Introduction

The great John Milton, referring to American eloquence, said: “Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.” It seems that within the framework of what constitutes “liberty”, the lighted fire called “free-speech” is the greatest sight. The cracks and fissures in the monument we have to human solidarity – supported by the pillars Rights, Liberty, Freedom, Equality – is made to echo by simply the function of free-speech. In order to fix the problems, we must first identify them; this can only be done by the same tools that made them, that raised such a monument to the heights man has allowed himself. To such heights have we been able to gaze far into the future, deeply into grains of sand, and eloquently into our deepest selves. The problems we find – in the future, the grains and ourselves – are made apparent by the liberty to speak. Silence does not remove problems, it only covers them with a transparent veil. To fill the fissures, to smooth the sutures, we must open our eyes and minds and mouths and be prepared to engage with our own fallibility.

We dislike hearing of our own failings and here-in we must allow some support. None wants to be thought a failure. Yet, there is a vast chasm between missing a step and plummeting to the ground. People often mistake the latter for the former, their emotions matching the overzealous self-harm. Jane has forgotten her child at school, thus she is a failure as a mother. She feels the brunt and punishes herself emotionally even when she picks up her child two hours later. But she is not a failure, she is a fallible human. Yes, she has made a mistake. We do not aid Jane by mocking her, though we silently rebuke her to each other. As Bertrand Russell said, we do not gossip about each other’s virtues. The point remains however that she is not a complete failure, though her emotions are dictating as such.

Many will argue that such strong emotions prevent the recurrence of such a mistake. The punishment is done for the benefit of both Jane and her child. This is certainly true, but the problem remains to what extent do we allow such cross-firing to take in collateral damage. That is, how far do we take such a loathing of failing into the public sphere?

The Loathing of Failing and Berlin’s Concepts of Freedom

Jane is not a failure as human being to forget her child, though her actions are examples of what a terrible mother would do. However, it was not Jane’s intention to forget or leave her child (how does one deliberately forget anyway?). She made a mistake and, as a human being, this will happen. No one, not even Megan Fox, is perfect (though in the looks department, she comes “close”). Thus Jane must forgive herself and continue, trying harder. This is a healthy way to progress and better herself. Mistakes are not wooden-planks to produce our own crucifix, but to take higher steps toward an intended destination. This false-dichotomy plays out when it sets it sights on the freedom of others.

The reason to restrict anything within a society, that is curb liberty, is a form of coercion. This might be under the archway of what Isaiah Berlin calls “negative liberty”. To better understand “negative” notions of freedom (within Berlin’s context, freedom and liberty are interchangeable), we can also focus on its corollary.

Berlin states, in his famous essay Two Concepts of Liberty, that negative freedom is defined by the absence of coercion. As Nigel Warburton has succinctly stated: “Coercion is when other people force you to behave in a particular way, or force you to stop behaving in a particular way. If no one is coercing you then you are free in this negative sense of freedom.” An example might be that no curfew prevents one being on the streets, no police force prevents one from driving down to see friends, and so on. If one was prevented because of a curfew, police presence, threats of violence, then one would not be free (in this negative sense).

Berlin then goes on to define a positive conception of freedom. This is the freedom to do as one wants with one’s life, within that life’s context. As Berlin puts it with his usual beautiful phrasing: ” ‘positive freedom’ – the doctrine of self-adjustment to the unalterable pattern of reality in order to avoid being  destroyed by it.” The big concept is self-realisation and the actions toward exercising control over one’s life – rescinding such rights is absolving one’s positive freedom. The point is to help people realise their best virtues, their greatest strengths, their abilities. An example is someone who is stuck in a relationship with an abusive partner – no one is forcing her to stay in the relationship. The partner has told her to leave and abuses her emotionally and sometimes physically. Though the abusive partner is telling her to leave, she keeps telling herself she “loves” him. Her friends and family know this relationship is bad for her and if she could learn to love and appreciate herself more, she would realise she deserves better. In this context, she is not free – even though no one is stopping her from leaving this terrible relationship.

Thus, positive freedom is freedom to do something, as opposed to negative which is freedom from something.  Positive freedom might be thought of under the domain of “rights”. This means the allowance of slight paternalistic interferences – such that, someone who is wasting their life would be put on a better path. However, if the former part of the previous paragraph is troubling – talk of what’s best for the citizen, making them better people – then one is not in solitary company. Berlin himself maintains a heightened suspicion of positive freedom. Throughout history we have seen governments do the most horrid actions in the name of bettering themselves and their citizens.

So, positive freedom is the way one’s freedom is outlined – as outlined perhaps by declaration of rights and constitutions – and negative freedom is lack of coercion when performing certain actions.

