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|  - What Is Evil For The Darwinist, Ctd
- Andrew Sullivan posts some well-reasoned letters from readers on the question of what a non-theist would call "evil" (presumably responses to the old "how can you say God is evil when you don't have a basis for morality?" question). Bizarrely, he then describes them as showing "contempt" for religion. There's no pleasing some people. The letters are good, anyway.
- seek and ye shall find…. but what?
- “If you REALLY had been a Christian you would have never de-converted.” vs the observation that many de-converts are former Christian ministers.
(tags: de-conversion religion christianity) - Buddhism and the God-idea
- Interesting. I liked: "Whether we call those superior beings gods, deities, devas or angels is of little importance, since it is improbable that they call themselves by any of those names."
(tags: buddhism god religion) - Why it's so hard to quantify false rape charges. - By Emily Bazelon and Rachael Larimore - Slate Magazine
- False accusations probably account for 8 to 10% of all accusations, though the research isn't conclusive, and it's not clear how this compares to false reporting of other crimes. Interesting story about the falsely accused man who found support from his girlfriend who had been raped some time ago: emotions were similar on both sides.
(tags: feminism research rape crime) - Justice with Michael Sandel - Home
- Harvard has put Michael Sandel's justly popular "Justice" course on the web. Well worth watching.
(tags: education philosophy morality ethics video community politics harvard justice) - Messy Revelation: Why Paul would have flunked hermaneutics
- Susan Wise Bauer in Christianity Today, writing about Peter Enns, who noticed that the NT authors don't interpret the OT the way evangelicals would. I liked this bit: "This is the exactly the kind of exegesis that terrifies most evangelicals. The man who admits that meanings can be "read into" Scripture stands on the fabled slippery slope, right above a sheer drop-off, while below him churns a sea of relativism, upon which floats only a single overloaded lifeboat, captained by a radical feminist gay & lesbian & transgender activist who is very anxious to make the final decision about who gets pitched overboard."
(tags: bible hermaneutics peter-enns christianity religion paul old-testament) - What’s so great about being an ex-Christian? Intellectual integrity.
- This sounds familiar.
(tags: ex-christian de-conversion atheism christianity religion) - Omnipresent G-d (LORD_YHWH) on Twitter
- God's on Twitter, with some new commandments. I don't know why these atheists complain about divine hiddeness. "My word is a knife made white by heat, such as that which one uses to cut pastrami." - wisdom for us all there.
(tags: god yhwh religion funny satire christianity judaism twitter) - Science, Pseudoscience and Bollocks
- An interesting essay which talks about the demarcation problem in science and argues that we should be against creation science because it's wrong, not try to argue about what science is. I'm shocked he referred to a Christian belief as "bollocks". I got told off for that once.
(tags: bollocks science pseudoscience epistemology empiricism logical-positivism karl-popper popper creationism dover) - Thunderbirds will grow a generation of mad engineers
- FAB, Mr Ellis.
(tags: warren-ellis thunderbirds tv) - On The Possible God Of Philosophy And Cosmology Vs. The Personal, Historical God Of Faith
- Camels With Hammers links to Dennett's remarks on hearing William Lane Craig's cosmological argument, and then talks about the gap between the source of the universe (which we should properly be agnostic about) and the gods of major religions.
(tags: daniel-dennett dennett william-lane-craig craig cosmology kalam philosophy physics) - Rock-Bottom Loser Entertaining Offers From Several Religions | The Onion - America's Finest News Source
- Cruel but funny
(tags: onion religion funny satire humour) - "A Different Way of Knowing": The Uses of Irrationality... and its Limitations
- Greta Christina talks about "other ways of knowing" and their uses, as applied to the theism/atheism debate.
(tags: religion epistemology science atheism greta-christina empiricism) - Understanding Sarah Palin: Or, God Is In The Wattles
- Peter Watts gives his grand theory for why religion hasn't died out. It's all about preventing free-loading once societies get above a certain size.
