Bloc Raisonneur

The Case for God: Not So Much.

2010-01-07T15:30:00.000-05:00

Few religious thinkers have eased the consciences of spiritual liberals, anti-fundamentalist religious moderates, and functional nonbelievers unwilling to stake any affirmatively atheistic ground than Karen Armstrong. For years she has been making the assertion that her scholarship proves that the "great" monotheisms ought not be associated with the fear, xenophobia, irrational faith in the absurd, violence, or misogyny that so they so often encourage, but that they have their "true" foundations in love and tolerance--and anyone who doesn't think so hasn't been doing it right. As much as that assertion causes many skeptics to arch their eyebrows, it at least sounds like a good thing to which the faiths could aspire if they were so inclined. Alas.

Her latest book, The Case for God, is not meant to explain the various faiths' dispositions or ideological foundations, but to convince the reader that the most commonly held notions of God, those of a being that created the universe and "exists," are false, and that in actuality, God is an unknowable, unfathomable concept for which the very term "existence" is too limited. If you think that sounds like a pretty weak basis for an argument when dealing with such a grand concept's veracity, you're right. And despite Armstrong's impressive breadth of knowledge and her nuanced grasp of various thinkers' positions throughout the generations, her case never adds up.

Part of the trouble, of course, is that her book's premise is challenged by her own explanation of what God is. It is nigh impossible for me to understand how someone can build a case for God if the central thesis is that God is an unknowable pseudo-entity-but-not-really, something that mere humans are wholly incapable of defining. Where does that leave your book?

One would hope that an intellect like Armstrong's would note this paradox. Instead, she throws her lot in with apophatic explanations of God from a chosen slate of theologians, limiting the "correct" discussion of the nature of God to defining what God is not. Thus, The Case for God is not so much a set of proofs for God's existence, but a selection of and elaboration on the apophatic positions of particular religious thinkers, united in their unwillingness to pin God down to the realm of the perceivable. It is not a case, per se, but a series of similarly-themed guesses.

There is another paradox in Armstrong's venture. Repeatedly throughout the book, she laments how "rationalist" notions of God (pretty much all of them since the Enlightenment, a period about which she seems to have mixed feelings) that picture a supreme being of some form that "exists" in the way most (okay, just about all) people define the term, and she is quite clear that such a position is flatly incorrect and--what might be the worst sin in her eyes--"idolatrous." But by the very act of asserting that some notions of God are incorrect, she gives the lie to her position that God is an unknowable. If it is not, how can she know who is and is not correct in their beliefs?

Armstrong has a particular bone to pick with what we understand today as atheism, most vigorously with the New Atheists, who she says choose the idol-God of the incorrectly-religious to assert the non-existence of. But Armstrong herself, as many have pointed out before me, defines God out of all notions of existence anyway, leaving nothing to believe in to begin with. Speaking for atheists (if I may for the moment), I think it is safe to say that whether we are talking about a vengeful Old Testament Yahweh or a non-definable, quasi-existent infinite ultimateness of the divine logos, both are equally unprovable, devoid of evidence, and not worthy of acceptance. Like many of the New Atheists' critics, she complains that they are not sufficiently well-versed in theology, and are therefor in no position to weigh in on the question of God's existence. This is akin to saying that one cannot assert the nonexistence of the Starship Enterprise unless one has studied every episode of every Star Trek series, earned a degree in startrekology, and published scholarly articles on the debate as to whether resistance truly is futile.

To Armstrong, this rationalist line of thinking shuts out alternate means of arriving at "truths," for Armstrong rests on the also-unprovable notion that truth is a fluid, utterly subjective concept that can be realized by means other than reason. This mindset obviously opens up a formidable can of worms, as any cockamamie "methodology" that someone chooses, and any absurd answers they turn up, suddenly become equally valid. For Armstrong, there is rational truth and religious truth, and religion--something she insists should be viewed as a discipline and practice rather than a belief system--is equally capable of arriving at truth as science. What truths religion is supposed to reveal is, of course, not terribly well defined, and one is forced to infer that the correct truths are those that Armstrong has revealed to us; God is too out-there for mere existence, thinking otherwise is wrong, and we should only talk about what God is not, though we're pretty sure it's all about love and tolerance. Throw in a few dashes of meaningless terms like "the infinite," "ultimate truth," "inner essences," and things that have "no qualities," and you have some idea of what Armstrong is talking about. Or, more likely, you don't.

I would be remiss if this review did not also highlight what was particularly troubling about the book; Armstrong's twisting of the practice of science to imply that at its best it is grounded in some theological inspiration. Armstrong praises those greats of ages past, Newton, Descartes, Kepler, and claims that they practiced a "science rooted in faith" because they were personally inspired by religious feeling to pursue knowledge. Now, it may very well be that all these men were driven to discovery out of religious fervor, but that does not in any way make the method they chose, the scientific method, somehow dependent upon or tainted by superstition. Their motivations may have been faith-based, their science was not, and could not have been. Her assertion otherwise is as meaningless as saying that their work was rooted in money if they were paid for their research. She also offends the sensibilities by looping in modern physicists who, since they often deal in invisible abstracts, are examples of science-as-faith-exercise. I would imagine that most of those physicists would balk at the idea of their work being classified as religious in this way.