Free speech is the ability to speak or express oneself without fear of being “coerced” into silence or violence. Thus, as the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy also states, freedom of speech is a negative freedom. Curbing it thus rescinds liberty, not so much bending as breaking it.

Removing freedom of speech is done out of this hatred or loathing of failure (and perhaps other reasons, though I won’t be addressing those here, since I am dealing with freedom of speech in a societal framework). People do not want to hear contradictory remarks about their most deeply held beliefs. The important point here is that the very existence of a challenge to conventional views is evidence of liberty and freedom. It was of course the Greeks who started this idea that one should challenge tradition (what the classicist Peter Jones calls “the tradition of challenging tradition”), basing thought and inquiry into and, more importantly, from the human realm, since this is the only realm that has utility. Even if one is completely wrong to speak out against evolution or Darwinism or cosmology, the fact remains that the established view is forced to cement itself within a stronger foundation. This means more of those who accept the established views within a framework – so the majority of scientists and Darwinism, the majority of liberals and freedom – must almost relearn their views, express them eloquently and understand why their views are better than their opponents’. Notice: I did not say their views are “true” or “perfect”. According to Karl Popper, we should work with ideas that are strongest against its counter-theories. We have ideas that withstood the onslaught of prevailing criticisms. Beneath the storm of outrage, these are the ideas that bloom even in the fog of obscurity, the rain of anger and thunder of discontent.

But these ideas only come to fruition with the ability to express them. Hating an opponent’s view, simply because it upsets or hurts one’s feelings, is not reason enough to rescind freedom of speech.

Religions are often the  groups responsible for demanding censorship,  banning and burning. Throughout modern history, it has been the policy of papal instruction to burn books that speak out against god,  to restrict scientific inquiries which upset the geocentric world-view, and the demand from an Iranian leader to kill a man who lives in London for writing a work of fiction. Unfortunately, religions have been granted so much freedom within a liberal and secular framework that it has poisoned the well of freedom for all. The religions have taken hold of the bucket and laugh as we flail for our fingertips to touch the water’s surface. Instead, our wavering reflections on the water mock us and the bucket is punctured by the religions’ thorny retribution. Now, whenever we reach in to drink from freedom, most of it drains out because of the loopholes driven in by the religions.

This is not meant to sound extreme or to highlight that we have lost this battle. It is true that talking of liberty is hardly ever done in the context of praising it – it is usually done to defend it.

So to be able to express views, within the framework of rescinded coercion, is the most important element of any form of liberty. To encroach upon that fundamental framework for the purposes of avoiding hurt feelings is to ignore that one is rendering the framework hollow. The religious tend to forget that freedom of speech to criticise should be met by freedom to criticise back. In most other areas, it seems that many religious people share the fundamental principles of a liberal society. Yet it is no irony that we often hear about protestations (from where, ironically but unsurprisingly, Protestants derive their name), from religious groups, against the most important value within a free society: free-speech.

The Silencing of Mankind – Why Free Speech Matters

Consider any other fundamental right or important element of freedom – such as equality, justice, and avoidance of harm. All these would be close to nothing if freedom of speech was eliminated, undermined or restricted. Indeed, though freedom of speech is fourteen shades of grey, it is grey nonetheless – not black and white. We can only talk about freedom of speech with freedom of speech; we can only highlight restrictions to our rights with free-speech; we can only find power in numbers to eliminate despotism with free speech.  The first mark of a society that is ruled by a totalitarian regime is when there is no freedom of speech (this does not mean that all totalitarian regimes did not allow free-speech, only that it is a clear indication of a violation of an important freedom).

If we arbitrarily demarcate lines based on nothing but the “tyranny” of “majority” opinion, as Mill viewed it, then we have got no closer to doing best for mankind. All we have done is catered to the feelings of one group – even if it is the majority. Even if the whole of mankind believes the earth flat, the planet remains stubbornly spherical. A better writer than myself, John Stuart Mill, put it like this:

If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. (”On Liberty”, Chapter II. Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion, 1869 – Italics mine.)

“Silencing mankind”. The power of Mill’s image is a resounding call to prevent a gag being placed in the mouth of humanity. Mill’s point on the censor himself runs further. The censor must assume infallibility when censoring a work, since he must know beyond all doubt that a work is better off being censored. But this is blatantly incorrect since no one can be absolutely correct in their judgements. The difficulty of course could be shifted to the other extreme: allowing a work to be published which causes harm. The point however that we need to address is that people must be given the choice. When a work is banned, restricted or pulled from distribution, a censor has taken it upon himself to read a work for a whole society. This is paternalism of the worst kind, grinding our emotional maturity into a fine powder of obedience. It seems that on the whole it would be better that a work is presented, even if it does cause harm, as this leads to the overarching growth of maturity in our species. Censoring seems to only allow for juvenile and loud voices to find support for their views: for example, a work is censored, a few “liberals” cry out. No one is hurt. A work is not censored and someone is killed by fanatics who are offended by it. The latter of course we have seen occur to the Japanese translator of The Satanic Verse. Whilst it might appear harsh that we should risk our lives for the sake of some ideal, like freedom, it seems we risk our lives and freedom by not standing up for it. The allowance of religious arrogance threatens every aspect of freedom one can name: personal autonomy, sexuality, friendship, fashion, careers.