(tags: peter-watts religion evolution sarah-palin politics psychology signalling) - Whence Rationality?
- Some responses to the evolutionary argument against naturalism. The point that evolution is unlikely to come up with the sort of elaborate errors Plantinga mentions is new to me.
- Tags:atheism, bible, buddhism, christianity, creationism, daniel dennett, education, evolution, feminism, funny, judaism, link blog, morality, philosophy, politics, psychology, religion, science, william lane craig
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| Link roundup and browser tab closing time...
 Expel the evildoer from among you
If you're not reading back over my old entries (why not? I used to be much better before I jumped the shark), you might not have noticed that there was some LJ drama over the last one. ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) robhu conclusively won the debate on whether complementarianism is sexist by the cunning ploy of banning me from commenting on his blog: an innovative rhetorical tactic, and undeniably a powerful one. But it's not over yet. I've realised that he may have made a Tone Argument, which might enable me to reject his ideas out of hand and advance three squares to the nearest Safe Space, so I'm awaiting the results of a steward's inquiry. It's possible I may have too many Privilege Points to make a valid claim for Tone Argument, but I'm hopeful the powers that be will see things my way.
Could out-consume Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Down on the Premier Christian Radio boards, they're talking about science and religion again, specifically whether science can ignore the possibility of God's existence. I've been sticking my oar in, as usual.
Red Ken again
When I reviewed Ken MacLeod's The Night Sessions, I reckoned that he had something to do with Christianity himself at one point, as the observational humour was too keen to come from a total outsider. It turns out he's the son of a Presbyterian minister. At an SF convention in 2006, MacLeod spoke about his childhood, discovering that creationism was wrong, and the social contract. This old speech of his was linked from his recent blog posting on the changing meaning of evolution. MacLeod says a change occurred in the 1970s when Jacques Monod and Richard Dawkins introduced a thoroughly materialistic theory. This replaced older ideas that evolution is progress up a sort of secular Great Chain of Being,
ideas which C.S. Lewis grumbled about, though not for the same reasons as the biologists. "Evolutionary Humanism was no doubt troubling enough to believers, but at least it wasn't a vision of blind, pitiless indifference at the heart of things." It's the latter vision which MacLeod says has so riled modern creationists. I'm not sure whether he's right, but it's an interesting speculation.
Morality
Some people argue that if there's no God, you can't have real morality. We've discussed this previously here (and also here). The debate seems to boil down to which definition of morality you find psychologically satisfying, since as far as I can tell it has no practical consequences: almost everyone thinks that Bad Things are Bad, whether or not they also think there are moral absolutes.
Anyway, Jeffrey Amos over at Failing the Insider Test has an interesting post specifically about the idea that morality shows there's a God. Firstly, he argues that all moral systems have the problem of where you start from, so the Euthyphro dilemma isn't introducing a new problem for theists. Nevertheless, it does show that the problem isn't solved by introducing God, either. Secondly, he argues that a theist must either say that God's ideas of morality are not similar to ours, in which case pretty much everyone is wrong about morality and once we allow this, it's no stretch to say that they might be wrong about it in a different way (for example, maybe true morality doesn't have to be absolute). Or a theist must say that God's morality is similar to ours, but this runs into the problem of pain: a God whose morality was similar to ours wouldn't allow there to be so much suffering in the world. The standard response that God allows suffering for inscrutable reasons doesn't help: if God is inscrutable, how can we know his morality is similar to ours? The second prong of the second argument isn't new (gjm11 makes it here, and I doubt he was the first), but I think Amos's article states it very clearly. - Tags:atheism, c.s. lewis, christianity, drama, evolution, feminism, ken macleod, morality, privilege, religion, robhu, science, theodicy
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| Readers: in a recent thread on robhu's journal, Rob said I had misrepresented complementarians (of which he is one). I'm not sure how many of you click the links in my postings and have noticed that I occasionally have a joke with them, but to be clear, on the occasions where I have linked the word complementarian to Houseplants of Gor, I did not mean to imply that complementarians are the same as Goreans. Unlike Goreans, complementarians do not believe that women are intrinsically inferior to men and should naturally be their slaves. They believe that men and women are equal in status and dignity, but should occupy different roles in relationships like marriage, with women submitting to men's loving, self-sacrificial leadership. You can find a summary of complementarian beliefs in the Danvers Statement on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.