And while she praises those scientists who have been open to the supernatural, she castigates Galileo for that same disposition. The difference is that Galileo was punished for his pursuit of actual truth, and that punishment was delivered by the earthly representatives of the ruling faith tradition. This is apparently an uncomfortable and inconvenient bit of history for Armstrong, as it is an instance in which religion actively suppresses and penalizes understanding of reality, and so she is careful to let us know that Galileo shares the blame with Pope Urban VIII for his house arrest and public shaming, because Galileo was "perversely intent on reconciling" his scientific findings with scripture. This kind of faith-inspired science is perverse to Armstrong. Is it because he, unlike Kepler and Newton, was punished for it by the ministers of that very faith?

There is more to be said about Armstrong's puzzling take on the purpose of religion; something of a set of rituals designed to make one a better person in some undefined way, the vaguest kind of self-improvement. But if every believer on Earth were religious in the Armstrongian sense, there probably wouldn't be too much of a need for affirmative atheism or a secularist movement. Goodness knows, she has won the congratulations of the fuzzily-spiritual and not-quite religious all over the mainstream press, particularly from liberals. But her God is as flimsy of a hypothesis as any other more "idolatrous" version, whether she would deign to allow her position to be subject to such earthly terms as "hypothesis" or not. The case for God is not only a weak one, but it is, like Armstrong's own God, for all intents and purposes non-existent.

Illinois Gov. Candidates' Answers on Evolution Lost in the Ooze

2009-12-29T13:46:00.000-05:00

The Associated Press recently asked all the candidates for Illinois governor for their opinions concerning evolution. You won't be surprised that from both parties, the overall theme is that yes, evolution in some form probably occurred (and I use the past tense intentionally), but that God was and is the "prime mover."

Three of them also made a point of taking a defensive position concerning their feeling that science/evolution and religion are non-contradictory, and it makes me wonder if that question was even put to them. I suspect not, and that they felt they needed to cover their bases. But I'm guessing.

Anyway, there were certainly some standouts, mainly from the GOP candidates. Adam Andrzejewski, for example, tried being clever by answering the "do-you-believe-in-evolution" question by saying that "God created Darwin." Zing.

Republican Bill Brady, oddly, answered by saying that he accepts "the theory of creation, as I was taught, and believe the world has continued to evolve since." I must admit, I don't quite understand what that means. Is he saying he subscribes to intelligent design? Did he mix up the terms "creation" and "evolution"? Is he a deist? And how has the world evolved? If we're talking about biological evolution by means of natural selection, that's what we usually mean by evolution in these contexts, but he says "the world." Is the Planet Earth going to develop into a higher planet-form, by his thinking? Does he think that inanimate objects also evolve by natural selection? Brady's response, as you can see, has exhausted me with its meaninglessness.

GOPer Jim Ryan takes the arrogance cake by brushing the question aside and condescending to science by calling evolution "a reasonable theory," and asserts that humans have a Yahweh-bestowed soul "regardless of the extent" of evolutions veracity. Pish! Your funny little notions of evolution have amused me! How novel! I, in my theological superiority, choose not to relieve myself on your cute idea about biological development, and you should be happy about it! Now run along.

Democrat Dan Hynes, however, is the only one to answer the question correctly in two ways: By giving the right answer (evolution is true) and expressing it correctly: "I accept the theory of evolution." Note how "belief" does not enter into it. When it comes to the unproved or the unprovable, we are talking about belief. When it comes to established facts, however, that's when it's time to choose whether or not to accept those facts. Thanks, Mr. Hynes, for getting that.

E.J. Dionne and a Little Wishful Thinking

2009-12-28T18:09:00.001-05:00

E.J. Dionne's column this week asserts that there is a positive, if overlooked change in the debate over policy and politics this year. He writes:

In this highly partisan year, we did not see a sharpening of the battles over religion and culture.

Oh no? Dionne elaborates:

The most striking transformation occurred on the right end of politics. For now, the loudest and most activist sections of the conservative cause are not its religious voices but the mostly secular, anti-government Tea Party activists.

For further evidence, Dionne cites Dick Armey's apparent dislike of James Dobson.

I'm not sure what debate Dionne is watching. It seems to me that religion and "culture" is fully con-fused with the pseudo-debate over health care and the role of government. Don't believe me? Well, let's check in with that Pennsylvania guy who screamed at Arlen Specter at a town hall in August:

One day, God's gonna stand before you, and he's gonna judge you and the rest of your damn cronies up on the Hill -- and the rest of your damn cronies up on the hill -- and then you can get your just desserts.

That sounds to me like he's saying that Congress is going to be damned by the Creator of the Universe for their work on health care legislation.

And of course, there are visual reminders that in the minds of the disgruntled mob, there is no difference between their distaste for what they think Obama's policies are and their religion.

So Dionne may be even more incorrect than is immediately apparent. Not only has religion not left the debate, but it may have ensconced itself so firmly, enmeshed itself so completely, that it almost goes without saying.

Almost.

