as I have grown more an organization to discuss religion and President John F. Kennedy addressed aware of public opinion in the United that atheist students should join that his Catholicism, and President Barack States outside the picturesque New club to voice their opinions. When we Obama addressed his race. Even England towns I’m accustomed to, I looked into that club, we discovered Governor Mitt Romney overcame voter have come to the realization that my that it was not a forum for atheists and reluctance regarding his Mormon back- aspirations might be limited—not by agnostics. ground to win the 2012 Republican my race or gender, but because I do not Are these difficulties symptomatic primary. believe in a god. I am an atheist. of a larger problem with public opin- Secular members of Congress have Like many children raised in New ion toward atheists? A Gallup poll con- tempered their public beliefs in order England, I grew up in a secular house- ducted in 2012 revealed the extent of not to hurt their election chances. Rep. hold. God and religion were introduced public prejudice towards atheists run- Pete Stark (D–CA) served for twenty to me after I learned basic scientific ning for elected office. When voters terms, two of them as an open athe- concepts. Christianity struck me as were asked whether they would support ist, before being defeated by a thirty- just another myth that had a purpose a well-qualified atheist candidate from one-year-old primary challenger who before scientific discovery but lost its their party for president, 54 percent of attacked him for his lack of religion. relevance over time. It was not until respondents said they would, and 43 Rep. Stark had stated that he was a my freshman year in boarding school percent said they would not. Based on “Unitarian who does not believe in that I was confronted with deeply reli- the survey, these results put atheists last a supreme being,” perhaps the most gious classmates, most of whom came behind Muslims and lesbian, gay, and benign way of stating one’s atheism. from different parts of the country that bisexual candidates. These data point were much more religious than the to prejudice against atheists that afflicts ecularism is growing, with one in area where I grew up. the political process. Sfive Americans now claiming to be According to a survey of students A history of growing tolerance in irreligious. It won’t be long until an from my school, around 35 percent of American culture would imply that just openly atheist candidate runs for high the student body identifies as either like any other group, the irreligious office, and his or her lack of religion will atheist or agnostic, and while there are will be accepted in time. Polling seems be questioned. Presidential candidates organizations for Christians, Muslims, to indicate this exact trend. In a 1957 overcoming prejudice have had the Jews, and Hindus, there is no club for Gallup poll, only 18 percent of voters courage to meet obstacles head-on. atheist and agnostic students. Last said they would vote for an atheist If voters respect honesty and straight- year, a few classmates and I applied candidate for president, 36 percentage forwardness, then secular candidates to start an official Atheist/Agnostic points lower than in 2012. Among mil- should not be afraid to address their Society. Although there was no short- lennials, 70 percent in the 2012 poll say beliefs directly. age of faculty appearing to be atheist, that they would vote for an atheist. This is the approach my classmates not one of the handful we talked to Does this number point to growing and I are taking as we continue to was willing to serve as faculty advisor tolerance? In a Gallup poll conducted in pursue our club. Although we were for the club as we envisioned it. When 2007, voters were asked what quality is denied official status, we have con- we finally found an advisor, we were most important in a candidate for pres- tinued to meet informally, discussing

52 Free Inquiry December 2014/January 2015 secularhumanism.org everything from secularism in America more open to discourse. Atheism seems has been met with enthusiasm by stu- to philosophical arguments regarding to be the last “acceptable” prejudice dents and that a “sizable” group meets the existence of a deity. We have found in America. I hope we will overcome it for discussion each week Topics have a younger member of the faculty who by the time someone in my generation included Darwin’s explanation for the fully supports the club, and we have runs for president. evolution of morality and Bill Maher’s reapplied for official status this past comments on Islam on his program Postscript spring, this time without compromising Real Time. our name or mission. From the editors: As this article was While being an open atheist in being prepared for publication, the fall today’s political climate may eliminate school term had begun, and Thompson’s the possibility of a career in elected club for nonreligious students finally office, things will change when millen- won the administra- nials enter the political arena. The next tion’s permission to Marcus J. Thompson is a student at Phillips Academy in Andover, generation of Americans is less reli- operate. Thompson Massachusetts, Class of 2015. gious than its parents’ generation and reports that the club

Humanism at Large

On the ‘Evils’ of Santa Claus Ryan T. Cragun

ast year, a relative gave my wife, nodded in agreement but continued to a child’s behavior, as though Santa has son, and I The Elf on the Shelf®, read because my son, four years old at devised an econometric model of “nice- L which she thought my son might the time, was excited about the book. ness” that evaluates all behaviors on enjoy as a holiday tradition. My wife Its premise, for those who don’t know, some scale from naughty to nice and and I decided when we gave religion is that Santa sends an elf to watch chil- then calculates a niceness quotient. the boot over a decade ago that we dren to see whether they are naughty would continue to celebrate a com- or nice. Every night after the children pletely secular Christmas and even go to sleep, the parents move the elf “…One aspect of religious added a new tradition to Christmas somewhere else in the house, and the indoctrination that I believe Eve—we watch Monty Python’s Life of kids get to look for him in the morn- comes close to abuse is the idea Brian to remind us of the true meaning ing when they wake up, giving the of Christmas (namely, that it’s all made impression that the elf is real. But the that some supernatural entity up). From what little we had heard real goal of The Elf on the Shelf® is to is always watching you—and in about The Elf on the Shelf®, it seemed manipulate kids into behaving as the some traditions can like a nice idea—until we received parents want them to by suggesting the book that comes with the chintzy that the elf is watching, taking notes, also read your mind.” stuffed elf doll and started to read it. and then sneaking back to the North The first time through, I listened as my Pole at night to report to Santa Claus wife read it to our son. After I heard the on everything they do, even when they This is bothersome for two reasons. first sentence, I knew this wasn’t going think no one is looking. First, the idea that Santa Claus is watch- to work for us. It was this last part that really both- ing is a pernicious invasion of personal The beginning of the book reads, ered me, though not just about The Elf space. I have argued elsewhere that “Have you ever wondered how Santa on the Shelf® but about many depic- I do not believe religious indoctrina- could know if you’re naughty or nice tions of Santa Claus as well. Santa Claus tion is generally child abuse, counter to each year as you grow?” I stopped my is described in many stories as knowing what Richard Dawkins and others have wife right there and said, “We aren’t whether children are “naughty or nice.” suggested. But one aspect of religious going to let him believe that.” My wife Receiving presents is contingent upon indoctrination that I believe comes

