Skeptic Agnosticism

A Critical Examination of the Quran (Part I)

2009-09-08T02:58:00.000-07:00

By Edmund Standing

The Qur'an, Muslims believe, is the final revelation of the creator of the universe, a book dictated by an angel to the final in a long line of prophets sent by Allah to guide human affairs and to make known the will of the creator for how we should order our lives. Indeed, time and again, it makes this bold claim, so this really seems a non-negotiable article of faith and statement of reality. As such, it is said to be a book whose message is universal in scope, and whose message is not historically or geographically specific or conditioned, but which speaks with equal relevance to us all, in all places and at all times. Islam, the religion proclaimed by the Qur'an, means simply 'submission', and we are called to acknowledge the divine origins of the book and to submit our will and intellect to the proposition that this book and this religion constitute the undeniable pinnacle of moral teaching and literary creativity, and that we must all adopt this 'total way of life' or face stern consequences after death.

As a non-Muslim, coming to the Qur'an unburdened by the heavy influence of communal reinforcement that is given by being brought up to accept these notions as self-evidently true, I am at a complete loss as to understand how anyone can hold such a high opinion of a book which, it turns out, is so crude, so blatantly a product of a specific time and place, and so filled with childish threats and superstition. Reading the Qur'an is an arduous task, for in translation at least it is not a book whose literary style naturally commands admiration in the reader; in fact it is an exceedingly tedious book, made up of a collection of disjointed and often self-contradictory texts, filled with tiresome repetition of certain key phrases and themes, and brimming over with threats of torture and torment for those who will not accept its authority. It seems to me vitally important in a time in which this book and this religion are proclaimed so widely and so loudly to be the Truth and to be beyond criticism that those of us who value the fruits of the Enlightenment - rational, secular thought and discourse, freed from the often horrific superstitions of ignorant men of the past - should endevour to both examine and critically evaluate Islam and its much vaunted 'holy book'.

The Enlightenment and the huge social changes it ushered in are precious gifts that it is our duty to protect against the forces of resurgent irrationalism in the world today. The values and achievements of the Enlightenment are things which should be open to all, regardless of skin colour or ethnicity: in short, they are not simply a luxury for white Western elites. In seeking to 'understand' Islam and in offering an unthinking and servile 'respect' for the Qur'an, many feel they are championing the cause of minorities and protecting them from bigotry and Western 'cultural imperialism'. This is utter condescending nonsense. There is no reason why brown skinned people should be left in the chains of superstition and there is no reason why the things many of them hold dear should be beyond rational criticism. Beliefs have consequences, and in the case of this particular religion one of those consequences is that many of its followers feel duty-bound to attempt to roll back the Enlightenment and to 'Islamify' the West. This is an unpopular statement to make, considered in the minds of many self-proclaimed liberals and progressives to border on 'bigotry' or to actually constitute a form of 'racism'. But bigotry and racism are enemies of Enlightenment rationalism - they belong to precisely the same realm of irrational, petty, provincial thinking that produced competing religions, all proclaiming to be bearers of the Truth without a shread of real evidence, and all quite unsatisfactory if we are to be serious about developing further together as a global community in the years to come.

In this article, I shall look at exactly what the Qur'an says, and I hope to demonstrate to the reader quite what a divisive, primitive, and insulting book it actually is; not to provoke hostility towards Muslims, nor to be deliberately and gratuituously offensive, but for the important reasons outlined above.

The intended readership of the Qur'an - universal or localised?

As already noted, mainstream Muslims proclaim the Qur'an to be the final revelation of the creator of the universe, a book given in a specific time and place, but a book whose message is not dependent on that time and place. Hypothetically, the belief goes, the Word of God could have been given anywhere in the world, in an place, time, or language, and its message would have been exactly the same. Given the Qur'an's constant proclamation that it is of divine origin, we would be safe in assuming that its message will be found to be universally applicable, equally relevant to all, and lacking signs that it is culturally or historically conditioned. In fact, unsurprisingly, this is far from the case.

The readership of the Qur'an is clearly presupposed to be male, and this is a book for men, by men. We find numerous examples of the audience being given information and instructions about women, in texts that speak of women in the third person. So, for example, we read statements such as 'Your wives are a tilth for you' (2.223), 'And those of you who die and leave wives behind' (2.240), 'And when you divorce women' (2.231), 'And when you have divorced women' (2.232), 'And Allah has made wives for you from among yourselves, and has given you sons and grandchildren from your wives' (16.72), 'when you marry the believing women' (33.49), 'Enter the garden, you and your wives; you shall be made happy' (43.70), 'when you divorce women' (65.1), and so in, in passage after passage.

The readership of the Qur'an is also clearly presupposed to be made up of Arabs. So, we read 'Surely We have revealed it -- an Arabic Quran -- that you may understand' (12.2), 'And thus have We revealed it, a true judgment in Arabic' (13.37), 'In plain Arabic language' (26.195), 'An Arabic Quran without any crookedness, that they may guard (against evil)' (39.28), 'A Book of which the verses are made plain, an Arabic Quran for a people who know' (41.3), 'Surely We have made it an Arabic Quran that you may understand' (43.3). Most telling of all, we read 'And if We had made it a Quran in a foreign tongue, they would certainly have said: Why have not its communications been made clear? What! a foreign (tongue) and an Arabian!' (41.44)

So much for the much vaunted universal message for a universal audience. There is plenty more evidence that the Qur'an, more than simply being a book specifically tailored for Arab men, is also a book firmly situated in a particular place and time. Animals and food are written of in the Qur'an, often in the many passages presenting the natural world as evidence of Allah as creator, and the choice of animals and food, and the uses of animals that are referred to, situate the text both historically and geographically. So, for example, we read of camels - important animals for Arabs but irrelevant as examples for readers in places such as Europe, where they were largely unknown at the time of the writing of the Qur'an:

And (as for) the camels, We have made them of the signs of the religion of Allah for you; for you therein is much good; therefore mention the name of Allah on them as they stand in a row, then when they fall down eat of them and feed the poor man who is contented and the beggar; thus have We made them subservient to you, that you may be grateful (22.36).

Will they not then consider the camels, how they are created? (88.17)

We read of working animals, again situating the Qur'an as a product of its time, as opposed to being a universal trans-historical book.:

And He created the cattle for you; you have in them warm clothing and (many) advantages, and of them do you eat.
And there is beauty in them for you when you drive them back (to home), and when you send them forth (to pasture).
And they carry your heavy loads to regions which you could not reach but with distress of the souls; most surely your Lord is Compassionate, Merciful.
And (He made) horses and mules and asses that you might ride upon them and as an ornament; and He creates what you do not know (16.5-8).

Allah is He Who made the cattle for you that you may ride on some of them, and some of them you eat (40.79).

Of the 'gardens of bliss' promised to believers after death, we read that there will be 'thornless lote-trees, and banana-trees (with fruits)' (56.28-9). Elsewhere, we read of palm trees, grapes, olives, pomegranates and clover (6.99, 12.49, 13.4, 16.11, 16.67, 17.91, 18.32, 23.19, 36.34, 80.28). All of these were useful examples for the Arabs of Muhammad's time, but are useless as examples for many people in other places and other times. Of how much relevance is talk of bananas to the Inuit? How many Scandinavians would have found palm tress a meaningful example? The claim that the Qur'an's message is of equal relevance to all people in all times is revealed to be utterly bogus.

Central concerns of the Qur'an - universally relevant or historically situated?

Reading the Qur'an, we find that huge chunks of the text are devoted to Muhammad's disputes with his fellow Arabs and their rejection of his message. If the message of the Qur'an transcends time and place, then why is there so much talk of this issue? We read much of the 'polytheists' - those who followed the traditional Arab religions of Muhammad's time, and how many of them have rejected the message of Islam and scoffed at Muhammad's claim to be a prophet, and we also read of Jews and Christians ('followers of the Book') who likewise rejected the Qur'an :

Those who disbelieve from among the followers of the Book do not like, nor do the polytheists, that the good should be sent down to you from your Lord, and Allah chooses especially whom He pleases for His mercy, and Allah is the Lord of mighty grace (2.105).

And those who disbelieve say: This is nothing but a lie which he has forged, and other people have helped him at it; so indeed they have done injustice and (uttered) a falsehood (25.4).

And those who disbelieve say: Why has not the Quran been revealed to him all at once? Thus, that We may strengthen your heart by it and We have arranged it well in arranging (25.32).

And they wonder that there has come to them a warner from among themselves, and the disbelievers say: This IS an enchanter, a liar. What! makes he the gods a single God? A strange thing is this, to be sure! (38.4-5)

He it is Who sent His Apostle with the guidance and the true religion, that He may make it overcome the religions, all of them, though the polytheists may be averse (61.9).

Those who disbelieved from among the followers of the Book and the polytheists could not have separated (from the faithful) until there had come to them the clear evidence: An apostle from Allah, reciting pure pages, Wherein are all the right ordinances (98.1-3).

So, we read that many Arab polytheists of Muhammad's time rejected his new monotheistic religion, calling it a lie that he had invented, questioning why the whole Qur'an was not 'revealed' at one time, and calling Muhammad himself an 'enchanter' and a 'liar'. These are records of arguments that Muhammad had with those he tried to convert to his new faith, but teach us absolutely nothing of value for how to live in the modern world.

For those who accept Muhammad's claims, the Qur'an promises numerous rewards after death, with a life of bliss in gardens of paradise, complete with an unending supply of delicious food and drink, as well as wives and a life of relaxation and pleasures. But for those who reject Muhammad and his message (largely the aforementioned polytheists), the author of the Qur'an, with seemingly endless repetition, offers threats and promises of unspeakable suffering after death. As we shall see, the author seems to relish the thought of the infliction of these punishments with great enthusiasm, and a sadistic and perverse mentality is clearly in evidence.

What does the Qur'an say about non-Muslims?

In their proper historical context, the following texts from the Qur'an can be seen as threats made by Muhammad to people of his time who rejected his message. However, for Muslims the Qur'an is not a text that refers only to the time of Muhammad, but instead offers a universal message for all peoples and all time, given by God and perfect in its every statement. Given this is the case, the Qur'an calls upon Muslims today to understand the fate of those who do not accept Islam to be an eternity of unending torture and torment, not simply of a 'spiritual' variety, but in literal, corporeal terms. If you are an atheist or a follower of another religion (there may be some exceptions among Jews and Christians, as we will see later), then here is what the perfect Word of God has to say to about you:

Surely those who disbelieve, it being alike to them whether you warn them, or do not warn them, will not believe. Allah has set a seal upon their hearts and upon their hearing and there is a covering over their eyes, and there is a great punishment for them (2.6-7).

Allah is the enemy of the unbelievers (2.98).

(As for) those who disbelieve, surely neither their wealth nor their children shall avail them in the least against Allah; and these are the inmates of the fire; therein they shall abide. (3.116).

Let it not deceive you that those who disbelieve go to and fro in the cities fearlessly. A brief enjoyment! then their abode is hell, and evil is the resting-place.(3.196-7).

[S]urely Allah will gather together the hypocrites and the unbelievers all in hell (4.140).

[A] painful chastisement shall befall those among them who disbelieve (5.73).

And (as for) those who disbelieve and reject Our communications, these are the companions of the flame (5.86).

And they who reject Our communications are deaf and dumb, in utter darkness; whom Allah pleases He causes to err and whom He pleases He puts on the right way (6.39).

And (as for) those who reject Our communications, chastisement shall afflict them because they transgressed (6.49).

And leave those who have taken their religion for a play and an idle sport, and whom this world's life has deceived, and remind (them) thereby lest a soul should be given up to destruction for what it has earned; it shall not have besides Allah any guardian nor an intercessor, and if it should seek to give every compensation, it shall not be accepted from it; these are they who shall be given up to destruction for what they earned; they shall have a drink of boiling water and a painful chastisement because they disbelieved (6.70).

Who then is more unjust than he who rejects Allah's communications and turns away from them? We will reward those who turn away from Our communications with an evil chastisement because they turned away (6.157).

And (as for) those who reject Our communications and turn away from them haughtily-- these are the inmates of the fire they shall abide in it (7.36).

Surely (as for) those who reject Our communications and turn away from them haughtily, the doors of heaven shall not be opened for them, nor shall they enter the garden until the camel pass through the eye of the needle; and thus do We reward the guilty. They shall have a bed of hell-fire and from above them coverings (of it); and thus do We reward the unjust. (7.40-1).

What! do the people of the towns then feel secure from Our punishment coming to them by night while they sleep? What! do the people of the towns feel secure from Our punishment coming to them in the morning while they play? What! do they then feel secure from Allah's plan? But none feels secure from Allah's plan except the people who shall perish (7.97-99).

Evil is the likeness of the people who reject Our communications and are unjust to their own souls. Whomsoever Allah guides, he is the one who follows the right way; and whomsoever He causes to err, these are the losers. And certainly We have created for hell many of the jinn and the men; they have hearts with which they do not understand, and they have eyes with which they do not see, and they have ears with which they do not hear; they are as cattle, nay, they are in worse errors; these are the heedless ones. (7.177-9).

Whomsoever Allah causes to err, there is no guide for him; and He leaves them alone in their inordinacy, blindly wandering on (7.186).

I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve (8.12).

And had you seen when the angels will cause to die those who disbelieve, smiting their faces and their backs, and (saying): Taste the punishment of burning (8.50).

Surely the vilest of animals in Allah's sight are those who disbelieve, then they would not believe (8.55).

Allah will bring disgrace to the unbelievers (9.2).

[A]nd announce painful punishment to those who disbelieve (9.3).

The idolaters have no right to visit the mosques of Allah while bearing witness to unbelief against themselves, these it is whose doings are null, and in the fire shall they abide (9.17).

Allah has promised the hypocritical men and the hypocritical women and the unbelievers the fire of hell to abide therein; it is enough for them; and Allah has cursed them and they shall have lasting punishment (9.68).

O Prophet! strive hard against the unbelievers and the hypocrites and be unyielding to them; and their abode is hell, and evil is the destination (9.73).

And never offer prayer for any one of them who dies and do not stand by his grave; surely they disbelieve in Allah and His Apostle and they shall die in transgression (9.84).

Surely those who do not hope in Our meeting and are pleased with this world's life and are content with it, and those who are heedless of Our communications: (As for) those, their abode is the fire because of what they earned (10.7-8).

Whoever desires this world's life and its finery, We will pay them in full their deeds therein, and they shall not be made to suffer loss in respect of them. These are they for whom there is nothing but fire in the hereafter, and what they wrought in it shall go for nothing, and vain is what they do (11.15-16).

They shall have chastisement in this world's life, and the chastisement of the hereafter is certainly more grievous, and they shall have no protector against Allah. A likeness of the garden which the righteous are promised; there now beneath it rivers, its food and shades are perpetual; this is the requital of those who guarded (against evil), and the requital of the unbelievers is the fire (13.34-5)

Hell is before him and he shall be given to drink of festering water: He will drink it little by little and will not be able to swallow it agreeably, and death will come to him from every quarter, but he shall not die; and there shall be vehement chastisement before him. The parable of those who disbelieve in their Lord: their actions are like ashes on which the wind blows hard on a stormy day; they shall not have power over any thing out of what they have earned; this is the great error (14.16-18).

Therefore do not think Allah (to be one) failing in His promise to His apostles; surely Allah is Mighty, the Lord of Retribution. On the day when the earth shall be changed into a different earth, and the heavens (as well), and they shall come forth before Allah, the One, the Supreme. And you will see the guilty on that day linked together in chains. Their shirts made of pitch and the fire covering their faces (14.47-50).

(As for) those who do not believe in Allah's communications, surely Allah will not guide them, and they shall have a painful punishment (16.104).

Whoever desires this present life, We hasten to him therein what We please for whomsoever We desire, then We assign to him the hell; he shall enter it despised, driven away (17.18).

And whomsoever Allah guides, he is the follower of the right way, and whomsoever He causes to err, you shall not find for him guardians besides Him; and We will gather them together on the day of resurrection on their faces, blind and dumb and deaf; their abode is hell; whenever it becomes allayed We will add to their burning (17.97).

We have prepared for the iniquitous a fire, the curtains of which shall encompass them about; and if they cry for water, they shall be given water like molten brass which will scald their faces; evil the drink and ill the resting-place (18.29).

Surely you and what you worship besides Allah are the firewood of hell; to it you shall come (21.98).

And (as for) those who strive to oppose Our communications, they shall be the inmates of the flaming fire (22.51).

And (as for) those who disbelieve in and reject Our communications, these it is who shall have a disgraceful chastisement (22.57).

And when Our clear communications are recited to them you will find denial on the faces of those who disbelieve; they almost spring upon those who recite to them Our communications. Say: Shall I inform you of what is worse than this? The fire; Allah has promised it to those who disbelieve; and how evil the resort! (22.72)

Think not that those who disbelieve shall escape in the earth, and their abode is the fire; and certainly evil is the resort! (24.57)

As to those who do not believe in the hereafter, We have surely made their deeds fair-seeming to them, but they blindly wander on. These are they who shall have an evil punishment, and in the hereafter they shall be the greatest losers (27.4-5).

And (as to) those who disbelieve in the communications of Allah and His meeting, they have despaired of My mercy, and these it is that shall have a painful punishment (29.23).

They ask you to hasten on the chastisement, and most surely hell encompasses the unbelievers; On the day when the chastisement shall cover them from above them, and from beneath their feet; and He shall say: Taste what you did (29.54-5).

Will not in hell be the abode of the unbelievers? (29.68)

And as to those who disbelieved and rejected Our communications and the meeting of the hereafter, these shall be brought over to the chastisement (30.16).

[S]urely He [Allah] does not love the unbelievers (30.45).

And of men is he who takes instead frivolous discourse to lead astray from Allah's path without knowledge, and to take it for a mockery; these shall have an abasing chastisement. And when Our communications are recited to him, he turns back proudly, as if he had not heard them, as though in his ears were a heaviness, therefore announce to him a painful chastisement (31.6-7).

And whoever disbelieves, let not his disbelief grieve you; to Us is their return, then will We inform them of what they did surely Allah is the Knower of what is in the breasts. We give them to enjoy a little, then will We drive them to a severe chastisement (31.23-24).

And as for those who transgress, their abode is the fire; whenever they desire to go forth from it they shall be brought back into it, and it will be said to them: Taste the chastisement of the fire which you called a lie. And most certainly We will make them taste of the nearer chastisement before the greater chastisement that haply they may turn. And who is more unjust than he who is reminded of the communications of his Lord, then he turns away from them? Surely We will give punishment to the guilty (32.20-22).

Surely (as for) those who speak evil things of Allah and His Apostle, Allah has cursed them in this world and the here after, and He has prepared for them a chastisement bringing disgrace (33.57).

Surely Allah has cursed the unbelievers and has prepared for them a burning fire, to abide therein for a long time; they shall not find a protector or a helper. On the day when their faces shall be turned back into the fire, they shall say: O would that we had obeyed Allah and obeyed the Apostle! And they shall say: O our Lord! surely we obeyed our leaders and our great men, so they led us astray from the path; O our Lord! give them a double punishment and curse them with a great curse (33.64-8)..

So Allah will chastise the hypocritical men and the hypocritical women and the polytheistic men and the polytheistic women (33.73).

And (as for) those who strive hard in opposing Our communications, these it is for whom is a painful chastisement of an evil kind (34.5).

[T]hose who do not believe in the hereafter are in torment and in great error (34.8).

And (as for) those who strive in opposing Our communications, they shall be caused to be brought to the chastisement (34.38).

(As for) those who disbelieve, they shall have a severe punishment (35.7).

This is the hell with which you were threatened. Enter into it this day because you disbelieved (36.63-4).

And thus did the word of your Lord prove true against those who disbelieved that they are the inmates of the fire (40.6).

Surely those who disbelieve shall be cried out to: Certainly Allah's hatred (of you) when you were called upon to the faith and you rejected, is much greater than your hatred of yourselves (40.10).

Have you not seen those who dispute with respect to the communications of Allah: how are they turned away? Those who reject the Book and that with which We have sent Our Apostle; but they shall soon come to know, when the fetters and the chains shall be on their necks; they shall be dragged into boiling water, then in the fire shall they be burned (40.69-72).

Therefore We will most certainly make those who disbelieve taste a severe punishment, and We will most certainly reward them for the evil deeds they used to do. That is the reward of the enemies of Allah -- the fire; for them therein shall be the house of long abiding; a reward for their denying Our communications (41.27-8).

And (as for) those who dispute about Allah after that obedience has been rendered to Him, their plea is null with their Lord, and upon them is wrath, and for them is severe punishment (42.16).

Woe to every sinful liar, who hears the communications of Allah recited to him, then persists proudly as though he had not heard them; so announce to him a painful punishment. And when he comes to know of any of Our communications, he takes it for a jest; these it is that shall have abasing chastisement. Before them is hell, and there shall not avail them aught of what they earned, nor those whom they took for guardians besides Allah, and they shall have a grievous punishment. This is guidance; and (as for) those who disbelieve in the communications of their Lord, they shall have a painful punishment on account of uncleanness (45.7-11).

And on the day when those who disbelieve shall be brought before the fire: You did away with your good things in your life of the world and you enjoyed them for a while, so today you shall be rewarded with the punishment of abasement because you were unjustly proud in the land and because you transgressed (46.20).

That He may cause the believing men and the believing women to enter gardens beneath which rivers flow to abide therein and remove from them their evil; and that is a grand achievement with Allah and (that) He may punish the hypocritical men and the hypocritical women, and the polytheistic men and the polytheistic women, the entertainers of evil thoughts about Allah. On them is the evil turn, and Allah is wroth with them and has cursed them and prepared hell for them, and evil is the resort (48.5-6).

And whoever does not believe in Allah and His Apostle, then surely We have prepared burning fire for the unbelievers (48.13).

Therefore woe to those who disbelieve because of their day which they are threatened with (51.60).

So woe on that day to those who reject (the truth), those who sport entering into vain discourses. The day on which they shall be driven away to the fire of hell with violence (52.11-13).

And if he is one of the rejecters, the erring ones, he shall have an entertainment of boiling water, and burning in hell. Most surely this is a certain truth. Therefore glorify the name of your Lord, the Great (56.92-6).

So today ransom shall not be accepted from you nor from those who disbelieved; your abode is the fire; it is your friend and evil is the resort (57.15).

And (as for) those who disbelieve and reject Our communications, they are the inmates of the fire, to abide therein and evil is the resort (64.10).

But what is the matter with them that they do not believe, and when the Quran is recited to them they do not make obeisance? Nay! those who disbelieve give the lie to the truth. And Allah knows best what they hide, so announce to them a painful punishment (84.20-24).

Has not there come to you the news of the overwhelming calamity? (Some) faces on that day shall be downcast, laboring, toiling, entering into burning fire, made to drink from a boiling spring. They shall have no food but of thorns, which will neither fatten nor avail against hunger (88.1-7).

So today those who believe shall laugh at the unbelievers; On thrones, they will look. Surely the disbelievers are rewarded as they did (88.34-6).

And (as for) those who disbelieve in our communications, they are the people of the left hand. On them is fire closed over (90.19-20).

Surely those who disbelieve from among the followers of the Book and the polytheists shall be in the fire of hell, abiding therein; they are the worst of men (98.6).

These are clearly not the writings of a rational mind. Deranged by religious delusions, the author or authors of these passages would no doubt be considered mentally ill or psychologically unbalanced were this 'holy' book to be written today. Yet, as a religious text, the Qur'an is all too often given a special exemption from normal criticism, and we are told that we must show it 'respect', despite the hateful attitude it takes towards those who do not accept Islam. Around the world, children are taught to revere the Qur'an as the very words of the creator of the universe, as a perfect book with a timeless message, yet how can texts like those I have just cited do anything but instill a negative or contemptuous attitude towards non-Muslims? And why would anyone in their right mind claim that this book should be held up as the most important book ever written, or even as a great work of literature?

Sadly, there is worse to come.

Republished from Butterflies and Wheels

Archeology, God & Medusa

2009-09-07T23:05:00.000-07:00

By Mike LaBossiere

Two factors have merged to inspire this blog. The first is my seemingly endless debates about God’s existence. The second is the History Channel’s series Clash of the Gods.

In a recent discussion of God’s existence, the arguments turned to the matter of whether or not archeological finds can serve as evidence for God’s existence. For example, if a place that is mentioned in the bible is found to be real, does this help support the claim that God exists?

My position on this matter has been and remains that such findings do not provide such support. Naturally, folks have objected that such findings would help show that the bible makes credible claims about historical places and this adds to its credibility. While I am quite willing to agree that such findings would help add to the credibility of the bible as a source for historical information, this is quite a distinct matter from providing evidence that God exists.

My first argument in support of my view is a very simple and perhaps even a silly one. However, I think that it is rather effective in its simplicity. Suppose I give you a call and claim to have seen a ghost in my kitchen. Sensing your doubt, I assure you that I have evidence that supports my claim and I invite you over to see it. Intrigued (and perhaps worried about my sanity), you head on over to see this evidence. I lead you to my kitchen and say “here is my proof. As you can see, my kitchen is quite real!”

Naturally, you would think that I had either gone off my rocker (once again) or that I was pulling some sort of odd prank (once again). After all, showing you that I have a kitchen just proves that my kitchen exists (well, for practical if not philosophical purposes) and does not establish anything about ghosts. What is wanting is a bit of evidence relevant to spirits of the ghostly sort rather than a view of where I keep my mundane spirits.

Likewise, showing that a place where a supernatural biblical supernatural event took place exists merely proves that the place exists. Without further evidence of this alleged event, such a find does nothing to support a claim of divine activity. For example, finding the city of Sodom does not prove that God destroyed the city. What would be needed would be signs that the city was destroyed via means available only to God.

My second argument for my view is more or less an extension of the first one, but it adds in the stuff relating to the Clash of the Gods.

In the episode on Medusa, the program presented both the mythology and discussions about the possible facts behind the myths. Also, the real places where the events where said to have taken place are presented. For example, in the myth Medusa is raped by Poseidon in the temple of Athena. This temple still exists to this day. As another example, the birthplace of the hero Perseus is also quite real.

In various other episodes, the same sort of approach is taken. The possible historical facts that inspired the myths are presented (such as the maze like palace that probably inspired the infamous maze of the minotaur) and the places where the events allegedly took place are often revealed as real places.

While the places mention in the Greek myths are often real, it would not be inferred that finding such places establishes the truth of the supernatural (or extraordinary) aspects of the myths. For example, the fact that the temple of Athena is real does nothing to prove that Medusa was raped there by Poseidon and transformed by Athena into a Gorgon. Likewise, finding places mentioned in the bible are real does nothing to show that any alleged supernatural events really took place.

To use a final example, consider another book about the supernatural and great events: Homer’s Iliad. This book tells tales of the supernatural: the doings of the gods, the existence of demigods and so on.

In a nice parallel, the city of Troy was long believed to be a legend. It was not until Schliemann found Troy did people accept that the story had some basis in historical fact. However, no reasonable person believes that the re-discovery of Troy proves that the Greek gods really exist (or existed). After all, it is one thing to find evidence of a legendary city and quite another to infer the existence of divine beings.

The same would seem to be true of the bible. Even if every earthly place in the bible is found, this would not provide a single piece of evidence for God’s existence. What would be needed would be evidence of the allegedly supernatural events that took place.

Naturally, some folks might object that certain findings would seem to show that God exists. For example, it might be claimed that finding Noah’s ark would do the trick. However, this is not the case.

Finding the ark would certainly be an amazing discovery, but it would not prove that God exists. After all, men can build huge vessels without any divine intervention (just consider some of the huge vessels built in ancient days). Also, we know that serious flooding occurs naturally. As such, finding such a ship would not show that God destroyed humanity in a vast flood.

Of course, I do accept that finding archeological evidence that the entire earth was flooded and all humans (aside from Noah’s folks) perished would point towards an event that would seem to be beyond natural explanation. After all, a natural event that could flood the entire earth (putting the mountains under water) during the time that humanity has been around does not seem to be geologically possible. Of course, there seems to be no indication of such a massive event, despite the fact that it should have left a significant amount of evidence.

In light of the above discussion, archeological findings that do not contain actual evidence of divine activity cannot be considered as evidence for God’s existence.

Republished from talking philosophy

Facts are NOT Anti-Religious

2009-09-02T11:53:00.000-07:00

by Steven Novella

In the small community of Sedalia Missouri there happens to be a substantial Krishna community. (I won’t get into the various names for specific Krishna religions, but will just refer to them as Krishna for simplicity.) Recently they took offense at the T-shirts worn by the local high school band. The theme was a trip to the moon and their shirts featured imagery from the Apollo moon landings.

The Krishnas took offense at this because, according to their Vedic scriptures, the moon landing was a hoax. Specifically it says that the moon is further away than the sun, and that in order for a human to exist on another world, they have to leave their body and adopt one made for that world. Therefore the astronauts could not have landed on the moon, and the moon landings must have been a hoax. Seriously – they really believe this.

But the issue here is that they complained about the T-shirts because they found it offensive to their religious beliefs. They argued that the school system is supposed to remain neutral with regard to religious beliefs, and that they violated this neutrality by endorsing the “controversial” Apollo moon landings.

The local paper reports:

Assistant Superintendent Brad Pollitt said complaints by parents made him take action.

“I made the decision to have the band members turn the shirts in after several concerned parents brought the shirts to my attention,” Pollitt said.

Regarding the theme of “Brass to the Moon” the paper further reports:

Pollitt said the district is required by law to remain neutral where religion is concerned.

“If the shirts had said ‘Brass Resurrections’ and had a picture of Jesus on the cross, we would have done the same thing,” he said.

And of course parents on both sides of the issue were found for juicy quotes.Parent Sherry Melby was quoted as saying:

“I was disappointed with the image on the shirt.” Melby said. “I don’t think the moon landings should be associated with our school.

”

Meanwhile, parent Alena Hoeffling got it right:

“Whatever happened to the separation of church and state.”

OK – this story is not actually true. Well, parts of it are true. The Krishnas really do believe the moon landing was a hoax because it contradicts their interpretation of Vedic scripture and believe that their scripture is a more reliable guide to reality because it comes from god (sound familiar), while they denigrate materialist science as a “cheat”.

The story itself is true but it is about evolution, not the moon landing. The T-shirts had the theme – the “evolution of brass” and featured the iconic image of primates evolving toward homo sapiens (carrying brass instruments). Melby’s quote above should read: “I don’t think evolution should be associated with our school.”

But the analogy to Krishnas denying the moon landing is perfect. The only difference is that we live in a Christian dominated culture.

The major malfunction in the reasoning of those parents who complained about the T-shirts, and the response of the school (who should not have caved to this pressure) is the equation of endorsing a scientific fact with being against a specific religious belief. Being neutral with regard to religion does not equate to avoiding scientific facts that some religious groups reject based upon their faith.

There is of course the practical issue that it would be absurd for the public schools to steer clear of every possible religious belief in a multi-cultural society, as my moon landing example demonstrates. Those who typically make the claim that science must avoid offending their religion, however, are usually only concerned about their religious beliefs. Christians in the US, for example, who make this claim also often claim that the US is a Christian nation, and therefore we must only respect Christian sensibilities – despite the Constitution’s rather specific prohibition.

But I am talking about the underlying philosophical position, not the hypocrisy or practicality of the issue. I am not what some might call an “accommodationist” – arguing that science and religion are compatible if we would just water down science enough. Rather I argue that they occupy separate realms – or at least “faith” and science do. Religions trample on science all the time.

The way I read our Constitution is that the state must remain neutral with regard to faith-based beliefs. That does not mean the state must remain neutral with regard to purely secular conclusions. Science is a purely secular system – it is agnostic with respect to any non-falsifiable claim. Further, science is a system, and its conclusions need only be valid within the system of science. We as a society have chosen to support the system of science – through funding, institutions, and education. This largely stems from the recognition that societies which support scientific progress and education tend to thrive while those who do not stagnate and decline. This is increasingly true as science and technology dominate our civilization.

If the scientific process leads us to a specific scientific conclusion – such as the well-established fact that life on earth as it exists today is the product of organic evolution, or that Apollo astronauts landed on the moon – then that is a scientific conclusion, not a religious belief. Stating that, within the system of science, the process of science leads us to this specific conclusion is not the same thing as taking a stand with regard to any particular religious belief.

The religious in this country have the freedom to believe and preach whatever they want. But that does not extend to the right to censor other people from believing or preaching what they want. Or (relevant to this case) to censor the secular process of science whenever they decide it conflicts with their religious conviction.

Put more bluntly – if their religious beliefs conflict with the conclusions of science, that’s their problem. They can deal with the cognitive dissonance any way they like, but they cannot impose it upon secular society.

In this case, even though it was just about band T-shirts, the school system should have held the line, rather than cave to pressure. Some things are worth fighting for, even if they are inconvenient to the success of your high school brass band.

This issue crops up in other ways as well. Chris Cromer was fired as the Director of Science for the Texas Educational System because she passed on an e-mail announcing a lecture about evolution. This, her superiors argued, violated their neutrality policy regarding evolution and creationism. She is now suing. Her case was dismissed, but she is appealing. My hope is that this point will be decided at the Supreme Court level. Evolution is a scientific theory, creationism is a religious belief. Our public school systems teach science, and must remain neutral with regard to religion. That does not mean they must remain neutral with regard to a scientific theory. They can enthusiastically teach and promote the consensus of scientific opinion without violating the Constitutional ban on establishing a religion.

The public school system not only cannot, it should not steer clear of every possible religious belief, and even more so of an allegedly privileged religious belief – whether it’s Krishna or Christian.

Republished from NeuroLogica Blog

To love, honour and obey in Mali

2009-09-02T08:16:00.000-07:00

By Martin Vogl
BBC News, Bamako

A new family law in Mali is causing a furore, partly because it no longer stipulates that wives have to obey their husbands.

Such has been the anger in the majority Muslim country that President Amadou Toumani Toure has sent the law back to parliament for MPs to re-consider.

For many people here the new law is an attack on their religion and traditions and there have been loud protests against it ever since it was adopted by parliamentarians at the start of August.

In some parts of the world, article 312 of the new family law would seem inoffensive enough.

The article says that, once married, husbands and wives owe each other "loyalty, protection, help and assistance".

Mali's current law specifically states that a wife must obey her husband, and that is the way things should stay says Mahmud Dicko, president of Mali's High Islamic Council.

"We're not trying to make women slaves. Not at all," he says.

"It's just the way our society is organised. The head of the family is the man, and everyone in the family has to obey him.

"It's like that to create harmony."

Equality

At most of the demonstrations against the new code, women have been present, although usually greatly outnumbered by men.

Hadja Safiatou Dembele, president of the National Union of Muslim Women's Associations (NUMWA), says the Koran is clear that a wife has the obligation to listen to her husband.

"A man must protect his wife. A wife must obey her husband," she says.

"It's a tiny minority of woman here who want this new law; the intellectuals. The poor and illiterate women of this country, the real Muslims, are against it."

Kane Nana Sanou, a women's rights activist who is on the committee that has been lobbying for the new family law, says women across Mali should be overjoyed at the new code and disputes the idea that the majority of women are against it.