Despite the complementarian assertion that men and women are of equal status, I find complementarianism problematic because it seeks to perpetuate a hierarchy with men in a position of power over women, and claims that this sort of hierarchy is normative. While I should probably be cautious about comparing historically oppressed classes for fear of being called problematic myself (this being one of the worst things that can happen to you on LJ, as some of you will know, second only to being accused of "fail"), I'd note that replacing "men" with "white people" and "women" with "black people" in complementarian statements would not result in something many of us were happy to sign up to (with the possible exception of Rudyard Kipling, who was big on loving, self-sacrificial leadership). To be clear, I am not saying the complementarianism is racist (I'm saying it's sexist), but I believe the analogy is appropriate as members of both classes were and are oppressed as a result of being born into a particular group.
While there are important differences between them, complementarians and Goreans are similar in that both advocate a male-led hierarchy and claim it is the correct and fulfilling state of all male/female relationships. As such, the two philosophies are, shall we say, equal in status and dignity, with complementarianism certainly not deserving more respect merely because it originates in a religion.
Hope that's cleared things up. Must go, scribb1e's just finished cooking my dinner.
Update: Expelled!
Edited to add: So, Rob didn't like my analogy and banned me from commenting on his blog.
Of course, I didn't chose the analogy at random. The question at hand was whether complementarianism should be considered sexist. I think it should. If similar statements to those complementarians make about women were made about another historically disadvantaged group, like black people, we would rightly consider them discriminatory against that group. Likewise, there have been times when sentiments we'd now consider discriminatory have been couched in terms of self-sacrifice and serving the disadvantaged group, as Kipling's poem illustrates.
Is complementarianism as bad as racism or sexism at its most horrible? No. It is patronising rather than hateful, and I'm not sure how much harm it does. There are much worse examples discrimination around today. I suppose what irks me about complementarianism is that it pretends to righteousness (that, and the fact that I was once taken in by it). Were the early Christians ahead of their time in their attitude to women? Quite possibly, but complementarians are behind theirs.
If anyone feels the analogy was taking things too far, I'd be interested to discuss it. | |
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| Contains general discussion of the premise, but no other spoilers. Dollhouse is the new Joss Whedon thing (you know, Buffy, Firefly: that Joss Whedon). It stars, and is produced by, Eliza Dushku, who played Faith in Buffy. Dushku plays Echo, one of the "dolls" in the Dollhouse. The dolls are reprogrammable people: their personalities are wiped and replaced with whatever the clients of the Dollhouse ask for. The Dollhouse isn't just a brothel, although it's part of what it does. When the first episode appeared, there was a lot of debate on here on LJ, with posts heavily laden with feminist theoretic jargon about agency, the male gaze and so on. It's easy to see why the feminists objected: the idea of being able to program Eliza Dushku to do whatever I want certainly causes some triggering in my safe space, let me tell you. Still, a more telling criticism was that it wasn't really that good. In his other work, Whedon does witty dialogue to keep us amused while the story draws us into the relationships between the ensemble cast, and there's always a story arc which rewards watching the series in order rather than as individual episodes. This sort of thing was initially absent from Dollhouse. The first few episodes of Dollhouse are pretty much Quantum Leap (which must count as one of the neatest tricks you can do with episodic SF) without the fun bits. Things have been looking up for the last couple of episodes, so perhaps we can forgive the early stuff as really laboured scene setting. It looks like there is an arc, we're finding out more about the characters' pasts so we care about them more, and the last one was funny. Worth a look, I'd say. | |
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| Inasmuch as there's an atheist movement (Dawkins for Pope!), it seems pretty male dominated, both online and off. So, what about the atheist women? They're out there, and this is a post to link to some of them. - Greta Christina is gay and atheist, and draws some parallels between the two. Atheism seems to be a lot harder in the USA than it is here. Greta writes about how to be an ally to atheists in the same way that you might speak of being an ally to any other disadvantaged class of people.