Yet some things should be contentious for the liberal agenda, such as racist or misogynist writings. But then, they should be rejected from publication not because it hurts people’s feelings, but because of poor scholarship. I for example would be very interested to read a case, based on reason, evidence and good logic, that states we are better off denigrating women, treating them like cattle, and reducing their minds to dull throbs of rhythmic idiocy. I would like to read this because I know – as far as I know anything – that I never will. The case for the equality of humanity and the emancipation of women is so strong, in terms of a Popperian paradigm, that we can easily backhand arguments against it.

Thus it seems the censor is useless. Who is this person reading works for society? Who is deciding for the average citizen that material is too harsh?

Progress in terms of equality comes about through discussion. Limiting access to the public domain of ideas is to prevent the growth of these ideas toward the betterment of society. Before we can allow the ideas to come to fruition, we must have a foundation open to the light of reason and comprehension. Lucidity, ease of access and an understanding that ideas are fallible and to be contested should be the benchmark for policies that we decide for ourselves. Arbitrarily limiting or restricting certain forms of information assumes, as previously said, infallibility from the censor and as Mill also highlighted, the problem that the restricted document could contain the truth we seek.

The final problem in limiting free speech or censoring a work is the assumption that: only one group is harmed, or, if the whole of society is harmed, that no one benefits. Both are wrong. If, as constantly occurs, Muslims are offended by a work of art or fiction or the way someone scratches their nose, those targets are censored to placate Muslims (similarly when other religious groups cry out that they are offended). Now, that work of art is gone completely and the Muslims are satisfied. But what about the artist, the producer, the audience, and so on, who do appreciate it? Their concerns are swept aside to placate one group because they are religious as opposed to artistic or academic. Religions should not have a moral high ground but should be on the plateau of equality with the rest of us. Then we can speak of judging something; not because the religious groups hanker over us, but because we are all equally horrified at a dog being tortured to death as a work of art, equally dissatisfied with publication of some poor novel. This would mean that religions are taken seriously, not because they are religious people, but because they are people. Mature people, treated as such to show that we want to put them in line with ourselves, as adults dealing with a chaotic world. Not as children who have loud voices and toys of mass destruction they throw out their cot of platitude.

And the second point, that no one benefits is also wrong. By a group censoring or crying for a limit to the free speech in this instance, they prevent themselves from judging it. How many Muslims read The Satantic Verses before deciding Rushdie & Co. should die? How many people bothered to see the cartoons made by Jyllends-Posten before they marched in the streets, demanding death and blood of those who mocked Islam? In these instances, the groups would have benefited by simply engaging with the work. They then have a choice: ignore the silly infidels who just do not understand the power of Allah or retaliate by drawing satirical pictures of the cartoonists, writing a strongly-worded letter (minus death-threats) and so on. There are ways of “retaliating” that do not cross the bounds of discourse to enter the minefield of violence. Muslims reacting in such brash, harmful and violent ways are not making Islam any more a “religion of peace” or their faith any more acceptable by behaving in such stupid, childish ways. If religions want to be taken seriously, they must accept the rules of adult discussion which govern our growth and not the monkey-bars of juvenile delinquency that lets them leap over the lines of conduct we have in place.

This even before equality, justice, and equal suffrage. This before the inducing of minds toward intellectual adventure and fulfilment regardless of race, sex and ethnicity. This all before we decide on how create a path to glory, unifying our shaking hands and raising a platform toward peace. Freedom of speech is itself the decider in what should be free. Not everything should be said or spoken but the decision as to what we shall say, read or publish can only be decided on an open platform, using reason and not emotion as the yardstick. All this can only occur with the freedom to speak, ideas flying across the mental landscape like a flock of migrant birds blackening the ground with their shadows. Freedom starts with the first flap of wings and the dilation of the pupil toward the horizon. Now we can set off and take our wings toward a more peaceful horizon.

