Get on the (atheist) bus

As most readers of this blag will know already, an attempt to raise GBP5,500 for pro-atheist bus adverts in London was excessively successful, raising (to date) GBP135,000. There's a good write up by someone involved in the campaign -- indeed also its originator -- the writer Ariane Sherine on The Grauniad website here.

A few observations:

(1) The campaign is quite innocuous - the message on the adverts simply says "There's probably no God: Now Stop Worrying and Enjoy Your Life."

(2) The campaign was occasioned by a thoroughly non-innocuous one by some Christian nutters, that included a URL taking you to a website that advised that non-Christians "will be condemned to everlasting separation from God and then you spend all eternity in torment in hell … Jesus spoke about this as a lake of fire prepared for the devil".

(3) The comment thread following Sherine's piece is mostly depressing reading. Anti-atheists grousing and grumping away, suggesting other uses for the money, and also -- it seems to me -- missing the point by complaining that nobody has been made into an atheist by the adverts.

It seems to me that the point of the adverts is not so much to make more atheists, and to make existing ones feel better. And this is worth doing. My mate Dave has spoken publicly a few times in defence of atheism, and on every single occasion some pro-God idiot has insisted that atheism is equivalent to Satanism, that atheists are opposed to all morality, etc., etc. That this is obviously fallacious self-serving dishonest hateful rubbish appears not to concern the religious. Atheists aren't Satanists - they don't have ANY imaginary friends. If you need a magical imaginary friend to be the basis of morality, then YOUR imaginary friend needs one of her, or his, or its own too, and so on ad infinitum. Being an avowed atheist is a ticket to ongoing, ignorant, bigoted abuse and this make a morale boost a fine thing. And maybe it makes some waverers feel a bit better about crossing the line - that would be good too.

Freedom of religion includes freedom to have no religion at all. People who have no religion are entitled to spend a tiny fraction of their money on advertising if they want to. And that is all there is to it.

Added 11 January: The Official Campaign Website has plenty of stories and pictures.

Dawkins vs. Meadon

So there's a somewhat unseemly spat going on at Richard Dawkins.net occasioned by some criticism of Dawkin's new documentary by Michael Meadon, who earlier took issue with some of the pedagogy in the show. I thought that some of Meadon's remarks where a bit on the bracing side, but left the matter alone mostly because I'd not yet had a chance to see the film and so wasn't qualified to engage. But there's something here that can be remarked on without seeing the film at all. Dawkins responded to Meadon by saying (see the comment thread):

That is a bloody lie. I tried to persuade those children to abandon their belief in CREATIONISM. That is NOT the same as persuading them to become atheists. I was scrupulously careful to do no such thing.

I suspect that you didn't watch the documentary at all, but read one of the critics, such as Libby Purves, and believed her.

Please apologise NOW. As an educator, I feel extremely strongly about this.
Richard

Well, no. At most Dawkins had grounds to believe that according to his view Meadon was incorrect. A justified assertion to the effect that someone is lying requires something else - it requires grounds for believing that they believed what they were asserting to be false, yet asserted it anyway. Dawkins had no such evidence, and although Meadon (who had indeed watched the film) has, on further watching and considering the responses to his original post, retracted some of his claims, last I saw Dawkins was still tiresomely insisting on calling him a liar. Dawkins has no grounds for doing so. Such evidence as is publicly available strongly suggests that Meadon (in general an admirer of Dawkin's work, which he follows enthusiastically through his blog) had absolutely no mendacious intent. At best Dawkins is bullshitting (in the sense of Frankfurt - asserting something for reasons other than concern with truth). I don't see any way to read his response where it doesn't turn out pretty mean, although the discussion continues.

IDiots at their mendacious games again...

As PZ Myers notes, there's a good post at Panda's Thumb called Von Neumann, Berlinski, and evolution: Who’s the hooter? It turns out (again, or should I say yet again) that defenders of ID are helping themselves to the usual mix of selective quotation, selective attention to the facts, wish-fulfillment driven bullshitting (in the sense of Frankfurt) and outright dishonesty. This is worth paying serious attention to: their 'mistakes' are not mistakes in the innocent sense - the fact that they all trend in the one direction (misrepresenting science, misrepresenting specific historical figures, leaving out the bits of context and background that you have to leave out to get even a fake case for ID off the ground) tells you something is driving the process. In this case it sure isn't natural selection - just the kind of systematic deliberate distortion that would end a scientific career, but turns out to be no obstacle to advancement among those of "faith".