"How can people say that the majority of women in this country are against the code? Have they done a poll to find that out? They haven't.

"I believe this new law is good for Mali. It makes all citizens equal before the law."

Ms Sanou says she understands why some women might argue that the law should contain a provision that they have to obey their husbands, even if that might mean less rights for them.

"Like me, these women have grown up in traditional families. They have always been told that it's the right thing to do to obey your husband, so of course they believe that," she says.

Modern age

There are other provisions in the new code that have also upset some Muslims.

Marriage is defined as a secular institution in the law and widows and children born outside wedlock are given greater inheritance rights.

The minimum age for girls to marry is raised to 18 - although it is possible to ask for permission for girls to be married younger - and rules on adoption are set out.

The law's supporters say that Malian society has evolved and the new law is simply bringing the country into the modern age.

What is more, says Boya Dembele, an adviser to Mali's justice minister, some of the things that Muslim organisations want - like making religious marriages official - are contrary to Mali's constitution.

"In Muslim states it's the Koran which applies. Mali is a majority Muslim country, but it's a republic. It's democratic and secular," he says.

"So we can't move away from being secular because if we did it would be attacking the very foundations of the state."

Some of the angry protests across Mali since the law was passed have almost got out of control.

At one meeting at Bamako's main mosque, religious leaders had to step in to stop young Muslims, opposed to the law, from attacking the parliament building.

Mali's imams have been threatening to refuse to hold marriage or baptism ceremonies for members of parliament who voted for the law.

Mali's High Islamic Council says mosques will start issuing their own wedding certificates and will tell people not to bother getting the official paperwork at the town hall.

If the law is not changed, Mr Dicko of the High Islamic Council says the country's politicians will get a nasty shock at the next elections.

"We are trying to keep people calm. We don't want them to do anything that is against the law.

"Instead we are telling people that they elect the parliament, so if their members of parliament don't listen to them, they will have the power to vote them out of office."

In the face of such pressure, President Toure has backed down and sent the law back to parliament to be reviewed.

Republished from BBC

Where is the Muslim anger over Darfur?

2009-08-30T00:05:00.000-07:00

by Ed Husain

As war raged in Lebanon in the summer of 2006, people around the world called for international intervention to stop the shelling of civilians. In January this year, millions shared similar feelings of horror and anger witnessing the bloodshed in Gaza. Both events were especially painful to Muslims watching other defenceless Muslims being killed. But why have the deaths of vastly more unarmed Muslims in Darfur caused so little concern among co-religionists?

The Khartoum regime, brought to power in a highly ideological and fundamentalist Islamist coup 20 years ago, has killed an estimated 400,000 of its fellow Muslim citizens. Yet, there is near silence about massive human rights abuses in the remote western corner of Sudan. As Tareq Al-Hamed, editor of the Asharq Alaswat paper, has asked, "Are the people of Darfur not Muslims as well?"

When the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for the Sudanese leader, President Bashir, in March, Muslim politicians from Senegal to Malaysia rallied behind him. The same people who demand international justice for war crimes in Lebanon and Gaza abruptly changed their tune. Instead of denouncing Bashir as the architect of ethnic cleansing, they congratulated him for defying the "conspiracy" to undermine Sudan's sovereignty so the West can take its oil. The Iranian Parliamentary Speaker, Ali Larijani, said the ICC warrant was "an insult to the Muslim world".

Mercifully, the views expressed by Arab and Muslim leaders are at odds with their citizens. The Lebanese American pollster James Zogby found 80 per cent of those questioned in four Arab countries were concerned about Darfur and felt it should have more media attention. However, they were reluctant to apportion blame, and, not surprisingly, they were hostile to international intervention. Meanwhile some commentators in Muslim-majority countries are questioning their leaders' support for Bashir.

According to The Daily Star of Lebanon, "Bashir has sought to cultivate an image of himself as an Arab/African hero who is standing up for his fellow Arabs/Africans by defying the edicts of foreign 'imperial' powers."

So, are Darfuris the "wrong" kind of Muslims because they self-identify as black Africans rather than Arabs, despite widespread inter-marriage in Sudan? The Ugandan president, Yoweri Museveni, cites Arab chauvinism against Africans. I have lived in Arab countries and seen first hand the racism and bigotry that commands the minds of the Arab political class.

The Canadian academic Salim Mansur claims: "Blacks are viewed by Arabs as racially inferior, and Arab violence against blacks has a long, turbulent record."

For the Nobel Prize winning novelist Wole Soyinka, the unwillingness to confront Arab racism is rooted in the role of Arabs in the slave trade. "Arabs and Islam are guilty of the cultural and spiritual savaging of the Continent," he writes.

The Ethiopian academic Mekuria Bulcha estimates that Arab traders sold 17 million Africans to the Middle East and Asia between the sixth and twentieth centuries. Yet, there is an almost total reluctance on the part of Arab intellectuals to examine their central role in slavery, past or present. Any attempt to confront persistent Arab racism is shouted down by appeals to Arab/African solidarity against the neo-colonialist West, a sentiment that seldom moves beyond slogans.

Sheikh Saleh Al-Fawzan, a member of the senior council of Wahhabi clerics responsible for writing Saudi school text books, states: "Slavery is part of Islam. Slavery is part of jihad and jihad will remain as long as there is Islam. It has not been abolished."

Arab racism is familiar to African guest workers in countries like Libya and Egypt, enduring routine verbal and physical attack. Sudanese Arabs suffer from their own racial identity dilemma, viewed as black by their Egyptian neighbours to the north (Sudan is a corruption of the Egyptian word for black). I have heard the Arab Sudanese use the word for slave (abid) to the faces of their fellow citizens who self-identify as non-Arab. It is also known for Sudanese parents to tease their darker-skinned children, calling them slaves.

To be charitable, it seems that Muslim and Arab leaders wish Darfur would simply go away. Hence their enthusiasm for postponing Bashir's arrest warrant "to allow peace talks to work". Shortly after the ICC announcement, key members of the Khartoum regime attended an Arab League summit. They were confident the League would call for the cancellation of ICC jurisdiction in Darfur, conferred by the United Nations Security Council in 2005. The meeting failed to agree on anything stronger than the usual denunciations of Israel and America. Privately, Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi were urging Sudan to deal with the ICC through legal channels. The Sudanese also failed to get a solidarity summit in Khartoum. However, Bashir did enjoy a victory tour of countries where he was hailed rather than arrested.

Arab and Muslim leaders are by no means unique in failing to back up their words with action. Both the US and the UK until recently had leaders who frequently cited their Christian faith, yet did little to help Christians being persecuted in China, Nigeria, Eritrea, North Korea or Egypt.

However, "Muslim solidarity" matters for two reasons. The Khartoum dictatorship is sensitive to the opinion of Muslim and Arab leaders. A genuine peace deal will be more likely as a consequence of private pressure from Iran or Egypt rather than Canada or Sweden.

Muslims' amnesia about Darfur is also symptomatic of the malaise affecting the public face of a faith that lacks the confidence to engage in constructive debate or renewal. Until Muslims can be self-critical without being condemned as heretics, there will be atrophy where there should be vibrancy, and polarisation and extremism where there should be tolerance and inclusiveness. Darfur's tragedy is fast becoming an indelible stain on the collective name of Islam and Muslims.

Ed Husain is co-director of the Quilliam Foundation and author of The Islamist

Republished from the Independent

The evolution of religion

2009-08-01T01:50:00.001-07:00

Michael Shermer and Francisco Ayala discuss the theory that religious belief is hard-wired in humans by evolution.

Today's topic: What do you think of the theory that religious belief and experience are wired through evolution?

Homo religious

Point: Michael Shermer

Did humans evolve to be religious and believe in God? In the most general sense, yes, we did. Here's what happened.

Long ago, in an environment far away from the modern world, humans evolved to find meaningful causal patterns in nature to make sense of the world, and infuse many of those patterns with intentional agency, some of which became animistic spirits and powerful gods. And as a social primate species, we also evolved social organizations designed to promote group cohesiveness and enforce moral rules.

People believe in God because we are pattern-seeking primates. We connect A to B to C, and often A really is connected to B, and B really is connected to C. This is called association learning. But we do not have a false-pattern-detection device in our brains to help us discriminate between true and false patterns, and so we make errors in our thinking. A Type I error is believing a pattern is real when it is not (a false positive) and a Type II error is not believing a pattern is real when it is (a false negative).

Imagine you are a hominid on the planes of Africa and you hear a rustle in the grass. Is it a dangerous predator or just the wind? If you assume it is a dangerous predator and it is just the wind, you have made a Type I error, but to no harm. But if you believe the rustle in the grass is just the wind when it is a dangerous predator, there's a good chance you'll be lunch and thereby removed from your species' gene pool. Thus, there would have been a natural selection for those hominids who tended to believe that all patterns are real and potentially dangerous.

I call this process "patternicity" (the tendency to find meaningful patterns in random noise) and "agenticity" (the tendency to believe that the world is controlled by invisible intentional agents who may mean us harm). This, I believe, is the basis for the belief in souls, spirits, ghosts, gods, demons, angels, aliens, intelligent designers, government conspiracy theorists and all manner of invisible agents intending to harm us or help us.

People are religious because we are social and we need to get along. The moral sentiments in humans and moral principles in human groups evolved primarily through the force of natural selection operating on individuals, and secondarily through the force of group selection operating on populations. The moral sense (the psychological feeling of doing "good" in the form of positive emotions such as righteousness and pride) evolved out of behaviors that were selected because they were good either for the individual or for the group. An immoral sense (the psychological feeling of doing "bad" in the form of negative emotions such as guilt and shame) evolved out of behaviors that were selected because they were bad either for the individual or for the group.

While cultures may differ on what behaviors are defined as good or bad, the moral sense of feeling good or feeling bad about behavior X (whatever X may be) is an evolved human universal. The codification of moral principles out of the psychology of the moral sentiments evolved as a form of social control to ensure the survival of individuals within groups and the survival of human groups themselves. Religion was the first social institution to canonize moral principles, and God -- as an explanatory pattern for the world -- took on new powers as the ultimate enforcer of the rules.

Thus it is that people are religious and believe in God.

Michael Shermer is publisher of Skeptic magazine, a monthly columnist for Scientific American and the author of, most recently, "The Mind of the Market."

We die, therefore we are religious

Counterpoint: Francisco J. Ayala

The formal name of the human species is Homo sapiens, or "knowing human." As a consequence of evolution, ours is the most intelligent species on Earth. A likely explanation of how our exalted intelligence came to be has to do with our ancestors of 2 million years ago, known as Homo habilis, who started to make very simple stone tools. Making tools requires seeing such objects as "tools," in other words, something to be used for a particular purpose: a knife for cutting, an arrow for hunting and so on. Seeing something as a tool requires forming mental images of realities not present: the deer I'll seek to kill and the flesh I'll cut for eating. In turn, forming mental images of things not present requires advanced intelligence, which is why so few animals make tools, and the tools they do make haven't developed into anything resembling the advanced technologies of our species.

The evolution scenario suggests that those more intelligent among our remote ancestors were able to make better tools. And those who made better tools survived better because they got more food and were more effective at killing their enemies or defending themselves. Therefore, those more intelligent left more descendants, and genes for higher intelligence increased in frequency for thousands and thousands of years among our ancestors.

Our intelligence is curious: We want to understand the world around us, how things happen and why they happen. We seek causal explanations of natural events. Before modern science came of age in the 17th century, humans attributed natural events for which they did not know the explanation to supernatural agents. Spirits or gods caused rain and drought, floods and storms, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, surely in retribution for human deeds. These beliefs would often lead to worship and rituals.

Seeking causal explanations for events in the natural world was one source of religious beliefs and practices. Humans live in complex societies, which need to be governed by laws and moral norms. Seeking justification for moral norms and social laws was another source of religious faith and cults. Israelites, for example, were told by Moses to observe the Ten Commandments because these were ordered by God.

But there is one more source of religion that also depends on our evolution-endowed intelligence: self-awareness and its consequence, death-awareness. Except for young infants, every person is conscious of existing as a distinct individual, different from other people and from the environment. Self-awareness is the most immediate and unquestionable reality of our experience.

Moreover, we humans are the only animals with full experience of self-awareness, which implies death-awareness. If I know I exist as a distinct human individual, I know I will die because I see other people die. Because we ceremonially bury our dead, we know humans are the only animals that are death-aware. All human societies have burial rituals, although the rites are very diverse. Ritual burial follows from death-awareness: If I know I will die, I will treat other dead humans with such respect because I want to be treated this way when I die.

Because we humans are aware of the transitory character of our existence, we develop anxiety over death. This anxiety is at least in part alleviated by religious beliefs and rituals, which give meaning to one's own life even though life will end. Anxiety about death is further relieved in the many religions that attribute immortality to the soul, either through successive reincarnations or in the form of life beyond death.

Evolution, by making humans intelligent, predisposed us to be religious.

Francisco J. Ayala, a biology professor at UC Irvine, is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and was awarded the U.S. National Medal of Science in 2001.

**

Republished from Los Angeles Times

Horrors inflicted in the name of Islam

2009-07-10T15:49:00.000-07:00

By Irfan Hussain

ALL too often, natural disasters and human atrocities make only a fleeting impression. We watch fascinated and horrified as TV anchors give us their impressions while images of death and disaster roll across our screens.

But soon, one particular crisis is overtaken by another, and relentlessly, the news cycle moves on.

It is not until one sees and hears the survivors that the magnitude of a disaster really sinks in. This is what I experienced while watching Channel 4’s programme on its Dispatches series. Called Terror in Mumbai, the documentary retraces the steps of the terrorists as they first landed in Mumbai by boat, and then made their way across the city, spreading mayhem over a period of 60 hours.

We were shown clips from CCTV cameras that had captured the killing spree. Casually the killers shot everybody who moved. At the VT railway station, where 52 people died, they massacred a family, and a young boy who survived later recounted who had died: "My father. My mother. My aunt. My uncle. Their two sons. What had we done to them? So many dead. What had they done to the terrorists?" What indeed?

When I wrote a couple of columns expressing sympathy for the victims and condemning the killers and those behind them in Pakistan, I got a flood of angry emails demanding to know the proof that linked the terrorists to Pakistan. Our government was in similar denial. And although it has grudgingly accepted that the controllers and planners of the attack were based in Pakistan, and has even arrested some members of the Laskhar-e-Tayyaba that has morphed into the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, very little progress has been made on punishing those responsible.

The most chilling part of the documentary was the constant voice contact between the terrorists and their handlers. Talking on cellphones, the controllers urged on their pawns in Punjabi and Urdu, interspersed with the odd English words and phrases. They certainly did not sound like graduates of a madrasas. Rather, they were professionals doing a job, instructing the young terrorists to kill as many people as possible; urging them to move from one target to another; and repeating that they must not allow themselves to be captured.

Soon after his arrest, Ajmal Kasab was questioned by the police, and admitted that he had been sent by the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba. Asked why and how he had joined the group, he said his father had "sold" him to the Lashkar for money that would lift the family out of poverty, and pay for his sisters’ weddings.

A Turkish couple, spared because of their faith, recount how the bodies of massacred guests at the Trident Oberoi piled and how slippery it was to walk over the pools of blood. A neighbour of the rabbi and his wife who were murdered at the Jewish Centre describe how the couple said "shoot me" to the killers and were duly shot. After the terrorists had left, the two-year-old son of the couple is filmed in a heart-breaking sequence, walking around in the room, clearly confused.

After Kasab had been captured, the controllers realised what would happen if he spilled the beans. They ask two of the killers to take a hostage and get her to call the authorities with a demand to free Kasab in exchange for her life. After an hour or so, when there is no response from the government, they are told to finish off the hostage. All through the atrocity, the handlers keep urging their footsoldiers on, encouraging them by descriptions of what they are seeing on TV. "The whole world is watching your deeds… Remember this is a fight between the believers and the non-believers… If you speak to the authorities, tell them this is only the trailer and the real film is yet to come..."

And when the terrorists are clearly exhausted, the controllers urge: "Throw some grenades, my brother... How hard can it be to throw a grenade? For your mission to end successfully, you must be killed. God is waiting for you in heaven". After each such exhortation, the young terrorist at the receiving end says, "Inshallah". At the start of the programme, the handler asks the landing party if they have eliminated the captain of the hijacked boat, and if so, how? "Zibah kar diya", is the chilling response. ("We have slit his throat.")

Repeated use of Islamic phrases underlines the extent to which the faith has been cynically used to spread violence. While Muslims argue that Islam does not condone this kind of terrorism against unarmed, innocent civilians, most do not condemn it in clear, unequivocal terms. After agreeing that such acts are un-Islamic, there is all too often a lingering "Yes, but…" hanging in the air.

It is this ambiguity that has given terror groups in Pakistan and elsewhere the space and legitimacy to operate. Now that Pakistanis have seen the true face of terrorism in Swat, and have begun to support the government in its drive to rid us of this cancer, the lesson needs to be reinforced. One way would be to dub the Channel 4 documentary and show it extensively on various TV channels in Pakistan. We need to hear ordinary people who survived or lost close relatives, and see their pain.

We need to see the horrors inflicted in the name of Islam. Above all, we need to share the agony of our neighbours.

Republished from The Asian Age

The Hall of Shame: God, Evolution, and Quantum Mechanics

2009-07-08T08:55:00.000-07:00

For those who claim that no religious scientists allow their scientific statements and beliefs to be infected with religion, here’s a counterexample. It’s from Francis Collins’s BioLogos website (funded by our friends at The John Templeton Foundation) and is a statement about how God may influence the world through quantum mechanics:

The mechanical worldview of the scientific revolution is now a relic. Modern physics has replaced it with a very different picture of the world. With quantum mechanical uncertainty and the chaotic unpredictability of complex systems, the world is now understood to have a certain freedom in its future development. Of course, the question remains whether this openness is a result of nature’s true intrinsic chanciness or the inevitable limit to humans’ understanding. Either way, one thing is clear: a complete and detailed explanation or prediction for nature’s behavior cannot be provided. This was already a problem for Newtonian mechanics; however, it was assumed that in principle, science might eventually provide a complete explanation of any natural event. Now, though, we see that the laws of nature are such that scientific prediction and explanation are ultimately limited.

It is thus perfectly possible that God might influence the creation in subtle ways that are unrecognizable to scientific observation. In this way, modern science opens the door to divine action without the need for law breaking miracles. Given the impossibility of absolute prediction or explanation, the laws of nature no longer preclude God’s action in the world. Our perception of the world opens once again to the possibility of divine interaction.

This view is nearly identical to that of Kenneth Miller in his book Finding Darwin’s God. What this all means, of course, is that what appear to us to be random and unpredictable events on the subatomic level (for example, the decay of atoms) can really reflect God’s manipulation of those particles, and that this is the way that a theistic God can intervene in the world. And of course these interventions are said to be “subtle” and “unrecognizable.” (Theologians are always making a virtue of necessity. They never explain why, if God wanted to answer a prayer, he would do it by tweaking electrons rather than, say, just directly killing cancer cells with his omnipotence. Theology might, in fact, be defined as the art of making religious virtues out of scientific necessities.) And why did these interventions used to involve more blatant manipulations of nature (several thousand years ago, virgin human females gave birth to offspring, were taken bodily to heaven, and their offspring brought back to life after dying), while in more recent years the manipulations have been confined to the subatomic level?

And think about how ludicrous this theology really is. God: “Well, let’s see. Johnny’s parents have prayed for a cure for his leukemia. They’re good people, so I’ll do it. Now how to do the trick?. If I can just change the position of this electron here, and that one over there, I can cause a mutation in gene X that will beef up his immune system and allow the chemotherapy to work.” Why can’t God just say “Cancer, begone!”? (He apparently did that in Baltimore.) I already how the theists will respond: “That’s not the way God works, because we know how he works and it’s not that way!”

The BioLogos statement appears as part of the answer to the question, “What role could God have in evolution?” I submit that the statement is a scientific one that is deeply infected with religious views. The statement is this: “God acts by tweaking electrons and other subatomic particles, constantly causing non-deterministic changes in the universe according to his desires.” Further, the clear implication is this: “God intervened in the evolutionary process, tweaking some electrons to eventually ‘evolve’ a creature made in his image”. That is a religious statement masquerading as science. And that appears to be the view of some religious theists, especially those Catholics who adhere to the Church’s position that God intervened in human evolution.

Well, what happens if we find out some day that the subatomic “nondeterministic” changes really turn out to be deterministic? After all, quantum mechanics and its indeterminacy are provisional scientific theories; we might eventually find out that what appear to be totally unpredictable events really do have a deterministic causation. Where does Collins’s deity go then? Do you suppose for a minute that Collins and his fellow theistic evolutionists would say, “Right. Everything is in principle predictable after all. Obviously, there’s no room for God to intervene in nature, so theism is wrong.” I wouldn’t count on it.

Making quantum mechanics the bailiwick for celestial intervention is a God-of-the-gaps argument, no different in kind from many arguments for intelligent design. Do theistic evolutionists really want to make quantum mechanics God’s playground? Remember the words of the martyred theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer about the dangers of mixing science and faith:

If in fact the frontiers of knowledge are being pushed farther and farther back (and that is bound to be the case), then God is being pushed back with them, and is therefore continually in retreat.

--

Republished from Why Evolution Is True

Forced Marriage: 'I can't forgive or forget what they did to me'

2009-07-06T06:30:00.000-07:00

Dr Humayra Abedin talks for the first time to Nina Lakhani about the international storm that began when she visited her parents in Bangladesh

An NHS doctor from east London who was held hostage and forced into marriage has spoken for the first time about her four-month ordeal, during which she feared for her life.

Dr Humayra Abedin, who was freed from her vows on the orders of a Bangladeshi court soon after The Independent on Sunday highlighted her plight, described the humiliation and pain she suffered at the hands of her parents, some members of her extended family and nurses and doctors in a private psychiatric hospital in Bangladesh last year.

In an exclusive interview with the IoS, Dr Abedin told of the moment she was abducted: "My face was covered with a piece of cloth by men who told me they were policemen, before they carried me out into an ambulance which was parked outside the house. They held my arms and legs, carried me like a prisoner, while my parents stood in the background."

She was driven, kicking and screaming, to a private hospital, on the request of her family. During the journey, she was held down and gagged by three people as they tried to stop her shouting.

"This was the first time I thought, 'this is it, I am dying'," said Dr Abedin. "I begged them to stop." And so began the nightmare.

For the next three months, every morning and every night, she was forced to swallow dangerously high doses of powerful tranquillisers used to treat people with psychoses. She was kept locked in the hospital, constantly told she was a disgrace by staff and relatives, and denied contact with the outside world. But she could make it stop, so her parents and psychiatrist told her, if she agreed to give up her life in England, marry the man her family had chosen for her and stay in Bangladesh. She refused.

Last December, Dr Abedin was dramatically freed after frantic efforts – highlighted by the IoS – by lawyers in the UK and Dhaka, together with Ask, a human rights NGO, led to her release. The majority of victims are not so lucky; hundreds of missing schoolchildren each year are feared to have been married off abroad by their families.

When you picture a victim of forced marriage, whom do you see? Probably an uneducated, young Asian girl, from a deeply traditional and authoritarian family. But research published last week suggests there could be 8,000 forced marriage cases in England each year, affecting African, European and Middle Eastern communities as well. Victims in 14 per cent of cases are male; 14 per cent are under 16. A worrying proportion involves people with learning disabilities who may not have the capacity to consent.

Sitting in her friend's house in suburban Essex, Dr Abedin looks a million dollars. Her physical appearance has been transformed over the past six months. Gone are the puffy, blotchy skin, brittle hair, stiff joints and tremor she developed as a result of the medication. She complains that she can't lose the last few pounds – anti-psychotics also cause an insatiable appetite – but the physical transformation is truly remarkable. As for her mental state, she denies nightmares or flashbacks, often experienced by victims of abuse and trauma; her anxiety symptoms have gone, but she does admit to dwelling on what happened in the hospital.

"It's my time at the clinic that I think about. These people are meant to be health professionals, but what they did to me was a complete abuse. This I will never forgive or forget," says Dr Abedin, and just for a second she doesn't seem as relaxed or confident as she claims to be.

Born and raised in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, Humayra Abedin, 33, is not your typical victim. An only child from a well-off, middle-class Muslim family, she grew up happily surrounded by friends, cousins and extremely supportive parents who encouraged her to study medicine.

After she graduated, her mother, Sophia, 68, a housewife, and her father, Joynal, 77, a retired businessman who at that time owned a clothing factory and several shops, supported her move to England in 2002 to study for a master's degree in public health at Leeds University. She joined several of her Bangladeshi friends in London the following year and embarked on the exams that would enable her to work in the NHS.

"I was totally focused on my career and very happy. I was also learning how to do very ordinary things for the first time, like washing clothes and shopping, which gave me a great sense of satisfaction to be independent instead of having people helping me with everything like at home. I guess I was changing, just becoming more individual and independent."

She spoke to her parents often and there was occasional talk about marriage but she made it clear that studying was her priority.

"Actually, some of my aunties had wanted me to get married before I came to UK, so that I didn't come alone. This would have been quite normal; in fact, most of my friends who went abroad did so after they got married. But I didn't want that and my dad totally agreed every time it came up. I just used the same excuse and kept putting them off."

At the end of 2007, a cousin, also a doctor, came to visit and started commenting on this new-found independence. After his return to Bangladesh, the tension started to mount.

"The family pressure was building. There were more phone calls, more talk about guys they wanted me to meet, but I told them this wasn't what I wanted. It wasn't about religion; it was a cultural thing. In their eyes I was becoming too Westernised, too focused on my career and getting too old to be alone. It was about protecting me."

In July 2008, she flew home to visit her mother, who her dad claimed was suffering from heart problems. "Both my parents have chronic health problems so it was possible that she was sick. I did think they might want me to meet some guys but not in my wildest dreams could I have imagined what would happen next."

As soon as she arrived she was physically restrained, beaten and locked away. She was forced to take sleeping tablets and constantly bombarded with insults. Her parents never touched her; it was a trusted maid, who had worked for the family for 25 years, who took the lead in the abuse. But she still refused to consent to marriage; a week later, the ambulance arrived and took her away.

"After three months of medication, verbal abuse, emotional blackmail, my mind was weakened. I felt like a puppet. I had lost all hope and had no more energy to fight back," she says.

But before she was carted off to this so-called hospital, she had sent texts to friends in the UK. So unbeknown to her, efforts to secure her release were under way.

A female cousin co-operated with Ask and filed a petition to the court, which served her family with an order demanding she be brought in front of the court in Bangladesh, where forced marriage is illegal.

In order to avoid the authorities, her parents discharged her from the hospital and the next couple of weeks were spent in a medication-induced haze, travelling between towns, staying with family friends, until eventually she was forcibly married to a doctor her parents had deemed a suitable match. She won't talk about what happened with him, only that she's waiting for the marriage to be annulled.

Eventually, left with no option, her parents brought her to the court, convinced she would choose her family over her independence. Her father broke down in court after he was told she had chosen to come back to the UK. It was the last time she saw him.

She arrived back in London to face a media storm. "I felt joy, happiness, relief; you've no idea how thankful I was to the media, my lawyers, everyone who had been trying to get me out of that hospital."

There has been no contact with her parents since she was freed; she has moved and changed her phone numbers to avoid them. It is not something she will rule out for ever; she still loves them, but is nowhere near the point of being able to forgive them. She believes her aunts and uncles convinced her parents that she was out of control and needed protection. "I think my dad was made to feel guilty about encouraging me, his only child, to come to the UK, so he felt he had to sort things out. What they did was wrong, but I still think from their point of view they were trying to protect me. But that psychiatric hospital ... the staff told me they knew I was normal, so what they did to me was grossly unethically and criminal." Two other women in similar situations have since been rescued from the same clinic.

A strong, ambitious woman, she is determined not to let this horrific experience become a life-defining one. It is her friends, colleagues and employers she turns to for support; they have become her family and she cannot praise them enough. Work comes first, but she hasn't forgotten how to have fun: listening to Bollywood music while eating home-cooked food with friends is her ideal way to relax. She will finish her GP training with the London Deanery next year and still wants the happy-ever-after ending she always dreamed about.

"The whole incident has made me realise how precious and beautiful life is and it's made me stronger, so maybe it was my destiny. Right now my focus is my career. I love my job, and I also want to do what I can to raise awareness about forced marriage – the protection order was the turning point in my life. In the future, I definitely want to get married to the right person, have children, all those things that I always wanted."

Republished from The Independent

Schopenhauer on human solidarity in a world without God

2008-11-17T00:17:00.001-08:00

A facile charge frequently leveled against atheism by religious apologists is that without God, human beings have no reason to care about one another.

This obviously says a lot about the person making the claim, for they are inadvertently admitting that without their belief in God, they would no longer feel the need to behave in a respectful and considerate way towards others, but would instead embrace radical selfishness, hatred, contempt, and destructiveness.

The claim itself is false for a number of important reasons that I won't be covering in any detail in the post. However, I would like to point to one interesting example of an atheist philosopher making a case for human solidarity based on the shared experience of the 'human condition'.

Arthur Schopenhauer is perhaps best known as a philosopher of 'pessimism', but in many respects a cold, rational evaluation of the nature of the world by necessity will result in a somewhat 'pessimistic' conclusion. Judaic monotheism in particular contains within it an awareness of the fundamentally flawed nature of existence, hence the tale of a 'fall', the endless attempts at creating theodicies to 'explain' (essentially justify) suffering, and some modern Christian theologians' focus on the Incarnation as God 'suffering alongside us'.

From the perspective of atheism, the attempts at reconciling a flawed world of suffering with a perfect God of love fall down as incoherent, fanciful, and a flight from reality.

In his essay 'On the Sufferings of the World', Schopenhauer looked honestly and without supernatural self-deception at the world and concluded:

[T]hat a God like Jehovah should have created this world of misery and woe, out of pure caprice, and because he enjoyed doing it, and should then have clapped his hands in praise of his own work, and declared everything to be very good — that will not do at all!

He continued:

Even though Leibnitz' contention, that this is the best of all possible worlds, were correct, that would not justify God in having created it. For he is the Creator not of the world only, but of possibility itself; and, therefore, he ought to have so ordered possibility as that it would admit of something better.

There are two things which make it impossible to believe that this world is the successful work of an all-wise, all-good, and, at the same time, all-powerful Being; firstly, the misery which abounds in it everywhere; and secondly, the obvious imperfection of its highest product, man, who is a burlesque of what he should be. These things cannot be reconciled with any such belief.

To view the world as, fundamentally, a world of 'misery and woe', and to accept this inevitability as the 'price' of existence is to be liberated from illusion and from the intellectual dishonesty involved in maintaining fantasies of a divine creator. Indeed, 'you will regulate your expectations accordingly, and cease to look upon all its disagreeable incidents, great and small, its sufferings, its worries, its misery, as anything unusual or irregular'. Obviously, Schopenhauer did not advocate a passive acceptance of suffering, for joy is the aspiration of all humans and

every state of welfare, every feeling of satisfaction, is negative in its character; that is to say, it consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of existence. It follows, therefore, that the happiness of any given life is to be measured, not by its joys and pleasures, but by the extent to which it has been free from suffering — from positive evil.

Now we come to Schopenhauer's basis for human solidarity:

In fact, the conviction that the world and man is something that had better not have been, is of a kind to fill us with indulgence towards one another. Nay, from this point of view, we might well consider the proper form of address to be, not Monsieur, Sir, mein Herr, but my fellow-sufferer, Socî malorum, compagnon de miseres! This may perhaps sound strange, but it is in keeping with the facts; it puts others in a right light; and it reminds us of that which is after all the most necessary thing in life—the tolerance, patience, regard, and love of neighbour, of which everyone stands in need, and which, therefore, every man owes to his fellow.

When we see our fellow humans' suffering, we should, according to Schopenhauer, be able to see ourselves mirrored in them. There is no need to invoke invented notions such as humans all being 'children of God' or 'equal in God's eyes' to feel solidarity. If anything, a stronger bond is felt precisely through the fact that we are not 'children of God', but rather the products of nature, which does not favour us, does not concern itself with our suffering or our happiness, and which has no 'plan' or 'purpose'. We stand alone in a world that is not made 'for us' and we have evolved through pain, struggle, and hardship. The fact that most of us in developed nations feel little pain when compared with past generations is precisely because we have evolved societies which ever-increasingly protect and sustain human survival.

In the past, tolerance, patience, regard, and love of neighbour were presented variously as signs of virtue and also as compulsory actions, enforced by a God who will judge those who fail to help others. These supernatural injunctions were used to 'explain', justify, and enforce the need for human solidarity. However, there is absolutely no reason to suggest that these qualities are any less valid or any less necessary when the superstitious aspects surrounding them are removed.

As Schopenhauer argues, in order to survive, everyone stands in need of certain acts of human solidarity, and just as we need these acts of kindness from others, so also, in turn, we owe them to others. Human solidarity is in fact a rational response to the 'human condition', and mutual co-operation and ethical reciprocity require no 'God' at all. If anything, following Schopenhauer's line of reasoning, those who refuse the supernatural illusion and face the fact that we are all fellow-sufferers and that there is no heavenly escape outside 'this life' and no 'divine plan', are actually more likely to feel a fundamental need to show kindness to one another than those who think 'this world' is only the momentary antechamber to another world of eternal joy.

Republished from I Kid You Not

Portrayal of Religion in the Media: Religion is Political

2008-11-16T05:37:00.001-08:00

I was doing some research on the topic of this article on the Internet. There were many complaints about the Western media's presentation of Islam, lamenting thewrong image of Islam being portrayed in the media. I agree that the media is not true to the real issue and portrays a designed image of not only Islam but religion in general. However, I look at the problem from a different angle. After spending some time on web searches but I did not find any protests or complaints about how the media glorifies religion and religious institutions and hierarchy. As an atheist, secularist and one who sees many wrongs with religion, I was disappointed. I would like to state here my view of how the media help cover up the evils of religion and helps maintain this outdated value system as part and parcel of the dominant ideology.

Proponents of Islam complain that the Western media portray Islam as a source of aggression, that it stereotypes Muslims as terrorists. They maintain that this is a political agenda by the Western powers who feel threatened by Islam presenting itself as an alternative civilisation. There are some assumptions here, with some of which I agree and some with which I disagree.

Political Agenda

Religion is political. We are made to believe that religion is merely about faith, spirituality and morality, without which humanity will lack any sense of ethics, goodness and humanity. This is the dominant and official view of religion, espoused by the state and education system. A lot of work and money is used to make this image of religion the accepted dominant view. Religion is one of the main ingredients of the dominant ideology. Religion belongs to the political realm as the British monarchy, the Labour or Conservative parties do. Moreover there is a great deal of money involved. Religious institutions have a great deal of wealth at their disposal and constantly struggle to get their hands on more. Perhaps to some extent the Church has lost its power over public opinion in the West. But it is still an inseparable part of the political system, except in France. In Britain the Church and the monarchy are two important pillars of the political system. Religion plays a major part in the education system. Therefore, any presentation of religion in the media, including Islam, is a political act with a political agenda.