]]> http://factonista.org/2009/08/08/within-liberty/feed/ 0 http://factonista.org/2009/08/07/the-wantonly-amoral-theologically-correct-worldview-of-george-sodini/ http://factonista.org/2009/08/07/the-wantonly-amoral-theologically-correct-worldview-of-george-sodini/#comments Fri, 07 Aug 2009 21:29:34 +0000 Chris Ray http://factonista.org/?p=2895 The first thing the public wanted to know was: why? Why did 48-year old George Sodini, a gainfully employed middle-aged man with no apparent history of violence, stroll into a gym earlier this week armed to the teeth and shoot thirteen women, killing four of them, before killing himself?

Sodini himself told us, for months or even years leading up to the incident, in an online blog and video diary. His print diary was just as insightful. Yet even with a plethora of detail on their side, the experts quickly whittled away the complexity behind this man to the singular convenient trope of the modern serial killer: George Sodini hated women.

This was the media’s story, and that was all they would say about it. Sodini was a loner, Sodini was frequently rejected by women, Sodini felt hurt by all the women in his life who declined his advances, and so they had to die because of his rejection issues. In the fast-paced world of 24-hour news reporting it was important to reduce the complex psychology of a deranged loner down to an easily-digestable theme, regardless of extemporaneous details like Sodini’s deep religious convictions.

And yet the only play that Sodini’s religious convictions received in the whole discussion following his death was in online secular freethought media. Every mainstream source was so hooked up on the convenient excuse of Sodini’s hatred of women that they never bothered to ask the hard questions about Sodini’s motivations. This is doubly perplexing because Sodini himself was quite clear on this point:

Maybe soon, I will see God and Jesus. At least that is what I was told. Eternal life does NOT depend on works. If it did, we will all be in hell. Christ paid for EVERY sin, so how can I or you be judged BY GOD for a sin when the penalty was ALREADY paid. People judge but that does not matter. I was reading the Bible and The Integrity of God beginning yesterday, because soon I will see them.

But of course, such truths would be confusing to the average consumer of mass media today. It simply does not comport with the current accepted social narrative that ‘religion = morality’ to think that a Christian could be both motivated to violence by religion and also be theologically correct in his understanding of doctrine.

‘Magic Words’ theology

Sodini comes from an Evangelical tradition that explicitly states that morality is irrelevant. Its apologists go out of their way to attack and ridicule those Christians who dare suggest that goodness matters. To the Evangelical, what is important is submission to doctrine, and nothing else. A man who is ’saved’ through the born again experience is in heaven guaranteed, not because they have earned it, but because they have recognized that they can’t earn it. The core principle here comes from Paul: humans are inherently filthy, perverted creatures (Paul’s word is ‘worthless’) who always fall short of God’s moral demands, so why bother trying to be good? We are so evil, in fact, that God himself had to come down from heaven and let himself be murdered on a tree just to give us the chance of some day receiving divine forgiveness.

Equipped with a “get out of hell free” card in the cheap excuse of a ‘born-again’ experience, Sodini felt empowered to do whatever he liked, whenever he liked, because he believed that his actions wouldn’t count in the long run. This ‘magic words’ theology teaches that, once you say the magic words admitting your inherent moral worthlessness and accept the human sacrifice necessitated by our worthlessness, you’re in the clear. Everything else is secondary to God, including your moral choices.

The average American is bombarded with propaganda linking irreligiosity to immorality, social deviance, and crime, so it makes sense that mainstream media wouldn’t burden them with the thought that religion could encourage immorality in this fashion. Yet this is exactly what the Evangelical mindset seeks to do: to cheapen goodness. They do this by equating value on goodness with heresy.

Sodini was indeed correct in his realization that, once he had met the minimum criteria of salvation, he was all set. Any expression of Evangelical born-again doctrine would have to agree with him, and indeed they have been agreeing with him for centuries. In his monstrous rampage Sodini has laid bare the central contradition of the American right: they preach and lecture and moralize endlessly as to how we should and shouldn’t behave, yet they are doctrinally committed to the notion that behavior is irrelevant except where it concerns submission to doctrine.

Not only that, but why has no one in the mainstream media asked if the Evangelical perspective on women poisoned his behavior as well? Theologians call the most popular conservative Christian perspective on gender roles ‘complementarianism.’ It holds that men and women have innate functions, and of course the innate function of women is submission to men. Sodini’s deeply unsatisfying relationships with women must have been truly perplexing to a Christian like him. What else to do with any element that persistently confounds your worldview except eliminate it? And so he did. Again, Christian doctrine gave him all the excuses that he needed, and yet popular media is stuck on square one, content to say that Sodini hated women without saying why his hatred would lead him to violence. For most people, being rejected by women does not lead to murder, but Sodini had religious passion on his side.