Dionne is one of those liberal public intellectuals who goes to great lengths to defend religion against the forces of secularism, such as they are, trying to emphasize the social benefits of a soft, squishy, take-all-comers kind of faith as opposed to the zealotry and madness of the fundamentalists. But an opponent of right wing religion he has been, so it's curious to me that he seems not to have noticed the religious underpinnings existing, if not at the heart, then alongside the other aspects of anti-progressive activism. Of course, that also includes racism, xenophobia, and a kind of willful vassalage to corporate power. So I don't know if there's really anything worth being impressed by.

Chicken, Don't Hurt Me No More

2009-12-16T10:22:00.001-05:00

I thought my star turn on CNN was cool. But this is the greatest thing ever.

CNN Recognizes My Lieber-Genius!

2009-12-15T22:08:00.002-05:00

It was bound to happen. Mad with frustration over the snivelly obstructionism of Joe Lieberman, Miranda Hale and I made the only substantive contribution to the debate surrounding Joe-Mentum that we could. We did terrible impersonations of him.

"Gasp," you say, "begone, you ruffian! No one," you say, "will care for this childish behavior!"

But you'd be wrong. CNN's Jeanne Moos saw just how powerful our political statement really was, and featured my video (for all of about 3 seconds) in her report on the national rage over Lieberman.

Check it out. I come in at about 24 seconds.

Rejoice, for my influence is being felt. Sort of. Sort of!!

Impatience with Frank Schaeffer

2009-12-15T04:10:00.004-05:00

In my role as an atheist blogger and columnist, I don't think it's enough to simply exist in the poles. That is, I can't limit myself to reaction to and analysis of a) those I agree with and b) those to whom I am diametrically opposed. There is a lot of mushy room in the middle, and sometimes the most difficult thing for me to do is to delve into the works of those for whom I may have a great deal of respect, or those who have taken a serious approach to their position and, despite my disagreement with it, warrant serious attention. This has been my intention with reading and reviewing Robert Wright's The Evolution of God. It is my intention in reading (however slowly) Karen Armstrong's A History of God and The Case for God. It was also my intention with Frank Schaeffer's Patience with God. But as Toad says, it's hard to rely on my good intentions.

I am losing my mind reading Schaeffer's book. A former member of the radical Christian Right, Schaeffer has emerged in recent years as one of its most vocal opponents, as he takes to liberal outlets like the Rachel Maddow Show and the Huffington Post to level heavy, unapologetic attacks on his former allies. His honesty and bluntness in showing the hate and willful ignorance of the fundamentalist right has been a breath of fresh air and red meat for secularists who might feel they have found a new ally and convert.

But these secularists should not get their hopes up. Patience with God is not anything so lofty or studious as Wright's or Armstrong's works. It is instead a personal expression of frustration not just with the right, but with the New Atheists. And here I face a dilemma.

The dilemma is not that Schaeffer is attacking those on my side of the fence, but that he is doing so in such a ham-fisted, uninformed fashion. I am only three chapters into this short book, and it has already made me wish I had never picked it up. Is it because it espouses ideas with which I disagree? No. It's because it espouses these ideas (so far) so poorly. Chapter 3, for example, is devoted to attacking Richard Dawkins personally for a) promoting his website (run by volunteers), b) selling merchandise on said website (see point "a") and c) thinking that scientists are really smart. I suppose one could, in theory, find a way to legitimately come after Dawkins on these points (I have no idea how), but Schaeffer's attempt reads like a 14-year-old's blog post on why one Jonas brother is way cooler than another. For substantive criticism, Schaeffer substitutes snark and line after line of sarcastic use of italics. He goes to enormous lengths to imply that Dawkins is some kind of atheistic version of a televangelist without actually having the guts to say so. One is forced to infer from Schaeffer's clumsy and juvenile writing that Dawkins is a money-grubbing, attention whore charlatan, but one can also only infer, because Schaeffer refuses to make any plain statements unbuffeted by layers of ill-executed snideness.

This doesn't even cover the other nonsense in this lone chapter, in which Schaeffer also takes the tired canard about 'atheistic atrocities' committed by the likes of Stalin, et. al., and runs deep afield with it, but only embarrassing himself with his mangling of history and the motivations of madmen. He accuses science of being responsible for technological misfires and humans' abuse of new discoveries, as though "science" was some alternate theology, or some interest group that can't control its wacky members, rather than what it is: a method of understanding reality through observation and experiment.

So I find myself hard pressed to continue. I have in the past cited Schaeffer in a positive light, but his drivel in Patience with God (thus far) makes me question whether I simply liked what I was hearing when he was attacking my enemies, and not considering the strength of his arguments on their merits. His childish attacks on the New Atheists have, at the least, helped me to remember that it's not enough to take whatever red meat that's tossed your way, lest one ingest some salmonella.

Life is short. There are many books waiting to be read; books of import, of substance, of beauty. Ought I to continue to wade through Schaeffer's blather in the spirit of hearing all sides, of giving the opposition a fair shake? I honestly don't know. I'd be curious to read what you think.