In my opinion there is a macro agenda behind religious portrayal. That is, whatever the agenda of every single programme, overall, the role and influence of religion and religious institutions must be maintained and upheld. Religion is not generally questioned nor criticised. A critical programme of religion will in general criticise a certain interpretation of a particular faith. This is true about all religions, including Islam. Therefore, all the complaints and laments about "injustices" done to Islam by the media, is nothing but political pressure to consume even more time and receive a less critical approach.

Wrong Image

Let's move to the complaint that the media portray a wrong image of Islam. I agree. But, I do not see it quite the same way as the proponents of Islam. In my opinion, the media does not come even close to exposing the vile teachings of the real Islam. The view we receive is that an extremist interpretation of Islam is to blame; otherwise, Islam is a nice and peaceful religion. This is total nonsense. There are definitely different interpretations of Islam, some softer and more peaceful than others. In the past three decades we have witnessed the rise of a very violent political force into power in the Middle East and North Africa, which is ideologically based on Islam and uses any measure of terror to gain power, i.e. political Islam, the so-called extremists. If we are only concerned about bombs in our trains, buses and neighbourhoods in the West, then we can blame political Islam and forget about what Islam and Islamists are capable of doing to the society upon which they rule.

Islam, like any other religion, is deeply misogynistic. Women are not considered whole human beings, they are the property of their male relations, and have no rights to move about, to work and to take part in society without their male owner's permission. Even with the man's permission, they are not allowed to occupy some professions; they cannot become judges or political leaders, for example. Gender apartheid is an important pillar of society under Islam.

The penal code in Islam is extremely harsh, violent and inhuman. Muslims are by their faith deprived of music, happiness and fun. To sum it up Islam is a very morbid, dull and violent religion. There are Muslims who live as per the tenets of modern society, but they cannot claim that this is another interpretation of Islam. Islam, as a religion, does not allow for these things, period.

Fairness and Balance

The complaints against the media address the issue of fairness and balance, as well. They claim that the media is neither fair nor balanced vis-à-vis Islam. I agree with the statement, but again from the opposite angle. We talked about presenting different interpretations of Islam. However, the question is whose interpretation? How do we decide whose interpretations must be voiced? At present, the media voices two groups: one, the self-appointed Muslim leaders; two, those who express a moderate and nice interpretation of Islam. This, to my opinion, is neither fair nor balanced. Hardly any harsh, critical views of Islam or any other religion for that matter are presented by the media. By carrying out this practice, the media plays an important role in the dynamics of power struggle in favour of the so-called religious leaders.

Abuse and hypocrisy are two basic ingredients of religion and religious establishments. Historically many people have been killed under the name of god and religion. The most violent abuses have been carried out by men of god. And
still in this day religion continues to kill, maim, abuse and terrorise. But the media is mainly concerned with presenting a game of holy and spiritual make-believe.

What is it about religion that makes it untouchable? Even when gruesome scandals are revealed, such as child abuse by the Catholic Church both in Ireland and the USA, the state and the mainstream media tend not to concern themselves as they should. We heard much more about the child abuse case against Michael Jackson, a case which was disproved in the court of law, than the Catholic Church with a few hundred cases of child abuse against the whole establishment which cost the church millions of dollars. Why is the media so reluctant to expose the religious hierarchy? Why do men of God get a free ride?

The public is becoming increasingly disenchanted with religion and religious establishments in the West. The media does not reflect this important fact. Atheists are becoming more outspoken but this, too, is ignored by the mainstream media.

Instead the media continues to aid the mystification of religion as an untouchable institution. The most banal and backward teachings are treated as the absolute truth, a given fact, hardly questioned and rarely criticised. The media is an important instrument in upholding the myth of God.

Azar Majedi is the chair of Organisation for Women's Liberation-Iran and a veteran campaigner for women's rights and against political Islam.

Republished from: http://www.iheu.org/node/3150

Pujiono Cahyo & Underage Lust

2008-11-13T00:21:00.001-08:00

A Muslim cleric has caused public outrage in Indonesia after marrying a 12-year-old girl.

Pujianto Cahyo Widianto married the girl in the central Java city of Semarang, during an unofficial religious ceremony.

He reportedly chose her from a pool of 20 girls, before flying to Singapore with his new bride, as well as his first wife.

Police have launched an investigation into the incident.

Possible charges

Investigators from Indonesia's child protection agency said Mr Widianto had chosen the girl based on her intelligence, maturity and physical development.

They said Mr Widianto, who runs an Islamic boarding school, had planned to put the child in charge of his second business - a calligraphy workshop.

It is unclear if the marriage has been consummated. If it has, Mr Widianto could face charges under child protection, marriage and labour laws.

He is reported to have justified his actions by saying he was emulating Islam's Prophet Muhammad, and that he would wait until his wife reached puberty before having sex with her. But there has been fierce reaction to the marriage within Indonesia.

A senior member of the prominent Islamic party, PKS, said he thought Mr Widianto was wrong in what he was doing, and wrong in his thinking about Islam.

Police say they have not asked Singapore to extradite the cleric, but are continuing investigations.

43 year old Pujiono Cahyo Widayanto/Widianto, aka Syech/Syekh Puji, the head of an Islamic boarding school (Ponpes Miftahul Jannah) in Bedono, Jambu, Semarang, Central Java, in August 2008 informally married (nikah siri) Lutfiana Ulfa, 11 years and 10 months old, who had just begun studies at a local junior high school, but has now taken up wifely duties at home.

Ulfa & Pujiono Cahyo Widianto

Sheikh Puji is a very wealthy man, being the owner of PT Sinar Lendoh Terang (Silenter), a handicrafts exporter, and appeared in the news in August for distributing 1.3 billion rupiah (about $130,000) in zakat or charity to the poor. His first wife is 26 years old. In 2005 he was a candidate for the Partai Amanat Nasional (PAN) in a regency election but withdrew from the race at the last moment, and has long been involved in local politics.

He also intends to marry two other girls, aged 9 and 7. Of these latter two, Syech Puji says that neither has begun menstruating, so he will refrain from interfering with them, while Ulfa has already entered puberty.

Syech Puji believes his actions have a legitimate basis in Islam, considering that the prophet Muhammad married the 7 year old Aisha.

I'm not just doing what I like, it's based in religion. It's in accordance with the prophet's teaching. You can marry a 7 year old if you like but you can't have relations with her until she starts menstruating.

Clerics' Council/Majelis Ulama Indonesia (MUI) leader Umar Shihab condemned the marriage to Ulfa:

Men should marry adults, there are a lot of other prospective brides around. Why has he married a 12 year old? The poor girl.

His actions have been mostly condemned in other quarters, with some saying that he has broken the Marriage Law, and is liable to criminal prosecution.

One supporting voice is that of politician Hilman Rosyad Syihab from the Islamist Partai Keadilan Sejahtera (PKS), who says that marrying young girls is allowed within Islam provided the marriages are not consummated until the girl has begun menstruating.

Sources:

http://www.indonesiamatters.com/2768/pujiono-cahyo/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7692502.stm

An invitation to meet Mr Adnan Oktar (aka Harun Yahya, aka Adnan Hoca) - "future ruler of the entire world"?

2008-11-12T04:57:00.001-08:00

I was recently invited to fly to Istabul to interview Mr Adnan Oktar, also known as Harun Yahya, a Muslim who has published very many books challenging evolution, including, of course, his lavishly illustrated and produced Atlas of Creation, provided free to thousands of schools around the world.

I received a phone call from Mr Oktar's representative, Seda Aral, correcting "minsinformation" about Oktar, and explaining why his successful attempt to shut down Richard Dawkins website in Turkey was entirely justified. Oktar styles himself a defender of freedom of speech, and insists he was defamed.

Actually Oktar also attempted to get e.g. The God Delusion banned in Turkey, despite the fact that it says nothing about Oktar.

Dawkins explains why Oktar is a world-class nincompoop here. It's hilarious.

Despite the offer of an all-expenses-paid trip to Turkey as the guest of Mr Oktar, I'm not going.

It seems many others have received such offers, such as this writer for New Humanist (scroll down and you'll see one of the comments is from "Nathan" who also received an invitation). Oktar's budget for self-promotion seems to have no limits - as Dawkins points out, OUP estimated the cost of producing his Atlas at half a million quid. Where's the money coming from (there's a clue below)?

Why aren't I going? I am not nearly as well-known as Dawkins, of course, so I don't much mind appearing at low-key events such as this one in London, because I don't think I am providing much "oxygen of publicity", and may succeed in casting a few doubts into the minds of the audience.

However, Oktar is different - he's powerful and, I suspect, dangerous, and I wouldn't feel comfortable taking his money. The Dawkins episode is nothing compared to some of the other stuff it seems Oktar has got up to. He stands convicted by a Turkish court and faces a three year prison term. Oktar is appealing against the conviction. While this conviction has been reported in the West (see Reuters), the sheer scale of the various allegations being made against Oktar (in court and out) has not yet received much attention over here. To date, it's only the Dawkins website ban that's attracted interest.

For example, there have been some very serious allegations about cult activity:

Adnan Oktar (Harun Yahya) is a cult leader who have enslaved many children of rich and elite. His sexual and mental abuse of his subjects is a well known fact to Turkish people. His confession in police alone, which is corroborated by his former followers to details, is sufficient to put him behind bars. But so far, money, connections, blackmail and all the tricks available to his well-connected and super rich followers have kept him out of trouble. But his days are numbered and now there is a major case against him in Turkish courts for black mail and illegal activities.

Also this:

Though Adnan is a lay person by academic standards, he is a gifted manipulator, a patient and highly skilled team manager: he uses various highly efficient psychological devises and marketing gimmicks to depict his image as a divinely ordained leader with a great mission. It would be in the best interest of the naïve and young pupils to join his cause, since soon he will be ruling the entire world and they would be his lucky and powerful aids. Besides, the cult provides a holy club for the children of the rich and well connected; they also get second-hand girls as a fringe benefit. In turn they lose their freedom and part of their identity; but we know that millions of people are ready to trade those precious rights and values to join a cult or a religious organization. Though the dates for victory he has given have been extended several times, who would not be the secretary or the spoke person of the long-awaited great ruler of the entire world?

Oktar insists he is simply the victim of conspiracy.

Oktar, also known as Adnan Hoca, was arrested after "Operation Adnan Hoca" which involved 2,000 Turkish police officers, according to this quite amazing story from the Turkish Daily News. It's long, but it's worth it - gun battles, sex, blackmail, conspiracies: it's got it all.

The Force Behind the Adnan Hoca Operation: Agar's Revenge

 The Adnan Hoca operation, which involved 2,000 police officers and resulted in the apprehension of Adnan Hoca, has the support of two well-known politicians: Mehmet Agar and Celal Adan

HAKAN ASLANELI

Adnan Oktar, otherwise known as Adnan Hoca, and his disciples, who were taken into custody during a midnight operation last weekend, were the victims of a political struggle. Adnan Hoca's followers are members of the Science Research Foundation (BAV) and have been trying to take sides in the leadership contest going on in the True Path Party (DYP). About two months ago they engaged in a gun battle that featured three of Adnan Hoca's disciples on one side and DYP Deputy Celal Adan and his men on the other. The fight took place at the Ceylan Inter-Continental Hotel Istanbul and eventually ended in the police station. Celal Adan left the hotel in the car of independent Deputy Mehmet Agar, formerly of the DYP.

Adnan Hoca's followers were kept in custody for some time at the Beyoglu police station. Their statements that followed signalled a call to war.

In his statement, BAV General Secretary Bahadir Guven accused Celal Adan and Mehmet Agar in uncompromising terms, insisting that these two politicians were behind all the dark relationships in Turkey. Guven said that when they realized there was a partnership between Adan and Agar and that the two intended to overthrow DYP leader Tansu Ciller they tried to stop this conspiracy, at which point they were confronted with a gunfight. Guven also suggested, that Agar, as many people suspect, is the "patron of Susurluk," the 1996 automobile crash that led to the revelation of relations between the government, the police and criminal elements.

After the press reported on the "Gunfight at a Luxury Hotel" the two sides kept silent. This silence was broken last weekend when the Istanbul police carried out their unusual operation.

Nearly 2,000 policemen conducted simultaneous raids in 40 districts across Istanbul. Their goal was to take Adnan Oktar and his disciples into custody. The centers of the raids were Aktar's villa at Kandilli and his estate at Silivri. In all, police searched 38 houses belonging to Adnan Hoca and took everyone they found there into custody -- including Adnan Hoca himself, who had not been seen in public for six years. Oktar's appearance had changed during this time; he had put on weight to resemble opera singer Lucian Pavarotti, who might not be pleased with the comparison.

The actual residences where Adnan Hoca and his disciples had been living were another point of interest. Surprisingly, the woodland villas in Kandilli and Silivri were decorated in the opulent style of the Dolmabahce Palace. The Kandilli villa was actually a complex, consisting of two separate buildings and a total 13 rooms. Inside three iron gates is a small grove, secured by hidden cameras and Dobermans. The police participating in the Silivri operation were treated to an even more unusual sight. The estate, which served as a summer residence for Hoca and his followers, resembled a zoo, complete with camels, horses and two artificial lakes.

The stated reason behind the roundup of Hoca and his followers was blackmail. The group is claimed to have used hidden cameras to capture politicians and performing artists. The resulting tapes are said to have trickled down to some in the right-wing parties.

Is it true that the raids on Hoca's villas, referred to in the press as "the snake's headquarters," were ordered by Interior Minister Sadettin Tantan? Even the police who took part in the operation do not know the answer to this question because they weren't informed about where they were going until the last minute. Istanbul Police Chief Hasan Ozdemir directed the operation himself, delivering envelopes to his immediate subordinates on which were written the instructions, "Open during the operation." Special efforts were made to prevent news from leaking out to Oktar and his followers because the police department didn't trust some of its own members. Those who were responsible for the operation and who knew about the close links between Adnan Hoca and his disciples and high-level police chiefs and politicians chose to behave this way.

The timing of the operation, which included top models and famous performing artists, also received attention. Why did they take Hoca's disciples into custody now, when they had known for a long time about the allegations of blackmail?

The answer to this question lies in the gunfight that took place at the Ceylan Inter-Continental Hotel Istanbul two months ago. The struggle between the two groups within the DYP lit the fuse for the operation. Adnan Hoca and his disciples were supporting Tansu Ciller and collecting confidential information on her rivals. The Adnan Hoca group, working as an organization, had a wealth of surveillance equipment ranging from hidden cameras disguised as buttons to high-tech eavesdropping equipment. The partnership between Tansu Ciller and her group and Adnan Hoca and his group began when Ciller began benefiting from Oktar's "professionalism." Among the many claims about this partnership is that Ciller had made promises to Adnan Hoca's group regarding the next elections in exchange for the work they were doing for her.

Unsettled as a result of this specialized work undertaken by Hoca and his followers, Adan and Agar, as opponents of Ciller, took on the roles of leaders in the anti-Hoca operation. The two men secretly prepared a report on Adnan Hoca's activities and turned it over to Interior Minister Tantan. The report detailed the illegal activities of the group, making reference to a rich archive of material to be used in blackmail. This included videotapes of many of the politicians and businessmen in Turkey having illicit sex. Filmed by hidden cameras over the course of several years and transferred to CDs, the documents are supposed to have been invaluable to Hoca's disciples, who are claimed to have used them to put pressure on important politicians.

Interior Minister Tantan, who took office asserting that his main goal would be to totally wipe out crime, instructed the Istanbul police chief to destroy Adnan Hoca's group. While these developments were taking place in Ankara very secretly, another development was taking place at the Istanbul State Security Court (DGM). DYP Istanbul parliamentarian Celal Adan applied to the DGM public prosecutor to begin criminal proceedings. The incidents progressed as Adan and Agar wished. All of Adnan Hoca and his group's secrets came out in public. The group, which had become a sex and blackmail team, were questioned for days, with two extensions of the legal custody period.

As the questioning continued in Istanbul, repercussions were heard in Ankara. A group supposedly complained to President Suleyman Demirel, asking why this operation had not taken place earlier. Demirel himself did not approve of the timing of the operation, which was attracting so much attention on the eve of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) summit in Istanbul.

It is also being claimed that National Movement Party (MHP) Deputy Mehmet Gul, who is well-known for his close relationship with the Adnan Hoca group, complained to MHP party leader Devlet Bahceli that the operation could destroy the coalition government. In addition to reaching the heights of the Presidential Palace and causing tension between the MHP and the Motherland Party (ANAP), the operation also touched on Necmettin Erbakan, the former leader of the Welfare Party (RP) and spiritual leader of the Islamists.

It is known that Erbakan's son Fatih has close links with the Adnan Hoca group and that the former RP leader himself had often met with Adnan Hoca. The press provided additional evidence of this close relationship. The Erbakan-Adnan Hoca was particularly obvious when the daily Milli Gazette, Erbakan's mouthpiece, published articles criticizing the operation against Adnan Hoca under such headlines as "Slander and Mudslinging Campaign."

Application for criminal procedures from Mazlum-Der

Aside from the criticism in Milli Gazete there was a response from Mazlum-Der. Yilmaz Ensaroglu, the head of the Islamist human rights association, criticized the police operation against Adnan Hoca at a press conference, questioning its legality:

"The operation against BAV does not have any legal basis because there is no concrete accusation against BAV. The police conducted detailed searches in the houses of people related to BAV, but all they found were lots of computers, documentary video cassettes, a couple of licensed guns and some cultural publications. On the other hand, certain newspapers are asking their readers to file complaints against BAV on behalf of the Istanbul Chief of Police. The crime that did not exist is being created through advertisements, invitations and threats."

Ensaroglu: 'It could be a masonic conspiracy'

Ensaroglu pointed out that Oktar, who was the honorary chairman of the BAV, had been associated with other conspiracies in the past. "It is a very well-known fact that Adnan Oktar's works on Freemasonry and Zionism have disturbed certain people for a long time," Ensaroglu said. "And it is also known that these people have constantly carried out propaganda and conspiracies against BAV and Adnan Oktar. One of the most concrete examples of this is the cocaine conspiracy of 1991. At the time, an unexpected and sudden raid led to Oktar being kept under custody for 62 hours, and, after being taken to Forensic Medicine, it was confirmed that cocaine was detected in his blood. However, in the following months, it was confirmed by 24 different international medical institutions that the cocaine was given to Oktar in the food and drink he consumed while he was in custody. Later, Forensic Medicine admitted this, and Oktar was acquitted."

Ensaroglu also called on the public to be sensitive towards these embarrassing and illegal operations that were taking place just as the major OSCE summit was about to take place.

Babuna: 'I have no connection'

Among those whose houses were raided as part of the operation against Adnan Hoca and his followers was Dr. Oktar Babuna, who reached public notoriety through the nationwide blood donor campaign he initiated after it was discovered he had leukemia. It was claimed that Babuna, who had returned to Turkey from the United States after being cured of cancer, had for a time been one of Adnan Hoca's disciples. Based on these claims, Babuna's house was included in the police raid. However, Babuna stated during a press conference that while he had seen Adnan Oktar once or twice he was not one of his disciples. On the other hand, there were claims that not only Dr. Babuna but his brother and father, Professor Cevat Babuna, were also among Adnan Hoca's disciples. Furthermore, it was being claimed that Adnan Hoca and his disciples had actually organized the Babuna blood donation campaign, which earned them trillions of lira.

Statement from the Science Research Foundation

A statement released by the BAV included the following claims:

 The houses [that were raided] do not belong to Adnan Hoca. The house and the estate raided by the police do not belong to Adnan Oktar, they belong to wealthy members of the foundation. Adnan Hoca was giving a speech at the house in Beylerbeyi on the night of the operation.

 The items in the houses in Beylerbeyi and Silivri display a sense of aesthetics that aims to raise national values. The existence of the statues, the imperial signatures belonging to the Ottoman Empire, the imperial edicts and the gilded objects are not a reflection of tastelessness but a reminder of the flamboyance of Ottoman-Turkish culture.

 It is slander to say that there were cassettes to be used for blackmail. After inspection, it will be shown that the video cassettes and computer disks do not contain any compromising material.

 The claims about sex parties are also slanderous. The female members of the foundation are such virtuous and honorable women that such immoral actions could have no connection with reality.

 The statement denies the claims related to cocaine as well, indicating that Adnan Hoca instilled patriotism and moral values in many young people. The cocaine reportedly found in Adnan Hoca's blood in 1991 was given to him through food and drink while in custody.

Source: http://stephenlaw.blogspot.com/2008/10/invitation-to-meet-mr-oktar-yahya.html

Why I am an Ex-Muslim, Part #1

2008-11-03T07:49:00.001-08:00

By Tauriq Moosa

Whilst I find biographical writing egotistical in most cases, I hope to indulge here in a trajectory of thought rather than a life. I hope to show my own severing of the Islamic veil, which shrouded everything within its bleak dichotomous imagery, and how it is that ex-Muslims are a rarity. Though we are growing in number, there are not many who are willing to openly criticise Islam - I consider this to be part laziness, part apathy and part incredulity by "moderate" Muslims.The major reasons and criticisms will be dealt with in the second part.

Is it racist to loathe some one's nonevidential-based and metaphysical beliefs? I do not think so. If this were true, I'd be considered alongside the person who decided "Whites Only" was a good sign to make on park-benches. We do not find black people declaring themselves ex-black, or white people declaring themselves ex-white. To say then that I am a racist is incorrect. I was Muslim, now I am no longer.

The question then is why declare oneself by what one is not. Why focus on being an ex-Muslim?

Power in Words

Defining oneself by a negative is something we as sceptics and atheists often have to puzzle over. Indeed, such a sentence might itself preclude this notion. I have said and I will continue to say that atheism is not a thing, a group, a set of goals. It is not a group of people clamouring for their world view to be adopted, since it is not a world-view. It comes close to be meaninglessness as air comes to being an ocean breeze. Indeed, the harshest critiques of labelling arises from amongst the "upper" echelons of the pursuit of reason.

Sam Harris in his address at Atheist Alliance in 2007, picks up on this theme of racism and atheism too, when he states:

Attaching a label to something carries real liabilities, especially if the thing you are naming isn't really a thing at all. And atheism, I would argue, is not a thing. It is not a philosophy, just as "non-racism" is not one. Atheism is not a worldview—and yet most people imagine it to be one and attack it as such. We who do not believe in God are collaborating in this misunderstanding by consenting to be named and by even naming ourselves. So, let me make my somewhat seditious proposal explicit: We should not call ourselves "atheists." We should not call ourselves "secularists." … "humanists," or "secular humanists," or "naturalists," or "skeptics," or "anti-theists," or "rationalists," or "freethinkers," or "brights."

We should not call ourselves anything. We should go under the radar—for the rest of our lives. And while there, we should be decent, responsible people who destroy bad ideas wherever we find them.

No doubt, my dear readers, some of you will already have objections to this. Whilst I am not dealing with atheism in general, the application to ex-Muslim can be seen as a two-pronged defence: To labeling ourselves atheists and maintaining the use of ex-Muslim.

The main reason: No, there is no such thing as non-racism. But there was a very prominent, destructive, irrational and un-evidential claim known as racism. But we can not deny the activism of "black consciousness"; No reasonable person today would support my country's history of apartheid. Yet during that time, people proudly - but sometimes in secrete for fear of reprisal - called themselves "anti-apartheid activists". Yet would any of us today call ourselves "anti-apartheid", well yes, if there was an apartheid to oppose.

Similarly, the tide must turn with faith. I believe it must be eradicated, for good if we are to even grasp at the near-infinite beauty of a good life. No: We do not call ourselves non-astrologers, as Harris states. Nonetheless, just as it needed activism to render most people's accepted world-view of "race" into something aversive, I think it will take such "activism" to render faith into the vice it is. But this is for another article.

I believe, then, that the use of reason effectively dealt with racism, such that only stragglers and madmen could present themselves proudly as racists today. Similarly, with faith: It too is a great retardation of intelligence. But one so great that even those who do not have "faith" sometimes think it must be sacred, left to its own devices, "it's not harming anyone" (those I call IDGAFS¹).

And a form of faith that has coiled into a great fist, smashing the ground beneath our feet, is Islam. All religions have their horrors and their extremists, no one denies this. Essentially, it is our main point in critiquing it: Religion is man-made. That must be religion's most salient and nocuous property.

And no more so demonstrated than through the repugnant, almost childish knee-jerk reactions from fundamentalist Muslims. Having unwoven the threads of caustic intellectual abuse, by the hands of the vice of faith, I can finally step back to see this for what it is. But there are no woods to step out of to see trees of respect, love, or reason. Faith would have us cover our eyes and just nod to shadows. Islam, being what it is, as dangerous as it is, would send those shadows out to fight. It is time to fight back.

We know what a terrible darkness such shadows of truth hold.

The Triumph of Reason

I can admit something I was never very proud of before: I do not think I ever truly believed in a god or afterlife. Along with probably most of you, I am the addressee of Pascal's Pensées: He who is so made that he can not believe. I learnt the Quran - and still know it - from beginning to end. I can read and write in Arabic. It is a very beautiful language and the incredible aesthetic beauty of its script no less appealing.

But what does the Quran say? If you had asked me that after I had read it the first time, then proceeded to memorise it, I would have stared at you blankly.

As we speak, there are approximately 1.2 billion Muslims in the world, comprising 22% of world. The results may vary but we can assume this: There's a lot. Of those, I'm an uncertain how many of those are children of Muslim parents (did you flinch when you thought of "Muslim children"?). We can safely say though that millions of children around the world are taught to read, learn and recite in Arabic without understanding a word they're saying.

I did not know I was reading this, when I recited:

98:6 Lo! those who disbelieve, among the People of the Scripture and the idolaters, will abide in fire of hell. They are the worst of created beings.

88:23-24 But whoso is averse and disbelieveth /Allah will punish him with direst punishment.

These are mere tips of growing icebergs, as fundamentalists freeze ancient ideas into growing pandemics of destruction.

Perhaps your own thoughts can formulate on why it is dangerous to learn in a language you essentially do not speak, to learn sentences you would not condone. I do not condone murder or destruction or harm to any person, yet here I was, learning verses spoken by "Allah Himself" (via Jibreel, to Muhammad, to the scribes, to etc.). Who was I to question my duty as a Muslim?

I attended seven madrassas. At each one, I was physically abused by the jaded jackals of god's word. If we did not pronounce certain Arabic letters correctly, our fingers were bleeding after a good dose of punishment by a cane. We yelled at, screamed at, hair was torn out in anger as were not feeling Allah's power and grace and beauty. It is neither hard nor uncommon to consider such occurences and perhaps that's what makes it so wrong. A lot of my ex-Muslim friends also went through similar conditions. All this amidst a growing society, fresh from the battle against oppression - a society still licking its war-wounds and scrambling for some semblance of stability.

I neither consider myself scarred, harmed or abused to any great degree. I am neither angry at those men nor wish them harm. In a sense, I thank them for instilling the most powerful seed that resides in the human mind: Doubt.

We all know the foundation for stable thought in analysis begins with Cogito ergo sum. Yet, we must also remeber Dubito ergo Cogito (I doubt, therefore I think), THEN Cogito ergo sum. I found myself wondering, if god's love is so great, if his power so immense, why do I constantly feel nothing but the biting cain against my knuckles?; Why do I feel nothing but paper when I touch the Quran?; and where is that rapturous experience that exudes from all the imams and mullahs I had interacted with?

It was then that stumbled across the most important book in my life: The Satanic Verses. It was to render that doubt into reason, to turn my apathy into action and so stabilise why I think being an outspoken ex-Muslim is important…

ENDNOTES

^______

1. Idgafs are not necessarily "not giving a frack", as the term suggests, but they are primarily nonbelievers who treat faith as something that should not be attacked, mocked, criticised, or at least attempted to be understood using emotion. Most nonbelievers I know are like this, even though they would be supporting me in any other area to promote reason.

Was Darwin Wrong?

2008-10-17T10:24:00.001-07:00

By David Quammen

Evolution by natural selection, the central concept of the life's work of Charles Darwin, is a theory. It's a theory about the origin of adaptation, complexity, and diversity among Earth's living creatures. If you are skeptical by nature, unfamiliar with the terminology of science, and unaware of the overwhelming evidence, you might even be tempted to say that it's "just" a theory. In the same sense, relativity as described by Albert Einstein is "just" a theory. The notion that Earth orbits around the sun rather than vice versa, offered by Copernicus in 1543, is a theory. Continental drift is a theory. The existence, structure, and dynamics of atoms? Atomic theory. Even electricity is a theoretical construct, involving electrons, which are tiny units of charged mass that no one has ever seen. Each of these theories is an explanation that has been confirmed to such a degree, by observation and experiment, that knowledgeable experts accept it as fact. That's what scientists mean when they talk about a theory: not a dreamy and unreliable speculation, but an explanatory statement that fits the evidence. They embrace such an explanation confidently but provisionally—taking it as their best available view of reality, at least until some severely conflicting data or some better explanation might come along.

The rest of us generally agree. We plug our televisions into little wall sockets, measure a year by the length of Earth's orbit, and in many other ways live our lives based on the trusted reality of those theories.

Evolutionary theory, though, is a bit different. It's such a dangerously wonderful and far-reaching view of life that some people find it unacceptable, despite the vast body of supporting evidence. As applied to our own species, Homo sapiens, it can seem more threatening still. Many fundamentalist Christians and ultraorthodox Jews take alarm at the thought that human descent from earlier primates contradicts a strict reading of the Book of Genesis. Their discomfort is paralleled by Islamic creationists such as Harun Yahya, author of a recent volume titled The Evolution Deceit, who points to the six-day creation story in the Koran as literal truth and calls the theory of evolution "nothing but a deception imposed on us by the dominators of the world system." The late Srila Prabhupada, of the Hare Krishna movement, explained that God created "the 8,400,000 species of life from the very beginning," in order to establish multiple tiers of reincarnation for rising souls. Although souls ascend, the species themselves don't change, he insisted, dismissing "Darwin's nonsensical theory."

Other people too, not just scriptural literalists, remain unpersuaded about evolution. According to a Gallup poll drawn from more than a thousand telephone interviews conducted in February 2001, no less than 45 percent of responding U.S. adults agreed that "God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so." Evolution, by their lights, played no role in shaping us.

Only 37 percent of the polled Americans were satisfied with allowing room for both God and Darwin—that is, divine initiative to get things started, evolution as the creative means. (This view, according to more than one papal pronouncement, is compatible with Roman Catholic dogma.) Still fewer Americans, only 12 percent, believed that humans evolved from other life-forms without any involvement of a god.

The most startling thing about these poll numbers is not that so many Americans reject evolution, but that the statistical breakdown hasn't changed much in two decades. Gallup interviewers posed exactly the same choices in 1982, 1993, 1997, and 1999. The creationist conviction—that God alone, and not evolution, produced humans—has never drawn less than 44 percent. In other words, nearly half the American populace prefers to believe that Charles Darwin was wrong where it mattered most.

Why are there so many antievolutionists? Scriptural literalism can only be part of the answer. The American public certainly includes a large segment of scriptural literalists—but not that large, not 44 percent. Creationist proselytizers and political activists, working hard to interfere with the teaching of evolutionary biology in public schools, are another part. Honest confusion and ignorance, among millions of adult Americans, must be still another. Many people have never taken a biology course that dealt with evolution nor read a book in which the theory was lucidly explained. Sure, we've all heard of Charles Darwin, and of a vague, somber notion about struggle and survival that sometimes goes by the catchall label "Darwinism." But the main sources of information from which most Americans have drawn their awareness of this subject, it seems, are haphazard ones at best: cultural osmosis, newspaper and magazine references, half-baked nature documentaries on the tube, and hearsay.

Evolution is both a beautiful concept and an important one, more crucial nowadays to human welfare, to medical science, and to our understanding of the world than ever before. It's also deeply persuasive—a theory you can take to the bank. The essential points are slightly more complicated than most people assume, but not so complicated that they can't be comprehended by any attentive person. Furthermore, the supporting evidence is abundant, various, ever increasing, solidly interconnected, and easily available in museums, popular books, textbooks, and a mountainous accumulation of peer-reviewed scientific studies. No one needs to, and no one should, accept evolution merely as a matter of faith.

Two big ideas, not just one, are at issue: the evolution of all species, as a historical phenomenon, and natural selection, as the main mechanism causing that phenomenon. The first is a question of what happened. The second is a question of how. The idea that all species are descended from common ancestors had been suggested by other thinkers, including Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, long before Darwin published The Origin of Species in 1859. What made Darwin's book so remarkable when it appeared, and so influential in the long run, was that it offered a rational explanation of how evolution must occur. The same insight came independently to Alfred Russel Wallace, a young naturalist doing fieldwork in the Malay Archipelago during the late 1850s. In historical annals, if not in the popular awareness, Wallace and Darwin share the kudos for having discovered natural selection.

The gist of the concept is that small, random, heritable differences among individuals result in different chances of survival and reproduction—success for some, death without offspring for others—and that this natural culling leads to significant changes in shape, size, strength, armament, color, biochemistry, and behavior among the descendants. Excess population growth drives the competitive struggle. Because less successful competitors produce fewer surviving offspring, the useless or negative variations tend to disappear, whereas the useful variations tend to be perpetuated and gradually magnified throughout a population.

So much for one part of the evolutionary process, known as anagenesis, during which a single species is transformed. But there's also a second part, known as speciation. Genetic changes sometimes accumulate within an isolated segment of a species, but not throughout the whole, as that isolated population adapts to its local conditions. Gradually it goes its own way, seizing a new ecological niche. At a certain point it becomes irreversibly distinct—that is, so different that its members can't interbreed with the rest. Two species now exist where formerly there was one. Darwin called that splitting-and-specializing phenomenon the "principle of divergence." It was an important part of his theory, explaining the overall diversity of life as well as the adaptation of individual species.

This thrilling and radical assemblage of concepts came from an unlikely source. Charles Darwin was shy and meticulous, a wealthy landowner with close friends among the Anglican clergy. He had a gentle, unassuming manner, a strong need for privacy, and an extraordinary commitment to intellectual honesty. As an undergraduate at Cambridge, he had studied halfheartedly toward becoming a clergyman himself, before he discovered his real vocation as a scientist. Later, having established a good but conventional reputation in natural history, he spent 22 years secretly gathering evidence and pondering arguments—both for and against his theory—because he didn't want to flame out in a burst of unpersuasive notoriety. He may have delayed, too, because of his anxiety about announcing a theory that seemed to challenge conventional religious beliefs—in particular, the Christian beliefs of his wife, Emma. Darwin himself quietly renounced Christianity during his middle age, and later described himself as an agnostic. He continued to believe in a distant, impersonal deity of some sort, a greater entity that had set the universe and its laws into motion, but not in a personal God who had chosen humanity as a specially favored species. Darwin avoided flaunting his lack of religious faith, at least partly in deference to Emma. And she prayed for his soul.