secularhumanism.org December 2014/January 2015 Free Inquiry 53 close to abuse is the idea that some ing, they don’t. They are always being When those expectations are passed supernatural entity is always watching observed. This is a tool used by religions on, whether from parents to children or you—and in some traditions can also to manipulate and control followers. from children to friends, a new reality read your mind. Why is this potentially They have removed their followers’ has been constructed. abusive? Because it gives people the backstages. As a result, sincere theists But new realities are tenuous. They sense that they are never really alone. can never truly be themselves. They are have to be reinforced. Berger and In the social sciences, a number of always being watched. Luckmann refer to these efforts to rein- scholars and theorists have argued that When young children are taught force reality as “legitimizations.” Any when we are with other people, we are that Santa Claus is watching them, it effort to reinforce the reality that has basically the equivalent of actors on a serves the same function: it removes been created is a legitimization. Thus, stage. We are socialized into specific their backstage and teaches them that with Christmas and the belief that Santa roles in public life, such as student, they can never be who they truly are. Claus brings the presents, there are parent, or police officer. Once we learn What are the consequences of this a number of legitimizations involved what the norms are for those roles, manipulation? As far as I know, there in reinforcing the reality: putting out is no research examining this specific cookies and milk on Christmas Eve that question. But we do know that reli- are mysteriously consumed overnight, gious people are more neurotic than the seemingly magical appearance of are nonreligious people and that neu- presents on Christmas morning, the rosis can even develop into a psycho- writing of letters to Santa Claus, and so “When young children are taught logical disorder called “scrupolosity,” on. Each of these legitimizes the belief that Santa Claus is watching which is categorized by pathological that Santa Claus stopped by to deliver guilt about moral or religious issues. presents. them, it … removes their To what extent that neurosis and But more subtly, the characteristics backstage and teaches them scrupolosity are the direct or indirect of Santa Claus actually serve as legitimi- that they can never be result of feeling that someone is not zations of a different set of beliefs alto- only always watching but also judging gether. Santa’s omniscience and omni- who they truly are.” should be investigated. My educated presence—his ability to know what kids guess is that this is likely the culprit of want and how they behave—illustrate religious neurosis—the lack of a safe to children that supernatural entities backstage where people can just be. other than the monotheistic God their And this is the first reason why The parents and pastors have been blab- Elf on the Shelf® isn’t welcome in my bering on about at church have these home, and neither is a Santa Claus characteristics. What’s more, Santa’s when we are called upon to play them who is omniscient or omnipresent: it is remarkable ability to deliver gifts to we adopt the norms and act accord- manipulative and potentially abusive all the children of the world (at least, ingly. This is why police officers are to children to remove their backstage. those who have parents who can afford so solemn and serious when wearing All persons should, in my opinion, have to participate in this costly holiday) their uniforms; they are performing a place or space that is theirs, where also suggests that supernatural entities their role. Police officers behave just they can be who they are without any- other than God are very powerful, if like other people when they are off one watching. not omnipotent. Santa Claus is thus a duty. According to this dramaturgical The second reason that depicting legitimization of Yahweh. approach, public behavior occurs on Santa Claus as watching children’s Let me provide two additional illus- the “front stage.” When others can behavior is bothersome is because it trations of this point. First, for about observe our behaviors and we are serves as a legitimizer of monotheism. one month out of the year, theistic par- aware that they are observing, it affects Secular readers will, no doubt, under- ents conveniently stop telling their kids how we behave. stand that God is a social construct— “Behave, because God is watching” and But if there is a front stage, then an idea that humans created. In their instead tell them, “Behave, because there must also be a backstage—a place seminal book detailing how reality is Santa is watching.” Santa becomes where we believe no one is watching. It socially constructed, Peter Berger and a direct stand-in for God, probably is only when we are backstage that we Thomas Luckmann explained that real- because Santa, for the month between can be ourselves. Who we are when ity is socially constructed through a Thanksgiving and Christmas in the no one is watching may be completely tripartite process. Some behavior or United States, is more pervasive and far different from who we are when we’re idea has to become habitualized—for more real than God. His picture is plas- with our parents, when we’re at work, instance, Santa Claus giving gifts at tered all over the place. He has villages or when we’re visiting a nudist colony. Christmas. Once that happens, those and homes in shopping malls across the But do theists have a backstage? If they involved in the behavior (parents and country. He’s on television; he’s in com- truly believe that God is always watch- children) come to expect the behavior. mercials; hell, he’s everywhere! The fact

54 Free Inquiry December 2014/January 2015 secularhumanism.org that both Santa and Yahweh are also ral abilities at some level by suggesting ing my kid that Santa Claus is watching. commonly depicted as old, white males that Santa isn’t actually omnipresent That’s evil! with long bushy beards (depending on or omniscient—instead, he needs to References the cultural milieu) probably also helps rely on sneaky, teleporting elves—but Berger, Peter L., and Thomas Luckmann. with the legitimizations. the effect is still the same: Santa Claus 1967. The Social Construction of Reality: The second illustration brings me legitimizes Yahweh. A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. back to that damned Elf on the Shelf®. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. Cragun, Ryan T. 2013. What You Don’t Know Toward the end of the book, the elf n summary, Santa Claus, as popularly about Religion (but Should). Durham, NC: explains that there is one rule children Iconstructed, is evil. His omniscience re- Pitchstone Publishing. must follow—they can’t touch the elf. moves children’s backstage, preventing Francis, Leslie J., and Chris J. Jackson. “Eysenck’s Dimensional Model of If they do, he’ll lose his magic and them from being free to be who they Personality and Religion: Are Religious won’t be able to report back to Santa. want to be. And Santa Claus, when People More Neurotic?” Mental Health, The elf then tells the children read- depicted as omniscient, omnipresent, Religion & Culture 6(1)2003:87. Goffman, Erving. 1990. The Presentation ing the book: “I won’t get to tell him and quasi-omnipotent, is a dead ringer of Self in Everyday Life. New York: [Santa] that you’ve said your prayers, for the God of monotheists, helping Doubleday. or helped to bake cookies, or cleaned to legitimize religious belief in young Siev, Jedidiah, Lee Baer, and William E. Minichiello. “Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder off the stairs.” After reading this line, children. with Predominantly Scrupulous Symptoms: I very nearly threw the book in the I’m fully in favor of a secular Christmas— Clinical and Religious Characteristics.” Journal trash. This sentence suggests to the let’s steal the holiday back from the of Clinical Psychology 67(12)2011:1188–1196. kids that prayers are “nice” behaviors, Christians who hijacked it such as helping around the house. But, from the Romans, from Ryan T. Cragun is a sociologist whose research focuses on the more subtly, it illustrates the overlap the pagans, and from nonreligious and Mormonism. He is the author of numerous peer-re- between Santa Claus and God. The elf nature. I see no reason viewed articles and has previously contributed to Free Inquiry. He is telling Santa—a supernatural father why we can’t have a pleas- was the lead author (with Stephanie Yeager and Desmond Vega) of figure who is depicted as omniscient, ant day off toward the end “How Secular Humanists (and Everyone Else) Subsidize Religion in omnipresent, and quasi-omnipotent— of the year to celebrate the United States” (FI, June/July 2012), which won the Selma V. whether or not kids are talking to a friends and family and Forkosch Award for best article to appear in Free Inquiry that year. His nearly identical supernatural father fig- brighten up the dark days. most recent book is titled What You Don’t Know About Religion (but ure. Of course, The Elf on the Shelf® But Jesus fucking Rudolph, Should) (Pitchstone Publishing, 2013). actually undermines Santa’s supernatu- there is no way I’m teach-

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secularhumanism.org December 2014/January 2015 Free Inquiry 55 In previous issues I have presented examples of cases against Christianity which I am confident will more effectively arouse the attention and interest of those on the weak end of the faith curve than longer more sophisticated efforts. They are short, in plain language, and use the Bible, tenets of the faith and common sense to prove their case. I hope secular humanists will see the value, organize, find a way; and use the most promising print media to take them to the public. Here is another.