Maybe It's Not Alright

2009-12-15T02:17:00.002-05:00

At some point over the past month or so, my credulity reached its breaking point. A confluence of disparate events has saturated me with a feeling of hopelessness about the state of our democracy, our media, our ability to address real crises -- not just problems, crises -- with our politics and government. I have found it nearly impossible to avoid concluding that change is not coming to America.

A couple of catalysts for this awakening are probably fairly obvious. One, on the national scale, is the debate over things like health care and climate change taking place in Washington and elsewhere, a debate so removed from reality, so distorted and absurd that it could have been a piece of bad protest theatre. On health care and the economy, tens of millions of Americans struggle and suffer, and we don't debate solutions, but the debate is between piecemeal, ineffective legislative tweaks versus screwing people further. On global warming, our species truly is threatened, but the discussion is not about which ways are best to avert the disaster, but instead we gnash our teeth over whether Sarah Palin might be more informed about the science than Al Gore.

Sarah Palin is treated as a serious person. Joe Lieberman pretends to be principled. John Boehner pretends to have ideas. Democrats pretend to have a political party.

The media is no help at all. The major papers give us tired, insipid analysis and tunnel-vision focus. The "next generation" outlets frolic in the trivial and sensationalistic. Truth, as Susan Jacoby has put it, is too often considered equidistant between two points. But I think that it is more frequently becoming the case that truth is not of interest at all.

That's all one thing, really. The second big, obvious reason for my shift in thinking is the birth of my beautiful son. I suppose most parents-to-be toy with the question of whether it is "wise" to bring a new person into a world so troubled as ours, but I never gave those considerations much thought. He's a gift to this undeserving world, say I. But now that he's here, I can't help but despair a bit about how things will only be getting worse as he comes of age and takes his place in society. I know he will be a force for good, for progress, for decency, but he may not be enough, and it shouldn't be his responsibility to make up for all we have ruined.

But there's more. I have just completed Jeff Sharlet's book The Family, about the secret influence wielded by powerful fundamentalists throughout modern American history, and how it is continuing to grow in strength, totally under the radar. Without going into too much detail, the book chronicles the aiding and abetting of not just policies intended to screw the poor, screw workers, screw unions, and curtail the civil rights of minorities of all sorts, but also of murderers, criminals, oppressors, and genocidaires around the world. The worst of all possible combinations: radicalized, reasonless religious devotion coupled with an unbridled lust for power, topped with a complete lack of concern for those crushed underfoot.

It's enough to make one take a breath and wonder at the point of struggling. It's one thing to, say, beat John McCain in the presidential election. It's one thing to defeat a bad bit of legislation. It's also good to, say, win marriage rights for gays and lesbians...but of course, we can't seem to do that, can we? But all these things happen in the public, democratic arena, so it's something else entirely when one finds that regardless of elections, regardless of law, constitutions, ideals, or simple decency, an enormous shadow organization of religious elitist zealots is making policy without accountability to anyone. How do you fight what hardly acknowledges its own existence?

It's all too much, isn't it?

I feel like I am losing a political home. I don't quite trust that the Obama administration, even if well intentioned, is really committed to solving impending crises and mitigating certain catastrophes. I don't feel I have many trustworthy sources in the media to which I can turn for anything useful. Anything that does tell me the truth only makes me sadder. I don't even feel like liberals and progressives are really ready to look at the world as it is. Just read what people like the liberal hero Nick Kristof writes about atheists (citing the New Atheists' alleged "irreligious intolerance" -- gag!), and you can see why I increasingly feel like there is no party, no movement, no politics for me.

But I left theatre for politics. I took my then-fiancée and dragged her to DC so I could earn a master's degree in professional politics. I believed to my core that it was the best way for me to make a positive difference on Earth. I no longer feel that way. In fact, at times I feel like it might be the least meaningful thing I could do.

I hadn't listened to it in a while, but a song from one of my favorite albums came up on the iTunes shuffle the other day, and it seemed to express how I have been feeling.

The New Pornographers in "Testament to Youth in Verse" sing:

Should you go lookin'
For a testament to youth in verse
Variations on the age old curse
You blame the stations
When they play you like a fool
And like a fool you get played with

Baby, think twice
Maybe it's not all, maybe it's not alright

I don't pretend to have any skill with interpreting this band's lyrics. But from what I hear in this song, this is how I feel. Played like a fool by the "stations," and yeah, maybe it's really not alright. Maybe things are as bad as they feel, and there's nothing existing in our institutions or our politics to address them.

The song concludes, as if to really rip the hope right out of your heart:

The bells ring

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no

And it repeats and repeats and repeats.

We Made a Toby

2009-12-15T00:48:00.002-05:00

And on the 25th of November a star did shine over Alexandria (or, if you prefer Shakespeare as I do, a star danced), and at 1:52pm Tobias Chandler Fidalgo was born. And the angels did sing, and the unicorns did prance, and the Klingons did drink blood wine, and the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal did tremble in between gulps of a Vogon grandmother. (I think we should now refer to November 25th as Tobesmas.)

Toby is an amazing boy. He is easily the cutest baby I've ever seen, but you'd expect me to say that. More interestingly, he immediately seemed wise beyond his years. He was a big kid at birth, 9 lbs in fact. But beyond just being a little on the large size -- unexpected, considering his daddy's genes -- he looks a little older. Strangers have mistaken him for a 2-month-old.