In 1859 he finally delivered his revolutionary book. Although it was hefty and substantive at 490 pages, he considered The Origin of Species just a quick-and-dirty "abstract" of the huge volume he had been working on until interrupted by an alarming event. (In fact, he'd wanted to title it An Abstract of an Essay on the Origin of Species
and Varieties Through Natural Selection, but his publisher found that insufficiently catchy.) The alarming event was his receiving a letter and an enclosed manuscript from Alfred Wallace, whom he knew only as a distant pen pal. Wallace's manuscript sketched out the same great idea—evolution by natural selection—that Darwin considered his own. Wallace had scribbled this paper and (unaware of Darwin's own evolutionary thinking, which so far had been kept private) mailed it to him from the Malay Archipelago, along with a request for reaction and help. Darwin was horrified. After two decades of painstaking effort, now he'd be scooped. Or maybe not quite. He forwarded Wallace's paper toward publication, though managing also to assert his own prior claim by releasing two excerpts from his unpublished work. Then he dashed off The Origin, his "abstract" on the subject. Unlike Wallace, who was younger and less meticulous, Darwin recognized the importance of providing an edifice of supporting evidence and logic.

The evidence, as he presented it, mostly fell within four categories: biogeography, paleontology, embryology, and morphology. Biogeography is the study of the geographical distribution of living creatures—that is, which species inhabit which parts of the planet and why. Paleontology investigates extinct life-forms, as revealed in the fossil record. Embryology examines the revealing stages of development (echoing earlier stages of evolutionary history) that embryos pass through before birth or hatching; at a stretch, embryology also concerns the immature forms of animals that metamorphose, such as the larvae of insects. Morphology is the science of anatomical shape and design. Darwin devoted sizable sections of The Origin of Species to these categories.

Biogeography, for instance, offered a great pageant of peculiar facts and patterns. Anyone who considers the biogeographical data, Darwin wrote, must be struck by the mysterious clustering pattern among what he called "closely allied" species—that is, similar creatures sharing roughly the same body plan. Such closely allied species tend to be found on the same continent (several species of zebras in Africa) or within the same group of oceanic islands (dozens of species of honeycreepers in Hawaii, 13 species of Galápagos finch), despite their species-by-species preferences for different habitats, food sources, or conditions of climate. Adjacent areas of South America, Darwin noted, are occupied by two similar species of large, flightless birds (the rheas, Rhea americana and Pterocnemia pennata), not by ostriches as in Africa or emus as in Australia. South America also has agoutis and viscachas (small rodents) in terrestrial habitats, plus coypus and capybaras in the wetlands, not—as Darwin wrote—hares and rabbits in terrestrial habitats or beavers and muskrats in the wetlands. During his own youthful visit to the Galápagos, aboard the survey ship Beagle, Darwin himself had discovered three very similar forms of mockingbird, each on a different island.

Why should "closely allied" species inhabit neighboring patches of habitat? And why should similar habitat on different continents be occupied by species that aren't so closely allied? "We see in these facts some deep organic bond, prevailing throughout space and time," Darwin wrote. "This bond, on my theory, is simply inheritance." Similar species occur nearby in space because they have descended from common ancestors.

Paleontology reveals a similar clustering pattern in the dimension of time. The vertical column of geologic strata, laid down by sedimentary processes over the eons, lightly peppered with fossils, represents a tangible record showing which species lived when. Less ancient layers of rock lie atop more ancient ones (except where geologic forces have tipped or shuffled them), and likewise with the animal and plant fossils that the strata contain. What Darwin noticed about this record is that closely allied species tend to be found adjacent to one another in successive strata. One species endures for millions of years and then makes its last appearance in, say, the middle Eocene epoch; just above, a similar but not identical species replaces it. In North America, for example, a vaguely horselike creature known as Hyracotherium was succeeded by Orohippus, then Epihippus, then Mesohippus, which in turn were succeeded by a variety of horsey American critters. Some of them even galloped across the Bering land bridge into Asia, then onward to Europe and Africa. By five million years ago they had nearly all disappeared, leaving behind Dinohippus, which was succeeded by Equus, the modern genus of horse. Not all these fossil links had been unearthed in Darwin's day, but he captured the essence of the matter anyway. Again, were such sequences just coincidental? No, Darwin argued. Closely allied species succeed one another in time, as well as living nearby in space, because they're related through evolutionary descent.

Embryology too involved patterns that couldn't be explained by coincidence. Why does the embryo of a mammal pass through stages resembling stages of the embryo of a reptile? Why is one of the larval forms of a barnacle, before metamorphosis, so similar to the larval form of a shrimp? Why do the larvae of moths, flies, and beetles resemble one another more than any of them resemble their respective adults? Because, Darwin wrote, "the embryo is the animal in its less modified state" and that state "reveals the structure of its progenitor."

Morphology, his fourth category of evidence, was the "very soul" of natural history, according to Darwin. Even today it's on display in the layout and organization of any zoo. Here are the monkeys, there are the big cats, and in that building are the alligators and crocodiles. Birds in the aviary, fish in the aquarium. Living creatures can be easily sorted into a hierarchy of categories—not just species but genera, families, orders, whole kingdoms—based on which anatomical characters they share and which they don't.

All vertebrate animals have backbones. Among vertebrates, birds have feathers, whereas reptiles have scales. Mammals have fur and mammary glands, not feathers or scales. Among mammals, some have pouches in which they nurse their tiny young. Among these species, the marsupials, some have huge rear legs and strong tails by which they go hopping across miles of arid outback; we call them kangaroos. Bring in modern microscopic and molecular evidence, and you can trace the similarities still further back. All plants and fungi, as well as animals, have nuclei within their cells. All living organisms contain DNA and RNA (except some viruses with RNA only), two related forms of information-coding molecules.

Such a pattern of tiered resemblances—groups of similar species nested within broader groupings, and all descending from a single source—isn't naturally present among other collections of items. You won't find anything equivalent if you try to categorize rocks, or musical instruments, or jewelry. Why not? Because rock types and styles of jewelry don't reflect unbroken descent from common ancestors. Biological diversity does. The number of shared characteristics between any one species and another indicates how recently those two species have diverged from a shared lineage.

That insight gave new meaning to the task of taxonomic classification, which had been founded in its modern form back in 1735 by the Swedish naturalist Carolus Linnaeus. Linnaeus showed how species could be systematically classified, according to their shared similarities, but he worked from creationist assumptions that offered no material explanation for the nested pattern he found. In the early and middle 19th century, morphologists such as Georges Cuvier and Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire in France and Richard Owen in England improved classification with their meticulous studies of internal as well as external anatomies, and tried to make sense of what the ultimate source of these patterned similarities could be. Not even Owen, a contemporary and onetime friend of Darwin's (later in life they had a bitter falling out), took the full step to an evolutionary vision before The Origin of Species was published. Owen made a major contribution, though, by advancing the concept of homologues—that is, superficially different but fundamentally similar versions of a single organ or trait, shared by dissimilar species.

For instance, the five-digit skeletal structure of the vertebrate hand appears not just in humans and apes and raccoons and bears but also, variously modified, in cats and bats and porpoises and lizards and turtles. The paired bones of our lower leg, the tibia and the fibula, are also represented by homologous bones in other mammals and in reptiles, and even in the long-extinct bird-reptile Archaeopteryx. What's the reason behind such varied recurrence of a few basic designs? Darwin, with a nod to Owen's "most interesting work," supplied the answer: common descent, as shaped by natural selection, modifying the inherited basics for different circumstances.

Vestigial characteristics are still another form of morphological evidence, illuminating to contemplate because they show that the living world is full of small, tolerable imperfections. Why do male mammals (including human males) have nipples? Why do some snakes (notably boa constrictors) carry the rudiments of a pelvis and tiny legs buried inside their sleek profiles? Why do certain species of flightless beetle have wings, sealed beneath wing covers that never open? Darwin raised all these questions, and answered them, in The Origin of Species. Vestigial structures stand as remnants of the evolutionary history of a lineage.

Today the same four branches of biological science from which Darwin drew—biogeography, paleontology, embryology, morphology—embrace an ever growing body of supporting data. In addition to those categories we now have others: population genetics, biochemistry, molecular biology, and, most recently, the whiz-bang field of machine-driven genetic sequencing known as genomics. These new forms of knowledge overlap one another seamlessly and intersect with the older forms, strengthening the whole edifice, contributing further to the certainty that Darwin was right.

He was right about evolution, that is. He wasn't right about everything. Being a restless explainer, Darwin floated a number of theoretical notions during his long working life, some of which were mistaken and illusory. He was wrong about what causes variation within a species. He was wrong about a famous geologic mystery, the parallel shelves along a Scottish valley called Glen Roy. Most notably, his theory of inheritance—which he labeled pangenesis and cherished despite its poor reception among his biologist colleagues—turned out to be dead wrong. Fortunately for Darwin, the correctness of his most famous good idea stood independent of that particular bad idea. Evolution by natural selection represented Darwin at his best—which is to say, scientific observation and careful thinking at its best.

Douglas Futuyma is a highly respected evolutionary biologist, author of textbooks as well as influential research papers. His office, at the University of Michigan, is a long narrow room in the natural sciences building, well stocked with journals and books, including volumes about the conflict between creationism and evolution. I arrived carrying a well-thumbed copy of his own book on that subject, Science on Trial: The Case for Evolution. Killing time in the corridor before our appointment, I noticed a blue flyer on a departmental bulletin board, seeming oddly placed there amid the announcements of career opportunities for graduate students. "Creation vs. evolution," it said. "A series of messages challenging popular thought with Biblical truth and scientific evidences." A traveling lecturer from something called the Origins Research Association would deliver these messages at a local Baptist church. Beside the lecturer's photo was a drawing of a dinosaur. "Free pizza following the evening service," said a small line at the bottom. Dinosaurs, biblical truth, and pizza: something for everybody.

In response to my questions about evidence, Dr. Futuyma moved quickly through the traditional categories—paleontology, biogeography—and talked mostly about modern genetics. He pulled out his heavily marked copy of the journal Nature for February 15, 2001, a historic issue, fat with articles reporting and analyzing the results of the Human Genome Project. Beside it he slapped down a more recent issue of Nature, this one devoted to the sequenced genome of the house mouse, Mus musculus. The headline of the lead editorial announced: "HUMAN BIOLOGY BY PROXY." The mouse genome effort, according to Nature's editors, had revealed "about 30,000 genes, with 99% having direct counterparts in humans."

The resemblance between our 30,000 human genes and those 30,000 mousy counterparts, Futuyma explained, represents another form of homology, like the resemblance between a five-fingered hand and a five-toed paw. Such genetic homology is what gives meaning to biomedical research using mice and other animals, including chimpanzees, which (to their sad misfortune) are our closest living relatives.

No aspect of biomedical research seems more urgent today than the study of microbial diseases. And the dynamics of those microbes within human bodies, within human populations, can only be understood in terms of evolution.

Nightmarish illnesses caused by microbes include both the infectious sort (AIDS, Ebola, SARS) that spread directly from person to person and the sort (malaria, West Nile fever) delivered to us by biting insects or other intermediaries. The capacity for quick change among disease-causing microbes is what makes them so dangerous to large numbers of people and so difficult and expensive to treat. They leap from wildlife or domestic animals into humans, adapting to new circumstances as they go. Their inherent variability allows them to find new ways of evading and defeating human immune systems. By natural selection they acquire resistance to drugs that should kill them. They evolve. There's no better or more immediate evidence supporting the Darwinian theory than this process of forced transformation among our inimical germs.

Take the common bacterium Staphylococcus aureus, which lurks in hospitals and causes serious infections, especially among surgery patients. Penicillin, becoming available in 1943, proved almost miraculously effective in fighting staphylococcus infections. Its deployment marked a new phase in the old war between humans and disease microbes, a phase in which humans invent new killer drugs and microbes find new ways to be unkillable. The supreme potency of penicillin didn't last long. The first resistant strains of Staphylococcus aureus were reported in 1947. A newer staph-killing drug, methicillin, came into use during the 1960s, but methicillin-resistant strains appeared soon, and by the 1980s those strains were widespread. Vancomycin became the next great weapon against staph, and the first vancomycin-resistant strain emerged in 2002. These antibiotic-resistant strains represent an evolutionary series, not much different in principle from the fossil series tracing horse evolution from Hyracotherium to Equus. They make evolution a very practical problem by adding expense, as well as misery and danger, to the challenge of coping with staph.

The biologist Stephen Palumbi has calculated the cost of treating penicillin-resistant and methicillin-resistant staph infections, just in the United States, at 30 billion dollars a year. "Antibiotics exert a powerful evolutionary force," he wrote last year, "driving infectious bacteria to evolve powerful defenses against all but the most recently invented drugs." As reflected in their DNA, which uses the same genetic code found in humans and horses and hagfish and honeysuckle, bacteria are part of the continuum of life, all shaped and diversified by evolutionary forces.

Even viruses belong to that continuum. Some viruses evolve quickly, some slowly. Among the fastest is HIV, because its method of replicating itself involves a high rate of mutation, and those mutations allow the virus to assume new forms. After just a few years of infection and drug treatment, each HIV patient carries a unique version of the virus. Isolation within one infected person, plus differing conditions and the struggle to survive, forces each version of HIV to evolve independently. It's nothing but a speeded up and microscopic case of what Darwin saw in the Galápagos—except that each human body is an island, and the newly evolved forms aren't so charming as finches or mockingbirds.

Understanding how quickly HIV acquires resistance to antiviral drugs, such as AZT, has been crucial to improving treatment by way of multiple drug cocktails. "This approach has reduced deaths due to HIV by severalfold since 1996," according to Palumbi, "and it has greatly slowed the evolution of this disease within patients."

Insects and weeds acquire resistance to our insecticides and herbicides through the same process. As we humans try to poison them, evolution by natural selection transforms the population of a mosquito or thistle into a new sort of creature, less vulnerable to that particular poison. So we invent another poison, then another. It's a futile effort. Even DDT, with its ferocious and long-lasting effects throughout ecosystems, produced resistant house flies within a decade of its discovery in 1939. By 1990 more than 500 species (including 114 kinds of mosquitoes) had acquired resistance to at least one pesticide. Based on these undesired results, Stephen Palumbi has commented glumly, "humans may be the world's dominant evolutionary force."

Among most forms of living creatures, evolution proceeds slowly—too slowly to be observed by a single scientist within a research lifetime. But science functions by inference, not just by direct observation, and the inferential sorts of evidence such as paleontology and biogeography are no less cogent simply because they're indirect. Still, skeptics of evolutionary theory ask: Can we see evolution in action? Can it be observed in the wild? Can it be measured in the laboratory?

The answer is yes. Peter and Rosemary Grant, two British-born researchers who have spent decades where Charles Darwin spent weeks, have captured a glimpse of evolution with their long-term studies of beak size among Galápagos finches. William R. Rice and George W. Salt achieved something similar in their lab, through an experiment involving 35 generations of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. Richard E. Lenski and his colleagues at Michigan State University have done it too, tracking 20,000 generations of evolution in the bacterium Escherichia coli. Such field studies and lab experiments document anagenesis—that is, slow evolutionary change within a single, unsplit lineage. With patience it can be seen, like the movement of a minute hand on a clock.

Speciation, when a lineage splits into two species, is the other major phase of evolutionary change, making possible the divergence between lineages about which Darwin wrote. It's rarer and more elusive even than anagenesis. Many individual mutations must accumulate (in most cases, anyway, with certain exceptions among plants) before two populations become irrevocably separated. The process is spread across thousands of generations, yet it may finish abruptly—like a door going slam!—when the last critical changes occur. Therefore it's much harder to witness. Despite the difficulties, Rice and Salt seem to have recorded a speciation event, or very nearly so, in their extended experiment on fruit flies. From a small stock of mated females they eventually produced two distinct fly populations adapted to different habitat conditions, which the researchers judged "incipient species."

After my visit with Douglas Futuyma in Ann Arbor, I spent two hours at the university museum there with Philip D. Gingerich, a paleontologist well-known for his work on the ancestry of whales. As we talked, Gingerich guided me through an exhibit of ancient cetaceans on the museum's second floor. Amid weird skeletal shapes that seemed almost chimerical (some hanging overhead, some in glass cases) he pointed out significant features and described the progress of thinking about whale evolution. A burly man with a broad open face and the gentle manner of a scoutmaster, Gingerich combines intellectual passion and solid expertise with one other trait that's valuable in a scientist: a willingness to admit when he's wrong.

Since the late 1970s Gingerich has collected fossil specimens of early whales from remote digs in Egypt and Pakistan. Working with Pakistani colleagues, he discovered Pakicetus, a terrestrial mammal dating from 50 million years ago, whose ear bones reflect its membership in the whale lineage but whose skull looks almost doglike. A former student of Gingerich's, Hans Thewissen, found a slightly more recent form with webbed feet, legs suitable for either walking or swimming, and a long toothy snout. Thewissen called it Ambulocetus natans, or the "walking-and-swimming whale." Gingerich and his team turned up several more, including Rodhocetus balochistanensis, which was fully a sea creature, its legs more like flippers, its nostrils shifted backward on the snout, halfway to the blowhole position on a modern whale. The sequence of known forms was becoming more and more complete. And all along, Gingerich told me, he leaned toward believing that whales had descended from a group of carnivorous Eocene mammals known as mesonychids, with cheek teeth useful for chewing meat and bone. Just a bit more evidence, he thought, would confirm that relationship. By the end of the 1990s most paleontologists agreed.

Meanwhile, molecular biologists had explored the same question and arrived at a different answer. No, the match to those Eocene carnivores might be close, but not close enough. DNA hybridization and other tests suggested that whales had descended from artiodactyls (that is, even-toed herbivores, such as antelopes and hippos), not from meat-eating mesonychids.

In the year 2000 Gingerich chose a new field site in Pakistan, where one of his students found a single piece of fossil that changed the prevailing view in paleontology. It was half of a pulley-shaped anklebone, known as an astragalus, belonging to another new species of whale.

A Pakistani colleague found the fragment's other half. When Gingerich fitted the two pieces together, he had a moment of humbling recognition: The molecular biologists were right. Here was an anklebone, from a four-legged whale dating back 47 million years, that closely resembled the homologus anklebone in an artiodactyls. Suddenly he realized how closely whales are related to antelopes.

This is how science is supposed to work. Ideas come and go, but the fittest survive. Downstairs in his office Phil Gingerich opened a specimen drawer, showing me some of the actual fossils from which the display skeletons upstairs were modeled. He put a small lump of petrified bone, no longer than a lug nut, into my hand. It was the famous astragalus, from the species he had eventually named Artiocetus clavis. It felt solid and heavy as truth.

Seeing me to the door, Gingerich volunteered something personal: "I grew up in a conservative church in the Midwest and was not taught anything about evolution. The subject was clearly skirted. That helps me understand the people who are skeptical about it. Because I come from that tradition myself." He shares the same skeptical instinct. Tell him that there's an ancestral connection between land animals and whales, and his reaction is: Fine, maybe. But show me the intermediate stages. Like Charles Darwin, the onetime divinity student, who joined that round-the –world voyage aboard the Beagle instead of becoming a country parson, and whose grand view of life on Earth was shaped by attention to small facts, Phil Gingerich is a reverant empiricist. He's not satisfied until he sees solid data. That's what excites his so much about pulling shale fossils out of the ground. In 30 years he has seen enough to be satisfied. For him, Gingerich said, it's "a spiritual experience."

"The evidence is there," he added. "It's buried in the rocks of ages."

Republished from National Geographic Magazine

Fish With First Neck Evolved Into Land Animal -- Slowly

2008-10-16T03:55:00.000-07:00

James Owen
for National Geographic News
October 15, 2008

The skull of a 375-million-year-old walking fish reveals new clues to how our fish ancestors evolved into land dwellers.

The fossil fish—called Tiktaalik roseae—was discovered in the Canadian Arctic in 2004 and provides the 'missing link' between fish and land vertebrates, according to scientists. It's also the proud owner of the world's first known neck.

read more at National Geographic News

Amnesty condemns Saudi executions

2008-10-14T02:56:00.001-07:00

By Christian Fraser

BBC Middle East correspondent

Executions in Saudi Arabia are being carried at an average rate of more than two a week, according to a new report by Amnesty International.

The human rights group says the rate of executions in the Kingdom has increased markedly in recent years.

In their report, they say foreign nationals bear the brunt of executions.

Saudi Arabia is also one of the few remaining countries to execute people for crimes they committed while under the age of 18.

On Friday in downtown Riyadh the crowds gather at Justice Square, outside the grand mosque. It is a place Westerners have dubbed "Chop Chop Square".

On the stage, awaiting the blade of the scimitar, stands the condemned. The death penalty in Saudi Arabia is beheading under the law of the sharia.

'Secret trials'

Although the Kingdom refuses to provide official statistics on how many people it kills each year, Amnesty International has recorded at least 1,695 executions between 1985 and May 2008.

Of these, 830 were foreign nationals - a highly disproportionate figure since foreigners only make up about a quarter of the country's population.

The rate of execution has increased, says the charity in its report "Affront to justice: Death penalty in Saudi Arabia", following an extension of the death penalty to crimes for drugs offences and corruption.

According to the report, the trials are often held secretly, foreigners would be unable to understand the proceedings because routinely they are denied access to a lawyer and, in some cases, they have no idea they have even been convicted.

Six Somalis beheaded this year were only told they were to be killed on the morning of their execution.

Confessions are usually extracted through torture, ranging from cigarette burns, to electric shocks, nail-pulling, beatings and threats to family members, Amnesty says.

It adds that, while pardons are sometimes granted, Saudi nationals are eight times more likely to escape execution through the payment of a diya or "blood money".

Republished from BBC News

Does science make belief in God obsolete? – Conversation 3

2008-10-12T02:21:00.001-07:00

A series of conversations among leading scientists and scholars.

Conversation 3 - Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy

Not necessarily.

But you must find a science-friendly, science-compatible God. First, try the pantheon of available Creators. Inspect thoroughly. If none fits the bill, invent one.

The God of your choice must be a stickler for divine principles. Science does not take kindly to a deity who, if piqued or euphoric, sets aside seismological or cosmological principles and causes the moon to shiver, the earth to split asunder, or the universe to suddenly reverse its expansion. This God must, among other things, be stoically indifferent to supplications for changing local meteorological conditions, the task having already been assigned to the discipline of fluid dynamics. Therefore, indigenous peoples, even if they dance with great energy around totem poles, shall not cause even a drop of rain to fall on parched soil. Your rule-abiding and science-respecting God equally well dispenses with tearful Christians singing the Book of Job, pious Hindus feverishly reciting the havan yajna, or earnest Muslims performing the salat-i-istisqa as they face the Holy Ka'aba. The equations of fluid flow, not the number of earnest supplicants or quality of their prayers, determine weather outcomes. This is slightly unfortunate because one could imagine joining the faithful of all religions in a huge simultaneous global prayer that wipes away the pernicious effects of anthropogenic global climate change.

Your chosen God cannot entertain private petitions for good health and longevity, prevent an air crash, or send woe upon demand to the enemy. Mindful of microbiology and physiology, She cannot cure leprosy by dipping the afflicted in rivers or have humans remain in unscathed condition after being devoured by a huge fish. Faster-than-light travel is also out of the question, even for prophets and special messengers. Instead, She must run the world lawfully and unto the letter, closely following the Book of Nature.

A scientific Creator should certainly know an awful lot of science. To differentiate between the countless universes offered by superstring theory is a headache. Fine-tuning chemistry to generate complex proteins, and then initiating a cascade of mutations that turn microbe to man, is also no trivial matter. But bear in mind that there are definite limits to divine knowledge: God can know only the knowable. Omniscience and science do not go well with each other.

The difficulty with omniscience—even with regard to a particle as humble as the electron—has been recognized as an issue since the 1920s. Subatomic particles show a vexing, subtle elusiveness that defeats even the most sophisticated effort to measure certain of their properties. Unpredictability is intrinsic to quantum mechanics, the branch of physics which all particles are empirically seen to obey. This discovery so disturbed Albert Einstein that he rejected quantum mechanics, pronouncing that God could not "play dice with the universe." But it turned out that Einstein's objections were flawed—uncertainty is deeply fundamental. Thus, any science-abiding deity we choose may be incompletely informed on at least some aspects of nature.

Is one being excessively audacious, perhaps impertinent, in setting down terms of reference for a Divine entity? Not really. Humans have always chosen their objects of worship. Smarter humans go for smarter Gods. Anthropomorphic representations—such as a God with octopus arms—are a bit out of fashion today but were enormously popular just a few centuries ago. As well, some people might object to binding God and human to the same rules of logic, or perhaps even sharing the same space-time manifold. But if we drop this essential demand then little shall remain. Reason and evidence would lose meaning and be replaced by tradition, authority, and revelation. It would then be wrong for us to have 2 + 2 = 5, but okay for God. Centuries of human progress would come to naught.

Let's face it: the day of the Sky God is long gone. In the Age of Science, religion has been downsized, and the medieval God of classical religions has lost repute and territory. Today people pay lip service to trusting that God but they still swallow antibiotics when sick. Muslim-run airlines start a plane journey with prayers but ask passengers to buckle-up anyway, and most suspect that people who appear to rise miraculously from the dead were probably not quite dead to begin with. These days if you hear a voice telling you to sacrifice your only son, you would probably report it to the authorities instead of taking the poor lad up a mountain. The old trust is disappearing.

Nevertheless, there remains the tantalizing prospect of a divine power somewhere "out there" who runs a mysterious, but scrupulously miracle-free, universe. In this universe, God may choose to act in ingenious ways that seem miraculous. Yet these "miracles" need not violate physical laws. Extraordinary, but legitimate, interventions in the physical world permit quantum tunneling through cosmic worm holes or certain symmetries to snap spontaneously. It would be perfectly fair for a science-savvy God to use nonlinear dynamics so that tiny fluctuations quickly build up to earthshaking results—the famous "butterfly effect" of deterministic chaos theory.

Nietzsche and the theothanatologists were plain wrong—God is neither dead nor about to die. Even as the divine habitat shrinks before the aggressive encroachment of science, the quantum foam of space-time creates spare universes aplenty, offering space both for a science-friendly God as well as for self-described "deeply religious non-believers" like Einstein. Many eminent practitioners of science have successfully persuaded themselves that there is no logical contradiction between faith and belief by finding a suitable God, or by clothing a traditional God appropriately. Unsure of why they happen to exist, humans are likely to scour the heavens forever in search of meaning.

Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy is chairman of the department of physics at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, Pakistan, and is the author of Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality.

In death's shadow

2008-10-11T09:07:00.000-07:00

Jul 24th 2008
From The Economist print edition

“CAN a person who is Muslim choose a religion other than Islam?” When Egypt’s grand mufti, Ali Gomaa, pondered that dilemma in an article published last year, many of his co-religionists were shocked that the question could even be asked.

And they were even more scandalised by his conclusion. The answer, he wrote, was yes, they can, in the light of three verses in the Koran: first, “Unto you your religion, and unto me my religion”; second, “Whosoever will, let him believe, and whosoever will, let him disbelieve”; and, most famously, “There is no compulsion in religion.”

The sheikh’s pronouncement was certainly not that of a wet liberal; he agrees that anyone who deserts Islam is committing a sin and will pay a price in the hereafter, and also that in some historical circumstances (presumably war between Muslims and non-Muslims) an individual’s sin may also amount to “sedition against one’s society”. But his opinion caused a sensation because it went against the political and judicial trends in many parts of the Muslim world, and also against the mood in places where Muslims feel defensive.

In the West, many prominent Muslims would agree with the mufti’s scripturally-based view that leaving Islam is a matter between the believer and God, not for the state. But awkwardly, the main traditions of scholarship and jurisprudence in Islam—both the Shia school and the four main Sunni ones—draw on Hadiths (words and deeds ascribed with varying credibility to Muhammad) to argue in support of death for apostates. And in recent years sentiment in the Muslim world has been hardening. In every big “apostasy” case, the authorities have faced pressure from sections of public opinion, and from Islamist factions, to take the toughest possible stance.

In Malaysia, people who try to desert Islam can face compulsory “re-education”. Under the far harsher regime of Afghanistan, death for apostasy is still on the statute book, despite the country’s American-backed “liberation” from the tyranny of the Taliban. The Western world realised this when Abdul Rahman, an Afghan who had lived in Germany, was sentenced to die after police found him with a Bible. After pressure from Western governments, he was allowed to go to Italy. What especially startled Westerners was the fact that Afghanistan’s parliament, a product of the democracy for which NATO soldiers are dying, tried to bar Mr Rahman’s exit, and that street protests called for his execution.

The fact that he fled to Italy is one of the factors that have made the issue of Muslim-Christian conversion a hot topic in that country. There are several others. During this year’s Easter celebrations, Magdi Allam, an Egyptian-born journalist who is now a columnist in Italy, was publicly baptised as a Catholic by Pope Benedict; the convert hailed his “liberation” from Islam, and has used his column to celebrate other cases of Muslims becoming Christian. To the delight of some Catholics and the dismay of others, he has defended the right of Christians to proselytise among Muslims, and denounced liberal churchmen who are “soft” on Islam.

Muslims in Italy and elsewhere have called Mr Allam a provocateur and chided Pope Benedict for abetting him. But given that many of Italy’s Muslims are converts (and beneficiaries of Europe’s tolerance), Mr Allam says his critics are hypocrites, denying him a liberty which they themselves have enjoyed.

If there is any issue on which Islam’s diaspora—experiencing the relative calmness of inter-faith relations in the West—might be able to give a clearer moral lead, it is surely this one. But even in the West, speaking out for the legal and civil right to “apostasise” can carry a cost. Usama Hasan, an influential young British imam, recently made the case for the right to change religions—only to find himself furiously denounced and threatened on Islamist websites, many of them produced in the West.

Moroccan theologian: Muslim girls can wed at nine

2008-10-10T01:40:00.000-07:00

Sheikh Maghraoui reiterates his claims are based on Prophet Mohammad’s sayings.

RABAT - A Moroccan theologian repeated his claims that Muslim girls could marry as early as nine years old, arguing it was sanctioned by the Prophet Mohammed.

"The marriage of nine-year-old girls is not forbidden because according to the Hadith (the Prophet Mohammed's sayings), Mohammed married Aisha when she was only seven-years-old and he consummated his union when she was nine," wrote Sheikh Mohamed Ben Abderrahman Al-Maghraoui on his website (Maghrawi.net).

"I am a confirmed theologian and I have not made this up. It is the prophet who said it before me," said the Marrakesh-based founder of a religious association.

"Those who criticise me, like the press or Moroccan television as well as the lawyer who filed the complaint (against me), are part of a secular attack against the Islamic nation and its theologians," he added.

Earlier this month, Rabat-based lawyer Mourad Bekkouri filed a complaint against Sheikh Maghraoui and his fatwa, which he said damages children's human rights, and the family and criminal code by increasing the risk of rape.

He said the theologian is undermining Islam and its followers and that he had requested the state prosecutor to speed up the case.

His views were backed by the left-wing newspaper Al Ittihad Al Ichtiraki, which claimed that "vicious theologians are today capable of putting religion in the service of paedophilia."

The views of Maghraoui, which contradict the teachings of mainstream Islam and the interpretation of the life Prophet Mohammed, has sparked anger and criticism among pious Muslims, who accused him of deliberately attempting to distort Islam.

Republished from: Middle East Online

Saudi cleric favours one-eye veil

2008-10-04T22:12:00.000-07:00

A Muslim cleric in Saudi Arabia has called on women to wear a full veil, or niqab, that reveals only one eye.

Sheikh Muhammad al-Habadan said showing both eyes encouraged women to use eye make-up to look seductive.

The question of how much of her face a woman should cover is a controversial topic in many Muslim societies.

The niqab is more common in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, but women in much of the Muslim Middle East wear a headscarf which covers only their hair.

Sheikh Habadan, an ultra-conservative cleric who is said to have wide influence among religious Saudis, was answering questions on the Muslim satellite channel al-Majd.

Republished from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7651231.stm

Rushdie unrepentant about Satanic Verses

2008-10-04T01:44:00.000-07:00

1st October 2008

Twenty years after the publication of the book that almost cost him his life, Sir Salman Rushdie is still glad that he wrote The Satanic Verses.

In the second of a series of interviews with leading cultural figures filmed exclusively for The Times, he tells Clive James that he “wouldn’t not have wanted” to be the writer asking the big questions about religion and civilisation posed by the book.

His remarks are uncomfortably pertinent, coming at a time when Muslim extremists have again driven a literary figure into hiding. This time the victim is Martin Rynja, a Dutch-born London publisher who had agreed to release The Jewel of Medina, a controversial novel by Sherry Jones about the Prophet Muhammad’s relationship with his nine-year-old bride, Aisha.

Mr Rynja’s home in Islington was firebombed in the early hours on Saturday. Undercover police tipped him off hours earlier and arrested three men from East London.

Rushdie criticised Random House, his own publisher, in August for refusing to publish the book in the United States , calling it “censorship by fear.”

The interview stretches beyond the fatwa against Rushdie. It ranges from the partition of India to how he played air-guitar Elvis on a squash racket when a child in Bombay.

Rushdie says he is an atheist who finds dead religions “much more attractive” but says he has nothing against true believers until their faith spills over into the public sphere and becomes “my business”.

The Times first reviewed The Satanic Verses 20 years ago today. The review carried no hint of the controversy to come but praised the book as “better than Midnight’s Children”, Rushdie’s Booker Prize-winning second novel.

The first sign of serious trouble came four days later when India banned the book after complaints that it was offensive to Muslims and protests began in Muslim communities around the world.

In February 1989 Ayatollah Khomeini, then supreme leader of Iran, issued a fatwa calling on all Muslims to murder Rushdie, and the writer went into hiding for the best part of ten years.

Rushdie says: “The question I’m always asking myself is: are we masters or victims? Do we make history or does history make us? Do we shape the world or are we just shaped by it? The question of do we have agency in our lives or whether we are just passive victims of events is, I think, a great question and one that I have always tried to ask. In that sense I wouldn’t not have wanted to be the writer that asked it.”

During his time in hiding there were explosions at bookshops in London, York and High Wycombe, the book’s Japanese translator was stabbed to death, its Italian translator survived a stabbing, its Norwegian publisher narrowly escaped an attempt on his life and 37 people died after a gang set fire to a Turkish hotel where the Turkish translator was staying (he survived).

The writer is more relaxed about his security today but the fatwa cannot be annulled, and when he was knighted last year protests in Pakistan and Malaysia called for his death. No wonder Rushdie prefers “dead religions”.

Republished from: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/clive_james/article4856150.ece

Saudi Arabia: Shia Minority Treated as Second-Class Citizens

2008-10-02T11:25:00.000-07:00

Wahhabi Authorities Discriminate Against Ismaili Citizens

(London, September 22, 2008) – The Saudi government should end its systematic discrimination against its Ismaili religious minority, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Human Rights Watch called upon the government to set up a national institution empowered to recommend remedies for discriminatory policies and responding to individual claims.

The 90-page report, “The Ismailis of Najran: Second-Class Saudi Citizens,” based on more than 150 interviews and reviews of official documents, documents a pattern of discrimination against the Ismailis in the areas of government employment, education, religious freedom, and the justice system.