This question should have led to a sobering internal discussion among Christians as to how they can reconcile their doctrine with the social narrative that religion makes people better. The Christians should have been forced to review their scriptures and talk to their leaders and explain Sodini’s behavior to their congregations as some kind of error. But they can’t. The belief is too deeply-ingrained in centuries of Protestant dogma and apologetics. And the media prevented even a prelude to conversation by stopping everything at Sodini’s chauvanism.

If the media had the courage, and the public had the honesty, to confront this question, then we would really have something productive to talk about. Does religion cause morality? No, because they say that it shouldn’t. The Evangelical doctrines, plainly visible to the initiated but completely hidden from the public who are meant to believe that religion is about goodness rather than against it, have to be brought to light and seriously discussed. How can you be good without God?, they ask us. It’s very simple. How can you be good with God? According to the Evangelicals, you aren’t supposed to be. Sodini understood this, and it’s high time that the public realized this doctrinal monstrosity for what it is: an excuse to be evil.

For those of you who have no interest in reading the entire article, here is its thrust: We need to stop paying attention to the private actions of those we label celebrities, for the simple reason that it is in domain of their private lives. If such actions are within their private lives, then it is none of our business. However, when they engage in the public domain, they – along with anyone in the public domain including, for example, religious groups – are subject to the open criticism of a secular, liberal society. By respecting the autonomy of such people, we can shift our interest and obsessions to more important matters and make life better for all, simply because we will be using what precious little time we have.

Full Article

In honour of the 4th of July, I would like to shift quickly and briefly to America, as this is often the breeding ground for my critique.

Whether it was Bill Clinton doing the naughty in the Oval Office (and he didn’t apparently, it was only “oral” sex, as far as we know), or finding some rock star in bed with a dozen strippers and cocaine – I frankly could not care and neither should you. The so-called moral outrage is a symptom of the horrible disease of peering over the fence at the Jones’.

This takes its unbridled form in “gossip” magazines: he is dating her, but she is actually married to him, but he was seen kissing his sister; she was wearing this dress which was not appropriate for her age and her daughter was seen with this guy, etc. etc. Many people lick their lips when a celebrity, for example, is found “cavorting with a stripper”, as happened here in South Africa a few months back. We need to stop this obsession when other people make apparently horrid choices in their – note – private lives. When they are good and just, we should praise them in the public; but when they act against the backdrop of a moral choice, in private, then we should leave it for the person, their family and their friends to sort out. It is none of our business if they want to do have sex with strippers or receive fellatio in the Oval office. (I recall Dylan Moran saying: “What else are you meant to give strippers in a hotel room!”)

The slight Freudian analysis is hard to resist here: those who are usually most outraged by the moral perplexity of our society are usually the ones who most desire said outrage. But often we can predict with pin-point accuracy that, when, for example, a gay couple gets married, when we advance in stem-cell research, and so on, usually people of a religious persuasion and often the one involving a man on a Cross are going to “comment”.  Their voices are raised highest when such things that outrage them are found stirring in their surroundings (if their voices are loudest, we can only wonder how badly they crave to be let loose from the chains of their society). There are too many examples of religious people marching against this and that, which, if they simply ignored it, would have gone away (recently, it was one that involved blasphemy, which you can find on this blog). But it’s not just religious people. Anyone who subscribes or is obsessively tracking the downfall of some celebrity due to a “sex scandal”, is partisan to such a mindset of “fence peering”.

We need to stop. There are more important things to focus on: how we can contribute to a just society, how we can help others, how we can advance our technology, and so on. Who cares if Britney Spears breasts have got larger, if this person is found doing drugs again, and so on. That is their business.

This is of course as a result of the freedom of the press: with so much freedom and information to collect, there will be garbage. Notice: I am not saying we should ban celebrity-focused websites and magazines, I am saying we should alternate our views and read something more intellectually stimulating. We should stop being drawn into the obsessive culture of “fence peering” and focus on ourselves. No one is perfect, least of all those who have climbed the acting-ladder in Hollywood, or the one made of guitar chords and broken hearts in the music industry. The intensity to which we hold such moral outrage against celebrities would be a better tool used against ourselves: are we succeeding in our goals of being better people, are we constantly striving (more important than succeeding, since the latter hardly occurs or matches to the expectations of the former)? We need to ask these questions or we are failing in our, in terms of philosophy, “epistemic duty” – to question, evaluate, pose alternate theories and evidence.

So, I am not asking the celebrity papers to be burnt to the ground. I am asking the readers to read something else – not by pain of death, but by pain of losing out on something far more fulfilling. Socrates said that the unconsidered life was not worth living and we might think that with all the focus and consideration our societies dumps onto celebrities, their lives would be most worth living. But they are not. We need to divide up our considerations mostly for ourselves to become better people.