His face is extremely expressive, and not just when he has gas, but when he stares intently at a face or even just a space somewhere out in front of him. . .we often have no idea what it is that's caught his interest. But when he does gaze, his eyes light up, his mouth opens, his eyebrows raise, as though he's deciphering some impossible yet irresistible code. I sense great things for his great big mind.

Yes, we're exhausted. Yes, he cries for no reason sometimes. Yes, caring for him throws into disarray many of our ideas of what balancing parenthood, work, and the other parts of life would be like. But he's a dream, and we love him more than anything we've ever known. I can't imagine life without him.

I've been extremely gratified and moved by all the well-wishes from folks all over the godless tweetosphere and blogosphere, so let me say thank you. #fetusfidalgo followers on Twitter should be resetting their sites to #babyfidalgo for the tweeted adventures of me and my new best bud.

There'll be a lot more to talk about with the arrival of Toby, but for now, this is just the official Bloc Raisonneur welcome for Bloc Jr. He's crying again, so I better run and help Jess, who is trying to get some sleep.

So Say We All?

2009-11-24T16:20:00.004-05:00

For once, Drudge and I agree.

I know. He doesn't mean it the way I mean it. Sigh. But for a moment, 'twas as though he was reading my mind.

Oh, and see that guy behind Joe-mentum? He's going, "I can't stand him either."

Joe-Mentum is Mocked by Two Bespectacled Atheist Bloggers

2009-11-24T00:18:00.000-05:00

Joe Lieberman is on everyone's last nerve.

He endorsed John McCain, he's threatening to filibuster health care, and if you believe my paranoid tweets, he's also filibustering the birth of my first child.

Well, at least two of us have had enough, and we needed to express our outrage in the only way we knew how.

Bad impersonations.

I mean, what better way to really take Joe-mentum down a notch than by having two nerdy-yet-adorable atheist bloggers with thick-rimmed glasses do lame-ass impressions of His Whiny-ness? Let me answer that for you. There is no better way.

So me and Miranda Celeste Hale (author of Exquisite with Love, easily the loveliest place on all the internets) decided to have a crack at Joe, in the hopes of beginning a new trend. A Liebermeme, if you will.

And you will.

First, here's mine.

And here's Miranda's. She kind of one-upped me with a full-out monologue, when all I really wanted to do was make a funny face.

Many props to Miranda.

Now how's-about you turn on your little webcam, and show off your own in-Joe-cation? Show us your Liebermeme!

Binding Anti-Blasphemy Advances with Veiled Threats of Terrorism

2009-11-20T23:05:00.000-05:00

Islamist demonstration outside Danish Embassy in London in 2006

(Photo: Jacob Lundberg)

An internationally enforceable anti-blasphemy law is on the march, and according to the chair of one UN subcommittee, resistance to such a backward and oppressive treaty will result in increased terrorism.

Frank Jordans of the Associated Press reports today that Algeria and Pakistan are actively pursuing a binding international treaty in the UN General Assembly that would forbid insult to or mockery of religion and its accompanying practices, symbols, artifacts, and figures. It is the latest--and arguably, boldest--attempt yet by the Organization of Islamic States to impose anti-blasphemy laws on the rest of the world, and codify religiously-based oppression and censorship. Per Jordans:

The Islamic Conference "believes that the attack on sacredly held beliefs and the defamation of religions, religious symbols, personalities and dogmas impinge on the enjoyment of human rights of followers of those religions," the letter said. It was sent last month to members of the Ad Hoc Committee on Complementary Standards, a temporary committee created to consider a previous anti-racism treaty.

This is, of course, utterly nonsensical on its face. The right to "enjoy," experience, or partake in the religious tradition of one's choosing is absolutely, in no way infringed upon, harmed, or obstructed one iota by even the most merciless of mockery of or tasteless insult to that faith. The most vile rhetorical attack on a religion is insufficient to keep anyone from exercising their right to practice or believe in that religion in the slightest bit. The entire enterprise is based upon a sinister lie.

But it is a lie that is gaining steam. In March of this year, the UN Human Rights Council passed a resolution to combat the "defamation of religions" through murky language implying that governments are within their rights to take measures to restrict speech that might be offensive to believers. Since then, reverberations of this stance have manifested in troubling ways: Turkey opposed the appointment of Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen to the post of Secretary-General of NATO because of his unwillingness to apologize for the infamous cartoons of Mohammad that sparked riots and violence throughout the Muslim world. In August, Christians in a Pakistan village were horrifically slaughtered because of mere rumors that someone in the village had defaced a Koran, something considered a legitimate and official crime in Pakistan.

I have bemoaned the US administration's silence on the issue of anti-blasphemy initiatives, but last month Secretary of State Hillary Clinton came out strongly in opposition, saying, per the Washington Post:

"Some claim that the best way to protect the freedom of religion is to implement so-called anti-defamation policies. . . . I strongly disagree," Clinton said. "The protection of speech about religion is particularly important since persons of different faiths will inevitably hold divergent views on religious questions."