“The Saudi government preaches religious tolerance abroad, but it has consistently penalized its Ismaili citizens for their religious beliefs,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “The government should stop treating Ismailis as second-class in employment, the justice system, and education.”

At least several hundred thousand, and perhaps as many as 1 million, Ismailis live in Saudi Arabia, part of the Shia minority in the Sunni-dominated country of 28 million. Most Ismailis live in Najran province, on Saudi Arabia’s southwestern border with Yemen, where tensions have been growing in recent years.

Saudi Arabia conquered Najran following a brief war with Yemen in 1934, incorporating into the kingdom the local Sulaimani Ismailis, one strand of Ismaili belief. Najran has been home to the highest Sulaimani Ismaili cleric, the Absolute Guide, since the 17th century.

Despite more than 70 years of shared history, Saudi authorities at the highest levels continue to propagate hate speech against this religious minority. In April 2007, the Council of Senior Religious Scholars, the body tasked with officially interpreting Islamic faith, ritual, and law, termed Ismailis “corrupt infidels, debauched atheists.” In August 2006, Saudi Arabia’s highest judge, Shaikh Salih al-Luhaidan, declared to an audience of hundreds that Ismailis “outwardly appear Islamic, but inwardly, they are infidels.” Other Saudi officials did not rebut or disown those statements.

Growing tension since the mid-1990s between Ismailis and Najran’s governor, Prince Mish’al bin Sa’ud bin Abd al-‘Aziz, led to clashes in April 2000, after the authorities arrested an Ismaili cleric they accused of “sorcery.” Security forces arrested hundreds of Ismailis, and tortured and secretly tried dozens of others. The authorities then purged some 400 Ismailis from the local bureaucracy.

Since then, local officials who have been sent to Najran from other parts of the country and reflecting the country’s dominant conservative Wahhabi Muslim ideology, have continued to discriminate against Ismailis in employment, education and the justice system, and interfered with their ability to practice their religion.

Only one of the 35 department heads of the Najran provincial government is an Ismaili. Almost no Ismailis work as senior security personnel or as religion teachers. Saudi textbooks teach that the Ismaili faith is a sin of “major polytheism,” tantamount to excommunication. Wahhabi teachers in Najran insult Ismaili pupils’ faith and try to convert them to Sunni Islam, even using threats of class failure and flogging.

Ismailis are not free to pass their religious teachings on to new generations. The authorities have at times exiled the Absolute Guide from Najran or placed him under house arrest. Saudi authorities also ban the import or production of Ismaili religious literature. Ismailis face obstacles in obtaining permits to build new mosques or expand existing ones, whereas the state funds and builds Sunni mosques in Najran, even in areas without a Sunni population.

The country’s Sharia judges, following Wahhabi beliefs, routinely discriminate against Ismailis on the basis of their faith. In March 2006, a judge annulled the marriage of an Ismaili man to a Sunni woman, saying that the man lacked religious qualification. In May 2006, another judge barred an Ismaili lawyer from representing his Sunni client.

“State-sponsored and officially tolerated discrimination against the Ismailis of Najran seriously threatens their identity and denies them basic rights,” Stork said. “The authorities are shutting them out from education, government employment, and professions.”

In July 2008, King Abdullah opened a well-publicized interfaith conference in Spain initiated by Saudi Arabia and attended by Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist religious leaders.

“The measure of Saudi religious tolerance will be its practice at home, not only what it preaches abroad,” Stork said.

Republished from:
http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2008/09/22/saudia19804.htm

Pakistan's rising 'Taliban' hits women's health

2008-10-01T05:05:00.000-07:00

Christina Lamb and Mohammed Shehzad, Peshawar

MALE doctors and technicians have been banned from carrying out ultrasound examinations and using electrocardiographs (ECG) on female patients by the Islamist government of Pakistan’s North West Frontier province in its latest step towards “Talibanisation”.

The ban effectively excludes all women from undergoing such crucial medical examinations as the province has only one female ECG technician and none trained in ultrasound.

“We think that men could derive sexual pleasure from women’s bodies while conducting ECG or ultrasound,” explained Maulana Gul Naseeb Khan, the provincial general secretary of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), the six-party religious alliance which now governs the North West Frontier.

“Similarly some women could lure men under the pretext of ECG or ultrasound. Therefore to uphold the supreme values of Islam, the MMA has decided to impose the ban in line with the May 8 resolution of the province’s assembly that nothing repugnant to Islam will be allowed.”

The ban is the latest in a series of Taliban-style measures imposed by the MMA since its surprising victory last October after General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s president, came under western pressure to allow elections.

The clerics have already banned public dancing and music, kite flying and satellite television. They have closed cinemas, photographic shops and beauty parlours, and have torn down billboards displaying female images.

The bans are disturbingly similar to those imposed by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, which was intent on turning the clock back to the time of the prophet Muhammad in the 7th century.

Several MMA leaders were strong backers of the Taliban, running madrassas, or religious schools, that provided fighters to help Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban leader.

In June the frontier government imposed sharia, or Islamic law, with penalties such as stoning to death, in defiance of Musharraf who denounced the so-called Talibanisation of his country and attacked MMA attempts to make women wear head-to-toe veils.

“This reflects shallow-mindedness,” he said in an interview. “We do not want a backward and intolerant Islam. If we follow the intolerant version of Islam we cannot progress.”

However, it was the Pakistan military that for years encouraged the growth of Islamic militant groups, using them to fight in Kashmir, or to provoke sectarian clashes, which military rulers used as an excuse to prolong their stay in power.

It is widely believed that the MMA was given a helping hand in last year’s elections, which backfired when the strong anti-Americanism in the province resulted in the religious parties doing far better than expected.

The province borders Afghanistan and there has been widespread outrage at Pakistan allowing American forces onto their land to search for Osama Bin Laden and members of the Al-Qaeda network.

The bazaars of the old city of Peshawar, the provincial capital, sell posters of Bin Laden and sweets and dates in boxes bearing his picture.

The ban on men carrying out ultrasound and ECGs means that women are now forced to travel outside the province to Rawalpindi, a long and costly journey, requiring their husbands to miss at least a day off work to accompany them.

“The so-called apostles of Islam are unaware of the facts and figures related to the dismal state of health in our country,” complained one surgeon in Peshawar.

He pointed out that not only are there no female ultrasound technicians in the North West Frontier province but also no female anaesthetists, dispensers or theatre technicians.

“Women are operated on in the presence of male staff. They are anaesthetised and undressed for surgery by men. Even if female surgeons operate on them, male staff are indispensable during the operation. If we started following the MMA’s orders then all the women will die in the operating theatre,” said the surgeon.

Human rights activists are concerned that the ban will result in more stillborn babies and deaths in pregnancy. Pakistan already has one of the world’s highest rates of deaths in pregnancy, with an estimated 30,000 women dying in childbirth each year.

Republished from: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article1060071.ece

Does science make belief in God obsolete? - Conversation 2

2008-09-28T09:39:00.000-07:00

A series of conversations among leading scientists and scholars.

Conversation 2 - William D. Phillips

Absolutely not!
Now that we have scientific explanations for the natural phenomena that mystified our ancestors, many scientists and non-scientists believe that we no longer need to appeal to a supernatural God for explanations of anything, thereby making God obsolete. As for people of faith, many of them believe that science, by offering such explanations, opposes their understanding that the universe is the loving and purposeful creation of God. Because science denies this fundamental belief, they conclude that science is mistaken. These very different points of view share a common conviction: that science and religion are irreconcilable enemies. They are not.

I am a physicist. I do mainstream research; I publish in peer-reviewed journals; I present my research at professional meetings; I train students and postdoctoral researchers; I try to learn from nature how nature works. In other words, I am an ordinary scientist. I am also a person of religious faith. I attend church; I sing in the gospel choir; I go to Sunday school; I pray regularly; I try to "do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with my God." In other words, I am an ordinary person of faith. To many people, this makes me a contradiction—a serious scientist who seriously believes in God. But to many more people, I am someone just like them. While most of the media's attention goes to the strident atheists who claim that religion is foolish superstition, and to the equally clamorous religious creationists who deny the clear evidence for cosmic and biological evolution, a majority of the people I know have no difficulty accepting scientific knowledge and holding to religious faith.

As an experimental physicist, I require hard evidence, reproducible experiments, and rigorous logic to support any scientific hypothesis. How can such a person base belief on faith? In fact there are two questions: "How can I believe in God?" and "Why do I believe in God?"

On the first question: a scientist can believe in God because such belief is not a scientific matter. Scientific statements must be "falsifiable." That is, there must be some outcome that at least in principle could show that the statement is false. I might say, "Einstein's theory of relativity correctly describes the behavior of visible objects in our solar system." So far, extremely careful measurements have failed to prove that statement false, but they could (and some people have invested careers in trying to see if they will). By contrast, religious statements are not necessarily falsifiable. I might say, "God loves us and wants us to love one another." I cannot think of anything that could prove that statement false. Some might argue that if I were more explicit about what I mean by God and the other concepts in my statement, it would become falsifiable. But such an argument misses the point. It is an attempt to turn a religious statement into a scientific one. There is no requirement that every statement be a scientific statement. Nor are non-scientific statements worthless or irrational simply because they are not scientific. "She sings beautifully." "He is a good man." "I love you." These are all non-scientific statements that can be of great value. Science is not the only useful way of looking at life.

What about the second question: why do I believe in God? As a physicist, I look at nature from a particular perspective. I see an orderly, beautiful universe in which nearly all physical phenomena can be understood from a few simple mathematical equations. I see a universe that, had it been constructed slightly differently, would never have given birth to stars and planets, let alone bacteria and people. And there is no good scientific reason for why the universe should not have been different. Many good scientists have concluded from these observations that an intelligent God must have chosen to create the universe with such beautiful, simple, and life-giving properties. Many other equally good scientists are nevertheless atheists. Both conclusions are positions of faith. Recently, the philosopher and long-time atheist Anthony Flew changed his mind and decided that, based on such evidence, he should believe in God. I find these arguments suggestive and supportive of belief in God, but not conclusive. I believe in God because I can feel God's presence in my life, because I can see the evidence of God's goodness in the world, because I believe in Love and because I believe that God is Love.

Does this belief make me a better person or a better physicist than others? Hardly. I know plenty of atheists who are both better people and better scientists than I. I do think that this belief makes me better than I would be if I did not believe. Am I free of doubts about God? Hardly. Questions about the presence of evil in the world, the suffering of innocent children, the variety of religious thought, and other imponderables often leave me wondering if I have it right, and always leave me conscious of my ignorance. Nevertheless, I do believe, more because of science than in spite of it, but ultimately just because I believe. As the author of Hebrews put it: "faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

William D. Phillips, a Nobel Laureate in physics, is a fellow of the Joint Quantum Institute of the University of Maryland and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Republished from: http://www.templeton.org/belief/

Does science make belief in God obsolete? - Conversation 1

2008-09-26T19:55:00.000-07:00

A series of conversations among leading scientists and scholars.

Conversation 1 - Steven Pinker

Yes, if by...
"science" we mean the entire enterprise of secular reason and knowledge (including history and philosophy), not just people with test tubes and white lab coats.

Traditionally, a belief in God was attractive because it promised to explain the deepest puzzles about origins. Where did the world come from? What is the basis of life? How can the mind arise from the body? Why should anyone be moral?

Yet over the millennia, there has been an inexorable trend: the deeper we probe these questions, and the more we learn about the world in which we live, the less reason there is to believe in God.

Start with the origin of the world. Today no honest and informed person can maintain that the universe came into being a few thousand years ago and assumed its current form in six days (to say nothing of absurdities like day and night existing before the sun was created). Nor is there a more abstract role for God to play as the ultimate first cause. This trick simply replaces the puzzle of "Where did the universe come from?" with the equivalent puzzle "Where did God come from?"

What about the fantastic diversity of life and its ubiquitous signs of design? At one time it was understandable to appeal to a divine designer to explain it all. No longer. Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace showed how the complexity of life could arise from the physical process of natural selection among replicators, and then Watson and Crick showed how replication itself could be understood in physical terms. Notwithstanding creationist propaganda, the evidence for evolution is overwhelming, including our DNA, the fossil record, the distribution of life on earth, and our own anatomy and physiology (such as the goose bumps that try to fluff up long-vanished fur).

For many people the human soul feels like a divine spark within us. But neuroscience has shown that our intelligence and emotions consist of intricate patterns of activity in the trillions of connections in our brain. True, scholars disagree on how to explain the existence of inner experience—some say it's a pseudo-problem, others believe it's just an open scientific problem, while still others think that it shows a limitation of human cognition (like our inability to visualize four-dimensional space-time). But even here, relabeling the problem with the word "soul" adds nothing to our understanding.

People used to think that biology could not explain why we have a conscience. But the human moral sense can be studied like any other mental faculty, such as thirst, color vision, or fear of heights. Evolutionary psychology and cognitive neuroscience are showing how our moral intuitions work, why they evolved, and how they are implemented within the brain.

This leaves morality itself—the benchmarks that allow us to criticize and improve our moral intuitions. It is true that science in the narrow sense cannot show what is right or wrong. But neither can appeals to God. It's not just that the traditional Judeo-Christian God endorsed genocide, slavery, rape, and the death penalty for trivial insults. It's that morality cannot be grounded in divine decree, not even in principle. Why did God deem some acts moral and others immoral? If he had no reason but divine whim, why should we take his commandments seriously? If he did have reasons, then why not appeal to those reasons directly?

Those reasons are not to be found in empirical science, but they are to be found in the nature of rationality as it is exercised by any intelligent social species. The essence of morality is the interchangeability of perspectives: the fact that as soon as I appeal to you to treat me in a certain way (to help me when I am in need, or not to hurt me for no reason), I have to be willing to apply the same standards to how I treat you, if I want you to take me seriously. That is the only policy that is logically consistent and leaves both of us better off. And God plays no role in it.

For all these reasons, it's no coincidence that Western democracies have experienced three sweeping trends during the past few centuries: barbaric practices (such as slavery, sadistic criminal punishment, and the mistreatment of children) have decreased significantly; scientific and scholarly understanding has increased exponentially; and belief in God has waned. Science, in the broadest sense, is making belief in God obsolete, and we are the better for it.

Steven Pinker is the Johnstone Family Professor in the department of psychology at Harvard University. He is the author of seven books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, and most recently, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature.

Republished from: http://www.templeton.org/belief/

Good without God?

2008-09-25T14:35:00.000-07:00

by: R. Joseph Hoffmann

Being good is not the same as being ethical ,or virtuous, or doing good, or even leading a good life.

Let me begin with two stories. The first comes from Voltaire, who is reported to have said to his mistress, Marguerite, “Whatever you do, don’t tell the servants there is no God or they’ll steal the silver.”

Another, told by the writer Diderot in the 18th century, is about the journey of Catholic missionaries to Tahiti--a dialogue between a chief named Orou and a priest, who tries to explain the concept of sin.

Orou says that many of the things Europeans find sinful are sources of pride in his island.

He doesn’t understand the idea of adultery, since in his culture generosity and sharing are virtues. Marriage to a single man or woman is unnatural and selfish. And surely there can be nothing wrong with being naked and enjoying sexual pleasure for its own sake—otherwise, why do our bodies exist. The horrified priest delivers a long sermon on Christian beliefs, and ends by saying, “And now that I have explained the laws of our religion, you must do everything to please God and to avoid the pains of hell.”

Orou says, “You mean, when I was ignorant of these commandments, I was innocent, but now that I know them, I am a guilty sinner who might go to hell.”

“Exactly,” the priest says.

“Then why did you tell me?” says Orou.

***

These stories indicate a couple of things about the relationship between religion and morality—or more precisely, the belief that God is the source of morality. The first story suggests that belief in God is “dissuasive.” By that I mean, religion is seen as a way of preventing certain kinds of actions that we would do if we believed there was no God. The kind of God religious people normally think of in this case is the Old Testament God, or the God who gives rules and expects them to be obeyed.

Not all religious people believe these rules were given by God to Moses or Muhammad directly, but most would agree that it’s a good idea, in general, not to steal, commit adultery, hate your neighbor (or envy his possessions obsessively), or kill other people. For at least a thousand years busy theologians have tried to put these essentially negative rules into more positive form: for example, by saying that people should act out of love for each other, or love of God, and not out of fear. Most Christians would say this is the essential difference between the laws of the Old Testament and the teaching of Jesus in the New. But they are only partly right. Both books of the Bible and all of the Qur’an emphasize fear of God, judgment, and the rewards and punishments of the hereafter as goads to repentance, leading a better life, giving up your rotten ways. Even the books of the Bible that are tainted with Greek thought—like the Book of Proverbs--emphasize that “the Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” So it’s mischievous to say that fear and trembling aren’t used for moral leverage throughout the Bible.

Modern Christians, Jews, and the Muslims who focus on God’s compassion and mercy, are required to ignore a whole cartload of passages where God reminds people, like any ancient father (and not a few modern mothers), that his patience is wearing thin. Jeremiah 5:22 (NIV) “’Should you not fear me?" declares the Lord. ‘Should you not tremble in my presence?’" The answer is a deafening: “Yes.” Remember the flood? Remember the first born sons of the Egyptians? Remember the plagues and famines? Remember Sodom and Gomorrah? You love this God because you ignore his commandments at your peril. He has chosen you; you have not chosen him, and he can withdraw his favor whenever he wants. (As Jackie Mason used to say, you look at Israel and you have to wonder if “maybe the Samoans aren’t the chosen people”).

The theme of the oldest books of the Bible is very plain: God “loves” (more precisely, he watches out for) the ones who keep his commandments and punishes those who don’t. -- A simple message that theology has had two thousand years to massage. In fact, the New Testament belongs to the history of that massaging process. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were the first spin doctors--re-writing the script, transforming Yahweh into a compassionate conservative. But let’s be clear that the hero of the story is a typical Near Eastern tyrant: powerful, vengeful, jealous by his own admission, proprietary (“His is the world and all that dwells within”), and though slow to anger, fearsome when his wrath is provoked, watchful to point of being sleep- deprived (Ps 121.4). There is no unconditional love here. God is not a model for progressive parenting; he’s not interested in the self-esteem of his people, has not read Dr Wayne Dyer, and will not break down weeping on Oprah! for being compulsive. The message of God the Father is, “Do this or else.”

A larger question posed by Voltaire’s little story is whether the motivation of fear is ever ethical. If you do something because there is a threat of pain and suffering if you don’t, or if you hold off doing something you would really like to do—for the same reason—are you being moral?

What Voltaire is really saying—as Nietzsche, Marx and Freud would later say—is that religion is useful for keeping certain kinds of people in line. Eighteenth- and Nineteenth- century European society could be neatly divided into those who knew better and those who served the ones who did. Marx went so far as to suggest that the social deference the moneyed classes paid to religion was simply intended to convince the lower classes that religion is true—in fact, that’s exactly what Voltaire is saying: Religion is a mechanism used by the knowledgeable to keep the unknowledgeable in their place. It has social advantages—Marx’s Jewish father conveniently “converted” from Judaism to the Prussian State Church in order to go on working as a lawyer. And we all know the younger Marx’s most famous verdict on the topic: “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness.”

What’s missing from this critique, of course, is the question of whether a “religious act” can ever be a “moral act.” Clearly, belief in God (or a specific kind of God) provides behavioral incentives. As a system of control based on fear, religion keeps people from “being bad,” or at least doing things considered bad by the controller. But it does this inefficiently. Clearly it offers people an explanation for why they behave in certain ways, ranging from the “Bible tells me so” to “Papa dixit”—the pope says so. As a means of consolation, it teaches people to deal with the fear and insecurity created by oppression. But it does this at the expense of self-fulfillment, wholeness. It is the security of an abusive relationship, where comfort consists in being able to predict and manipulate eruptions of violence. In fact, to look back to the sacrificial origins of religion, this was precisely its social role. Even the story of the crucifixion, which many people believe is all about love and forgiveness, is the story of a God so angry at the sinful imperfections of humanity that he transfers his violence to his only son, who becomes the redemptive victim—the buy-back price—for sins he didn’t commit.

Let’s call this religious approach to behavior “Being Good.” Being good is not the same as being ethical or virtuous, or doing good, or even leading a good life. It’s a mother wagging an imperative finger at a three year old and saying “You’d better be good.” It always involves threat and reward. Two generations ago, the image would have included threats of belts or woodsheds spankings, going to bed without dinner. I guess, unfortunately, in some places it still does. But you don’t get ethics out of this. You get obedience and submission.

***

What about Diderot’s story about the missionary and the tribal chief? If the story about Voltaire suggests that religion is dissuasive and coercive, Diderot’s suggests another reason why religion doesn’t sit well with ethics: Religion is prescriptive, and like politics, it’s local. In 2000 years of massaging the message, it has changed because we have changed our minds. Most of the biblical rules about property, goods and chattels, adultery and incest were typical throughout the Middle East; in fact, as Freud recognized, the taboos against murder and incest are the earliest form of laws in some tribal societies. But the books we call the basis of the “Judaeo-Christian -ethic” weren’t written by tribes—tribes don’t write. And the body of laws we call the Ten Commandments contain lots of rules that have been quietly put in trunks and sent to the attic.

For example, we all applaud the wisdom of the commandment that says, “Honor your father and your mother.” It has a nice ring, especially during school vacations. But Deuteronomy 21.20 says that disobedient sons should be stoned in front of the elders at the gates of the city. And Exodus 21.17 says that anyone who insults his mother and father shall be put to death. As for adultery, which belongs to ancient property law in the Jewish system, the punishment is stoning—normally only for the woman (Deut. 22.21). In Deut. 22.28, the penalty for raping an unbetrothed virgin is a fine of 50 shekels--plus taking her on as a wife. There are laws protecting the rights of the firstborn sons of unloved wives when a man has several wives (Deut. 21.15) and even laws about how long a Jewish warrior must wait (one month) before he can have intercourse with a woman he has captured in battle (21.10). According to Leviticus 19.23, raping another man’s female slave is punishable by making an offering to the priest, who is required to forgive him. There are laws covering how long you can keep a Hebrew male-slave—6 years—but if you sell your daughter as a slave to another man she cannot be freed, unless after the master has had sex with her he finds her “unpleasing”—in which case she can be put up for sale (ransom) (Exodus 21. 7ff.). On it goes—throughout the books of the Torah—the Law.

The sheer ferocity of the God who gives, or rather shouts these commandments to his chosen people is distant from our time. The voice is unfamiliar: Failure to do what he says results in terror: In fact, that’s the very word he uses: “I will bring upon you sudden terror, wasting disease, recurring fever, plagues that will blind you….those that hate you will hound you until there is no place to run; I will multiply your calamities seven times more than your sins deserve. … I will send wild beasts among you and they will tear your children from you. … If you defy me , I will scourge you seven times over. …I will send pestilence …cut short your daily bread, until ten women can bake your bread in a single oven. … I will punish you seven times over. … Instead of meat, you shall eat your sons and your daughters.” Don’t take my word for it: read Leviticus 26. It has literary flair. The God of the Old Testament is a three dimensional figure—far bigger than Zeus and twice as malignant. (Perhaps Zeus was able to give freer rein to his sexual appetites, whereas Yahweh limits himself to one Galilean virgin?) And look though you may, you will not find these laws “repealed” in later books, at least not in the way modern laws can be amended and repealed. But it’s absolutely certain that anyone who tried to obey these laws in twentieth century Europe or America would be slapped into jail, and the defense “The Bible told me so” would not be an adequate defense. --Try posting these commandments above the blackboard in your neighborhood school.

One way of charting the so-called progress of western civilization is to trace how human values eventually triumph over the ferocity of religious law. The kind of morality that Diderot’s priest represents, like the morality of the Bible, and even the reductionist versions of biblical and Quranic teaching that modern religious denominations espouse, is not ethics. It is not ethics because ethics can’t be grounded in what I’m going to call “irrelative prescriptive dissuasion.” If you say to me, “Well: no one believes these things any more,” then I say “Good for us for not believing. Then time to stop letting the Bible be the source of moral authority when the conduct of its hero is not up to our standards of civil behavior.” If you say, “There is great wisdom and poetry in scripture,” then I say “Please then, let’s treat it like other great books that express ideas, customs, and values that have no authority over how we lead our lives.” I have no quarrel with those who want to appreciate the Bible as a product of its own time and culture—with all the conditions that attach to appreciation of that kind. My quarrel is with people who want to make it a document for our time and culture.

And I suppose my quarrel extends to people who consider themselves experts, when what they are expert in is reading around, into, or past the text. Liberal theologians are immensely gifted at reinventing the God of the Bible in the light of modern social concerns. But the project is a literary--not an ethical one. At another extreme, which is really a false opposite, are the fundamentalists who claim to defend the literal truth of the Bible while ignoring two-thirds of the text and focusing on the “literal” truth of bits and pieces.

Can the Bible make you good? If you accept the framework, beginning with Adam and Eve, and the creation of a race doomed to be perpetually three years-old and scolded into obedience, I suppose it can.

Reduced to basic form, the temptation in the Garden of Eden is a story about a cookie jar and a sly, accusing mother. But it takes more than avoiding mousetraps for a choice to be moral or an action to be ethical. A moral act is one in which you can entertain doubt freely, where a person confronts human choices and human consequences, personal and social.

To be fair: the Bible and its cousins are important records of those human choices and their social consequences, coming from an age which is no longer relevant to us. To make it a book for our time is an abuse of the book and a misunderstanding of its importance. More depressingly for some, perhaps, there will probably be no book to replace it. Not even one by a secular humanist. But there will be wisdom, and reason and choice-making, and that will make us humanly better, if not exactly good.

Republished from: http://www.spinozaslens.com/libet/articles/hoffmann_goodwithoutgod.htm

Is an Islamic Reformation Possible?

2008-09-24T13:39:00.000-07:00

Towards a Vatican II of Islam
by Ibn Warraq

1. What is a Reformation? Defined from the UDHR 1948 perspective

Since there is no Pope or even, in principle, an organized clergy in Islam, how would we ever know if an Islamic Reformation had taken place? One person’s reformation will be another person’s decadence. My perspective will be from The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, which many Muslims still do not accept—indeed several Muslim countries got together in 1981 and issued their own Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights, where individual freedoms are denied. Muslims were particularly horrified by Article 18 of the UN Declaration which guarantees the right for anyone to change her or his religion. I think those who do accept the United Nations Declaration would agree that a de facto reformation had taken place in Islamic societies, as for example in Pakistan or Egypt, if the tenor of its major articles were respected, especially the rights of women and non-Muslims, and freedom of thought, conscience, expression, and religion, including the right to change one’s religion, and the right not to believe in any deity; if no person is subjected to cruel punishments such as mutilation of limbs for theft or stoning to death for adultery; if copies of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses and Ibn Warraq’s Why I Am not a Muslim are freely available.

2. If human rights are the goal, then rather than pretend that the real Islam is compatible with the UDHR, which leads to dishonest tinkering and spurious re-interpretation of the Koran, it is recommended that the whole debate about human rights be lifted out of the religious sphere altogether.

But how likely is such a reformation in today’s Islamic societies? Can Islam institute such reforms and stay Islam? There are some, I believe, misguided liberal Muslims who want to have their cake and eat it too. These liberals often argue that the real Islam is compatible with human rights, that the real Islam is feminist, that the real Islam is egalitarian, that the real Islam tolerates other religions and beliefs, and so on. They then proceed to some truly creative re-interpretation of the embarrassing, intolerant, bellicose and misogynist verses of the Koran. But intellectual honesty demands that we reject just such dishonest tinkering with the holy text, which, while it may be open to some re-interpretation, is not infinitely elastic. To give you an example of dishonest tinkering, take Sura IV.34: “As for those [women] from whom you fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge [or beat] them.” This translation comes from a Muslim. Another Muslim translator, Yusuf Ali, clearly disturbed by this verse, adds the word “lightly” in brackets after “beat,” even though there is no “lightly” in the original Arabic. Every Arabic dictionary or lexicon (such as, for example, the famous one by Ibn Manzur compiled in the thirteenth century) has glossed the Arabic verb daraba to mean hit, strike, or beat. Every Muslim translator until 1987 has thus translated daraba to mean hit, beat or strike. However, in 1987 Ahmed Ali translated the above verse as: “As for women you fear are averse, talk to them suasively; then leave them alone in bed (without molesting them), and go to bed with them (when they are willing).” For Ahmed Ali daraba is a euphemism for “to have sexual intercourse.”

As a tactic, this tinkering will simply not work either, because to trade verses with fundamentalists is to do battle on the fanatics’ terms, on the fanatics’ ground. For every text that the liberal Muslims produce, the mullas will adduce dozens of counter examples exegetically, philologically and historically far more legitimate. Reform cannot be achieved on these terms—whatever mental gymnastics the liberal reformists perform, they cannot escape the fact that Orthodox Islam is incompatible with human rights. There are moderate Muslims, but Islam itself is not moderate. Islam itself is a fascist ideology. There is no difference between Islam and Islamic fundamentalism. At most there is a difference of degree, but not of kind. All the tenets of Islamic fundamentalism are derived from the Koran, the Sunna, the Hadith—Islamic fundamentalism is a totalitarian construct derived by Muslim jurists from the fundamental and defining texts of Islam.

3. The way to arrive at the implementation of the UDHR is to separate mosque and state absolutely, to establish democracy, and improve the economic situation of all citizens regardless of religion and gender.

The only solution is to bring the questions of human rights out of the religious sphere and into the sphere of the civil state—in other words, to separate religion from the state and to promote a secular state where Islam is relegated to the personal and where it would continue to provide consolation, comfort, and meaning to millions of individuals. However, I should like to remark in passing that I believe it is wrong to think that we can neatly avoid the problem of confronting Islam by separating religion and state. Certainly, a strong leader like Bourguiba or Kemal Ataturk could impose a separation from above, but sooner or later one would have to argue positively for a separation, and this would inevitably involve both explicitly and implicitly rejecting the central tenets of the Sharia, Islamic Law. Why have a separation when Islam is such a perfect religion providing answers for even the most mundane of problems? It is true that Islam does not provide answers for all the problems, but why can’t we keep Islamic Law for those areas where it does have solutions and does legislate, for instance, stoning for adultery? In other words, someone at some point will have to suggest that such punishments are barbaric and incompatible with human rights. At some stage, someone will need to argue that the demands of reason and common humanity override the dictates of revelation.

Are Islamic societies secularizable? Yes, there are many reasons for thinking so, for being optimistic. Unfortunately, there also reasons for being pessimistic.

First, the reasons for being optimistic: Since September 11, every journalist has been eager to point out that in Islam there is no separation between mosque and state. Indeed, in Classical Arabic, there is no pair of words corresponding to ‘lay’ and ‘ecclesiastical’, ‘spiritual’ and ‘temporal’, or ‘secular’ and ‘religious’. But what these same journalists fail to add is that the doctrinal lack of a separation of mosque and state does not mean that Islamic history is a chronicle of a series of relentless Muslim theocracies. On the contrary, as Carl Brown demonstrated recently, Muslim history has been marked by a de facto separation of state and religious community. Rule was mainly by decree; it was given ex post facto religious sanction by the jurists .

Many modern leaders of culturally Islamic countries were secular in their outlook and approach to the problems of modern industrializing societies, leaders such Muhmmad Ali Jinnah of Pakistan, Nasser of Egypt, Sukarno of Indonesia, Habid Bourguiba of Tunisia, Sultan Muhammad V of Morocco, Riza Shah and his son Muhammad Riza Shah, plus Muhammad Musaddiq in Iran and so on. Habib Bourguiba, for example, barely five months after Tunisian independence, pushed through a radical legal reform (August 1956) that outlawed polygamy and made judgment for divorce a prerogative of the court, withdrawing the husband’s exclusive right to divorce his wife. Although fourteen Tunisian religious scholars issued a fatwa denouncing the new law, it was received with enthusiasm by the modernists and met with practically no resistance. Bourguiba had taken on the Muslim official religious class and won. Modernization and secularization of education followed, including the downgrading of the venerable Zaytuna Mosque University which became simply a faculté of religious studies in the University of Tunis. Unfortunately, corruption, nepotism, incompetence, and pandering to the mullas, the obscurantist religious scholars, led to the rising influence of the Islamic fundamentalists, who, sensing that their time had come, demanded a proliferated introduction of Islam in public life.

Other indications that Islamic societies are secularizable come from the Islamic Republic of Iran, of all places! Iran has adopted many institutions from the Western democracies, which have nothing to do with Islam historically or doctrinally, institutions such as popular elections, a constituent assembly, a parliament, even a constitution inspired by the 1958 French Constitution.

Iran is also the theatre of very optimistic developments. Hashem Aghajari is an Islamic revolutionary-turned-history-professor. He was one of the student activists of 1979 who later fully participated in the brutal repression after Khomeini’s coming to power. He is now challenging the infallibility of the ruling mullahs and calls upon Iranians to think for themselves instead of blindly accepting whatever is preached in Friday sermons, a piece of advice for which he has been sentenced to death. But he is now supported by the students and professors at most of the country’s universities and thousands of ordinary citizens, workers, and cultural leaders.

Where Aghajari wants to reform Islam; the students want a total separation between mosque and state. He wants an Islamic Reformation, but the demonstrators are interested in the creation of a secular civil society. He is a reformer, but they are revolutionaries. Why is the press silent on these developments? More important still, why is the Bush Administration not supporting these courageous students, workers, intellectuals, even soldiers?

Yet there are still reasons for pessimism:

1.With the partial exception of Turkey, there is not a single stable democracy in the Islamic world . It is not surprising that Muslims living under repressive regimes turn to Islamists for support, both moral and economic.

2. The situation in the Middle East as described by Human Rights Watch in its report published 2003 is disheartening. The report finds that Independent civil society institutions were fragile or nonexistent in most countries. Throughout the region, political parties, human rights organizations, and other entities came under attack from the state or were hampered because laws did not permit them to exist legally. In Iran and Saudi Arabia, conservative clerical establishments remained entrenched and powerful, retarding progress and hampering the development of independent and effective national institutions

3. Free and fair elections will not necessarily lead to secular governments, as victories of the Islamists in Algeria, Pakistan and Turkey have shown.

4. On July 2, 2002, The United Nations Development Program released the Arab Human Development Report 2002, which covers not only economic matters but such issues as the lack of freedom and democracy in the Arab world, the high rate of illiteracy, and the position of women. Because it was written by Arab intellectuals and academics, it is a just cause for celebration, for it manifests one of the prerequisites of reforming Islamic society: that is, self-criticism. I shall come back to this later. Unfortunately, the contents of this report make for depressing reading, and can only aggravate the mood of pessimism. In the words of the Middle East Quarterly, “with uncommon candour and a battery of statistics, the report tells a sorry story of two decades of failed planning and developmental decline. One inescapable conclusion emerges from its sober pages of tables and charts: the Arab world is in decline, even relative to the developing world. ‘The report was written by Arabs for Arabs,’ announced a U.N. official. Arabs did read it (it was also released in Arabic), and Arab authorship made its arguments more palatable to Arab intellectuals and policy makers. A columnist in Al-Ahram Weekly urged ‘a serious deep reading’ of the report, since ‘no changes will occur without Arabs facing the facts, however unpalatable they may be. ’”

In the same Arab Human Development Report of 2002, published by the United Nations Development Programme, we learn that “the total number of books translated into Arabic in the last 1,000 years is fewer than those translated in Spain in one year. Greece, with a population of fewer than 11 million, translates five times as many books from abroad into Greek annually as the 22 Arab countries combined, with a total population of more than 300 million, translate into Arabic.”