- Mathurine (not her real name, for obvious reasons) is an ex-Muslim woman. She wrote a three guest posts over at Tree Dreamer: one the hijab, another on making atheist communities friendly to ex-Muslims, and another answering atheists' questions on Islam.
- Lily originally blogged at Leaving Eden, writing about her experiences as a closet atheist at Wheaton College, a Christian college in the USA. Since graduating, she's been blogging as Peaceful Atheist (I've mentioned her before in my posting on doubt). There's an article over there specifically on women in atheism.
- No Longer Quivering is the blog of two women who were once part of the Quiverfull movement. As Salon explains in an article about them, that means that as well as accepting the standard evangelical stuff on male leadership, they also rejected birth control and sought to have as many kids as possible. They got out, and are blogging about how they feel about it.
I traditionally googlebomb the word complementarian with a link to Houseplants of Gor. Of course, there are differences between the Gor series and the Bible: one is a historically-based fantasy which, although some people have found it rich enough to base their lives on, undoubtedly advocates a patriarchy based on the "natural roles" of men and women; and the other is a set of books by John Norman.
- Deborah Drapper isn't an atheist. She's the Christian girl who was the subject of Deborah 13: Servant of God, a BBC documentary about her and her family (the link goes to a post on the Dawkins site where you can watch it on Youtube). She's something unusual in this country: she's part of a large family (there are hints that they subscribe to the Quiverfull idea) and home-schooled. I was reminded of her after No Longer Quivering because of the point in the documentary where she explains that she belongs to her father until she marries someone.
Deborah comes across as bright, articulate and a firm believer in evangelical Christianity. Her blog has been inundated after the screening of the documentary, but I hope she'll continue to write. Her father also has a blog where you can find out about how the EU is part of the coming world government of the Antichrist, and that the King James Version of the Bible was inspired by God.
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| There's a new LiveJournal meme doing the rounds, where you make a post about what you think of theferrett's Open Source Boob Project. All the cool kids are doing it, so I thought I'd join in. Here's a compendium of comments I've been making elsewhere. I agree with springheel_jack's point that this is all about geekery. theferrett has been here before, expressing similar sentiments about how it would be easier if you could just tell women you wanted to do them. The dance that most heterosexual courtship rituals involve is (what? all my courtship rituals have involved dancing) at least partly about face saving if it goes wrong, but also about not scaring off the woman, who is physically smaller and weaker, on average, and probably has reason to fear the sort of man who would ask direct questions of the sort theferrett talks about. Some geeks do dispense with some of the dance, and that can work for them when they're dealing with other geeks. theferrett wants to dispense with more of the dance than most people are comfortable with. He had a nice time at the convention, which is fair enough. It also seems that the original thing was instigated by women who are happy to defend it. His mistake is to think that experience can be generalised and codified into a "project", and his other mistake is writing about it on LJ, especially in the style he used. I'm becoming a big fan of synecdochic, whose postings on the drama itself and how not to be That Guy are excellent. | |
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| Oh my. The feminist bloggers have taken on the Internet Hate Machine known as Anonymous. Encyclopedia Dramatica (very NSFW and extremely offensive, don't blame me if you get fired) has the scoop on the post which might have been from Biting Beaver that started it all, as well as the on-going aftermath. Some of the commenters on the feminist blogs get it, and actually tell them what's going on and how to weather the raids ( ilyka, or Holly in this thread). Luckily for Anonymous, the rest of the commenters either ignore them or jump on them and accuse them of misogyny, while beginning the countdown which will end in them reaching Defcon 1 and launching the e-lawyers against the Patriarchy. Hint: the only winning move is not to play. It's like the Internet perfect storm. Who brought popcorn? | |
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