No doubt many readers will say: How can we praise them when they do good but ignore them when they do bad? If you are thinking that, you have missed an important word: “privately”. Julian Baggini defends this same position I offer of turning our attention away from celebrity hogwash in his book Making Sense, stating that a shift in focus could alter our society dramatically. And this begins when we can understand the difference between “private” and “public” lives.

For most people this is a difficult concept. For example, when we deal with religious issues in a secular society, I for one will accept people practising their religious beliefs in the privacy of their own homes. When they begin to shift their god-given opinions into the public domain, say to stone women who are traumatized enough after having gone for an abortion – then we have a problem. The notion of freedom from and of religion is permitted within the domains of said religious people’s private domains. Their views are unwelcome in the public arena – only to the extent that they justify it with their holy book. Austin Dacey dissects this problem in his book A Secular Conscience: note again, I am not saying religious people are not welcome in the public domain. Their ideas are not. This is not to say that perhaps their ideas – say to protect the life of the unborn (a bizarre concept) starts with the Bible, then grinds itself along by the friction of non-biblical sources. If they can do this, fantastic. In most cases they cannot and simply assert it with dogmatic confidence fueled by the torrent of Biblical exegesis. Thus, we see the differentiation: the private domains of the religious are suitable arenas for religious worship and proclamation – when they bring it in to discuss such matters as health care initiatives, for example banning stem cell research on nothing but the whim of the bible, their ideas are at the least irritating and childish and at the most preventative in our endeavour to further medical knowledge. Private and public – acceptable in the former, worthy of mockery and derision in the latter.

It gets complicated if we ask ourselves: is a church a private domain? This is what I mean by it being a difficult question. It is not so easy to answer such things.

Now, if we bring back the moral outrage and focus again on celebs, I hope we can clarify my position on this. By private, I mean those things (I have to repeat) done in the privacy of their own homes and lives. If the celebs want to have affairs and do drugs, leave it there. It stays in the private domain and is none of our business. If the celeb however advocates cocaine to be sold to minors, then we can have an outrage and deride him for being an idiot. Bertrand Russell famously was hated for his advocating of a promiscuous marriage and relationships and he lost his position in America because of it (briefly and during this time, he managed to deliver the lectures that would make up his beautiful History of Western Philosophy). Here I can actually sympathize with those who were outraged, because Russell wrote a whole book about it. Thus, his advocating was in the public domain – if it is such a sphere, it is part of our culture of ideal freedom which means it is open to being criticized. That’s why when people, in this case, were outraged by Russell’s views, it was acceptable: if they were simply outraged by him having affairs with beautiful women, it would be unacceptable. In the latter case, it would be none of theirs, or our, business. (It must also be largely assumed that Russell was loathed because he was a brilliant, eloquent and ardent defender of freedom from religion and all areas and openly agreed with Lucretius, as he himself states, in thinking religion a virus).

Many people tell me that when you are a celebrity, your life is one that is constantly a public life. But that is nonsense and nothing but assertion by hungry, lecherous fools who have nothing to goggle at except falling stars of the wrong kind. Instead, we should shift our gaze and curiosity to the world at large, which is often far more beautiful than say the pestilential Jeremy Clarkson or Amy Winehouse – who is a very talented musician who just gets the worst pictures! We can do better than goggling, ogling and bumbling around celebrities’ private lives which are mostly quite boring and secondly not our business. We must stop the fence peering and instead try microscope-peering, telescope-peering or the one I can’t stress enough book-peering. Do you really want to waste precious reading time on how many babies Madonna has adopted (I think she is doing more good for our species and planet than people who just keep breeding for no reason other than to further their genes in an already overcrowded and scantly resourced planet)? Or perhaps reading on the latest naughty-naughty that <insert any celeb here> has done? Or would you rather brush up on your Carl Sagan, your PG Wodehouse, your Oscar Wilde? In fact, there are things called libraries where you can get the latter for free! Why pay for garbage when you can get gold for free? Feast your mind, dear reader, lest it rot in the bile of fence-peering.

UPDATE 13 July ‘09: Michael Jackson was apparently gay! Oh no! Oh my! I can tell you right now there will be:

1. People who say he’s alive

2. People who say he’s faked his death

3. People who will say it was a murder/conspiracy

4. Etc.

I really don’t care that Michael Jackson was gay. It really does not diminish the brilliance of “Thriller” nor his amazing dancing. Who cares!!! This is what I mean.