4. Learning from how secularization took place in the West; encourage secularisation through:

i) Koranic Criticism
ii) secular education encouraging critical thought
iii) religious pluralism by defending non-Muslims in Islamic societies
iv) secular democracies not tyrannies.
v) self-criticism

How did secularization take place in the Christian West? Some of the factors involved in the secularization of the West were: advances in knowledge in general and the sciences in particular meant that the criteria of rationality could be applied to religious dogma with devastating effect; Biblical Criticism, which led to the abandonment of a literal reading of the Bible; and religious tolerance and religious pluralism, which eventually led to tolerance and pluralism tout court. As scholar Owen Chadwick put it, “once concede equality to a distinctive group, you could not confine it to that group. You could not confine it to Protestants; nor, later, to Christians; nor, at last, to believers in God. A free market in some opinions became a free market in all opinions... Christian conscience was the force which began to make Europe ‘secular’; that is, to allow many religions or no religion in a state, and repudiate any kind of pressure upon the man who rejected the accepted and inherited axioms of society... My conscience is my own. ”

What lessons can we learn from this process of secularization of the West? First , we who live in the free West and enjoy freedom of expression and scientific inquiry should encourage a rational look at Islam, should encourage Koranic criticism. Only Koranic criticism can help Muslims to look at their Holy Scripture in a more rational and objective way, and prevent young Muslims from being fanaticized by the Koran’s less tolerant verses. It does not make sense to lament the lack of a Reformation in Islam and at the same time boycott books like, “Why I am Not A Muslim,” or cry, “Islamophobia” every time a critique of Islam is offered. Instead of which, political leaders, journalists and even scholars are bent on protecting the tender sensibilities of the Muslims. We are not doing Islam any favours by protecting it from Enlightenment values.

Second, simply by protecting non-Muslims in Islamic societies, we are encouraging religious pluralism, which in turn can lead to pluralism in general. By insisting on article 18 of the UDHR, which states, “ Everyone has the right to freedom of thought , conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief...” we are loosening the grip of fanatics, we are encouraging, in the words of Owen Chadwick, a free market in all opinions—in other words, democracy.

We can encourage rationality by education, secular education. This will mean the closing of religious madrasas where young children from poor families learn only the Koran by heart, learn the doctrine of Jihad, learn, in short, to be fanatics. The failure of the central government in Pakistan, for example, to provide free schools and economic prosperity for all its citizens has led to the rise of madrasas where poor children are given some schooling and food that their poor parents cannot provide. In Pakistan, it is clear that many of these religious schools are funded by Saudi Arabia. The West must do its utmost to reduce the ideological and financial influence of the Saudis, and instead encourage Pakistan to provide free secular education for all children, boys and girls. The West can give aid with strings attached to this end.

What kind of education? My priority would be the wholesale rewriting of school texts, which at present preach intolerance of non-Muslims, particularly Jews. One hopes that education will encourage critical thinking and rationality. Again, to encourage pluralism, I should like to see the glories of pre-Islamic history to be taught to all children. The banning of all religious education in state schools, as is the case in France where there is a clear constitutional separation of state and religion, is not realistic for the moment in Islamic countries. The best we can hope for is the teaching of comparative religion, which we hope will eventually lead to a lessening of fanatical fevers as Islam is seen as another set of beliefs amongst a host of others. It may surprise some of you to learn that the Islamic fundamentalists fear the humanities, especially history and sociology, more than the exact sciences. Many of the leaders of the various Islamist groups are by training engineers. They do not fear physics; in fact, most of them are convinced that all the modern discoveries of modern nuclear physics are predicted in the Koran. They are wary of history, for it seems this discipline has a tendency to relativise human knowledge. Certainly, a course in the methodology of history and historical research should teach methodological skepticism; as R.G.Collingwood said, the fundamental attribute of the critical historian is skepticism regarding testimony about the past. This skepticism can of course be extended to the early history of Islam.

But education alone cannot solve the problems. Several million young educated people enter the job market only to learn that their education has not opened the doors to economic prosperity they had dreamed of. Education without economic opportunities at the end leads to social frustrations which can only help the fundamentalists.

5. Self-criticism

Islamic countries will never make any progress if they continue to blame all their ills on the West. Whining about US Imperialism will not lead Islamic countries out of the morass of their own making. Such whining is self-pity, and while self-pity is never an attractive quality, it is particularly inappropriate in Islamic societies. Muslim intellectuals who spew forth hatred of the West and indulge in such self-pity are not leading their people to assume responsibility for their own acts. Will Muslims grow up and become men or women capable of taking their destiny in their own hands, or will they continue to wallow in self-pity, dribbling and mumbling about US Imperialism? Islamic countries need charismatic leaders, capable of self-criticism, who can say to their people that “the fault is not in [the] stars [and stripes], but in ourselves, that we are underlings,” nor does the fault lie with some putative Imperialist-Zionist conspiracy, leaders who can lead their people to democracy, who can institute a civil state and a uniform code of civil laws separate from and independent of religious institutions, allowing free choice of religious belief and practice, who can pass legislation to enshrine the rights of all its citizens—men and women , Muslim and non-Muslim—as set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the various UN Conventions, leaders who institute free secular education for all. The West must review its continuing and unconditional support for Saudi Arabia which is responsible for the spread of radical Islam. Will the West encourage secularism in the Islamic world when two of its leaders, Tony Blair and George W. Bush, have done more than any other leaders in the West since 1945 to introduce more and more religion into the public sphere? May I remind them of the words of James Madison, “There is not a shadow of right in the general government to intermeddle with religion. Its least interference with it would be a most flagrant usurpation.”

Ibn Warraq is a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Inquiry Transnational and a member of the CFI Collegium.

Republished from:
http://www.spinozaslens.com/libet/articles/warraq_islamicreformationpossible.htm

Moses Saw God Because He Was Stoned

2008-09-23T08:05:00.000-07:00

The Bible (and Quran) tells us that when the Children of Israel left Egypt, they had a 40-year trip through the desert before reaching the Promised Land. Now a leading Israeli academic has a new theory about exactly what kind of trip it was.

In the philosophy journal Time and Mind, Benny Shanon states that key events of the Old Testament are actually records of visions by ancient Israelites high on hallucinogens. Shanon is a professor at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, where he used to head the psychology department.

The psychedelic substance is a drink called Ayahuasca. It is extracted from plants that grow in the Holy Land and in the Sinai peninsula and is still used today by Amazonians in Brazil for their religious rituals. Shanon came up with his theory when reading the Bible. The events described reminded him of the visions he had after trying this drink 15 years ago. So, when Moses first encountered God, he was high. "Encountering the divine is one of the most powerful experiences associated with high-level Ayahuasca inebriation," claims Shanon.

At the Burning Bush, covered in flames but mysteriously not consumed, there was no miracle, just a drug-induced "radical alteration in the state of
consciousness of the beholder - that is, Moses". The account of the Children of Israel hearing God while camped at Mount Sinai is about a mass drug-taking event - giving a whole new explanation for the reported "cloud of smoke" that settled on the mountain. And when Moses climbed Sinai and received the Ten Commandments and the Bible, he was tripping.

Hardly an incident in the Bible is spared Shanon's drug-focused reading. Acacia trees, used by Noah to build the ark, were revered because some varieties contain the psychedelic substance dimethyltryptamine (DMT). In Shanon's opinion, the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden offered something far more tempting than an apple.

Rabbis in Israel and the UK are largely ignoring Shanon's theories, and those who have spoken out have been dismissive. "The Bible is trying to convey a very profound event. We have to fear not for the fate of the biblical Moses, but for the fate of science," Rabbi Yuval Sherlow told Israel Radio. Israeli internet chatrooms, though, are buzzing with condemnations of "heresy", endorsements, and charges that Shanon, not Moses, must have taken drugs. One poster writes: "Maybe it is true - then religion really is the opiate of the people."

Republished from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/06/religion.israelandthepalestinians

Multi-secularism: The New Agenda

2008-09-22T11:31:00.000-07:00

by Paul Kurtz

The battle for secularism has leaped to center stage worldwide; we find it being contested or defended everywhere. Of the world's fifty-seven Islamic countries, virtually all except Turkey and Tunisia attempt to safeguard or enact Islamic law (sharia) as embodied in the Qur'an. Radical Islamists wage jihad against the secular society. Pope Benedict XVI rails against secularism, portraying it as the major challenge to Roman Catholicism. There have been attempts in Eastern Europe to reestablish the Eastern Orthodox Church. In the United States, the religious Right and its spokespersons—among them Pat Buchanan, Bill O'Reilly, George Weigel, and Newt Gingrich—vociferously castigate secularism. Mitt Romney claims that freedom requires religion (since when?). He says nothing about the rights of unbelievers in America and accuses them of wishing to establish "the religion of secularism." Regrettably, leading Democratic candidates have thus far remained silent rather than defend the secular society for fear of antagonizing religious supporters. Nevertheless, secularism is growing; it is essential for flourishing vibrant, pluralistic, democratic societies and especially important in today's developing countries.

However, secularism needs to be adapted to diverse cultural conditions if it is to gain ground. I submit that we cannot legislate secularism uberhaupt without recognizing the cultural traditions in which it emerges. Accordingly, multi-secularism seems to be the best strategy to pursue: that is, adapting secular ideas and values to the societies in which they arise.

The question that I wish to raise is: What is secularism and/or the secular society? I will focus on three main characteristics.

SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

First, secularism refers to the separation of church and state. In the United States, this means the First Amendment's provision that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." This vital principle implies that the state should be neutral about religion, allowing freedom of conscience and diversity of opinion, including the right to believe or not believe. All citizens are to be treated equally no matter what their religious convictions or lack of them. The state does not officially sanction any religion nor give preferential treatment to its adherents. We are very fortunate that the U.S. Constitution was written under the influence of Enlightenment thinking, and that George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and other Founding Fathers wished to avoid the establishment of the church as it existed in England. Indeed, the United States was the first nation to be based on the separation principle.

I should point out that some ninety-five nation-states have since enacted similar constitutional procedures providing for the separation of church (or temple or mosque) and state. These include France, Spain, Ireland, the Netherlands, Germany, Mexico, Brazil, China, South Africa, India, and Australia. Separation is realized in various ways in each of these countries, and there are constant battles to defend separation and keep it from eroding.

Many challenges to the separation principle come from fundamentalist religions including Islam, conservative Hinduism, Orthodox Judaism, evangelical Protestantism, and conservative Roman Catholicism. To our dismay, the Bush administration has often affirmed such opposition—for example, by funding faith-based charities and opposing stem-cell research on moral-theological grounds. In Russia, President Vladimir Putin has sought to reestablish the Russian Orthodox Church; in Poland, the Roman Catholic Church seeks to resume its earlier, powerful position. Thus, the idea of the separation of church and state is always under threat. In France, the Libre Penseurs are always on the barricades defending secularism against incursions from the Roman Catholic Church or Islam. In Turkey, the army is ever ready to resist efforts to restrict Kemal Atatürk's secular constitution.

A key point to recognize is that one does not have to be an atheist or agnostic in order to defend the separation principle. In the United States, most Protestant denominations defend separation, as do secular Jews, liberal Roman Catholics, Unitarians, and members of other denominations. Secular humanists have many allies in this great battle. Indeed, both liberals and conservatives, believers and unbelievers, have stood firmly in support of the First Amendment.

THE SECULARIZATION OF VALUES

Second, when we talk about secularism we may also refer to societies that cultivate secular values; since the Renaissance, secularity in the ethical domain has been growing in influence. Secularists do not look to salvation and confirmation of the afterlife as their overriding goal, but rather focus on temporal humanist values in the here and now—happiness, self-realization, joyful exuberance, creative endeavors and excellence, the actualization of the good life—not only for the individual but for the greater community. The common moral decencies, goodwill, and altruism are widely accepted, as are the civic virtues of democracy, the right of privacy, the belief that every individual has equal dignity and value, human rights, equality, tolerance, the principles of fairness and justice, the peaceful negotiation of differences, and the willingness to compromise.

The modern age is basically secular. Quite independently of religious beliefs, the world's economies seek to achieve growth and increase social wealth, thus providing consumers with goods and services that everyone can enjoy. (I note that Pat Robertson and some other religious Right ministers have not eschewed fancy cars and splendid homes.) It would be ludicrous to inject religiosity (save as a perfunctory formality) into the modern corporation. Here the tests are efficiency, productivity, quality products and services, and the bottom line. We are appalled that Islamists in the Middle East oppose charging interest because it is forbidden by the Qur'an, yet use every rationalization to circumvent that prohibition to tap the power of finance. The point is well recognized that no modern society can function if it does not train skilled practitioners in diverse specialties. No nation can survive unless it can master the practical arts and sciences. If I have a toothache, I want a dentist, not a priest; and if I wish to construct a building I had better be damned sure that I have competent architects to draw the plans and that the engineering is solid.

Similarly, it is widely recognized that broad-based education—cultural, historical, intellectual, scientific, and artistic—is the right of every child and that every adult must have the opportunity to expand his or her dimensions of experience and knowledge.

Not the least among secular values of course is free inquiry and freedom of scientific research, the very basis of science and technology. Religious censorship or limitation—such as that intelligent-design advocates seek to impose on scientific theories of evolution—is unacceptable. The free mind is vital for the open society. If one wants to pursue scientific inquiry, then one needs to abide by methodological naturalism: objective standards of evidence, rational coherence, and experimental testing are quite independent of the Bible or Qur'an. Actually, secular considerations are vital in virtually all human interests, from sports and the arts to pharmacology, psychiatry, and meteorology. In these and other areas, religious doctrines are largely irrelevant.

Among the secular values that emerge today is the compelling need to develop a new Planetary Ethics. Because we must share the Earth, no entity can any longer be allowed to attempt to impose an exclusive, doctrinaire religious creed on every man and woman. We live in a multicultural world in which multi-secularism needs to be developed— in which different forms of secularism need to be adapted to the diverse cultural traditions and contexts of specific societies. Thus, we need secularized Christianity, secularized Judaism, secularized Hinduism, and even secularized Islam; all are requisite for societies to be able to cope with their problems. And here the question is, Can we develop a set of shared values and principles that can provide common ground for global civilization? High on the agenda, of course, should be our first responsibilities: to preserve the environment of our common planetary abode, to eliminate poverty and disease, to reach peaceful adjudication of conflicts, and to achieve prosperity for as many people as possible. These are practical problems that demand realistic, secular solutions.

SECULARIZATION AND UNBELIEF

There is a third sense of secularism. Some recalcitrant foes of secularism insist that it is synonymous with atheism; some militant atheists agree with them. But I think that this is a mistaken view. Far from being secular, some militant atheists have sought to protect their "faith" by abusing the power of the state. Indeed, some totalitarian regimes that embraced atheism as part of their ideology, such as those in the Soviet Union and Cambodia, have persecuted—even exterminated—their religious opposition.

One thing that distinguishes those who share a secular outlook from those committed to the rule of dogma, whether it is religious or atheistic dogma, is the acceptance of freedom of conscience. Bitter experience has taught many of the religious that a secular state works best for them. Many religious denominations have suffered at the hands of other devout believers: Roman Catholics have persecuted Protestants (as with the suppression of the Huguenots in France), while Protestant states have likewise waged war against Catholics (as in Elizabethan England). Hence, there has been "a war of all against all," to paraphrase Thomas Hobbes. After centuries of sectarian violence in these places, a truce between contending factions was hard won, and the secular state was the result. Demands for secularity also reflect the experience of religious minorities. Jews have been hounded out of country after country by devout Christians; Sunnis and Shiites have slaughtered each other with impunity; Hindus and Muslims have engaged in bloody communal riots, as have militant Buddhists in some countries. Thus, the separation principle has been agreed to by many sects—even devout Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Baptists, and Seventh-day Adventists in the United States. All have experienced persecution and have welcomed a modus vivendi. Thus, one does not have to be a nonbeliever to accept the separation principle.

The Enlightenment sought to liberate men and women from the stranglehold of religious morality inflicted on them by overzealous "virtue policemen" (we might call them "theo-thugs"). This long process of emancipation began with the defense of free thought in response to the persecutions of Bruno, Galileo, and Spinoza. This same impulse was intrinsic to the American Revolution, which appealed to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," and to the French Revolution, which proclaimed "liberty, equality, fraternity" and "the Rights of Man." Later, biology struggled to overcome intemperate attacks on Darwinism; in medical science, such advances as autopsy and anesthesia required defense against religious intransigence. Today stem-cell research and evolutionary theory are attacked on religious grounds. Such advances as the abolition of slavery, the recognition of women's rights, and the acceptance of sexual freedom (contraception, abortion, divorce, gay rights, etc.) were achieved only after protracted struggles. Traditional moral beliefs, enshrined in practice and sanctified by religious doctrine, had to be modified or overcome. Modern democratic societies have known long battles to allow diversity of taste and lifestyle.

These secularizing forces grew out of the democratic-humanistic revolutions of the modern world, which recognized that all citizens have equal dignity and value and that the rule of law should apply to poor persons as well as rich ones. Hence, intrinsic to modern democratic-capitalist and socialist societies is an acceptance of the civic virtues of democracy. Again, one does not have to be an atheist to accept libertarian values or the democratization of society.
Now, I grant that it may be difficult for a very devout person to fully accept secularity in ethics. For some believers, the quest for God and/or salvation may trump the pursuit of happiness or the battle for social justice. By the same token, unbelievers may have an easier time fully achieving the fullness of life and the realization of their talents and proclivities, including the satisfaction of sexual desires.

In the war waged on behalf of democratic institutions, there is an ongoing need to defend pluralistic societies that permit individuals "to do their own thing"—even as we hope this might be modified by responsible self-control. If we were to insist that, in the last analysis, secularism is equivalent to atheism, we may do a great disservice to secularism's importance in the battles for individual autonomy and the right of privacy.

The degree to which religiosity declines brightens the prospects for secularization of values. Many who embrace such values are formally religious, but only nominally affiliated with churches, synagogues, and temples; they are more likely to be receptive to secular attitudes and humanist values and to be tolerant of personal diversity. This is especially the case if they are broadminded, reflective, and perhaps members of their denominations only because of an accident of birth or family pressures.

That is why a negative atheism that seeks simply to destroy religion, without providing a positive agenda, will not in my judgment get very far. The wider platform for human progress as part of a New Enlightenment needs, I submit, to advocate secularism in the above three senses: (1) the separation of religion from the state; (2) the humanization of values that satisfy the deeper interests and needs of human beings; and (3) the decline of religious practice, entailing the growth of the Human City in place of the City of God.

I am not suggesting that we should not critically examine religious claims, especially where they are patently false, injurious, and destructive. The secular world constantly needs to be defended against those who would undermine it, and we need to responsibly examine the transcendental and moral claims of supernaturalism and criticize its pretensions—especially when they impinge on personal freedoms. This latter form of secularism is akin to neo-humanism, a broader, more welcoming expression of the humanist outlook.

Accordingly, the secularization of society needs a more inclusive agenda to enlist like-minded nominal religionists to share in defending—and expanding—humanist values. But this must be applied to actual socio-cultural contexts. Longstanding preexisting customs will vary from culture to culture; deeply ingrained ethnicities should be taken into account, including the richness of diverse languages, culinary tastes, and differences in fashion, manners, and other normative conduct. We cannot simply repeal religion and/or hope to wipe it off the map; its tentacles are deeply rooted, and some religions profoundly define the identity of each adherent—even nominal ones. Our approach should be multisecular, adapted to existing institutions and mores.

Christians and Jews, Mormons and Sunnis, Protestants and Buddhists, Hindus and Shiites carry culturally conditioned bundles of attitudes and values; it is a long process to reform behavior and move people's thinking onto another plane.

One of the basic ingredients of a reformation is to get a clan, sect, or denomination to transact with people of other faiths and convictions, hard as that often is. This involves dialogues and discussion, interaction and intermingling, appreciation and understanding of other points of view, as well as responsible criticism. One of the major dangers of any isolated religious system is that separation and exclusivity tend to solidify its dogmas.

THE AGENDA FOR SECULARIZATION

High on the agenda of secularization of course is education. We need to insist that all children have the right to appreciate and understand a wider range of cultural experiences—including the study of the sciences, the development of critical thinking, and exposure to world history, the arts, philosophy, comparative study of religions, and alternative political and economic systems. This entails recognizing the rights of children as human beings. Parents cannot starve, beat, or cruelly punish their children. Similarly, they should not prohibit them from receiving a full education. Indoctrination is an assault on the rights of children as persons.

The liberation of women from domination by men is also high on the secularizing agenda; women must be free to work and travel and to pursue independent careers, not be confined only to housework and menial jobs. Women have a right to an education and to pursue the roles they choose in their society's economic, political, and cultural life. They have equal dignity and value and should have equal status. This is today widely accepted in advanced democratic societies. It is rejected in most Muslim societies, and this is the Achilles heel of those societies that so badly needs to be pierced.

It follows, of course, that individuals should be permitted to marry or partner with whomever they wish, even if that means going outside their faith. Women should be accorded the same freedoms and responsibilities as men.

The secularization process is proceeding rapidly in today's world: Protestants and Catholics now intermarry in spite of earlier prohibitions; so do Jews and Christians, Asians and Anglos, blacks and whites. How encouraging that Ireland and Spain, formerly bastions of Catholic authoritarianism, have rapidly secularized and adopted humanistic values. Secular Jews likewise eschew Orthodoxy. Although they may retain some degree of ethnic loyalty, large percentages of contemporary Jews have sought mates outside their religion. They look to Spinoza and Mendelssohn, Einstein and Salk—modern Jews who heralded science and the arts—rather than to the ancient prophets of the Hebrew Bible. There is a beginning effort on the part of secularized Muslims, especially in Western democracies, to adopt the democratic ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity and to become more tolerant of the multiplicity of faiths as they begin to study the sciences and enter secular professions.

There are perhaps one and a half billion people on the planet today who are nonreligious, and their numbers are growing. These include agnostics and atheists but also people who are simply indifferent to existing religions. As I pointed out, there are also significant numbers of nominal members of religious bodies who are skeptical and need to break the stranglehold of the so-called sacred texts. We should point out that although we may appreciate the historical, literary, and moral values that traditional religions have bequeathed to us, nonetheless we wish to focus on other sources of inspiration that are more relevant to life today: modern science and philosophy, the vast reservoir of the secular arts and literature, and the ever- expansive richness of cultural diversity. The Sermon on the Mount is beautiful, as is much in Buddhism, but neither should yoke us to the past.

The United States is an anomaly among advanced nations because of its widespread public piety. Europe is basically postreligious; only a negligible minority still practices the old-time religion. Similar phenomena prevail in Japan, China, South Korea, Australia, and elsewhere in the world.

In the United States, the number of secularists is growing. A rapidly increasing segment of the public is the unchurched, untempled, and unmosqued. Religion has little impact on their lives. According to a recent Barna poll, the unchurched comprise 43 percent of the population. These people belong to no church and very rarely worship or attend services. They are secular too; saying that a person is secular does not necessarily mean that he or she is an atheist or even antireligious. I submit that secularism can provide affirmative alternatives for nonreligious men and women of every kind. Hence, we should focus on the nonreligious as our constituency. Indeed, a large number of ordinary folks, a majority of scientists in the United States, Nobel Prize winners, and people affiliated with our research universities and colleges, artists, and poets—people from every walk of life or occupation—express a secular outlook and exemplify ethical beliefs that are thoroughly secular and humanistic in appeal. The defining characteristic of secularists is simply that they are nonreligious.

In the spirit of cooperation and goodwill, we need to convince our neighbors that we can lead the good life and be good citizens and devoted parents without the trappings of religion, God, or clergy.

We need to demonstrate this by practicing good works. And, indeed, we do!

Republished from: http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=library&page=kurtz_28_2

34 Unconvincing Arguments for God

2008-09-21T09:19:00.000-07:00

by August Berkshire

Introduction - Atheism – the lack of belief in gods – is based upon a lack of evidence for gods, lack of a reason to believe in gods, and difficulties and contradictions that some god ideas lead to.

Nevertheless, atheism is a tentative state, subject to change if compelling theistic arguments are presented.

Following are some of the arguments that atheists have considered, along with some of the reasons these arguments have been rejected.

(1) God-of-the-Gaps (God as a “free lunch”) - Almost every “proof” for the existence of gods relies, at least in part, on a god-of-the gaps argument. This argument says that if we don’t know the answer to something, then “God did it.” “God” gets to win by default, without any positive evidence. But is saying “God did it” really an answer?

Intelligent design, god-advocate William Dembski has authored a book entitled No Free Lunch. However, “God” is the ultimate “free lunch.” Consider the following:

We don’t know what gods are composed of.

We don’t know what gods’ attributes are.

We don’t know how many gods there are.

We don’t know where gods are.

We don’t know where gods come from or, alternately, how it is possible for them to always exist.

We don’t know what mechanisms gods use to create or change anything.

We don’t know what the “supernatural” is, nor how it is capable of interacting with the natural world.

In other words, we know absolutely nothing about gods – yet at least one god is often given credit for many things. Thus, to say “God did it” is to answer a question with a question. It provides no information and only makes the original question more complex.

The god-of-the-gaps argument says that not only do we not have a naturalistic answer today, but we will never discover a naturalistic answer in the future because no naturalistic answer is possible. Thus, to rebut a god-of-the-gaps argument, we only have to show that a naturalistic answer is possible.

For example: We open the door to a room and observe a cat sleeping in a corner. We close the door, then open it again five minutes later. We observe that the cat is now sleeping in another corner. One person says “God did it by levitating the sleeping cat” (without offering any proof). Another person says “It’s quite possible that the cat woke up, wandered over to the other corner, and fell asleep again.” Thus, although no one saw what actually happened, the god-of-the-gaps argument has been rendered implausible by a possible naturalistic explanation.

(2) Leaps of Faith - The fact is, no one even knows if it’s possible for gods to exist. Just because we can imagine something doesn’t mean it’s possible. For example, we can all imagine ourselves walking through a solid wall, but that doesn’t mean it’s possible. So, just because we can imagine a god, doesn’t mean its existence is actually possible.

Because there is no direct proof for the existence of any gods, a typical believer must make at least nine leaps of faith to arrive at the god they believe in. These are separate leaps of faith because one leap does not imply the next leap.

The first leap of faith is that a supernatural realm even exists.

Second, that beings of some sort exist in this realm.

Third, that these beings have consciousness.

Fourth, that at least one of these beings is eternal.

Fifth, that this being is capable of creating something from nothing.

Sixth, that this being is capable of interfering with the universe after it is created (i.e. miracles).

Seventh, eighth, and ninth, that this being is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-loving.

If people want to believe in a god more specific to a particular religion, then some additional leaps of faith are necessary.

So, when we speak about gods, we have absolutely no idea what we’re talking about (see unconvincing argument #1), and we have to make at least nine leaps of faith to get to the god most people believe in.

(3) Holy Books - Just because something is written down does not make it true. This goes for the Bible, the Qur’an, and any other holy book. It is circular reasoning to try to prove the god of a holy book exists by using the holy book itself as “evidence.”
People who believe the holy book of one religion usually disbelieve the holy books of other religions.

(4) The Argument from Historical Settings - This argument states that because historical people and places are mentioned in ancient stories, that everything else about those stories, including descriptions of supernatural events, must be true. By this argument, everything written in the Iliad, including the intervention of the ancient Greek gods, must be true.

(5) “Revelations” of Others - All religions claim to be revealed, usually through people called “prophets.” But how can we know that a “revelation” is actually a “message from a god” and not a hallucination?

A revelation is a personal experience. Even if a revelation really did come from a god, there is no way we could prove it.

People of one religion usually disbelieve the revelations of other religions. These revelations often contradict each other, so what basis do we have for deciding which are the “true revelations”?

(6) “Revelations” of One’s Own (Personal Testimony, Feelings, “Open Heart”) - This is when you are personally having the revelation or feeling that a god exists. Though you may be sincere, and even if a god really does exist, a feeling is not proof, either for you or for someone else.

It will do no good to ask atheists to “open our hearts and accept Jesus” (or any other deity). If we were to set aside our skepticism, we might indeed have an inspirational experience. But this would be an emotional experience and we’d have no way to verify if a god was really speaking to us or if we were just hallucinating.

Many atheists have stories of how wonderful it felt to lose their belief in gods. As with religion, this is not proof that atheism is true.

(7) Most People Believe in God - It’s true that throughout history, most people have believed in at least one god. But mere popularity doesn’t make something true. (Most people used to mistakenly believe that the Earth was the center of the universe.)

The number of atheists in the world is currently increasing. We can imagine a day when most people are atheists. (In fact, most of the top scientists in the U.S. already are atheists.) However, as with religion, the popularity of atheism will not be able to be used as proof of its truth.

Even today, it is probable that in England and France atheists outnumber theists. Does this mean that God exists everywhere except in those two countries?

(8) Evolution Would Not Favor a False Belief - Would evolution reward a species incapable of perceiving reality? Would evolution reward a species that hallucinated? If not, then a god must exist, according to this argument.

However, evolution does not reward what is true. Evolution rewards that which is useful.

No one can doubt that religion and god-belief have sometimes been useful. “God” can be employed like Santa Claus, to keep people behaving well in order to earn a reward. “God” can also be used to justify horrible behavior that benefits your group, such as Islamic suicide bombings or the Christian Crusades. “God” can reduce your fear of death.

Nevertheless, in an age of nuclear weapons, the dangers of god belief far outweigh its usefulness.

(9) The “God Part” of the Brain - Some religious people argue that a god must exist, or why else would we have a part of our brain that can “recognize” a god? What use would that part of our brain be otherwise?

However, imagination is important for us to be able to predict the future, and thus aids in our survival. We can imagine all kinds of things that aren’t true. It is a byproduct of being able to imagine things that might be true.

As a matter of fact, scientists have begun to study why some people have religious beliefs and others don’t, from a biological perspective. They have identified certain naturally occurring chemicals in our brains that can give us religious experiences. For example, the brain chemical dopamine increases the likelihood that we will “see” patterns where there are none.

In studies of religion and the brain, a new field called neurotheology, they have identified the temporal lobe as a place in the brain that can generate religious experiences.

Another part of the brain, which regulates a person’s sense of “self,” can be consciously shut down during meditation, giving the meditator (who loses his or her sense of personal boundaries) a feeling of “oneness” with the universe.

(10) Ancient “Miracles” & Resurrection Stories - Many religions have miracle stories. And, just as people who believe in one religion are usually skeptical towards miracle stories of other religions, atheists are skeptical toward all miracle stories.

Extraordinary events can become exaggerated and grow into miraculous legends. Good magicians can perform acts that seem like miracles. Things can be mismeasured and misinterpreted. Many things that seemed like “miracles” in the ancient world can be explained with modern knowledge.

Regarding resurrections, atheists will not find a story of someone resurrecting from the dead to be convincing. There are many such legends in ancient literature and, again, most religious people reject the resurrection stories of other religions.

Many religions reports that their god(s) performed obvious, spectacular miracles thousands of years ago. Why have these miracles stopped? Is it because the gods have become shy? Or is it because science started?

(11) Modern Medical “Miracles” & Resurrection Stories - Modern medical “miracles” are a good example of “god-of-the-gaps.” A person experiences a cure for a disease that science can’t explain. Therefore, “God did it.” God never has to prove himself in these arguments. It is always assumed that he gets to win by default.

But this argument assumes we know everything about the human body, so that a natural explanation is impossible. But the fact is, we don’t have complete medical knowledge. Why don’t we ever see something that would be a true miracle, like an amputated arm instantaneously regenerating?

Several studies of prayer, where the patients didn’t know whether or not they were being prayed for, including a study by the Mayo Clinic, have shown prayer to have no effect on healing.

(This raises the question of why we would have to beg an all-powerful, all-loving god to be healed in the first place. It seems ironic, to say the least, to pray to a loving god to be cured from diseases and the effects of natural disasters that he himself created. It also raises the Problem of Evil: If God is all-powerful and all-loving, why does evil exist in the first place?)

Modern resurrection stories always seem to occur in Third World countries under unscientific conditions. However, there have been thousands of people in modern hospitals hooked up to machines that verified their deaths when they died. Why didn’t any of them ever resurrect?

(12) “Heaven” (Fear of Death) - Atheists don’t like the fact that we’re all going to die any more than religious people do. However, this fear does not prove there is an afterlife – only that we wish there was an afterlife. But wishing doesn’t make it so.

There is no evidence for a god, no evidence that he created any place for us to go after we die, no explanation as to exactly what that place is composed of, nor where it is, nor how a god created it from nothing.

There is no evidence for a soul, no description of what a soul is composed of, and no explanation of how a non-material soul evolved in a material body, or, alternately, no explanation of how or when a god zaps a soul into a body.

If a fertilized human egg has a soul, what happens if that egg splits in two to form identical twins? Does each twin have half a soul? Or did the original fertilized egg have two souls?

What about when the opposite happens, when two fertilized eggs fuse to form one human being, creating what is known as a chimera? Does that person have two souls? Or did each original fertilized egg have only half a soul?

If a one-week-old baby dies, what kind of thoughts will it have in an afterlife? The thoughts of a one-week-old, which are zero? The thoughts of an adult? If so, how will that happen? Where will those thoughts come from and what will they be?

There is no reason to believe our consciousness survives the death of our brains. The mind is not something separate from the body.

For example, we know the chemicals responsible for the feeling of love. Drugs can alter our mood, and thus change our thoughts. Physical damage to our brains can change our personalities, and our thoughts. And learning a new skill, which involves thinking, can physically change the structure of our brains.
Some people get Alzheimer’s disease at the end of their lives. The irreversible damage to their brains can be detected by brain scans. These people lose their ability to think, yet they are still alive. How, one second after these people die, does their thinking return (in a “soul”)?

If people had to choose between a god and an afterlife, most people would choose the afterlife and forget about God. They only choose god belief because it’s the only way they know of to fulfill their desire for an afterlife.

(13) Fear of Hell - The idea of hell strikes atheists as a scam – an attempt to get people to believe through fear what they cannot believe through reason and evidence.

The only way to approach this “logically” is to find the religion that punishes you the worst for disbelief, and then believe that religion. Okay, you will have saved yourself from the worst punishment that exists – if that religion is the “true” religion.

But if that religion (with its punishment) is not the true religion – if the religion that has the second or third worst punishment for disbelief is the true religion – then you have saved yourself nothing.

So, which religion’s hell is the true hell? Without evidence, we can never know.

Even within Christianity there are three different versions of hell. There is the traditional version, where your “soul” burns forever. A second version says that eternal punishment is too cruel for a loving god, so your “soul” is burnt out of existence.