THE PITILESS ARITHMETIC OF HELL JESUS WARNED: MANY WILL BE DAMNED — FEW WILL BE SAVED Many + Few = 100% = 7,000,000,000 Human Beings (Theologians exempt from hell the mentally incompetent, children and those acting under force.)

Do you believe Jesus? These are clear and emphatic statements. Is it not eminently reasonable to conclude that Jesus knew He said: Enter ye in at the narrow gate: for wide and meant what he was saying; and knew what oth- is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to ers hearing his words — or reading them through the destruction, and many there are who go in thereat. centuries — would think? How narrow is the gate, and strait is the way that leadeth to life: and few there are that find it! What man or men do you authorize to alter Jesus? (Matthew 7:13-14) Is it not eminently reasonable to conclude that I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who after he our chances of going to hell are better than has killed has power to cast into hell; yes, I tell you 50%? fear him! (Luke 12:5) With only two groups mentioned, it very likely is Do not think I have come to bring peace on earth; more than half — even 80% would not stretch the I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. meaning of many. That is simply how the arithmetic (Matthew 10:34) works. Just half of the world's population is 3,500,000,000 human beings! But, did he really mean it? Eternal suffering, with no hope of release ever. For I tell you unless your righteousness exceeds that of That such a threat — from God! — does not the scribes and Pharisees you will never enter the scare us to death can only be because no one can kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5-20) understand those words; no one has the slightest frame of reference to understand the meaning of eter- …and if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for nity. Still, the idea of forever and ever and ever can thee to enter into life maimed, than having two come across if you think about it. hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: (Mark 9:43) What qualifies you for hell?

He often said very hard things in the most w Not doing right when you could; solemn way: w Not believing right when you could; w Not loving God when you could; If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own w Not repenting your mistakes as your last mother and father and wife and children and broth- conscious thought in life, when you could. ers and sisters, yes, even his own life, he cannot be my — maybe. disciple. (Luke 14:26) The coulds come from the only thing all humans are You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly claimed to share equally and sufficiently: free will. It Father is perfect. (Matthew 5:48) is your claimed ability to make deliberated moral

56 Free Inquiry December 2014/January 2015 secularhumanism.org decisions, including believing rightly and doing rightly, and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish completely free of all that made you what you are! everlastingly.

How did you get into this obscene gamble of Other Christian denominations and sects too numer- the many damned and few saved? Just by ous to mention are no less cruel in demanding belief being born. Surely, as Jesus said about Judas, it where it is impossible. would be better not to have been born at all, than to be condemned to eternal punishment. You must also love God to stay out of hell. Must love? Compulsory love is a contradiction in terms. This is just and fair because, although there This alone discredits the Christian message of have never been two equals among humans, salvation. the theologians insist that all of humans know the right course when confronted with a serious The ones you love you know. Who can truly moral question; and are freely able to take the right love an all-knowing; immaterial; everyplace-at- course — irrespective of the advantages and once; something-yet-no-thing; with no personality? disadvantages we may have encountered. No one can even imagine such, much less love it. How can there be real belief and real love under Things like: genetic inheritance ◦ life in the womb ◦ threat of eternal punishment? time and place of birth ◦ parents ◦ relatives ◦ race ◦ gender ◦ nurture ◦ experiences in infancy and child- Requirements like this cannot be from a loving, hood ◦ mutations in the brain and body ◦ random merciful and forgiving father, whatever it is, it is events ◦ natural physical stature ◦ looks ◦ smile ◦ not that. It is far more likely the work of men — men voice ◦ intelligence ◦ sexual drive and proclivities ◦ who stand to gain as “interpreters” of God’s will. personality ◦ wit ◦ natural ability in sports ◦ music and dance ◦ religious training ◦ economic circumstances ◦ At bottom, Christianity is a religion of implaca- cultural influences ◦ political and civil rights ◦ prevailing ble HATE, not love. you are hated for a sin commit- customs of the times ◦ and the blizzard of experiences ted by Adam and Eve. And if you aren’t among the throughout life, not chosen by the individual but which lucky few who are cleansed of that imposed sin and happened to him or to her. your other sins before you happen to die, you will join the majority hated in hell forever. This is the merciless and man-made doctrine of the Christian Churches stripped of all senti- There is every reason why a Christian should mental encrustations. embrace the image and message of Jesus they find in his words and acts of love, mercy and It is the unyielding structure beneath the end- humanity. less talk of love, justice and mercy. There is every reason to reject the man-made You must believe rightly to stay out of hell. and cold blooded fiend, who ordered mass That means even if from the cradle you have been murders and rapes, in his capacity as One with taught another religion or have little or no informa- the Father from all eternity. These riddle the tion about Jesus, you must believe in him. The Old Testament. Catholic Church, still proudly proclaims the Athanasian Creed; this is what it says to them: There is every reason to reject the man-made Jesus in his role restoring the greatest symbol Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is of enduring hate without mercy of all time — necessary that he hold the Catholic Faith. Hell forever. Which Faith except everyone do keep whole

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secularhumanism.org December 2014/January 2015 Free Inquiry 57 Reviews

Claims for Meditation’s Benefits Overreach Edward Tabash

ince the publication of The End of SFaith (2004), Sam Harris has been using the empirical method to refute supernatural and paranormal reli- Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion, gious claims. However, even in that by Sam Harris (New York: Simon & Schuster, book he extolled the virtues of Eastern 2014, ISBN 978-1451636017) 256 pp. Hardcover, forms of meditation. In his latest book, $26.00. Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion, Harris makes excep- tional claims for what can be achieved by meditating. He attempts to validate much of what mystics have proclaimed throughout history. This review argues that, notwithstanding the benefits of ened, did Buddha view himself as now describe the one having the experience meditation, the empirical evidence just merged with everyone else so that he isn’t there to corroborate Harris’s asser- as a “self,” instead of as an underlying tions that our sense that we are each a could no longer eat, speak, or sleep as an consciousness in which “the self or ego separate self is an illusion and that the individual? When Buddha approached, is an illusory appearance within it” (129)? meditation disciplines he recommends did his disciples see one man or an What is the difference between experi- are the most reliable method for elim- uncountable number of people mushed encing a feeling of being at one with the inating or reducing human suffering. together so that no individual Buddha cosmos as a consciousness, rather than Harris has spent more time meditat- could be discerned? If we are not truly experiencing it as a “self”? ing than I have. I have practiced since separate selves, why does everyone still Harris, rightfully, argues that even 1969 but can’t equal him in actual sitting see each one of us as an individual per- this consciousness is a product of a func- time. However, even numerous hours of son, even after we overcome the illusion? tioning human brain (55), “just as the formal “tush on cush” are not sufficient Harris writes that “the true goal of rest of the human mind is” (75). So, if to constitute convincing empirical argu- meditation is more profound than most my individual consciousness exists only ments if objective proofs are otherwise people realize—and it does, in fact, because of my individual brain’s activity, lacking. encompass many of the experiences that it is still my consciousness manifesting as From an empirical standpoint, Harris’s traditional mystics claim for themselves. an emergent property of my brain and two most problematic contentions are It is quite possible to lose one’s sense of not someone else’s. My consciousness is that: (a) our conception of being a sepa- being a separate self and to experience a operative and is part of the individual self rate self is an illusion (129), and (b) begin- kind of boundless, open awareness—to that manifests only because of how my ning with Buddhist vipassana (insight) feel, in other words, at one with the cos- individual brain functions. meditation and Advaita self-inquiry mos” (43). If we lose our sense of being a While gazing at the surrounding hills methods (23), learning to be present in separate self, who is it that experiences at the Sea of Galilee, Harris describes a the “now” is the most important thing for oneness with the cosmos? Is there a part feeling of peace that developed into a us to understand if we “want to be happy of us that is not the “self” but still suffi- blissful stillness that silenced his thoughts. in this world” (34). ciently “us” to be able to experience this? He writes that the sense of being a sepa- Harris says Buddha “was merely a There is still an individual person who rate self vanished: he no longer felt that man who woke up from the dream of has this “open awareness” and sensation he was separate from the scene or a sep- being a separate self” (30). Having awak- of cosmic merger. Why can’t we still arate self peering out at the world from