Childhood

Ayaan Hirsi Ali was born in 1969 in Somalia.  During her childhood and young adult life her family would move from Somalia to Saudi Arabia, to Ethiopia, and then to Kenya.  Although her father was a rather liberal political activist (by Somalian standards) she was raised under strict Sharia law, which led to a tormenting youth.  Her genitals were mutilated by female circumcision, she was not allowed outside of the house without a male, her sexuality belonged to the head of her family, she went through an unwanted arranged marriage, and she suffered the humiliation of losing her virginity on marriage night – the penis of a man was violently forced into her sewn-shut vagina.  She had no freedom and was subject to do all of the cleaning and cooking that her brother did not have to do, simply because he was male.  If she refused chores, or spoke out of line, she was beaten.  On one such occasion she disobeyed her Ma’alim- whom her mother had hired to teach her more about the Quran – by locking herself in her room.  The Ma’alim came back later and whipped her with a sharp stick, ending the assault with the smashing of her head into a wall, cracking her skull.  The next morning she was in too much pain to do chores so her mother beat her.  Several days later, in much pain, her head had swollen.  When taken to the hospital for immediate surgery the doctors said that if she had not received surgery that day then she would have surely died.  At school she learned only Islam, math, the Quran, and “all the evil things Jews have done and plan to do against the Muslims” (47 Hirsi Ali).  One of her teachers even beat her.  Suffice to say, her childhood was violent and lacked freedom, most of which was due to strict Sharia law.   Childhoods like hers were common among most other children she knew.

Religious Control of Knowledge

In her childhood Ali was taught nothing outside of Islam; everything she knew was viewed through a fundamentalist Muslim mindset.  It is clear that the clerics and Imams had control over what she read. This type of religious control of knowledge has been around since the start of religion.  It is no wonder that the development of the printing press brought about the banning of books by religious institutions. The first example of religious censorship of the printed word came in 1517 when Pope Leo X condemned Martin Luther’s Ninety Five Theses (15 Foerstel).  Then, in 1564 the Papacy set into motion its Index Librorum Prohibitorum, defining books which Catholics were not allowed to read nor print (15 Foerstel).  It has progressed into 1989 when Salman Rushdie was forced into hiding for publishing The Satanic Verses because Ayatolla Khomeini of Iran put a one million dollar bounty out to anyone who killed him.  Most recently, Richard Dawkins’ book The God Delusion was nearly banned in Turkey after Harun Yahya filed a complaint that it was insulting to Islam and Sherry Jones’ novel The Jewel of Medina was dropped by publishers Random House – the same company that published the Satanic Verses – for fear of violent Muslim reactions.

The banning of books in developing countries is an effective means of controlling knowledge because these countries lack a robust information society full of newspapers, magazines, television, and the internet.  How could a young girl like a Ayaan Hirsi Ali gain any new knowledge if she had no way of obtaining it?  The reading of books leads to new insights, ideas, and opinions.  It expands the mind to think outside of narrow mindsets.  That is, of course, if one is reading books with a view that is not within their dominant meaning structure.  The knowledge gained through reading leads to freedom, both philosophically and in real life situations.  Daniel Dennet describes this acquisition of freedom by getting his readers to imagine a straight line traveling across a page.  This line represents time.  If you have no new knowledge your line will continue straight, but as you gain knowledge new lines branch off of the main line.  It is now your choice which line you want to take.  As more knowledge is attained more branches emerge, thus leading to more choices, until your world of freedom looks like an immense tree with intertwining branches of possibility.

Escape to Freedom

In her young teens Hirsi Ali would finally be presented with new branches of knowledge when she attended a school in Kenya that had a library full of books written in English.
“Once I had learned to read English I discovered the school library.  If we were good, we were allowed to take books home…  We began with Nancy Drew adventures, stories of pluck and independence.  There was Enid Blighton, the Secret Seven, The Famous Five: tales of freedom, adventure, of equality between boys and girls, trust, and friendship” (64 Hirsi Ali).
This started a new path in her life – “An entire world of Western ideas began to take shape” (69 Hirsi Ali).  She started to become interested in experiencing the same romance, equality, and adventure she found embedded in her ragged paperbacks.
“All of these books, even the trashy ones, carried with them ideas – races were equal, women were equal to men – and concepts of freedom, struggle, and adventure that were new to me” (69 Hirsi Ali).

As she progressed into early adulthood Hirsi Ali would start to rebel and disobey her mom.  She went to cinemas and experienced new food.  She even secretly married a man she liked.  Her marriage was short lived as her father soon after arranged a marriage with a man he had met only for several minutes.  He was a Somali from Canada who she was set to marry in a weeks time.  She was utterly disgusted by her new husband to be.   After a short while he moved back to Canada and left her money for her flight to join him there.  Instead of a direct flight she stayed a few nights in Frankfurt, Germany with relatives.  She went out alone and roamed the streets – something she was never allowed to do back home.  She walked without a man at her side, without other males calling her names, and without the fear of being called a bad Muslim.  And she could go anywhere she wanted without restraint…she was free.