And a third version says that hell is not a physical place but the condition of being forever separated from God. But atheists are already separated from God and are having a good time, so they fail to see how this is a punishment. And, how can a person be separated from God when God is supposedly everywhere?

(14) “Pascal’s Wager” / Faith - In short, Pascal’s Wager states that we have everything to gain (an eternity in heaven) and nothing to lose by believing in a god. On the other hand, disbelief can lead to a loss of heaven (i.e. hell).

We’ve already noted that heaven is wishful thinking and that hell is a scam, so let’s address the issue of faith.

Pascal’s Wager assumes a person can will himself or herself into having faith. This is simply not the case, at least not for an atheist. So atheists would have to pretend to believe. But according to most definitions of God, wouldn’t God know we were lying to hedge our bets? Would a god reward this?

Part of Pascal’s Wager states that you “lose nothing” by believing. But an atheist would disagree. By believing under these conditions, you’re acknowledging that you’re willing to accept some things on faith. In other words, you’re saying you’re willing to abandon evidence as your standard for judging reality. Faith doesn’t sound so appealing when it’s phrased that way, does it?

(15) Blaming the Victim - Many religions punish people for disbelief. However, belief requires faith, and some people, such as atheists, are incapable of faith. Their minds are only receptive to evidence. Therefore, are atheists to be blamed for not believing when “God” provides insufficient evidence?

(16) The End of the World - Like the concept of hell, this strikes atheists as a scare tactic to get people to believe through fear what they can’t believe through reason and evidence. There have been predictions that the world was going to end for centuries now. The question you might want to ask yourselves, if you’re basing your religious beliefs on this, is how long you’re willing to wait – what amount of time will convince you that the world is not going to end?

(17) Difficulties of Religion - It has sometimes been argued that because certain religious practices are difficult to follow, nobody would do them if a god didn’t exist. However, it is the belief in the existence of a god that is motivating people. A god doesn’t really have to exist for this to happen.

Difficulties can serve as an initiation rite of passage into being counted one of the “select few.” After all, if just anybody could be “saved,” there might be no point in having a religion.

Finally, the reward for obedience promised by most religions – a heaven – far outweighs any difficulties religion imposes.

(18) The Argument from Martyrdom - It has been argued that no one would die for a lie. This overlooks the fact that people can be intentionally or unintentionally fooled into believing a religion is true.

Most religious groups that promote martyrdom promise a great reward in “heaven,” so followers don’t perceive the loss of their lives as a great sacrifice.

Does the fact that the 9/11 bombers were willing to die for their faith make Islam true? What about cults like Heaven’s Gate, where followers committed suicide in 1997 believing their “souls” were going to a space ship carrying Jesus on the far side of a comet?

(19) The Argument from Embarrassment - Some religious people argue that because their holy book contains passages that are embarrassing to their faith, that those passages – and the accompanying descriptions of supernatural events – must be true or they wouldn’t have been included in the book.

A classic example of this argument is the Biblical description of the disciples’ cowardice after Jesus’ arrest. Yet in this case, as in others, embarrassing moments can be included in a fictional story to heighten dramatic tension and make the eventual triumph of the hero of the story that much greater.

(20) False Dichotomies - This is being presented with a false “either/or” proposition, where you’re only given two alternatives when, in fact, there are more possibilities.

Here’s one that many Christians are familiar with: “Either Jesus was insane or he was god. Since Jesus said some wise things, he wasn’t insane. Therefore, he must be God, like he said he was.” But those are not the only two possibilities.

A third option is that, yes, it is possible to say some wise things and be deluded that you are a god.

A fourth possibility is that Jesus didn’t say everything that is attributed to him in the Bible. Maybe he didn’t actually say all those wise things, but the writers of the Bible said he did. Or maybe he never claimed to be God, but the writers turned him into a god after he died.

A fifth possibility is that Jesus is a fictional character and so everything was invented by the authors.

(21) Meaning in Life - This is the idea that, without belief in a god, life would be meaningless. Even if this were true, it would only prove we wanted a god to exist to give meaning to our lives, not that a god actually does exist. But the very fact that atheists can find meaning in their lives without a belief in a god shows that god belief is not necessary.

(22) “God is Intangible, Like Love” - Love is not intangible. We can define love both as a type of feeling and as demonstrated by certain types of actions.

Unlike “God,” love is a physical thing. We know the chemicals responsible for the feeling of love.
Also, love depends upon brain structure. A person with a lobotomy or other type of brain damage may lose the ability to feel love.

Furthermore, if love were not physical, it would not be confined to our physical brains. We would expect to be able to detect an entity or force called “love” floating around in the air.

(23) Morality/Ethics - This is the idea that without a god we’d have no basis for morality. However, a secular moral code existed before the Bible: the Code of Hammurabi.

In Plato’s dialogue called Euthyphro, Socrates asks a man named Euthyphro whether something is good because God says it is, or does God announce something to be good because it has intrinsic goodness?

If something is good because God says it is, then God might change his mind about what is good. Thus, there would be no absolute morality.

If God merely announces something to be good because it has intrinsic goodness, then we might be able to discover this intrinsic goodness ourselves, without the need for god belief.

Most religious people ignore the bad ethics in their holy books and concentrate on the good advice. In other words, theists pick and choose their ethics just like atheists do.

Other animals exhibit kindness toward one another and a sense of justice. We have found the part of our brains responsible for feelings of sympathy and empathy – “mirror neurons” – which serve as the foundation for much of our ethics.

Morality is something that evolved from us being social animals. It’s based on the selfish advantage we get from cooperation, and on consequences. Helping one another is a selfish act that has evolutionary rewards. (See also Argument 25, against the existence of altruism.)

We also judge actions by their consequences, through trial and error. The best formula we have come up with is to allow the maximum amount of freedom that does not harm another person or impinge on that person’s freedom. This creates the greatest amount of happiness and prosperity in society, which benefits the greatest amount of people (the greatest good for the greatest number). This view includes the protection of minority rights, since in some way we are each a minority.

Since there is no evidence for any gods, it follows that any moral belief can be attributed to a god. So, rather than being a certain guide, religion can be used to justify any behavior. One simply has to say “God told me to do it.” The best way to refute this reasoning is to discard the idea of gods altogether.

Even if a god doesn’t exist, some people think that a belief in a god is useful to get people to behave – kind of like an invisible policeman. Do we really want to make this the basis for our ethics?

Any decent ethical system does not need the supernatural to justify it. However, belief in the supernatural has been used to justify many unethical acts, such as the Inquisition, the Salem Witch trials, gay-bashing, and 9/11.

(24) The Argument from Goodness/Beauty - Some religious people argue that without a god there would be no goodness and/or beauty in the world. However, goodness and beauty are defined in human terms.

If the Earth’s environment had been so nasty that it was impossible for life to evolve, then we wouldn’t be here to ponder this question. So, obviously, at least some things about the Earth’s environment are life-affirming, and we are naturally drawn to these things – our survival depends upon it.

As for the beauty of art: we are naturally drawn to life-affirming images, shapes, and colors. However, there are many examples of art, such as the paintings of the Cubists and the Surrealists, that are loved by some people and hated by others.

(25) Altruism - People sometimes say that without a god there would be no altruism, that evolution only rewards selfish behavior.

However, it can be argued that there is no such thing as altruism, that people always do what they want to do. If they are only faced with bad choices, then people choose the thing they hate the least.

Our choices are based on what gives us (our genes) the best advantage for survival, including raising our reputation in society.

“Altruism” towards family members benefits people who share our genes. “Altruism” towards friends benefits people who may someday return the favor.

Even “altruism” towards strangers has a basis in evolution. This behavior first evolved in small tribes, where everyone knew each other and a good reputation enhanced one’s survival. It is now hard-wired in our brains as a general mode of conduct. [Thanks to Richard Dawkins for this point.]

(26) Free Will - Some people argue that without a god there would be no free will, that we would live in a deterministic universe of cause and effect and that we would be mere “robots.”

Actually, there is far less free will than most people think there is. Our conditioning (our biological desire to survive and prosper, combined with our experiences) makes certain “choices” far more likely than others. How else can we explain our ability, in many cases, to predict human behavior?

Experiments have shown that our brain makes a “decision” to take action before we become conscious of it!

Some believe that the only free will we have is to exercise a conscious veto over actions suggested by our thoughts.

Most atheists have no problem admitting that free will may be an illusion.

This issue also brings up a conundrum: If a god who created us knows the future, how can we have free will?

In the end, if we are enjoying our lives, does it matter if free will is real or an illusion? Isn’t it only our ego – our healthy self-esteem that is beneficial for survival – that has been conditioned to believe that real free will is somehow better than imaginary free will?

(27) A Perfect Being Must Necessarily Exist - This is known as the ontological argument for God, first developed almost 1,000 years ago by Anselm.

We are asked to imagine the greatest or most perfect being possible. For most people, this is their conception of a god. Then it is pointed out that it is greater or more perfect for something to exist rather than not to exist. Therefore, this being (God) must necessarily exist.

But this argument does not address the question of whether it is possible for a perfect being to exist. It also means that our imagination can will things into existence. Not everything we can imagine is possible.

Let’s apply this logic to a different subject. Imagine a perfect skyscraper. It would remain undamaged if terrorists flew planes into it. Yet no skyscraper can withstand such an assault without at least some damage. But that violates our premise that the skyscraper must be perfect. Therefore, such an indestructible skyscraper must exist.

(28) Why is there Something Rather than Nothing? - This argument assumes that, without a god, we wouldn’t expect anything to exist. However, we have no idea of the statistical probability of Something existing rather than Nothing.

According to physics and astronomy professor Victor Stenger, symmetrical systems tend to be unstable. They tend to decay into less symmetrical systems. Now, Nothing – the lack of anything – is perfectly symmetrical, and thus highly unstable. Therefore, Something is more stable than Nothing. Thus we would expect there to be Something rather than Nothing.

We might just as reasonably ask: “Why is there a god rather than no god?” and “Who created this god?”

(29) The Argument from First Cause - This argument states that we live in a universe of cause-and-effect. However, the argument goes, it is logically impossible to have an infinite regression of causes. At some point the regression has to stop. At that point you need a First Cause that is not the result of any cause itself. That First Uncaused Cause, it is claimed, is God.

The universe we live in now “began” about 13.7 billion years ago. Whether the universe existed in some other form before that – whether there was energy/matter/gravity/etc. (a natural world) before that – is unknown.

We don’t know if the natural world had a beginning or whether it always existed in some form. If it had a beginning, we don’t know that a god is the only possible creative source. We don’t know that a god can be an uncaused cause. What caused God?

Virtual particles pop into and out of existence all the time. Quantum physics demonstrates that there can indeed be uncaused events.

(30) The “Laws” of the Universe - Where did the “laws” of the universe come from? Any physical “law” is merely an observed regularity. It’s not something handed down by a celestial tribunal.

According to physics and astronomy professor Victor Stenger: “It is commonly believed that the “laws of physics” lie outside physics. They are thought to be either imposed from outside the universe or built into its logical structure. Recent physics disputes this. The basic “laws” of physics are mathematical statements that have the form they do in an attempt to describe reality in an objective way. The laws of physics are just what they would be expected to be if they came from nothing.”

(31) The “Fine-tuning” of the Universe - Some religious people argue that the six physical constants of the universe (which control such things as the strength of gravity) can only exist within a very narrow range to produce a universe capable of sustaining life. Therefore, since this couldn’t have happened “by accident,” a god must have done it.

Again, this is a god-of-the-gaps argument. But beyond that, this argument assumes that we know everything about astrophysics – a field in which new discoveries are made on almost a daily basis. We may discover that our universe is not so “fine tuned” after all.

Another possibility is that there may exist multiple universes – either separately or as “bubble universes” within a single universe. Each of these universes could have its own set of constants. Given enough universes, by chance it is likely that at least one will produce and sustain life.

We know it is possible for at least one universe to exist – we are in it. If one can exist, why not many? On the other hand, we have no evidence that it is possible for even one god to exist.

Now let’s take a look at most people’s definition of a god: eternal, omni-present, all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-loving. Can God be any other way than exactly the way he is?

Although there is some small margin for variance in the “fine-tuning” of the constants of the universe, there is traditionally no margin for variance in the constants of God. Therefore, our universe with a traditional god is logically more implausible than our universe without one.

And, of course, we must ask: Who or what fine-tuned God?

If the universe was created specifically with humans in mind, then the enormous size of the universe (most of it hostile to life) and the billions of years that passed before humans showed up are ridiculous and wasteful – not what we would expect from a god.

(32) The “Fine-tuning” of the Earth - Some religious people argue that the Earth is positioned “just right” in the solar system (not too hot, not too cold, etc.) for life to exist. Furthermore, the elements on Earth (carbon, oxygen, etc.) are also “just right.” These people claim that this couldn’t have happened “by accident,” so a god must exist to have done the positioning and chemistry.

We should be able to recognize a god-of-the-gaps argument here. But an even better rebuttal exists. If Earth was the only planet in the universe, then it would indeed be remarkable that our conditions turned out to be “just right.”

But most religious people acknowledge that there are probably thousands, if not millions, of other planets in the universe. (Our own solar system has eight planets.) Therefore, by chance, at least one of those planets will have conditions that will produce some kind of life.

We can imagine religious purple creatures with four eyes and breathing carbon dioxide on another planet also falsely believing that their planet is “fine-tuned” and that a creator god exists in their image.

(33) Creationism / “Intelligent Design” - This is the idea that if we can’t currently explain something about life, then “God did it” (god-of-the-gaps).

However, if Genesis, or any similar religious creation myth, is true, then virtually every field of science is wrong. Not only is biology wrong, but so too are chemistry, physics, archeology, and astronomy, as well as their many subdisciplines such as embryology and genetics. In fact, we might as well throw out the entire scientific method.

Creationists often make a distinction between “micro” evolution and “macro” evolution – that is, change within a species, which they accept, and change from one species to another, which they do not accept.

But what are the mechanisms for “micro” evolution? They are: mutation, natural selection, and inheritance. And what are the mechanisms for “macro” evolution? Exactly the same: mutation, natural selection, and inheritance. The only difference is the amount of time required. Do some genes say to themselves: “Gee, I better not change too much or it will upset some religious people?”

Evolution is the best explanation, and the only explanation for which we have any evidence, for the age of fossils, for the progression of fossils, for genetic similarities, for structural similarities, and for transitional fossils.

Yes, there are transitional fossils. For example, we have a good fossil trail of species going from land mammal to whale, including basilosaurus, a primitive whale that still retained useless, small hind legs. Even today, whales retain their hip bones.
(Some creationists argue that those tiny hind legs would have been useful for mating, thus basilosaurus was a separately created species and not a transition. But if those hind legs were so useful, why did they evolve completely away?)

In fact, snakes, too, still have hip bones, and once in a great while we see a snake born with vestiges of hind legs, demonstrating their evolution from reptile ancestors that had hind legs.

In China we have found many half-reptile/half-bird fossils, demonstrating that transition.

There is the recently discovered fossil tiktaalik, which helped filled a gap between fish and amphibians. It was discovered in Canada, exactly where, and in the age of rock, that evolution predicted.

On the other hand, if a perfect god created life we would expect him to do a better job. We wouldn’t expect that 99% of all species that have ever existed would have gone extinct.

As the Christian evolutionary biologist Kenneth R. Miller stated: “if God purposely designed 30 horse species that later disappeared, then God’s primary attribute is incompetence. He can’t make it right the first time.”

As the evangelical Christian Francis Collins, head of the Human Genome Project, stated: “ID [Intelligent Design] portrays the Almighty as a clumsy Creator, having to intervene at regular intervals to fix the inadequacies of His own initial plan for generating the complexity of life.”

If a perfect god created life we would not expect birth defects. If a perfect god created life we would not expect “unintelligent design” such as a prostate gland that swells and shuts down the urinary tract, when the urinary tract could have just as easily have been routed around the prostate gland. Is “God” an incompetent or sloppy designer?

If a god created all life within a week then, even with an alleged worldwide flood, we would expect to find a thoroughly mixed geologic column of fossils. We don’t find this.

We also have the contradiction that people claim that God is “pro-life,” yet he allows for spontaneous abortion. One third to one half of fertilized human eggs get spontaneously aborted, often before the woman is even aware that she’s pregnant. If a god designed the human system of reproduction, this make God the world’s biggest abortionist.

Thus, scientific evolution provides answers, whereas religious creationism and “intelligent design” only introduce more questions.

(34) The universe and/or life violate the second law of thermodynamics (entropy) - The second law of thermodynamics (entropy) states that in a closed system, things tend toward greater disorder. Some religious people argue that because the universe and life are so orderly, that a god must be required who could violate this law.

Again, I thank physics and astronomy professor Victor Stenger for the secular explanation:

The universe does not violate the second law of thermodynamics. The universe started with the maximum amount of disorder possible for its size. Then, as the universe expanded, this allowed for more disorder to occur, and, in fact, it is occurring.

Despite the fact that the overall disorder is increasing in the system called the universe, increasing order is allowed in subsystems, such as galaxies, solar systems, and life – so long as the net effect to the entire universe is increased disorder.

If a god created the universe, we would have expected it to start in an orderly fashion, not in disorder. The fact that the universe started with maximum disorder means that a god could not have created it, because a purposeful creation would have had at least some order to it.

It also turns out that the negative gravitational energy in the universe exactly cancels the positive energy represented by matter, so that the total net energy of the universe is zero, which is what you would expect if the universe came from Nothing by natural means. However, if a god was involved, you would have expected him to have introduced energy into the universe. There is no evidence of this.

It’s interesting how theists will cling to the second law of thermodynamics to try to prove the existence of their god, while totally ignoring the first law of thermodynamics – that matter/energy can be neither created nor destroyed – which would thoroughly disprove the existence of their god as a being who can create something from nothing.

Conclusion - Religious people have a tough, if not impossible task to try to prove a god exists, let alone that their particular religion is true. If any religion had objective standards, wouldn’t everyone be flocking to the same “true” religion? Instead we find that people tend to believe, to varying degrees, the religion in which they were indoctrinated. Or they are atheists.

Republished from: http://mnatheists.org/

Review of Ibn Warraq's Leaving Islam

2008-09-20T07:11:00.000-07:00

Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out
by Ibn Warraq
Prometheus Books, 2003, 471. pp.
Reviewed by Ophelia Benson

Growing up in Pakistan, Ibn Warraq ‘learned to read the Koran in Arabic without understanding a word of it – a common experience for thousands of Muslim children.’ [1] He discarded religious dogmas as soon as he was able to think for himself, and that would have been that, had it not been for ‘the Rushdie affair and the rise of Islam.’ [2] The two events galvanized him into writing Why I Am Not a Muslim in 1995. Leaving Islam is a collection of testimonies from ‘apostates’ of Islam. Apostasy – the leaving of Islam – is a crime potentially punishable by death in many parts of the Muslim world.

In his introductory chapter, Ibn Warraq reproduces a pronouncement on apostasy in Islam from ‘the ultra-conservative Tehran daily Kayhan International’ in 1986. It includes this observation.

The antiapostasy punishments of Islam are proper laws to rescue mankind from falling into the cesspool of treason, betrayal, and disloyalty and to remind the human being of his ideological commitments. A committed man should not violate his promise and vow, especially his promise to God. (p. 32.)

A more wrong-headed idea is difficult to imagine. To define changing one’s mind about any particular set of ideas and truth claims as treason, betrayal, and disloyalty is to forbid thinking itself. Making the human being’s ideological commitments a permanent, irrevocable matter of loyalty is to impose ossification, dogmatism, conformity, and plain mindless stubbornness on an entire society, or, worse, an entire global ‘community of believers.’

This idea, and the dogmatism and simplistic binary thinking (us-them, believers-unbelievers, halal-haram, Dar al-Islam-Dar al-Harb) that issues from it, unsurprisingly make up one of the recurring themes of the book. Witness after witness tells of frustration – in childhood, adolescence, adulthood – at being told not to doubt, not to ask questions, not even to think. In chapter 15 Abul Kasem of Bangladesh says of his childhood attendance at the Eid prayer:

I did not understand a single word of what the imam was saying or why the people were doing their body movements. When I asked my dad any question he used to tell me to keep quiet and that Allah will punish those kids who ask too many questions. Thus, I was introduced to the fear from the very beginning of my childhood. (p. 181.)

The individual accounts are many and various, but particular themes recur: the status and treatment of women; the hatred of outsiders, non-Muslims, ‘unbelievers’; the vainglorious exclusivism (only Muslims are perfect, only Muslims are going to heaven); the memorisation of the Koran without understanding it; the shock of reading it in translation and understanding it at last; dogmatism and intellectual narrowness; violence and coercion.

It’s painful reading, for the most part. There is often a sense of relief at escape and freedom, but only after a suffocating sense of claustrophobia leading up to the escape, along with an inevitable sense of distress about the many who must feel the same claustrophobia but will never be able to escape. The reader gasps for air in a closed world filled with hatred, force, and boasting. One doesn’t want to think that, one would much rather think that ‘normal’ Islam is relatively free and benevolent and only political Islam is coercive and dogmatic – but when reading these experiences of Bangladeshis and Pakistanis and Iranians, that hope is hard to sustain.

That’s not to say that there is no such thing at all. Taner Edis, for instance, grew up in Istanbul without religion himself and with very mild versions around him.

Few of our relatives and family friends were visibly religious, and when so, they seemed very liberal about it … Most others in our circle were nominal, unobservant Muslims. They believed in God and that the Koran was in some way a divine message giving a good moral foundation, but they didn’t read the scriptures or care about doctrine.

But Edis (half-American half-Turkish, a physicist at a Midwestern US university, author of the excellent The Ghost in the Universe and The Illusion of Harmony) notes that things are different now, and he is not optimistic about the trend. Nor is Ali Sina of Iran, who had a similar upbringing.

[T]he majority of Muslims who have some education believe that Islam is a humanistic religion that respects human rights, that elevates women and protects their status. Most Muslims still believe that Islam means ‘peace.’ (pp 137-8)

Ali Sina shared such beliefs, but he read the Koran, and he now considers them a dream.

Azam Kamguian, editor of the Bulletin of the Committee to Defend Women's Rights in the Middle East, also grew up in Iran; her father was ‘relatively open-minded’ but her mother indoctrinated the children. There was one bit of luck however.

We had a big study with all kinds of books, including science and other nonfiction as well as fiction. That room was an important part of my world, a part that helped save me from the harm of religion, from the harm of Islam and superstition. (p. 213)

It didn’t save her favourite brother though. He had been interested in music, cinema, and reading books; he was learning to play a musical instrument and was one of the top students in physics and maths in Iran.

All of a sudden he started to read the Koran … My brother also began to take part in activities harassing and intimidating Bahais. Gradually, I became familiar with one of the ugly faces of Islam. (p. 214.)

The sense of stifling entrapment, uniformity, drabness, of the blotting out of all the rich possibilities of life in exchange for dogma, obedience, and submission, can seem intolerably bleak. Samia Labidi of Tunisia, who grew up ‘in a comparatively tolerant milieu, which only paid lip service to Islam’, found herself in such a trap. She was introduced to Islamism by an older sister’s husband when she was eleven, and at first she embraced it with enthusiasm. But then it began to close in.

I had to say good-bye to outings for pleasure, to the beach in a swimming costume, to my friends who refused to follow me in my religious activities, to mini-skirts, to bursts of laughter, in short, to all the pleasures of life. I resembled a shadow more than a living being worthy of the human condition. I saw my sisters around me sinking one after another into the madness of this interpretation, purely human and masculine, of the so-called divine texts. (p. 323.)

Islam failed to answer her questions – and it kept on closing in.

I felt more and more chained up and crushed by the dogma that interfered in the smallest detail of one’s daily life. My mind was sterilized gradually, unable to have access to freedom of thought, to myself … Uniformity did not suit me. The ordinary did not resemble me. Everyone had to dress, talk, and behave in the same manner, like a herd of animals. Monotony invaded space and became burdensome, and my life was devoid of all originality. (p. 324.)

That was especially true for women.

Women continued to be treated like incapable beings who need to be systematically under the guardianship of a close male relative in order to move, to exist, or even to breathe. I realized gradually that the promises of equal rights and duties they dazzled us with were but bait that lured us into a premeditated trap that closed over us immediately. (p. 324.)

The exclusivism and exceptionalism are another kind of bait and also a trap, as the account of Syed Kamran Mirza of Bangladesh indicates.

I was proud and happy to be a born Muslim, since I learned from mullahs, learned men, and my elders that Islam is the ultimate truth and best religion in the whole world. The Koran is the infallible words of Allah, who loves only the religion of Islam, and all other religions are simply bad, people of other religions are all kafirs and destined to go to hell. Muslims are impeccable human beings, and Allah loves only Muslims. Only we, the Muslims, are supposed to go to heaven and nobody else can enter the gate of heaven. (p. 240.)

A cheerful sort of belief on the surface, until one thinks seriously about all those other people destined to go to hell, and about the dangers of thinking that ‘people of other religions are all kafirs and destined to go to hell.’ Faisal Muhammad of Pakistan was interested in Sufism for a time but then he realised his Sufi master, despite his pretensions of being a scholar and a mystic, was a fanatic and a bigot.

Whenever he talked about the Hindus who had lived in Lahore before 1947, he forgot his message of human love and the fanatic in him would take over. During unguarded moments he would acknowledge that many Hindus and Sikhs were good people, but whenever I directly probed the subject he would give the standard version of all Hindus being kafirs and therefore killing them or turning them out of Lahore was all right. (p. 226.)

Syed Kamran Mirza was told the same thing.

[D]uring the partition (1947), there was a Hindu-Muslim riot in our area and many Hindus were killed because they were a very tiny minority in that area of densely populated Muslims … [L]ater I learned from the seniors that Hindus are kafirs and bad people, so they have to die. (p. 240.)

Anwar Shaikh and his friends were also told that murdering non-Muslims was an act of jihad. One August day in 1947 he saw a train pull in from East Punjab which was full of the mutilated bodies of Muslim men, women, and children. He went home to pray and then he took up a club and a knife, and went out in search of non-Muslims. He found two Sikhs, a father and son.

The father was perhaps not more than fifty, perhaps younger, and his young son. I killed both of them … I encountered another Sikh at Darabi Road and I killed him too. Often memories of those terrible days haunt my mind; I feel ashamed and many times I have shed tears of remorse. If it had not been for my fanaticism, engendered by the Islamic traditions, these people might have been alive even today. (p. 286.)

Abul Kasem was taught the same lesson in his school days.

I witnessed the slaughter of a dear friend of mine (along with his entire family) in Chandpur, Bangladesh … But more shocking was that many Muslims were actually happy about that slaughter … It was also declared by some Muslim clerics that killing of non-Muslims is an act of jihad and therefore anyone participating in jihad will be rewarded with heaven. (pp. 182-3.)

He describes his experience of the Pakistan army attack on what was then East Pakistan in 1971, especially an attack on university residential halls on the night of March 25: gunfire, explosions, shattering windows, hiding under his bed all night, and at 3 in the morning watching a tank firing on a slum next to the halls. ‘As the slum-dwellers came out to escape the fire, the Pakistani Islamic soldiers started shooting them with a machine gun.’ [p. 184-5.]

Kasem went to Thailand in 1973 to do postgraduate studies in engineering. There were many Pakistani as well as Bangladeshi students there, and they discussed what had happened in Bangladesh in 1971. The Pakistani students dismissed most of the claims of the Bangladeshis – the numbers killed were exaggerated, there were no rapes at all, not one.

Now, the interesting point was that whenever the atrocities of the Pakistani Islamic army were mentioned to them, they were all adamant that we (the Bengalis) were to be blamed for that. Why? Simply, because we were not good Muslims. How? If we were good Muslims, we would not have voted for the Awami League … Therefore, they opined that the genocide was not really a genocide! It was getting rid of the non-Muslims. After all, the non-Muslims were not really human beings. (p. 195.)

All religions of course carry within them this tendency to hate the other (yes, even Buddhism), and during Partition Hindus slaughtered Muslims as eagerly as Muslims slaughtered Hindus. The riots in Gujarat in 2002 were a case of Hindus raping and murdering Muslims, with the complicity and even encouragement of the state and national governments. [4] Furthermore, in the nature of the case the writers of a book about leaving Islam will not be writing as fans of it. Nevertheless the repeated accounts of the very broad prevalence of this at best insular and at worst genocidal way of thinking do carry some weight.

There are moments of humour though. Shoaib Nasir of Pakistan was a rebellious child when it came to what he calls ‘Muhammad’s ideology.’

My mother always asked me to carry Muhammad’s book above my head respectfully. I always carried it above my head when I was in sight. Once I neared the cabinet, I would put the book on the floor and step on it before I put it in the assigned place. (p. 252.)

A book of this kind is necessary for Islam in particular because other religions no longer make leaving a capital crime. Critics of Islam and ‘apostates’ are subject to fatwas and death threats, prison and murder, in many parts of the world. It is necessary to record that it is at least possible, if not always safe, to leave Islam.

Republished from: http://www.democratiya.com/review.asp?reviews_id=133

The Good Life

2008-09-19T05:55:00.000-07:00

What can we say about the good life for human beings? Over the centuries, philosophers and religious thinkers have spun out their theories. Plato’s Socrates holds that life is a preparation for death and that what we do now has eternal significance. The good life is one of knowledge, self-discipline and justice in the soul. Nietzsche holds that the good life is one that we affirm by living fully and with gusto, but with a sense of the tragic dimension of human life. His test is to get us to ask ourselves if we can willingly embrace the thought that our lives will repeat themselves forever in every detail, the famous Eternal Return of the Same. Another popular and ancient view is that we ought to eat, drink and be merry, because death awaits us all. Yet another is the dour religious view that the world, for all its pleasures, is a sink of iniquities. It is really a place where our faith will be tested and those who fail can look forward to eternal suffering. The good life is submission to the Divine Will.

Can we settle on a single definition of the Good Life for human beings? The differences between individuals and cultures, between aptitudes and shaped desires make this very unlikely. Life is short, and perhaps the goal is illusory. So let’s grant that there are various ideas and explore them through a contrast between a generally ‘other worldly’ approach to the good life, and a generally ‘this worldly’ approach. What we think about these things have practical consequences in our lives.

One ‘other worldly’ approach explores the idea that it is through being embodied that people are put into a world of suffering and deprivation. Plato, for example, tells us that the body is an impediment to knowledge and that the soul is superior to the body and ought to rule over it. The Good Life is really lived in Heaven, not on this earth, so the ‘good life’ on earth will be merely the least unworthy life, as seen from the perspective of Heaven. The pain and suffering you have now will no longer afflict you there. Now we see but through a glass darkly; in Heaven we will see the face of God. These are strong ideas and have had a terrific impact on the human psyche over the last two thousand years or so.

Taken to extremity, the ‘other worldly’ approach shows its disdain for the mortal body and all its frailties. Ascetics show us just how far the ‘spirit’ can overcome the inclinations of the body. At the same time, the ego is to be suppressed. Our mortal sin is the sin of pride. The self must be put away, and this is shown in altruism and self-sacrificing behavior. We ought to lose our selves in service to others. As far as possible, we ought to live in the world but not be part of it. There are higher things than this paltry, insecure and fearful life that we live on earth, a world of sin and evil. Forget this world; it is going to the Devil. What matters is your eternal soul. Think of the end, and the end is nigh.

Now consider a ‘this worldly’ approach to the good life. As I imagine it, we are to celebrate life on earth and not deplore it. The evils of the world can be combated. It is wrong to turn away from the world even if it is ultimately ‘unreal’. We have a duty to make the only world we know a better place for all of us to live. Furthermore, it is not a crime to have a body. We did not sin by being born, because, like all animals, we are born through entirely natural processes. Like the other animals we will die entirely natural deaths, and that will be an end of our individual existences. Like the flowers in the field, we are born and we die. There is no future immortality and no supernatural End, Telos or Purpose for which we exist, and whose accomplishment gives our lives Meaning with a capital ‘M’.

So what are the ingredients of a good life from this perspective? Obviously, it is not a simple matter. A number have been proposed, but the basics are the necessaries of continuing life: food, drink, shelter, clothing and community. These are the minimum conditions of the good life. They may also turn out to be sufficient. However, for our complex world, there are, perhaps, other ingredients that play an important role, like a sense of physical safety and social security, of access to healthcare and education, of freedom from financial insecurity and corrupt business practices, of freedom from arbitrary arrest and seizure, of just laws, of freedom to participate in the political process, to express one’s views, and to chart the course of one’s own life within the rule of law. It seems also that most humans need satisfying human relationships, the ability to serve others, have love and sex in their lives, perhaps children to raise, and eventually the opportunity to die with as much dignity as possible in such an inherently undignified process.

I will conclude by emphasizing the crucial difference between the two main approaches: between living with belief in the supernatural or living without it. Our relation to the world changes profoundly whether or not we think there is anything ‘behind’ the natural world as we discover it with our reason and our senses. It colors our idea of the good life for human beings, how we think a fully human life ought to be conceived and lived. This is a profound choice that everyone makes in the heart of her or his own being, and it is an unavoidable choice to make once we become aware of the alternatives.

Republished from: http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=379

Those fanatical atheists

2008-09-17T05:48:00.001-07:00

by Dan Gardner, The Ottawa Citizen

It's popular these days to equate those who question God with the worst kind of zealots, but it's not fair

Yesterday was one major religion's holy day. Today is another's. Tomorrow is a third's. So I thought this is an opportune moment to say I think all three of these faiths -- these mighty institutions, these esteemed philosophies, these ancient and honoured traditions -- are ridiculous quackery. Parted seas. Walking corpses. Nocturnal visits to Heaven. For goodness sake, people, the talking wolf in Little Red Riding Hood is more plausible.

In the past, I've tried to avoid talking about religion in such sharp terms. It's not that I fear giving offence (which would be something of a limitation in my line of work). Rather, I know, as all humans do, that it's scary knowing you're going to die. And if belief in angels on high eases the existential fears of some, I won't begrudge them. Whatever gets you through the night, as a long-haired prophet once said.

But a series of books doing quite well on bestseller lists -- by Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and, soon, Christopher Hitchens -- argues it's time to be a lot less deferential to faith, and I have to say I find it hard to disagree. After all, we live in a time when blowing children to bits is an increasingly popular form of worship, the most powerful man on earth thinks he's got a hotline to God, and much of the electorate who gave that man his power would never consider replacing him with someone who does not believe the son of a carpenter who died 2,000 years ago sits in heaven advising presidents, fixing football games, and waiting for the day he will return to the Earth to brutally murder all unbelievers and erect a worldwide dictatorship.

Private, quiet faith is one thing. But when the guy holding the launch codes believes the end of the world could come any day and that's a good thing, those who believe lives are limited to one per customer have a problem.

Those making this case have been dubbed the "new atheists." They have also been called fanatics who are dogmatic, zealous and intolerant of other views -- the mirror image of religious extremists. As one English university dean said in the Guardian, Richard Dawkins is "just as fundamentalist as the people setting off bombs in the Tube."

Less Olympian thinkers have portrayed strident atheists as hacking away at the bonds of morality, which must inevitably lead to various forms of depravity ranging from the sexual to the genocidal.