58 Free Inquiry December 2014/January 2015 secularhumanism.org behind his eyes (81). Obviously, he really tion of each of our individual physical no empirically established evidence as to was still separate from his surroundings. brains. There is then no reason to regard what altered states can accurately teach He did not literally become a hill in Israel, whatever type of awareness this is as us about our true nature. Harris admits not even for a second. He writes that something other than the awareness of that psychedelic drugs were indispens- this experience started “as I gazed at the a “self” that is playing out as a by-prod- able for him to initially be convinced “that surrounding hills” (ibid.). He refers to that uct of the activity of an individual brain, profound changes in consciousness are part of himself that was gazing as “I.” He physically separate from other brains. possible” (198). He doesn’t provide any didn’t write “as my consciousness gazed.” The question of what kind of verifiable evidence as to whether these Practically speaking, when we gaze at awareness persists to experience these drugs cause mere illusions or bona fide something, such as the hills of a land- states also appears in classic Indian experiences of transcending the sense scape, we are peering out at the world yoga. Among the supposedly very high of self. from behind our eyes. As even Harris meditative states, there is a distinction writes, it is the self, the “I” of each of us, between savikalpa samadhi and nirvi- doing the gazing. Anyone looking at kalpa samadhi. The former is used to him during this experience would have describe a state that still has “form” or still seen Sam Harris, the individual man, “seed” and involves mental activity.1 The regardless of what sensations Harris was latter is used to describe transcendental feeling at the time. awareness without mental activity.2 Who In arguing that the concept of a sep- is it, or what part of ourselves is it, that “If we lose our sense of being arate self can evaporate, Harris says that experiences what Harris calls “a blissful the surgical division of the two hemi- expanse of conscious peace” that exists a separate self, who is it that spheres of the brain, removing the cor- after all thoughts have subsided (127) experiences oneness with the pus callosum, would create two indepen- or after the cessation of mental activity cosmos? Is there a part of us dent conscious minds (88). However, he in nirvikalpa samadhi? Thus far, Harris immediately says that these two minds has not empirically demonstrated that that is not the ‘self’ but still would be “psychologically continuous” the part of each one of us that is having sufficiently ‘us’ to be able to with the person that existed before the these experiences cannot be described as experience this?” corpus callosum was removed (ibid.). an individuated self. Considering that Harris also says that The same dilemma affects the “the only thing relevant to the question Buddhist concept of nirvana. Noted of personal identity is psychological con- Buddhist author Walpola Rahula writes: tinuity from one moment to the next” “Nirvana is definitely no annihilation of (89), he is, by his own definition, admit- the self, because there is no self to be ting that even with each hemisphere of annihilated. If at all, it is the annihila- the brain’s having independent mind tion of the illusion, of the false idea of qualities, resulting from an absent or self.”3 So, after the “false idea of self” He further writes: “We need not await nonfunctioning corpus callosum, there is is annihilated, what part of our aware- any data from the lab to say that self-tran- an ongoing personal identity of one indi- ness remains to enter nirvana? Are we scendence is possible” (206). Since he vidual that can be called one “self,” in one already, while still in our present condi- is presenting his meditation experiences body with one brain. Though Harris says tion, anything like what we will be when as empirically valid, what would Harris that consciousness is divisible (71), he we overcome the illusion of self in order acknowledge as falsifying his claims? also writes that once we get the separate to experience this state? To add to the Does he admit that there are discover- sense of self to disappear, we will experi- confusion, Rahula, in his glossary, pres- ies or states of awareness that, if they ence a field of consciousness that is undi- ents nirvana as literally meaning “blow- occurred, would falsify what he currently vided (129). Adding up everything Harris ing out, extinction.”4 We still have no believes about meditative states and their says here, he is now locked into affirming reliable evidence regarding how much implications? He doesn’t mention any. that surgically removing the corpus callo- of ourselves, as we currently know our- Harris greatly admires the Indian guru sum would divide consciousness into two selves, will survive this loss of our sense of Ramana Maharshi. He appears to accept independent minds, even in the case of being a separate self. This reminds me of the claim that Ramana “spontaneously those who have already attained a sense the topic of meditation in Jewish Zen: “If became a spiritual adept” at the age of of undivided consciousness through the there is no self, whose arthritis is this?”5 sixteen (127). How can Harris know this? process of overcoming the notion of Harris writes, “Altered states of con- What is the empirical test that would existing as a separate self. This shows sciousness are empirical facts, and human yield reliable information about whether that the states of mind that Harris claims beings experience them under a wide this claim is true? Harris also writes that we can achieve through meditation are range of conditions” (203). People do Ramana “was said to grow so absorbed ultimately dependent upon the condi- experience them. However, there is still by his experience of transfigured con-