One part of Jordans' piece, however, was particularly horrifying:

In a telephone interview Wednesday, the Ad Hoc Committee [on Complementary Standards]'s chairman, Algerian Ambassador Idriss Jazairy, said concerns the treaty could stifle free speech have been "whipped up into a bugaboo."

Failure to agree on a treaty would boost extremists in the Arab world, said Jazairy, a former envoy to Washington now considered a key player in the U.N.'s human rights forum.

"If we keep hitting this glass wall and say there's nothing you can do about Islamophobia — you can do something about anti-Semitism but Islamophobia is out of bounds — you give an ideal platform for recruitment of suicide bombers," he said.

In other words, if we don't have anti-blasphemy laws that specifically protect Islam, then we can expect an increase in terrorist attacks killing masses of innocent people. This is quite disturbing, especially coming from someone who is considered a "key player" in international human rights, and it is extremely difficult not to read Jazairy's words as a threat.

Clearly, this is a movement that will not be stifled by polite finger-wagging by the West. It is something to be understood, to be exposed, and to be resisted.

Related Secularism Examiner Articles:

Follow Friday #4

2009-11-20T18:25:00.001-05:00

I felt overwhelmed with good choices for this week's #FollowFriday post, but then suddenly yesterday, a meme erupted.

Following the release of a horribly depressing poll showing that a majority of Republicans believe that ACORN stole the 2008 election for Barack Obama, progressive tweeps hijacked the hashtag for #acornfacts with an avalanche of snarky faux-facts about ACORN, blaming them for everything from the Wall Street collapse to the election of Gaius Baltar to President of the Twelve Colonies, to the crash of Oceanic Flight 815.

I thought I had come up with a few gems, if I do say so myself, including:

ACORN killed Jesus. #acornfacts
ACORN let the dogs out. #acornfacts
Why did the chicken cross the road? It didn't. ACORN forged its name into this joke. #acornfacts
I saw Goody ACORN with the devil! #acornfacts

But one entry from one of my tweeps, for me, rose above the rest:

I'mma let you finish Acorn, but No God was the best Trending Topic of all time...OF ALL TIME! #acornfacts

And there were many LOLs.

That tweet came from Jacqueline Lavache, @eilonnwy, a fellow Examiner, and a most excellent tweep.

She also warned us that ACORN believes in opposite marriage, and that it has Google Wave invites that it will not be sharing with you. The horror.

Jaqueline was also a very good sport about being included in a list of my tweeps that I labeled as "fellow arrogant elitists." For this, for her Boston Atheism Examiner column, and for being in general a supremely positive addition to the heretical Tweetosphere, she gets my #FF recommendation this week.

[See here for an explanation of the Follow Friday series, and don't forget to follow me on Twitter!]

Rappers Against Phony Entertainers

2009-11-19T16:49:00.000-05:00

Yeah, I still like this as much as I did back in the day.

Now that I'm older and crotchety-er, I really appreciate that it's a song that is asking the wider music industry not to dumb itself down. Unfortunately, the call was not heeded.

I did at one point test the waters with my wife to see if we could name our still-gestating son Prime Minister Pete Fidalgo. I think she's warming to it. It's '91, son, so somethin's gotta change.

BIRTHCON 3?

2009-11-15T23:49:00.000-05:00

In case you haven't noticed, I haven't been absent yet. The signs we thought we were getting last week that our baby was going to be born any second seem to have turned out to be erroneous. This evening, however, Jessica--who normally goes to bed no later than 10pm--decided at 9:45pm that she absolutely had to vacuum the bathroom floor.

The lore, of course, is that when preggies get those overwhelming "nesting" urges (to clean up the house and whatnot), birth may be imminent. Well, so far, nothing's brewing, but I am, as always, ready.

So for now we remain at BIRTHCON 3. When she hits pre-labor, we'll raise the alert to BIRTHCON 4, and I'll probably let the tweetosphere know it's happening.

If you'd like to be among the few, the select, the bored who are following the Fetus Fidalgo developments, follow me and the hashtag #fetusfidalgo.

Hillary Clinton, Education, and Afghanistan

2009-11-14T12:54:00.001-05:00

I have been very much encouraged by what appears to be a refreshing degree of forthrightness and assertiveness in the public comments of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. I have had love/suspect/hate/love feelings toward Sec. Clinton for some time--I worked in media research for her presidential campaign until a medical episode necessitated my exit, and even in my support of her and her candidacy I have often found myself disappointed or enraged by particular tactics here and there.

But as the chief of the United States' foreign policy operation, she has been blunt and unafraid of calling things as she sees them; a particularly impressive tightrope walk when one remembers that she is our top diplomat. I'm thinking particularly of her remarks in Pakistan in which she was clearly unafraid to imply that al Qaeda's whereabouts were not a mystery to everybody in the Pakistani government. And on the whole, she's loosened up, she speaks her mind, and she seems to have stopped trying to convince people to like her. That's our girl!

I did recently find a point she has made with which I do feel the need to quibble. On an otherwise excellent interview with Charlie Rose last week, Clinton said something that I hope was merely the result of a mushy attempt at making a larger point. Here's the transcript of the comment in question [emphasis mine]:

We fight wars to protect America, our values, our interests, our allies. We fight wars so that we can achieve an end point that we think is in furtherance of that.