Don't you know Stalin was an atheist? That's the way it goes. First you read Richard Dawkins. Then you have an abortion. Then you're putting a fresh coat of paint on the Gulag.

This frames the debate in a pleasingly symmetrical way. Over on that side are the insane religious fanatics who fly jets into skyscrapers and march around with signs saying "God Hates Fags." Over there are fanatical atheists. Between the two extremes are sensible moderates who take the Goldilocks approach to faith and reason. Not too hot. Not too cold. Lukewarm, please, keep it lukewarm.

The appeal is obvious. "All things to moderation," the Greeks sensibly advised, and this looks perfectly moderate. Whether it can withstand a little scrutiny is another matter.

The first problem for the moderate believer comes from those who like their faith hot. You've agreed God exists and that He mucks about in the world. You've agreed this book contains His holy commandments. So how do you respond when the mad religious zealot says, "hey, here on page 23, it says we should slice open unbelievers and use their guts for garters. And over here on page 75, it says we should bury homosexuals up to their necks and stuff olives up their noses. If God exists and these are his holy commandments, then shouldn't we get serious about the gutting and stuffing?"

One response is to make like a Philadelphia lawyer and spin plain words ("and yea, the Lord saith, the nose of the sodomite shall be stuffed with olives ...") until they don't say what they plainly say. But the more common response is to simply pretend the garters-and-olives passages don't exist and prattle on about how God is merciful and loving.

This is neither faithful nor reasonable. Still, as a practical matter, it will do in times of religious quiescence. But with religious zealotry in the ascendant, this non-answer is not going to keep the ranks of the nutters from swelling. And that's dangerous to us all.

Then there's the problem on the other side -- among the atheists such as Richard Dawkins who have been labelled "fanatics." Now, it is absolutely true that Dawkins' tone is often as charming as fingernails dragged slowly down a chalkboard. But just what is the core of Dawkins' radical message?

Well, it goes something like this: If you claim that something is true, I will examine the evidence which supports your claim; if you have no evidence, I will not accept that what you say is true and I will think you a foolish and gullible person for believing it so.

That's it. That's the whole, crazy, fanatical package.

When the Pope says that a few words and some hand-waving causes a cracker to transform into the flesh of a 2,000-year-old man, Dawkins and his fellow travellers say, well, prove it. It should be simple. Swab the Host and do a DNA analysis. If you don't, we will give your claim no more respect than we give to those who say they see the future in crystal balls or bend spoons with their minds or become werewolves at each full moon.

And for this, it is Dawkins, not the Pope, who is labelled the unreasonable fanatic on par with faith-saturated madmen who sacrifice children to an invisible spirit.

This is completely contrary to how we live the rest of our lives. We demand proof of even trivial claims ("John was the main creative force behind Sergeant Pepper") and we dismiss those who make such claims without proof. We are still more demanding when claims are made on matters that are at least temporarily important ("Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction" being a notorious example).

So isn't it odd that when claims are made about matters as important as the nature of existence and our place in it we suddenly drop all expectation of proof and we respect those who make and believe claims without the slightest evidence? Why is it perfectly reasonable to roll my eyes when someone makes the bald assertion that Ringo was the greatest Beatle but it is "fundamentalist" and "fanatical" to say that, absent evidence, it is absurd to believe Muhammad was not lying or hallucinating when he claimed to have long chats with God?

Of course I realize that by asking this question I may be contributing to mass depravity and a crisis of civilization. But I thought I'd risk it. That's just the kind of fanatic I am.

It should also be obvious from this that the supposed link between Dawkinsian atheism and Stalinist butchery is pure nonsense. Yes, Stalin did not believe in God. But he believed in History, Marxism, Leninism and all sorts of Hegelian mumbo-jumbo for which he had not the slightest evidence.

He was not a religious man, but he most certainly was a man of faith.

Reposted from:
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/columnists/story.html?id=62d4e647-9088-47dc-8a46-6397e3a6e30d

The Ethics of Hell

2008-09-15T03:27:00.000-07:00

A Designer Universe?

2008-09-15T03:07:00.000-07:00

by Steven Weinberg

Professor of Physics, University of Texas at Austin
Winner of the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics.

I have been asked to comment on whether the universe shows signs of having been designed. I don't see how it's possible to talk about this without having at least some vague idea of what a designer would be like. Any possible universe could be explained as the work of some sort of designer. Even a universe that is completely chaotic, without any laws or regularities at all, could be supposed to have been designed by an idiot.

The question that seems to me to be worth answering, and perhaps not impossible to answer, is whether the universe shows signs of having been designed by a deity more or less like those of traditional monotheistic religions—not necessarily a figure from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, but at least some sort of personality, some intelligence, who created the universe and has some special concern with life, in particular with human life. I expect that this is not the idea of a designer held by many here. You may tell me that you are thinking of something much more abstract, some cosmic spirit of order and harmony, as Einstein did. You are certainly free to think that way, but then I don't know why you use words like 'designer' or 'God,' except perhaps as a form of protective coloration.

It used to be obvious that the world was designed by some sort of intelligence. What else could account for fire and rain and lightning and earthquakes? Above all, the wonderful abilities of living things seemed to point to a creator who had a special interest in life. Today we understand most of these things in terms of physical forces acting under impersonal laws. We don't yet know the most fundamental laws, and we can't work out all the consequences of the laws we do know. The human mind remains extraordinarily difficult to understand, but so is the weather. We can't predict whether it will rain one month from today, but we do know the rules that govern the rain, even though we can't always calculate their consequences. I see nothing about the human mind any more than about the weather that stands out as beyond the hope of understanding as a consequence of impersonal laws acting over billions of years.

There do not seem to be any exceptions to this natural order, any miracles. I have the impression that these days most theologians are embarrassed by talk of miracles, but the great monotheistic faiths are founded on miracle stories—the burning bush, the empty tomb, an angel dictating the Koran to Mohammed—and some of these faiths teach that miracles continue at the present day. The evidence for all these miracles seems to me to be considerably weaker than the evidence for cold fusion, and I don't believe in cold fusion. Above all, today we understand that even human beings are the result of natural selection acting over millions of years of breeding and eating.

I'd guess that if we were to see the hand of the designer anywhere, it would be in the fundamental principles, the final laws of nature, the book of rules that govern all natural phenomena. We don't know the final laws yet, but as far as we have been able to see, they are utterly impersonal and quite without any special role for life. There is no life force. As Richard Feynman has said, when you look at the universe and understand its laws, 'the theory that it is all arranged as a stage for God to watch man's struggle for good and evil seems inadequate.'

True, when quantum mechanics was new, some physicists thought that it put humans back into the picture, because the principles of quantum mechanics tell us how to calculate the probabilities of various results that might be found by a human observer. But, starting with the work of Hugh Everett forty years ago, the tendency of physicists who think deeply about these things has been to reformulate quantum mechanics in an entirely objective way, with observers treated just like everything else. I don't know if this program has been completely successful yet, but I think it will be.

I have to admit that, even when physicists will have gone as far as they can go, when we have a final theory, we will not have a completely satisfying picture of the world, because we will still be left with the question 'why?' Why this theory, rather than some other theory? For example, why is the world described by quantum mechanics? Quantum mechanics is the one part of our present physics that is likely to survive intact in any future theory, but there is nothing logically inevitable about quantum mechanics; I can imagine a universe governed by Newtonian mechanics instead. So there seems to be an irreducible mystery that science will not eliminate.

But religious theories of design have the same problem. Either you mean something definite by a God, a designer, or you don't. If you don't, then what are we talking about? If you do mean something definite by 'God' or 'design,' if for instance you believe in a God who is jealous, or loving, or intelligent, or whimsical, then you still must confront the question 'why?' A religion may assert that the universe is governed by that sort of God, rather than some other sort of God, and it may offer evidence for this belief, but it cannot explain why this should be so.

In this respect, it seems to me that physics is in a better position to give us a partly satisfying explanation of the world than religion can ever be, because although physicists won't be able to explain why the laws of nature are what they are and not something completely different, at least we may be able to explain why they are not slightly different. For instance, no one has been able to think of a logically consistent alternative to quantum mechanics that is only slightly different. Once you start trying to make small changes in quantum mechanics, you get into theories with negative probabilities or other logical absurdities. When you combine quantum mechanics with relativity you increase its logical fragility. You find that unless you arrange the theory in just the right way you get nonsense, like effects preceding causes, or infinite probabilities. Religious theories, on the other hand, seem to be infinitely flexible, with nothing to prevent the invention of deities of any conceivable sort.

Now, it doesn't settle the matter for me to say that we cannot see the hand of a designer in what we know about the fundamental principles of science. It might be that, although these principles do not refer explicitly to life, much less human life, they are nevertheless craftily designed to bring it about.

Some physicists have argued that certain constants of nature have values that seem to have been mysteriously fine-tuned to just the values that allow for the possibility of life, in a way that could only be explained by the intervention of a designer with some special concern for life. I am not impressed with these supposed instances of fine-tuning. For instance, one of the most frequently quoted examples of fine-tuning has to do with a property of the nucleus of the carbon atom. The matter left over from the first few minutes of the universe was almost entirely hydrogen and helium, with virtually none of the heavier elements like carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen that seem to be necessary for life. The heavy elements that we find on earth were built up hundreds of millions of years later in a first generation of stars, and then spewed out into the interstellar gas out of which our solar system eventually formed.

The first step in the sequence of nuclear reactions that created the heavy elements in early stars is usually the formation of a carbon nucleus out of three helium nuclei. There is a negligible chance of producing a carbon nucleus in its normal state (the state of lowest energy) in collisions of three helium nuclei, but it would be possible to produce appreciable amounts of carbon in stars if the carbon nucleus could exist in a radioactive state with an energy roughly 7 million electron volts (MeV) above the energy of the normal state, matching the energy of three helium nuclei, but (for reasons I'll come to presently) not more than 7.7 MeV above the normal state.

This radioactive state of a carbon nucleus could be easily formed in stars from three helium nuclei. After that, there would be no problem in producing ordinary carbon; the carbon nucleus in its radioactive state would spontaneously emit light and turn into carbon in its normal nonradioactive state, the state found on earth. The critical point in producing carbon is the existence of a radioactive state that can be produced in collisions of three helium nuclei.

In fact, the carbon nucleus is known experimentally to have just such a radioactive state, with an energy 7.65 MeV above the normal state. At first sight this may seem like a pretty close call; the energy of this radioactive state of carbon misses being too high to allow the formation of carbon (and hence of us) by only 0.05 MeV, which is less than one percent of 7.65 MeV. It may appear that the constants of nature on which the properties of all nuclei depend have been carefully fine-tuned to make life possible.

Looked at more closely, the fine-tuning of the constants of nature here does not seem so fine. We have to consider the reason why the formation of carbon in stars requires the existence of a radioactive state of carbon with an energy not more than 7.7 MeV above the energy of the normal state. The reason is that the carbon nuclei in this state are actually formed in a two-step process: first, two helium nuclei combine to form the unstable nucleus of a beryllium isotope, beryllium 8, which occasionally, before it falls apart, captures another helium nucleus, forming a carbon nucleus in its radioactive state, which then decays into normal carbon. The total energy of the beryllium 8 nucleus and a helium nucleus at rest is 7.4 MeV above the energy of the normal state of the carbon nucleus; so if the energy of the radioactive state of carbon were more than 7.7 MeV it could only be formed in a collision of a helium nucleus and a beryllium 8 nucleus if the energy of motion of these two nuclei were at least 0.3 MeV—an energy which is extremely unlikely at the temperatures found in stars.

Thus the crucial thing that affects the production of carbon in stars is not the 7.65 MeV energy of the radioactive state of carbon above its normal state, but the 0.25 MeV energy of the radioactive state, an unstable composite of a beryllium 8 nucleus and a helium nucleus, above the energy of those nuclei at rest. This energy misses being too high for the production of carbon by a fractional amount of 0.05 MeV/0.25 MeV, or 20 percent, which is not such a close call after all.

This conclusion about the lessons to be learned from carbon synthesis is somewhat controversial. In any case, there is one constant whose value does seem remarkably well adjusted in our favor. It is the energy density of empty space, also known as the cosmological constant. It could have any value, but from first principles one would guess that this constant should be very large, and could be positive or negative. If large and positive, the cosmological constant would act as a repulsive force that increases with distance, a force that would prevent matter from clumping together in the early universe, the process that was the first step in forming galaxies and stars and planets and people. If large and negative the cosmological constant would act as an attractive force increasing with distance, a force that would almost immediately reverse the expansion of the universe and cause it to recollapse, leaving no time for the evolution of life. In fact, astronomical observations show that the cosmological constant is quite small, very much smaller than would have been guessed from first principles.

It is still too early to tell whether there is some fundamental principle that can explain why the cosmological constant must be this small. But even if there is no such principle, recent developments in cosmology offer the possibility of an explanation of why the measured values of the cosmological constant and other physical constants are favorable for the appearance of intelligent life. According to the 'chaotic inflation' theories of André Linde and others, the expanding cloud of billions of galaxies that we call the big bang may be just one fragment of a much larger universe in which big bangs go off all the time, each one with different values for the fundamental constants.

In any such picture, in which the universe contains many parts with different values for what we call the constants of nature, there would be no difficulty in understanding why these constants take values favorable to intelligent life. There would be a vast number of big bangs in which the constants of nature take values unfavorable for life, and many fewer where life is possible. You don't have to invoke a benevolent designer to explain why we are in one of the parts of the universe where life is possible: in all the other parts of the universe there is no one to raise the question. If any theory of this general type turns out to be correct, then to conclude that the constants of nature have been fine-tuned by a benevolent designer would be like saying, 'Isn't it wonderful that God put us here on earth, where there's water and air and the surface gravity and temperature are so comfortable, rather than some horrid place, like Mercury or Pluto?' Where else in the solar system other than on earth could we have evolved?

Reasoning like this is called 'anthropic.' Sometimes it just amounts to an assertion that the laws of nature are what they are so that we can exist, without further explanation. This seems to me to be little more than mystical mumbo jumbo. On the other hand, if there really is a large number of worlds in which some constants take different values, then the anthropic explanation of why in our world they take values favorable for life is just common sense, like explaining why we live on the earth rather than Mercury or Pluto. The actual value of the cosmological constant, recently measured by observations of the motion of distant supernovas, is about what you would expect from this sort of argument: it is just about small enough so that it does not interfere much with the formation of galaxies. But we don't yet know enough about physics to tell whether there are different parts of the universe in which what are usually called the constants of physics really do take different values. This is not a hopeless question; we will be able to answer it when we know more about the quantum theory of gravitation than we do now.

It would be evidence for a benevolent designer if life were better than could be expected on other grounds. To judge this, we should keep in mind that a certain capacity for pleasure would readily have evolved through natural selection, as an incentive to animals who need to eat and breed in order to pass on their genes. It may not be likely that natural selection on any one planet would produce animals who are fortunate enough to have the leisure and the ability to do science and think abstractly, but our sample of what is produced by evolution is very biased, by the fact that it is only in these fortunate cases that there is anyone thinking about cosmic design. Astronomers call this a selection effect.

The universe is very large, and perhaps infinite, so it should be no surprise that, among the enormous number of planets that may support only unintelligent life and the still vaster number that cannot support life at all, there is some tiny fraction on which there are living beings who are capable of thinking about the universe, as we are doing here. A journalist who has been assigned to interview lottery winners may come to feel that some special providence has been at work on their behalf, but he should keep in mind the much larger number of lottery players whom he is not interviewing because they haven't won anything. Thus, to judge whether our lives show evidence for a benevolent designer, we have not only to ask whether life is better than would be expected in any case from what we know about natural selection, but we need also to take into account the bias introduced by the fact that it is we who are thinking about the problem.

This is a question that you all will have to answer for yourselves. Being a physicist is no help with questions like this, so I have to speak from my own experience. My life has been remarkably happy, perhaps in the upper 99.99 percentile of human happiness, but even so, I have seen a mother die painfully of cancer, a father's personality destroyed by Alzheimer's disease, and scores of second and third cousins murdered in the Holocaust. Signs of a benevolent designer are pretty well hidden.

The prevalence of evil and misery has always bothered those who believe in a benevolent and omnipotent God. Sometimes God is excused by pointing to the need for free will. Milton gives God this argument in Paradise Lost:

I formed them free, and free they must remain
Till they enthral themselves: I else must change
Their nature, and revoke the high decree
Unchangeable, eternal, which ordained
Their freedom; they themselves ordained their fall.

It seems a bit unfair to my relatives to be murdered in order to provide an opportunity for free will for Germans, but even putting that aside, how does free will account for cancer? Is it an opportunity of free will for tumors?

I don't need to argue here that the evil in the world proves that the universe is not designed, but only that there are no signs of benevolence that might have shown the hand of a designer. But in fact the perception that God cannot be benevolent is very old. Plays by Aeschylus and Euripides make a quite explicit statement that the gods are selfish and cruel, though they expect better behavior from humans. God in the Old Testament tells us to bash the heads of infidels and demands of us that we be willing to sacrifice our children's lives at His orders, and the God of traditional Christianity and Islam damns us for eternity if we do not worship him in the right manner. Is this a nice way to behave? I know, I know, we are not supposed to judge God according to human standards, but you see the problem here: If we are not yet convinced of His existence, and are looking for signs of His benevolence, then what other standards can we use?

The issues that I have been asked to address here will seem to many to be terribly old-fashioned. The 'argument from design' made by the English theologian William Paley is not on most peoples' minds these days. The prestige of religion seems today to derive from what people take to be its moral influence, rather than from what they may think has been its success in accounting for what we see in nature. Conversely, I have to admit that, although I really don't believe in a cosmic designer, the reason that I am taking the trouble to argue about it is that I think that on balance the moral influence of religion has been awful.

This is much too big a question to be settled here. On one side, I could point out endless examples of the harm done by religious enthusiasm, through a long history of pogroms, crusades, and jihads. In our own century it was a Muslim zealot who killed Sadat, a Jewish zealot who killed Rabin, and a Hindu zealot who killed Gandhi. No one would say that Hitler was a Christian zealot, but it is hard to imagine Nazism taking the form it did without the foundation provided by centuries of Christian anti-Semitism. On the other side, many admirers of religion would set countless examples of the good done by religion. For instance, in his recent book Imagined Worlds, the distinguished physicist Freeman Dyson has emphasized the role of religious belief in the suppression of slavery. I'd like to comment briefly on this point, not to try to prove anything with one example but just to illustrate what I think about the moral influence of religion.

It is certainly true that the campaign against slavery and the slave trade was greatly strengthened by devout Christians, including the Evangelical layman William Wilberforce in England and the Unitarian minister William Ellery Channing in America. But Christianity, like other great world religions, lived comfortably with slavery for many centuries, and slavery was endorsed in the New Testament. So what was different for anti-slavery Christians like Wilberforce and Channing? There had been no discovery of new sacred scriptures, and neither Wilberforce nor Channing claimed to have received any supernatural revelations. Rather, the eighteenth century had seen a widespread increase in rationality and humanitarianism that led others—for instance, Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan—also to oppose slavery, on grounds having nothing to do with religion. Lord Mansfield, the author of the decision in Somersett's Case, which ended slavery in England (though not its colonies), was no more than conventionally religious, and his decision did not mention religious arguments. Although Wilberforce was the instigator of the campaign against the slave trade in the 1790s, this movement had essential support from many in Parliament like Fox and Pitt, who were not known for their piety. As far as I can tell, the moral tone of religion benefited more from the spirit of the times than the spirit of the times benefited from religion.

Where religion did make a difference, it was more in support of slavery than in opposition to it. Arguments from scripture were used in Parliament to defend the slave trade. Frederick Douglass told in his Narrative how his condition as a slave became worse when his master underwent a religious conversion that allowed him to justify slavery as the punishment of the children of Ham. Mark Twain described his mother as a genuinely good person, whose soft heart pitied even Satan, but who had no doubt about the legitimacy of slavery, because in years of living in antebellum Missouri she had never heard any sermon opposing slavery, but only countless sermons preaching that slavery was God's will. With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion.

Reposted from http://www.physlink.com/Education/essay_weinberg.cfm

Saudi OKs Killing "Immoral" TV Execs

2008-09-14T05:37:00.000-07:00

Decree Says Permissible To Kill Satellite TV Network Owners Over Immoral Content

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, Sept. 12, 2008

Saudi Arabia's top judiciary official has issued a religious decree saying it is permissible to kill the owners of satellite TV networks that broadcast immoral content.

The 79-year-old Sheik Saleh al-Lihedan said Thursday that satellite channels cause the "deviance of thousands of people."

Many of the most popular Arab satellite networks - which include channels showing music videos often denounced as obscene by Muslim conservatives - are owned by Saudi princes and well-connected Saudi businessmen. Al-Lihedan did not specify any particular channels.

Al-Lihedan is chief of the kingdom's highest tribunal, the Supreme Judiciary Council. Saudi Arabia's judiciary is made up of Islamic clerics whose decrees, or fatwas, on everyday issues are widely respected. Their fatwas do not have the weight of law. In the courts, cleric-judges rule according to Islamic law, but interpretations can vary.

Al-Lihedan was answering listeners' questions during the daily "Light in the Path" radio program in which he and others make rulings on what is permissible under Islamic law.

One caller asked about Islam's view of the owners of satellite TV channels that show "bad programs" during Ramadan.

"I want to advise the owners of these channels, who broadcast calls for such indecency and impudence ... and I warn them of the consequences," he said.

"What does the owner of these networks think, when he provides seduction, obscenity and vulgarity?" he said.

"Those calling for corrupt beliefs, certainly it's permissible to kill them," he said. "Those calling for sedition, those who are able to prevent it but don't, it is permissible to kill them."

Among the most viewed Arabic satellite networks is Rotana, which airs movies and music videos. It is owned by Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, a billionaire businessman and member of the royal family whom Forbes ranks as the world's 13th richest person.

Other questions in the radio show tackled personal issues. Al-Lihedan advised one man, for example, that by kissing his wife during the day he broke his fast during the holy month of Ramadan, when having sex, eating, drinking and smoking are prohibited from sunrise to sunset. He told the man he should make up for it with an extra day of fasting.

Al-Lihedan sparked controversy in the past by issuing a decree that Saudis can join jihadists to fight U.S. troops in Iraq.

Source: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/09/12/world/main4443857.shtml

What does a free society require of believers and non-believers alike?

2008-09-13T09:19:00.000-07:00

Religious diversity won't work without reasserting the liberal essentials. But let's not confuse secularism with atheism

Timothy Garton Ash
The Guardian

A great debate of our time concerns how people with different religions, ethnicities and values can live together as full citizens of free societies. Here's the common thread that runs through half-a-dozen news stories every day. Yesterday, for example: a schoolteacher arrested and charged in Sudan for allowing children to call a teddy bear Muhammad; the poor, ethnically mixed housing estates around Paris going up in smoke again; Israel-Palestine peace talks, with their implications for relations between Muslims and non-Muslims everywhere; a Jewish school in London criticised for insisting that for a child to qualify for admission the applicant's mother had to be born Jewish; angry scenes in Oxford as a student debating society offers a platform to a Holocaust denier.
A large part of this debate is about the position of Muslims in Europe, but it's important to remember that the issues are much wider. Recently, discussion of Muslims in Europe has crystallised around a few personalities, including some views attributed to me. Such a personalisation of the issues helps to dramatise them, but it also risks disappearing down obscure polemical back alleys of the "who did or did not say what about whom" variety. It's probably more useful to put personalities aside for the moment and restate some of the basics of the secular liberal position that I propose. Obviously I can't spell this out in a single column - that needs a book - but here are just a few of the bare bones.

Muslims start from Islam. Liberals start from liberalism. I'm a liberal, so I start from liberalism - not in the parody version propagated by the American right, but liberalism properly understood as a quest for the greatest possible measure of individual human freedom, compatible with the freedom of others. I believe that, faced with the challenges of growing diversity, we, the citizens, need to agree and spell out more clearly the essentials of a free society. A charter of citizens' rights and duties, as proposed by Gordon Brown, would be one way to take this forward.

Among the essentials is freedom of expression, which has been eroded to an alarming degree, both by death threats from extremists and by misconceived pre-emptive appeasement on the part of the state and private bodies. Freedom of expression necessarily includes the right to offend; not the duty, but the right. We must, in particular, be free to say what we like about historical figures, be they Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, Churchill, Hitler or Gandhi (and then let our claims be tested against the evidence). We may not agree with what controversialists say about these figures but we must defend to the death their right to say it. There should, for obvious reasons, be limits to what we are free to say about living people, but these limits must be very tightly drawn.
Among the liberal essentials is equality before the law, including equal rights for men and women. Among the essentials is also freedom of religion. Since a core liberal notion is that we must be free not just to pursue our own version of the good life but also to question and revise it, it follows that we must be free to propagate, question, change or abandon our religion. In a free society, proselytisation, heresy and apostasy are not crimes. This - and apostasy in particular - is not accepted in many versions of Islam, but it is a liberal essential on which there can be no compromise.

In order to secure these freedoms, we need a secular public sphere. But what exactly do we mean by that? To say "Enlightenment values" begs the question, "which Enlightenment"? The Enlightenment of John Locke, which claimed freedom for religion, or that of Voltaire, which aspired rather to freedom from religion? (I deliberately simplify a complex history.) A liberal order in which the devotees of all Gods are free to try their hand in the public square, on an equal footing with those who insist - correctly, in my view - that there is no God? Or a liberal order in which all gods are kept as far as possible out of the public square? (The French republican understanding of laïcité is closer to the latter, the United States' first amendment tradition to the former.) I'm more of a Lockean myself, but I don't think this debate is best pursued at the abstract, theoretical level of "which Enlightenment"? Better to tackle specific issues: faith schools, new mosques, the teaching of evolution, the hijab, Muhammad cartoons and so on.

We do, however, need to be clearer about the difference between secularism and atheism. Secularism, in my view, should be an argument about arrangements for a shared public and social life; atheism is an argument about scientific truth, individual liberation and the nature of the good life. Today's debate around Islam is bedevilled by a confusion between the two. Atheists must be free to say to Muslims, Christians or Jews: "Your mind would be much more free if you gave up your ridiculous belief in God." Believers must be free to argue back: "You would have a more profound sense of personal freedom if you did believe." But neither is entitled to demand that of the other as a condition for participating as a citizen in a free society. The public policy argument about freedom for religion and the private conviction argument about freedom from or in religion should operate on different levels.

That distinction would, of course, no longer hold if being a devout Muslim were in fact incompatible with being a full citizen of a free society. I feel this is what quite a few participants in the current debate, both atheist and Christian, really believe, while seldom spelling it out so clearly. Yet the thought keeps peeping through, for example in the formula "Islam is incompatible with democracy". But as a non-Muslim I can only agree with the author Edward Mortimer who, in his book Faith and Power, concluded that there is no single, unchanging Islam, "there is only what I hear Muslims say, and see them do". What Muslims say and do in the name of Islam has varied enormously through history, and varies enormously today. Yes, of course, there is the Qur'an and the Hadith, just as there is the Bible. But, as in all great religions, these are complex texts, subject to diverse interpretations.

When a Muslim letter-writer in yesterday's Guardian tells us, with the aid of Qur'anic references, that Islam, properly understood, supports "the vital principle of freedom of speech", what possible interest have we non-Muslim liberals in arguing against him? If a Christian supports the rule of law, as we understand it in a 21st-century secular liberal state, we don't cry: "But your Old Testament says 'life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth'!" Unless, of course, an atheist agenda - to show that religion is not just nonsense but dangerous nonsense - trumps the secular liberal agenda, which is to find the ways in which people with different beliefs can live together peacefully in freedom.

Well, I have run out of space, and I have barely begun. There is so much else that needs saying. All comments are welcome and let's continue this vital conversation

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2218663,00.html

Sue Blackmore on the Danger of Belief in God

2008-09-12T08:25:00.000-07:00

Tonight, at a debate at Bristol University, I've been asked to propose the motion that "belief in God is a dangerous delusion". Oxford theologian Alister McGrath will fight back and argue that it is not. By putting some of my thoughts up here I hope some of you may help me anticipate the flack to come, and since the thread should still be open afterwards, I can report back on what happened.

Belief in God is certainly a delusion but is it dangerous? Perhaps the organisers chose that word only because of the nice alliteration. Perhaps they might have said "harmless" or "quaint" or even "beneficial", but no, I think they are right. Belief in God is dangerous.

First, which God am I talking about? Not Einstein's God, the God of the deists, or what Stephen Hawking or Paul Davies refer to as "the mind of God," for their God amounts to the entirety of the universe, or the laws of physics. If you ask "why is there something rather than nothing?" or "what came before the big bang?" and you answer "God", belief in that God makes no difference to your daily life, or to morality and responsibility, nor does it cause people to band into groups, exclude outsiders, commit atrocities or justify wars.

No, I'm talking about the God of the great monotheistic religions, the vile and vengeful God of the Qur'an and the Old Testament, the God who supposedly made us in his own image, who answers prayers even though the world remains full of suffering, who exhorts us to love and feel compassion while threatening to kill the infidel and punish the unbeliever forever, and who fights on both sides of every war.

Belief in this kind of God is dangerous indeed, but I suspect its danger is different for individuals than for whole societies. For a single individual, living in a generally unbelieving or secularist, tolerant, and open society, belief may be a good thing - for that person. In times of fear, loneliness or bereavement, it's nice to believe that there's someone powerful out there who knows you deeply and cares what happens to you. When difficult choices loom, it helps to think there's a guiding hand. I suspect that for many of the 40% of Britons found in a survey last week to pray regularly, their God fills this role. We know that most of them do not go to church or worship regularly, and they probably do not take on board much of what is required of a committed Christian or Muslim. In other words they feel free to believe in a God of their own choosing. Surely there's no harm in this is there?

Maybe not, but as Sam Harris argues, in The End of Faith, moderate believers like this implicitly encourage the idea that faith is something to be respected - that it's all right to believe in completely ludicrous things for which there is no evidence. And this in turn encourages religious faith, which is where the real dangers begin.

You may have noticed an analogy here with game theory in biology, where what is good for the individual is not necessarily good for the group or the species. For example, there can be species in which most individuals behave altruistically towards each other and so benefit the whole group. But then it pays individuals to cheat and take the benefits without paying their way to everyone else. The result can be the complete elimination of the altruistic behaviour, or else a settling down into a stable state in which the wider group fights back but tolerates a certain proportion of freeloaders.

This is just an analogy, but there are good reasons for thinking of religions in terms of evolutionary theory - although in terms of cultural, or memetic evolution rather than biological. This way we can see just how and why the major religions of today are so horribly dangerous.
There has long been dispute between believers who claim that their particular religion was created by God and that their holy book (whichever one it might be) is "the word of God," and those who say that religions are man-made. Scholarship and historical and archaeological research naturally support the latter, but I'd rather forget that distinction and not think about religions as having been made up by particular individuals, but as having evolved over long periods of time, using lots of people as their copying and selecting machinery.

This way of thinking means inverting our normal way of thinking about ourselves and, to use Richard Dawkins's term, taking the meme's-eye view. Just as biologists have found it useful to take the gene's eye view - asking why and how this particular gene has survived - so we can look at religions as vast cooperating systems of memes, and then ask why this meme survived. Why are these words, stories, songs, artefacts, practices, clothes and rituals here today in Christianity, in Islam, in Judaism? Not because God gave them to us, not because someone or some group of people deliberately put them together to make a religion, but because they, the memes, the bits and pieces of behaviours and practices, out-competed their rivals to pull through over thousands of years and still lodge themselves in people's brains today.

Think of the times in which the great religions began, indeed think of much of the centuries since. All over the world, in villages, towns, or in great city states, there would appear epileptics who saw visions, fascinating visionaries, charlatans who worked miracles by trickery, orators of great skill and persuasiveness, and all sorts of other types who would collect around them small groups of followers. They still appear today and form cults that thrive for a while, and then usually die out. Human nature being what it is, their members want their own group to grow, and so bring in their friends, and persuade others that they have the answer to life's miseries and mysteries, or that they are superior to outsiders.

Different groups adopt different practices. Some of these routines, ways of talking, rituals, markers or special clothes prove attractive to people and so flourish and spread. Ineffective practices and beliefs fizzle out. This is just a simple evolutionary process - competition for survival - only the competition is between beliefs, practices, stories and habits to get lodged in human brains and passed on. Indeed it is a competition between beliefs to take over human copying machinery and make it work to spread those beliefs.

As the competition gets fiercer, free floating beliefs fail to compete. The ones that succeed are more like organisms that protect themselves and use tricks and clever adaptations to ensure their survival and propagation. And so they build up in complexity. This is, I suggest, the right way to understand how we got the religions we have today.

When you see religions as mind viruses that evolved over thousands of years in competition with other, similar, mind viruses, it's easy to see why they have acquired the powerful adaptations they have. Just as animals acquired teeth and claws, beaks and jaws, mimicry and trickery, so religions have acquired their own weapons and tricks. They protect themselves with threats and promises - and not just any old threats and promises. Some are promises of everlasting pain or eternal bliss - only you can't check whether they're true because you'll only find out after you're dead. Others are immediate threats that can be checked - that if you reject a belief you never chose in the first place but were landed with as a baby, you'll be killed. And this is happening even here in Britain. The founder of the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain has had numerous death threats for trying to help Muslims let go of their imposed beliefs.

Then there are subtler adaptations - what about claiming natural human mystical experiences as religious experiences or visions of God? Or claiming that morality comes from God rather than from human nature, so undermining people's confidence in their own moral decisions. Believers frequently claim that rejecting belief in God would lead people to immorality, murder and mayhem. What little research there is so far suggests quite the reverse. A recent study comparing developed nations showed that the more religious nations also had higher rates of murder, suicide, teenage pregnancy and violent crime - precisely those behaviours that most religions prohibit.

A really clever trick - and I'm not sure how the great religions have managed to pull this one off - is to make the rest of us feel that we ought to respect people for believing impossible things on faith, and that we should not laugh at them for fear of offending them. In a society that strives for honesty and openness, that values scientific and historical truth, and that encourages the search for knowledge, this is outrageous - and it's scary that we still fall for it.

Then there's the cost of believing. Many are tempted by Pascal's Wager: if I deny that God exists and I'm wrong, oops I might really go to hell, but if I believe in him and I'm wrong there is no problem. But there is a problem - the enormous cost of belief. There is not only the mental and intellectual burden of having to take on false, disturbing and incompatible beliefs, but the cost in time and money. Religious memes capture people's time to get themselves spread. Just as the common cold virus makes people sneeze to get itself spread, so religions make people sings hymns and say prayers, and chant and so spread the word of God. They also induce them to part with large sums of money to build glorious mosques, churches and synagogues and to pay the wages of priests who in turn spread the word of God.

And how did they get this way? They got this way because less effective versions of the religions, with less dangerous tricks and weapons, failed to infect enough people.

That is why belief in God is not just a harmless choice; it is a dangerous delusion.

Source: http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/sue_blackmore/2007/11/a_dangerous_delusion.html