secularhumanism.org December 2014/January 2015 Free Inquiry 59 sciousness that he remained motionless Even Jack Kornfield, one of Harris’s Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris apart? for days at a time” (128). As credulous favorite meditation teachers, recognizes Harris does not convincingly show as many followers of gurus are, can we that people frequently suffer continu- that his recommended meditation prac- trust that those who reported this were ing emotional pain from prior experi- tices are the most effective means of dispassionately and accurately describing ences that mediation alone will not heal. reducing or eliminating human suffering. what really happened? The additional help of psychotherapy is However, even if these techniques yield In more than forty-five years of med- needed.7 only a modest amount of the benefits itating, I have periodically experienced My mother, an emotionally devas- that Harris claims for them, they are still blissful states. However, I have never tated Auschwitz survivor, lived with vivid worth exploring. gotten the impression that my sense nightmares and excruciating flashbacks. Harris says that nothing he writes of being a separate self is false. It has She obtained some relief through sleep- “needs to be accepted on faith” and that always been I, the individual that I know ing pills, tranquilizers, and some psycho- all of his “assertions can be tested in the myself to be, who feels these sensations. therapy. Sitting with an erect posture laboratory” of our own lives (7). Sam, Even today, I love meditating in the and focusing on “the present moment, help me have these experiences in a way Anza Borrego Desert while listening to prior to the arising of thought” (38) most that I will have no choice other than to Tangerine Dream’s soundtrack for the likely would not have reduced her suffer- regard them as objectively verifiable by 1983 science-fiction movie Wavelength. ing from concentration-camp memories anyone who meditates as you recom- Meditating like this fills me with a won- in a more effective way than what she mend. Then, I will be happy to revise derfully satisfying sense of joy. Yet, it’s obtained from modern medicine. At a what I have written here. still the individual “self,” which I have minimum, then, the quest for greater Notes always known as “me,” who is experienc- emotional equanimity should make use 1. Georg Feuerstein, The Deeper Dimension ing this blissful interlude. The Calvinist of both meditation and Western psycho- of Yoga (Boston: Shambala Publications, Inc., philosopher Alvin Plantinga claims there logical science, without any automatic 2003) 358. 2. Ibid. is a mechanism for sensing the existence assumption that mediation will most 3. Walpola Rahula, What the Buddha of God called the sensus divinitatus. If we often be more effective. Taught, Revised and Expanded Edition with can’t believe in God, it means that this Harris writes: “In subjective terms, Texts from Suttas and Dhammapada (New York: Grove Press, 1974) 37. mechanism, which is supposed to exist each of us is identical to the very prin- 4. Ibid., 145. within each one of us, is malfunction- ciple that brings value to the universe. 5. “Jewish Zen,” accessed October 6, 2014, ing due to sin.6 Would Harris say that Experiencing this directly—not merely at http://www.jr.co.il/humor/humor674.txt. 6. “Calvin’s Sensus Divinitatis,” Holloway my inability to see the illusory nature of thinking about it—is the true beginning Quarterly, accesssed October 6, 2014, at http:// believing that I am a separate self, even of spiritual life” (206). Excuse me? Play www.hollowayquarterly.com/2013/02/ after decades of meditation, is because I it again, Sam. So, there is a principle calvins-sensus-divinitatis.html. 7. “Even the Best Meditators Have Old have a defective sensus meditatus, which, that brings value to the universe, identi- Wounds to Heal,” Jack Kornfield, buddhanet, if functioning properly, would provide me cal to ourselves, that we can experience accessed October 6, 2014, at http://bud- with the same experiences he has had? directly, over and above thinking about dhanet.net/psymed1.htm. If Harris and I both sat down for a it? Either prove it or provide us with a lengthy meditation session, there is no surefire technique so we can all experi- question that I would fidget before he ence this. would. However, the ability to sit still for Harris does not successfully demon- long periods of time does not, in and strate that it is more likely than not that of itself, empirically validate any claim our day-to-day awareness about what ultimate experiences media- of ourselves as a separate tion can yield. being, a “self,” is incorrect. Edward Tabash is a constitutional lawyer in the Los Angeles area Harris writes that our failure to rec- Regardless of what we and chair of the board of directors of the Center for Inquiry, the ognize thoughts as appearances in con- may experience in medi- Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, and the Council for Secular sciousness “is a primary source of human tation, we are still sepa- Humanism. He is recognized for his expertise in legal issues suffering” (100). He also writes that rate human beings in our pertaining to the separation of church and state. He is also a well- “Western psychological science” has only own separate bodies. known atheist debater in the United States. recently begun to explore how to become Otherwise, how could we Tabash’s father was an Orthodox rabbi from Lithuania and his more focused, patient, and compassion- say that Sam Harris spoke mother a survivor of Auschwitz. After Tabash abandoned conven- ate than one naturally tends to be (47). at the university tonight tional religion, he spent twenty-five years as a New Age seeker. He Wait a minute. Modern Western psycho- and not Richard Dawkins? became an atheist and a skeptic after realizing that even the most therapy has always taken into account If the notion that we are lofty meditation experiences were still only the result of his having how a well-adjusted person will be more separate selves is false, a physical body and brain. focused, patient, and compassionate. how could we ever tell

60 Free Inquiry December 2014/January 2015 secularhumanism.org The Faith of a Conservative Russell Blackford

nderstanding your opponents can Ube useful—and for many of us, con- servative philosopher Roger Scruton is definitely an opponent. I differ with The Soul of the World, by Roger Scruton (Princeton and Scruton across a wide range of philo- Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2014, ISBN 978-0-691- sophical and political issues, so much 16157-0) 205 pp. Hardcover, $27.95. so that I expected to find little to agree with in his newest book, The Soul of the World. Still, opponents can have illuminating things to say, and it is especially important to look for insights from unexpected quarters. That is how positions change, develop, or deepen. knowledgeable and is familiar with Instead, he is content to understand It’s how we make intellectual progress. the essentials of evolutionary theory, consciousness as a feature of ourselves In this case, my mind has not including the emerging science of evo- and other animals that emerges once a changed about anything. Scruton ulti- lutionary psychology. At one point, certain level of complexity is reached in mately reaches far beyond what the he indicates sympathy for the argu- behavior and “the functional relations facts allow him. Along the way, how- ments of Intelligent Design theorists, that govern it.” His focus is on what he ever, he provides genuine food for but this is not at all his emphasis, and calls “a kind of cognitive dualism” within thought. He also writes with clarity and he makes clear that none of his con- which there are two equally correct, but considerable beauty. clusions depend on rejecting main- incommensurable, ways to consider the His essential aim in this book is to stream science. Nonetheless, he seeks offer an alternative to the worldview to defend what he characterizes as a implicit in the past four hundred years form of dualism and to offer the attrac- “Scruton does not deny the of scientific progress. From the perspec- tions—as he sees them—of a broadly scientific picture as far as tive of science, we live in an incompre- theistic faith. (In passing, let’s note that hensibly vast universe that stretches his worldview is scarcely an orthodox it goes; nor does he develop his back to an origin almost fourteen bil- Christian one, since he appears to reject response from a position lion years ago (and perhaps even this the core doctrine of Christ’s sacrificial of ignorance.” universe is only one of many). We have atonement for humanity’s sins.) come to exist as extraordinarily com- The book’s main theme is its “cog- plex, yet purely material, beings via nitive dualism.” Scruton explains that processes that have unfolded over the this is not an ontological dualism such world: the way of science and the way of eons of deep time. Human forms of as offered by Descartes and numer- interpersonal understanding. The latter, interaction and creativity are products, ous past-and-present religious thinkers. so he argues, is inevitable for self-con- however impressive and however indi- Indeed, he gives short shrift to any dual- scious beings like us. We conceptualize rect, of the Darwinian mechanisms that istic arguments based on the claim that the world not only in terms of space-time incrementally shaped us as a species. something is left over, still unexplained, events and natural causation but also There is, as have often been said, when we try to reduce consciousness with reference to desires, reasons, mean- grandeur in this understanding of the to physical events, or on the idea that ings, and their justifications. There is universe and our place in it, but it also there is something mysterious in the something unique about I-You encoun- provokes much resistance. Importantly, way our neural processes manage to ters, in which I recognize another human Scruton does not deny the scientific be “about” the world. Accordingly, he individual as a distinct person with his or picture as far as it goes; nor does he shows little interest in the sorts of puz- her own subjectivity. develop his response from a position zles that frustrate or fascinate contem- Much of the book insists on our of ignorance. He appears relevantly porary philosophers of mind. need to think and speak in the lan-