So if we’re going to fight this war, then everybody better be very clear what it is that we’re trying to do. Would we like to see education levels in Afghanistan improve? Absolutely. Is that directly in our national security interests? Probably not.

So we want to help, but we want to keep focused on what is clearly in our national security interests, to dismantle, disrupt, and defeat al Qaeda and its extremist allies.

Really? A better-educated Afghanistan is not in our national security interests? This seems to me to be demonstrably false, and you can take any number of logical paths to see why. One seems pretty obvious: a more literate and educated nation is more likely to be economically prosperous, independent of need from other nations, and be less prone to conflict, both internally and externally.

Another is more directly related to ideology and religion: young men are indoctrinated in fundamentalist Islamist schools, learn to take extreme interpretations of Islam literally, and with little worldly education accompanying the indoctrination, become ripe for anti-Western, anti-modern sentiment.

So I am baffled by Clinton's comment. How could a more enlightened Afghanistan population not be in our direct national security interests? We certainly have no fear of violent extremism from South Korea or Sweden, so it only makes sense that not only would it be nice if Afghanis had better educations, but that it is crucial that they do. Clinton also talked about the "perversion" of Islam that abets the Taliban's hold over territory and codifies their oppression. Would not that "perversion" be far less influential, and would not the population be far less amenable to it, if everyone in Afghanistan were better-versed in history, science, civics, world literature, and yes, other religions? It seems to me that the best way to dilute the Taliban's influence over the "hearts and minds" of the Afghanistan population would be to give them a world-class education.

I want to assume that Sec. Clinton knows this, and that her comments were simply a clumsy attempt at a rhetorical contrast in the context of one lone interview. I hope that the entire U.S. government knows that wisdom and knowledge are the best vaccines against extremism and ignorance. (Sec. Clinton also cited ignorance as one of the modern "Berlin Walls" that challenge us today.) I'm not smart enough myself to know whether this means that we ought to be directly involved in bolstering the average I.Q. of Afghanistan villages, but I do hope we see that if we do have national security (and moral) priorities in Afghanistan, that the facilitation of education must rank very highly.

Related Secularism Examiner Articles:

Follow Friday #3

2009-11-14T00:11:00.002-05:00

I had trouble this week, since I forgot to pick someone, and then I realized I had three minutes.

And then that profile pic hit me with the "I'm going to do something that would disqualify me from public office" look, and it all became clear:

This week, I recommend a follow to Sara Ann, @xTexasBelle, whose profile describes her as a "90's child, Hispanic, Female, Epic Flirt, Tweet Spamming, Atheist, Liberal. Batsluts rule, noobs suffer the force." You are warned.

And why do I choose her? Ballsiness. Apart from simply having a good stream of interesting and amusing tweets, she also regularly tweets in such a way that as I am scrolling up Tweetdeck, surveying recent messages, one of hers often makes me stop suddenly and think, "Yowza."

[See here for an explanation of the Follow Friday series.]

And hey, it's still Friday in the Central Time Zone!

Documents Misfiled

2009-11-12T22:24:00.000-05:00

The following is not an isolated incident.

Keep reading after the video.

Now, I know that there might be some sympathy for a mix-up like this. Oh, you know, they're both really old founding documents on parchment with lots of fancy language about freedom and whatnot. I mean, they were both even hand-written with swirly cursive and show up on faded, beige, scroll-y paper. Give a guy a break, right?

NO.

Listen.

It is no longer okay to mix up the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. True, we moderns now tend to conflate these two documents in our collective memory as though they had sprung from the same heated deliberations. But they most certainly did not. The Declaration of Independence (as evidenced by its effing title) was our Dear John letter to Great Britain. It was the result of gut-wrenching debate and struggle, both among legislators and citizens (as well as within themselves), a monumental gamble to turn the continent's back on the motherland, risk death on scales unimaginable, and gamble that a relatively young hodgepodge of commonwealths and provinces could manage to govern itself as a brand new nation. And it was signed by 56 men in 1776.

The Constitution is a whole other ball of wax. It is the framework for the makeup of a national government. It establishes the branches of government, the powers and responsibilities of those branches, and how leaders and representatives will be elected or appointed to fill various positions within them. It was finally ratified in 1788 (get that? Twelve years after the Declaration!), and even that only happened after another proto-constitution, the Articles of Confederation, ratified in 1781, were deemed scrap-worthy in 1787. And what we usually tend to think of when we think of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, didn't even get ratified until 17-frickin'-91! That's 15 years after the Declaration!

So let's be clear. The Declaration of Independence was a letter to King George III saying "buh-bye-and-here's-why." The Constitution was an instruction manual for How to Built the United States Government. They are no more the same document than divorce papers are the same documents as the architectural plans for the singles' apartment complex one soon moves into. Oh, and the architectural plans were drafted twelve years after the divorce papers were filed. I think you get the point.