Support for PZ Myers

So, as any fule in the blagosphere kno', crazy catholic fanatics have declared war on PZ Myers. You can read his original posting, the one that annoyed them this time here. You can read their noxious little attempt to attack him here, and his response here. It's also covered (among many, many places) at Richard Dawkins' place here.

All PZ offered to do, is visit some good atheist disrespect on a communion wafer, and blag the process. You know, do some stuff with his free speech, act in ways that made clear that he held beliefs incompatible with those of the loons and freaks who call the act of some poor kid who smuggled a wafer out of church to show a friend a "hate crime" and a "hostake taking".

My mate Dave wrote a letter to the President of PZ's university. It's copied below. Also, if anyone can get me a wafer, then by golly I'll give it a going over myself.

President Robert H. Bruininks,

The public campaign against Professor P.Z. Myers by one Bill Donohue has recently come to my attention. I understand that he is exhorting people to write directly to your office calling for action against Professor Myers. While I object to their methods, under the circumstances -- including my rejection of their intentions -- I feel that it is my responsibility to add to the flood of messages.

Myers is not only a fine scholar, but an important and energetic public intellectual defending science and learning against some of its most committed and often unprincipled enemies. He is famous and widely admired for this among scientists, just as he is disliked by many opponents of science. His proposal to publicly express his lack of belief in the supernatural status of a communion wafer was, I think, an entirely legitimate exercise of free speech. It strikes me, furthermore, as an important intervention in the ridiculous reaction to the action of Webster Cook, including suggestions that Cook was guilty of a hate crime, and that taking the wafer amounted to holding a hostage.

With respect to the specific suggestion that Myers' remarks violate a university requirement to be 'respectful, fair and civil', it seems to me that the following points are worth making:

(1) Myers' proposal was calibrated to respond to the outrageous response to the actions of Webster Cook, which have included death threats to Cook. (And now, I gather, to Myers himself.)

(2) Myers' proposal is in an important sense brave - he's offering to put himself on the line, in defence of the rights of those who do not hold the communion sacred.

(3) While admittedly expressed with a certain fire, I do not believe that his post is in fact disrespectful, or unfair. That is, unless asserting that one emphatically holds a belief incompatible with that held by another is disrespectful or unfair. If it is, and fairness holds trumps, it's hard to see the point of universities, or a future for science.

(4) Finally, I do not think Myers' public utterances are truly examples of a failure of civility. They are a vigorous assertion of the right of some to do things that others find objectionable falling short of infringing those of their freedoms that do deserve protecting. They are no different in principle from the act of any individual who allows it to be known that she or he eats pork, shaves, thinks women have a right to education, has a same-sex partner, etc. If universities do not hold the line against conflating disagreement with lapses of civility, I wonder who will.

Regards,

And apologies again for feeling duty bound to add to the deluge,

David Spurrett

Professor of Philosophy

Head of School of Philosophy and Ethics

University of KwaZulu-Natal,

Howard College Campus

Durban

South Africa

Atheist meme

So Michael Meadon over at Ionian Enchantment tagged me, and apparently I have to answer some questions. Fair enough.

1) How would you define "atheism"?
Not believing in God. Not believing that there's anything supernatural doing any of the jobs standardly assigned to God - making life, designing life, being the moral boss of the universe.

2) Was your upbringing religious? If so, what tradition?
Erratically. Some half-arsed Christianity, but nothing systematic at home. Briefly captivated by Christianity (as opposed to going through the motions) in late primary school.

3) How would you describe "Intelligent Design", using only one word?
Bollocks.

4) What scientific endeavor really excites you?
Cognitive neuroscience.

5) If you could change one thing about the "atheist community", what would
it be and why?
We need an armed wing. OK, more seriously, I think more vigorous and public intellectuals like Dawkins and Dennett.

6) If your child came up to you and said "I'm joining the clergy", what
would be your first response?
I'd try to reason him out of it. (I've just got the one so far, and it's a boy.)

7) What's your favorite theistic argument, and how do you usually refute it?
They're all bad, and I don't have refutations of my own. The one I face most is the argument from design, variously retreaded, and I respond with natural selection.

8) What's your most "controversial" (as far as general attitudes amongst
other atheists goes) viewpoint?
I'm pretty militant, but I'm not aware of any specifically controversial atheist view. Maybe the view (doesn't seem controversial to me) that it should be illegal to require religious observance from minors, including requiring it in the home.

9) Of the "Four Horsemen" (Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens and Harris) who is
your favourite, and why?
Dawkins followed by Dennett. I don't have Michaele's memo-phobia.

10) If you could convince just one theistic person to abandon their beliefs,
who would it be?
The incumbent Pope.