secularhumanism.org December 2014/January 2015 Free Inquiry 61 guage of reasons, meanings, etc., when and its nuances, and in the literary of knowledge and continuity of aca- we encounter each other directly or conventions and systems of ideas that demic disciplines. through cultural products such as art Shakespeare could take for granted, Scruton goes much further in devel- and law. Scruton is doubtlessly correct than if we surveyed modern audiences oping his cognitive dualism. With some that we inevitably regard each other to ascertain their preferred renditions plausibility, he views systems of reli- as individual persons capable of enter- of speeches and lines. But then again, gion, law, and morality as ameliorating ing into commitments, assuming obli- who denies this? Perhaps no serious the human condition in restraining our gations, forming relationships, making thinker does so, but I have sometimes more selfish and destructive impulses— sacrifices, and ascribing meanings to heard or read such denials—always impulses that were once adaptive but our experiences. He is most persuasive in informal contexts but frequently now “disrupt the work of civilization.” when writing confidently about music, enough to accept that Scruton is not He claims that durable human commu- theater, painting, and architecture. In merely attacking a straw man. More nities require intergenerational bonds these passages, he correctly emphasizes generally, though again only in infor- and particularly self-sacrifice for others the legitimacy (and necessity) of tradi- mal contexts, I’ve encountered what who cannot reciprocate. This suggests, tional kinds of critical reflection and dis- seem to be suspicions about the very so he argues, that communities must be cussion. Whether or not we agree with, idea of literary meaning or even about built on a sense of bonds that are tran- say, his analysis of the opening bars of the fact that language can exhibit sub- scendent and noncontractual. From Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto—or tlety and nuance, as if attempts to inter- here, he portrays morality as reach- with any of his musical opinions—the pret and discuss any subtleties amount ing beyond the empirical world for its language he employs is fitted to our to a kind of confidence trick such as authority and as somehow involving cold reading or spoon bending. Against reasons for action that are transcen- that background, I welcome Scruton’s dently normative and binding. All this defense of humanistic scholarship and implies a universe that is purposive— “. . . He seeks to defend what he conversation. teleologically ordered—and it culmi- characterizes as a form The deeper philosophical questions nates in an affirmation, on the closing concern the implications of all this, and pages of The Soul of the World, of hope of dualism and to offer the here Scruton drastically overplays his for spiritual immortality and posthu- attractions—as he sees them— hand. Before going further, we ought mous oneness-with-God, though it is of a broadly theistic faith.” to look more closely at his claim that unclear to me how literally its author we study Shakespeare’s plays not by expects us to take this. explaining how they arose but by inter- Thus, the book’s deep argument is preting their meanings. “Hold on!” I that there are irreplaceable aspects of experience of music. It would, as he want to say here. “Aren’t we inter- human culture and interaction that points out, be inapt to converse about ested in both?” Attempts to under- point beyond themselves to a realm of Beethoven’s compositions merely as stand how literary compositions arose transcendent bonds, obligations, pur- sequences of pitched sounds. may well help us in understanding their poses, and meanings. Scruton wants Again he is surely correct that meaning—and vice versa. Often, we to push our thinking to the edge of “We don’t understand the plays of cannot conclude what works of art the empirical world and to an accep- Shakespeare by conducting surveys and might reasonably be taken to mean tance of something that lies beyond experiments.” On the same page, he without first understanding much of it—something unitary and purposive adds: “Art, literature, music, and history the cultural matrix within which they that we can identify with God. belong to the Lebenswelt, the world were created. At the same time, deeper But this strategy can cut both ways. that is shaped by our own conscious- understanding of the meanings of indi- Claims to transcendent intellectual and ness, and we study them not by explain- vidual works—the dramatic intentions moral authority may well have assisted ing how they arose but by interpreting and existential vision of King Lear, for some or many of the moralists, law- what they mean.” Yes, we do seek to example—enrich our knowledge of givers, and cultural mythmakers of the understand the meaning of King Lear their cultural circumstances, including past. At particular times, in particu- or Macbeth, and not merely to explain the great anxieties of their eras. This, in lar places, these stupefying claims may the forces, whether proximate or more turn, informs our sense of the anxieties have helped to sustain order, enhance distant, that enabled its existence. of other eras, including our own. cultural identification, and contribute Even if we must work with somewhat All these considerations support the to social survival. None of this provides inchoate—perhaps not entirely coher- importance of the humanities. They do a reason to believe that any such claims ent—notions of meaning, such works not, however, suggest that humanis- are actually true; on the contrary, it of the imagination seem to cry out for tic scholarship and conversation are gives us a reason to think they would engagement and interpretation. radically incommensurable with science have been made, and perhaps acceded We are more likely to understand or that they cannot be informed by to, whether they were true or not. Shakespeare’s plays by immersing our- insights from the sciences. Nothing that Claims to transcendent authority could selves deeply in Elizabethan English I’ve said argues against an overall unity have been socially useful under defin-

62 Free Inquiry December 2014/January 2015 secularhumanism.org able circumstances, and yet the exis- I question, however, whether there law are humanly constructed standards tence of any such authority could still is any value in encouraging the illu- of conduct that benefit us by facilitating have been an illusion. This exemplifies sion, particularly under modern condi- social cooperation and protecting our a recurring feature in arguments for tions. When religious rivals have sought worldly interests. These are not tran- religious beliefs that emphasize their the state’s power of fire and sword to scendent goals, but they are all-import- personal or social advantages. All such enforce their norms, the outcomes have ant human ones. arguments tend to suggest how beliefs often been disastrous. When morality A political conservative in Scruton’s in transcendent beings, forces, or prin- is backed by claims to transcendent mold might question whether any stan- ciples might arise and persist even if authority, this tends to preserve moral dards of conduct will retain general they are false. norms from earlier, more barbaric respect without the widespread belief To be fair, the language and emo- times, perhaps even intensifying their that they have a transcendent source. I tions that typify moral debate do seem, cruel effects if religious purity becomes disagree: we should expect morality and all too often, to reveal the participants a measure of social standing. When law to serve their important functions as believing in transcendent demands undue respect is given to religion, inhu- more effectively if we understand them in a secular and historical way. We can and prohibitions. This belief appears mane and oppressive moral demands shape our standards to serve us, with our to be deeply inscribed in our language, can often receive veneration instead of complex, changing needs, rather than culture, and thought (though perhaps being cast aside. imagining that if we serve them we’ll it’s an open question as to whether Contrary to Scruton, I submit that thereby conform to the purposes of that is true of all human societies or we would do better to understand law some unseen order of things. mainly of those shaped by adherence and even morality as what they really to Middle-Eastern monotheisms). Even appear to be when exam- many atheists appear unwilling to let ined more objectively. They Russell Blackford’s books include 50 Great Myths About Atheism, go of the illusion that there are stan- do not reflect the purposes coauthored with Udo Schüklenk (2013). He is a conjoint lecturer dards of human behavior with a kind of of any personal or imper- at the University of Newcastle, Australia, and a regular columnist transcendent and inescapable author- sonal transcendent author- for Free Inquiry. ity to back them up. ity. Instead, morality and