Here's another way to look at it. The Declaration was an expression of particular ideals and an intention to realize them. The Constitution was and is our attempt to do so.This literal con-fusion of these two documents is criminal--the passing of the centuries is not sufficient excuse for the blurring of these decidedly different documents and decidedly separate moments in history. "The Founding" was not achieved in one fell swoop, and it was not a single event.

It should not be surprising, I suppose, that those on the political right, who have never been predisposed to care about facts or reality to begin with, should opt not to concern themselves over this bit of data either. But every day in our political arena, it is the ideals and notions spelled out in these very two documents that we are fighting over--what they mean, what their implications are, and to whom they apply.

This kind of casual mixing-up of these documents, and the incorrect citations of quotes and passages from them, is a form of hypocrisy. You should not swear to protect and defend something, the contents of which you are wholly unfamiliar. It is akin to those who quote a snippet of scripture and wave their holy books aloft in order to prove a point or assert a moral truth, but have never actually read the book itself or really understand what's in it. Only this is worse, because our founding documents establish something that actually exists.

Hat tip to Brother Richard for the video.

My Awesome Blue Dog Origins Theory

2009-11-08T23:24:00.001-05:00

How someone becomes a Blue Dog Democrat:

Live in a conservative district
Hold steadfastly conservative ideals about God, guns, and gays
Decide to run for Congress
Attend local Republican Party meetings
Realize that said party will nominate candidate who misses slavery, thinks homosexuals should be shot, and sincerely believes that Jesus is King of America
Join local Democratic Party

Good, right? Political science Ph.D, here I come!

Fair Warning of Imminent Sudden Absence

2009-11-08T20:35:00.001-05:00

Just a quick heads up to let folks know that the birth of my son could happen any day now, so if you notice that I have suddenly stopped blogging, no, it's not because I've found Jesus (in my trunk), but because I am gleefully (and I imagine sleepily) looking after my offspring.

It is also possible that the kid is going to wait until mid-December to come out or something crazy like that, but IIIIII don't think so.

Until then, of course, I plan to keep prognosticating semi-regularly. I'm just saying: if things go dark for a while, that's why.

Same goes for my Examiner column, of course, where you can listen to my recent address to the Northern Virginia Ethical Society. That should hold you over.

Follow Friday #2

2009-11-06T12:58:00.000-05:00

This week, I'm recommending a follow to @GodlessGirl.

GG is very active on Twitter, and always has pithy responses to whatever is percolating about the 'tubes, and she has a great eye for must-see Internet snark. What brings her to the top this week is her very moving blog post on her coming-out as an atheist to her mother.

A taste (spoiler alert!):

I had just told her I was an atheist. She’d listened to my story, and now she sat silenced, glossy-eyed, and buried beneath her thoughts. As I inhaled my food, I tried to imagine what she felt. Disappointment came to mind first. Probably a caring sort of pity, too. Perhaps she was praying. No, I knew she was praying. My mother always prayed. This is probably the first time she thought twice about praying aloud in front of me.

“I can see how it would be hard for you to deal with all of that alone,” she said.

Coiner of the term "geekysexy," full of what might be called moxy, she insists on her profile, "Curiosity killed the faith, not the sass." Good news for us all.

[See here for an explanation of the Follow Friday series.]

No, You Really Did

2009-11-04T22:54:00.001-05:00

This completely jibes with tea baggers' unwillingness to accept other facts such as Obama's citizenship, his un-Muslim-ness, evolution, and Sarah Palin's lack of qualifications for public office.

Hitchens Make Gretchen ANGRY!

2009-11-01T16:16:00.000-05:00

Christopher Hitchens and Douglas Wilson appear for the blink of an eye on the stomach-turning Fox & Friends:

Not that this surprises me, but one can't help buy notice how infoBarbie Gretchen Carlson is immediately upset with Hitchens, beginning by trying to cast an awkwardly delivered aspersion by saying that Hitchens has made a "career of being an atheist," with what I think is the clear implication that doing so is a pretty disgraceful thing. She is then visibly angry when she announces and awkwardly defends the notion that the atheists are "winning" in American public schools, and then asks Wilson how he could possibly "keep his cool" around Hitchens. A fair and balanced quasi-interview!

Hat tip to onegoodmove.

FaceBook Birthday Calendar as Marker of Sexual Exploits

2009-10-31T17:11:00.004-04:00

Here's my FaceBook birthday calendar today, October 31.

I guess that means people are a little more careless on Valentine's Day, wouldn't you guess? Or perhaps February is just a cold, stay-indoors kind of month. :)

Matt Drudge Knows What the President is Really Hiding

2009-10-31T17:01:00.001-04:00

Original here.

Update: Oh lord, I should have known -- it was even better before I doctored it (via Andrew Sullivan).

Belatedly Blogrolled

2009-10-31T15:55:00.000-04:00

I somehow missed the boat on this a while back, but I'm glad now to be among the many and proud members of Mojoey's Atheist Blogroll. As always, the blogroll in the sidebar. And here's the official line from the 'Joey himself: "The Atheist Blogroll is a community building service provided free of charge to Atheist bloggers from around the world. If you would like to join, visit Mojoey at Deep Thoughts for more information."

Many thanks to Mojoey for offering this service, and thanks to all who read and participate.