The Sociologists Are In Tom Flynn

n 2007, researcher Frank Pasquale Icontributed a seven-page entry to my New Encyclopedia of Unbelief with the forbidding title, “Unbelief and Atheist Awakening: Secular Activism and Community in Irreligion, Empirical Study and Neglect America, by Richard Cimino and Christopher Smith, with a Of.” Essentially a scholarly rant, it foreword by Martin E. Marty (New York: Oxford University lamented how inadequately social sci- Press, 2014, ISBN 9780199986323) 216 pp. Hardcover, ence had studied the phenomenon of $27.95. unbelief in religion. Five years later, much had changed; Pasquale’s Free Inquiry cover article, “The Social Science of Secularity” (February/March 2012), celebrated a dramatic rise in the aca- demic study of unbelief and unbeliev- letter Religion Watch, lamentably just The book’s chapters grew out of sev- ers as phenomena in their own right. discontinued in print. Christopher Smith eral published papers, and some of the Atheist Awakening displays this young is an independent researcher. Between stitch work shows. Still, there’s incisive— field’s next level of development as two them, they’ve evaluated the movement and remarkably timely—analysis of the sociologists examine not just unbelief in great detail. Individually or jointly, current population of national atheist but the atheist/humanist movement in they have studied the 2012 Reason and humanist organizations, including a fine-grained way. Rally, pored over decades of Free Inquiry the Council for Secular Humanism. There Richard Cimino teaches sociology at back issues, and digested much of P. Z. is also provocative discussion of the impli- the University of Richmond and was Myers’s blog output. And that’s just the cations of blog- and social media–based founding editor of the research news- beginning. online activism for the role and future of

secularhumanism.org December 2014/January 2015 Free Inquiry 63 the national organizations. use of that term.) Ultimately the authors Harris, the first “horsemen” to publish Cimino and Smith tread less surely in conclude, almost wistfully: “[M]any in our their seminal New Atheist books, are their treatment of emerging “community” sample agreed . . . on the importance of American. Some British invasion!) initiatives among humanists and atheists. rituals. However, a significant number did In addition, I would question the The Sunday Assembly movement and not.” Activism and community, it seems, authors’ assertion that contempo- the National Atheist Party (by now, per- will continue to develop along separate rary atheism has roots in the nine- haps, the Secular Party of America) prob- paths. teenth-century freethought movement, ably receive more prolonged treatments Atheist Awakening is not without while secular humanism does not. In his than their long-term importance merits. inaccuracies. The authors are correct entry “Secular Humanism” in The New (Sunday Assembly won wide initial atten- in noting that “Arkansas has a consti- Encyclopedia of Unbelief, Vern Bullough tion but lost critical momentum when tutional provision disqualifying atheist stated flatly that “secular humanism its New York congregation schismed, a from holding public office,” but so do and freethought are closely identified in development covered in the book. In Maryland, Mississippi, North and South the modern world.” In an FI article that fairness, Atheist Awakening must have Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas. They list the authors cite (“A Secular Humanist been on press before the Party began to the American Humanist Association as a Definition: Setting the Record Straight,” founder amid allegations that its mem- religious organization, though it shed its Fall 2002), and in the Council’s intro- bership’s name-change vote had been religious tax status in the mid-2000s. The ductory pamphlet Secular Humanism tampered with.) Campus Freethought Alliance (founded Defined (also available on the Council On the other hand, the authors by the Council in 1996) is not “now called website), I describe secular humanism describe most perceptively the ongoing the Secular Student Alliance.” SSA is an as the product of a mid–twentieth-cen- rift between activists eager to rekindle independent organization that split off tury synthesis of religious humanism and freethought, with the latter’s influence “congregational life” among unbelievers from what is now Center for Inquiry– largely accounting for secular human- and those who seek a humanist practice On Campus, the Campus Freethought ism’s rejection of religious elements. free of churchly trappings. (Full disclosure: Alliance’s direct successor. The authors’ But these are quibbles; to some I am in the latter camp, and Cimino and account of Paul Kurtz’s resignation from degree, they reflect the challenges of Smith quote me frequently.) Recognizing the Council for Secular Humanism and painting a detailed portrait of our move- that something new is afoot, they suggest the Center for Inquiry is largely specula- ment from the outside, which few have that this divide “replays”—rather than tive, perhaps unavoidably so in view of attempted before. Atheist Awakening continues—“the conflicts and controver- how much of this affair remains outside manifests a welcome maturing of the sies that emerged between religious and of the public record. Finally, Cimino and sociology of unbelief. It offers a detailed secular humanists in the mid-twentieth Smith have the curious impression that and generally perceptive analysis of our century.” The new effort has a name: the New Atheism is a British import. (Of movement, its concerns, its rhetoric, and “congregational humanism,” co-intro- the “four horsemen,” Richard Dawkins its organizations. Read it. duced by the unlikely coalition of Greg is British. The British-born Christopher Epstein, James Croft, Jennifer Kalmanson, Hitchens moved to America and myself in FI’s October 2013 cover fea- in 1981, long before he Tom Flynn is the editor of Free Inquiry and the executive director ture. (In view of the book’s timeliness, I’m emerged as an atheist activ- of the Council for Secular Humanism. surprised that Cimino and Smith made no ist. Daniel Dennett and Sam

Letters continued from p. 19 ticks, fleas, and kissing bugs are Newport Beach, California it’s respecting them. For those defend themselves, and this vectors (transmitters) and not interested in the actual facts, I won’t change until Israel ends parasites. Hookworms, tape- Arthur L. Caplan replies: recommend reading the recent its crimes against humanity. worms, Guinea worms, and piece by Noam Chomsky titled, I yield to the experts, but the ethi- Barry F. Seidman, host roundworms are parasites. cal point still holds. “The Real Reason Israel ‘Mows Equal Time for Freethought Parasites are eukaryotic, the Lawn’ in Gaza.” Israel was New York, New York nucleated. The causes of Lyme indeed attacked by Hamas, as disease, bacterial; Typhus, bac­ Israel and Free Speech Hentoff’s headline reads, but terial; West Nile, viral; and that was in retaliation to Israel’s Nat Hentoff writes: “Uncharac­ Chikungunya, viral are not par- Re: Nat Hentoff’s article “Israel, behavior against them and teristically, Israel silences a asites, even though all are vec- Attacked by Hamas, Annuls its the Palestinian people. It’s so domestic critic. But Hamas is tor-borne. Free Speech History”: the rea- frustrating to hear the claim the real enemy.” It boggles the The gene drive he is refer- son most nations believe Israel is Israel has a right to defend mind how Israeli propagandists ring to is of the mosquito and primarily to blame for this con- itself when it is the occupying infiltrate every medium in the possibly other vectors. flict is because it is! Recognizing power. The Palestinians are United States, including what I Douglas C. Cable, MD this is not ignoring the facts; the ones who have a right to thought to be a skeptical mag-

64 Free Inquiry December 2014/January 2015 secularhumanism.org Why Christianity Is Not Only False But Evil [email protected]

Christians believe that Jesus was divine and 2. Omnipotent – able to do anything possible. coexistent with the Father. 3. Never Changing – one and perfect; always existing and eternal. Jesus said: I and the Father are one. 4. All loving, all just and all merciful.

The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity: declares But it is impossible to believe that a God of love, that Jesus Christ is not a created being, but is justice and mercy would deliberately create those he of the same substance as the Father. knew he would send to suffer forever; and reject his option to create them differently—as he did those Jesus said: “Depart from me, you cursed, into saved—or not create them at all; all of which he everlasting fire which was prepared for the could do with his omnipotent power. devil and his angels.” He promised that in that furnace: “there shall be weeping and gnashing It is impossible that such a God can be a God of teeth.” of love and mercy. Because not even God can make the meaning of love mean hate; or the mean- Jesus said: Enter ye in at the narrow gate: for ing of justice mean injustice; or the meaning of wide is the gate, and broad is the way that infinite mercy mean sending a single person to suffer leadeth to destruction, and many there are for eternity. who go in thereat. How narrow is the gate, and strait is the way that leadeth to life: and few God can no more do those than he can make a there are that find it! square circle.

Christians believe God is: There are scores of other compelling reasons, detailed in historical, scientific and philosophical 1. Omniscient – knows everything that has volumes, which show why the Christian story is man- happened or will ever happen. made—but they are superfluous to the conclusion.

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I have provided the prize money and Free Inquiry has OR JUST TELL US WHAT YOU THINK agreed to receive and judge submissions which accord with the following: If you don’t have the time to enter the contest, please tell us whether: 1. The theme must be why Christianity is false and immoral. • You agree or disagree that “the best way to screen 2. Be 400 words or less – this ad is 315 words. through millions to get the “gettable” to hear more of 3. Free Inquiry will, in its sole discretion, determine what they never hear in church, is to go after them with winners of each award. a series of short, arresting messages, written in plain 4. Winners must be good faith efforts, not substantially language.” the same as the ad above. 5. The first prize winner’s ad will be published in the • Your opinion of this ad. June/July 2015 issue. 6. All prizes will be awarded. Send your email to: [email protected] 7. Your entry must be postmarked or emailed no later Make the Subject: 315 Word Ad than January 31, 2015 to be considered.

secularhumanism.org December 2014/January 2015 Free Inquiry 65 azine such as Free Inquiry. Never tion. It was right there, in Psalm countered by many other state- issue ends with a similar dark mind the hundreds of kids that 2:8-9 of their holy Bible: “Ask ments attributed to him. It is warning: “making meaning and Israel has killed, the home dem- of me, and I shall give thee the understandable that the Jewish cultivating values in the course olitions, displacements, eth- heathen for thine inheritance, Gospel writers would convey of a fleeting . . . existence.” nic cleansing, imprisonments, and the uttermost parts of the some warlike characteristics to Reason shows that we mate- beating of Palestinians youths, earth for thy possession. Thou Jesus since the Jews were look- rialists have literally nothing to destruction of utility plants, etc., shalt break them with a rod of ing for a warrior messiah. worry about. Since we cannot etc., etc. I can go on and on iron; thou shalt dash them in Hugh Nicholson be conscious of being dead, we and enumerate the hundreds of pieces like a potter’s vessel.” Madison, Alabama can therefore only be conscious crimes and massacres that Israel The dashing (pun intended) of being alive. A dualist who has committed against the Jeffrey Amherst, a British gen- foresees his or her conscious- Palestinians. In Hentoff’s own eral, was in fact the infamous ness surviving death must worry words—just change Hamas for inventor of biological warfare. Andy Norman weakens his argu- about what that after-death Colonial Israel—if Colonial Israel In 1763, while under the pre- ment in “Reason Unhinged: The “life” will be like, and many reli- “is not disestablished, death will tense of negotiating a treaty Religious Subversion of Civil gions teach that there is plenty continue to triumph.” with the Delaware Indians, he Accountability” (FI, October/ to worry about. It appears that Guillermo Kuhl distributed smallpox-contami- November 2014) by describing many nontheists feel the need higher brain function com- Cumming, Georgia nated blankets among them. to be brave in denying such an The Indians who died from that bined with language ability active afterlife, tacitly assuming murderous act ultimately num- as a prescriptive norm called that the alternative is an eter- bered in the hundreds of thou- “reason.” He translates cog- nity of sitting in the dark. For What’s Religion sands, if not millions. nitive capacity into “the force example, James A. Haught (“No David Quintero of the better reason[s]” that Qualms,” October/November Good For? commands collaborative delib- Monrovia, California 2013) looks forward bravely to The articles in the October/ eration and action for the com- “nature’s blackout.” November 2014 issue’s special mon good based on evidence But we actually can’t expe- section, “What’s Religion Good cleansed of irrational bias or rience any such thing. From my For?,” are all good critiques It has been a long time since self-interest. On such grounds own point of view, I’m always of religion, but they did not I have been reminded of the he makes a compelling case alive, and far from being fleet- address the question except to untold atrocities that the for eliminating religious belief ing, for me my life is always answer “nothing.” heroes of the Old Testament from civic discourse. there. I can never get to the If you examine the lives of committed in the name of Although reason in the point where I look back and say, people who have been “saved,” God. But I had trouble with abstract fails to pick out any “It’s over.” you find mature individuals parts of Thomas Tandy Lewis’s one practice or outcome, its illu- Jerry Shedd article, starting with the title. mination in the article is largely who had become dysfunctional Ripton, Vermont in their habits. A religious con- The author talks of a single framed by innocuous scenarios version occurs to some, where- biblical deity. This is not a fair that affirm “common sense.” upon they are able to to change assessment. There is the Old For all the appealing rhetoric, and become not only functional Testament God and the God the essay seems tilted toward WRITE TO but happy and relieved to have put forth by Jesus. These gods commending desiderata that found “the way” to have a are completely different. are currently accepted by secu- meaningful and productive life. The author tries to tie Jesus lar humanists and “reasonable” Religion is a very “target in with the Old Testament people everywhere. rich” topic. But until secular genocide with the statement Jim Valentine humanism accepts that benefits that “Jesus never condemns the Woodland Hills, California exist no matter how irrational violence associated with the conquest of Palestine.” This is Send submissions to and evil religion can be, then Andrea Szalanski, Letters Editor, progress toward providing an true; to go further, Jesus never condemns war. But his failure FREE INQUIRY, alternative for society cannot How Atheists Deal P.O. Box 664, Amherst, to do so was not because he be made. NY 14226-0664. wanted to justify the conquest with Death Gilbert Reeser Fax: (716) 636-1733. of Palestine. It was because Dale DeBakcsy’s fine essay E-mail: Pleasanton, California he didn’t involve himself with (“When Atheists Mourn: How I [email protected]. affairs of state, and whoever Learned to Stop Worrying and has the power to make war is Love Chemistry,” FI, October/ In letters intended for publication, Re: “An Indictment of the the state. November 2014) ends with a please include name, address,­ city and state, ZIP code, Biblical Deity for the Crime of Granted, there are state- shift from how we mourn the ments in the Gospels attributed and daytime phone number Genocide” by Thomas Tandy deaths of others to our con- (for verification purposes only). Lewis (FI, October/November to Jesus that appear to be of templation of our own deaths: 2014): in their campaign to a warlike nature. Probably the “we become a little less wor- Letters should be exterminate the New World’s strongest one is “I came not ried about our own demise in 300 words or fewer pagan natives, the early to send peace, but a sword” the process.” Wayne L. Trotta’s and pertain to previous European settlers didn’t have (Matt. 10:34). These are rather review of Death and the Afterlife Free Inquiry articles. to look far to find their inspira- strong words, but they can be by Samuel Scheffler in the same

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