“I felt as though I had been thrown into another world, calm and orderly, as in the novels I’d read and certain films, but somehow I’d never really believed them before” (185 Hirsi Ali).

People had always told her that the rest of the world was dirty and filled with violence because it was not under Muslim rule.  She was amazed that they were not just wrong, they were completely wrong.  In fact, it was the opposite.  From her young teen years reading trashy romance and adventure novels that spoke of a beautiful world of passion, freedom, equality, and romance to these few days in Germany, Hirsi Ali had reached a climactic decision about her future.

“I could disappear here. I could escape it all, hide, and somehow make my own way, like someone in a book” (187 Hirsi Ali).

And so she did.  She packed her bags and boarded a train to Amsterdam to find Asylum in the Netherlands.

Death of Van Gogh

After a short stay in a refugee camp she received full Dutch citizenship in 1992 and stayed in municipal housing where she worked several menial labour jobs to save up for schooling.  After Hirsi Ali finished University she found interest in Dutch politics and won a position in 2003 in the Peoples’ Party for Freedom and Democracy. This same year she co-wrote and produced a short film with Theo Van Gogh (a descendent of Vincent Van Gogh) entitled Submission, which focused on the poor state of woman’s rights in Islam.  After the film aired on Dutch national television both Hirsi Ali and Van Gogh received death threats, which they both ignored.  In November of 2004, Van Gogh was murdered by a Muslim radical in broad daylight.  After the murderer had shot Van Gogh in the back 8 times, then slit his throat, he stabbed a knife with a letter attached into his chest.  In this letter was a call for Ayaan Hirsi Ali to be murdered next.  She has been in hiding ever since.

Knowledge secures power.  Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s acquisition of freedom came from knowledge of that freedom.  She understood the importance of knowledge and attended university as soon as she could, where she solidified her view that the reading of ideas leads to empowerment.  She then used this knowledge – this kernel of information so important to the flourishing of a free and democratic society – and wrote an  autobiography entitled Infidel.  Like the condemned serpent and the heroic Prometheus, Hirsi Ali has stolen knowledge from her oppressors, empowered herself with this knowledge, and used it to teach others the value of knowledge.  I highly suggest you read Infidel.  It is a beautiful book that puts a voice to the values of freedom and knowledge.

We understand her.

But its her actual decision which is philosophically interesting. Her decision is to literally severe the umbilical ties which unite Jason to her. That is, she decides to murder her sons to allow their hot blood to raise the heat of outrage within their uncaring, ossified father.

Stoics, Epicureans and sceptics have gazed upon this dilemma till their eyes were sore with wonder. Professor Julia Annas, in her broad outline of the various responses to Medea’s dilemma, states that the Stoics would have disagreed with Medea herself who thought that anger was dominating her reason. There are no “two parts” to Medea – she was a unified whole. Plato perhaps – we don’t know his actual position on most things since he spoke through characters and not from an official standpoint, like Aurelius – would have said there is a conflict, relating to different parts in Medea. Namely her passion and her reason really are in conflict. Someone like Galen, a late Platonist, would have thought that reason and anger were battling in the “soul” of Medea and eventually anger won.

Medea of course eventually kills her children.

What has this story or this investigation got to do with anything? As I stated in the beginning, it rests mainly in the need to be understood. Medea has an urgent need for Jason to understand her – post hoc, of course, but it seems that if he had understood what she had been through and (more importantly) appreciated it, he would not have left her so suddenly. The need to be understood is perhaps the central problem of philosophy, or at least an echo of the whole human enterprise, often called the “human condition”.

I don’t rightly kno what if anything is the human condition but I imagine it is this: What we consider internally often finds no harmony with what occurs externally and our need to reconcile these two incoherent and disharmonious constitutions leads to all manner of problems, with ourselves, others and the world as a whole. This we might consider a possible definition of the “human condition” (though I will be the first to say it is not a resolute or final one).

For example: We consider ourselves to be central to our lives, since the events and people we affect and focus orbit our sphere of knowledge. Yet to the universe at large and the earth as a whole, we are merely infinitesimal, insignificant bundles of perception, moulded by the fingers of nature and given a spark of consciousness as a cruel joke. We die and rot and amount to dust, which the closing fist of the universe will drive home into meaninglessness. We create meaning and yet we are largely meaningless, to the large expanse of time that has come before and will arise after. Meaning is meaning made in the face of meaninglessness.

For further illustration: We struggle and fight for things we believe in. We find certain books, careers, people important. Yet to most people, these important people (to us) are to most others unimportant because they do not know them.

These are illustrations of the incoherent nature of considerations between what occurs within our minds and what exists independently of our thoughts of them (I here take it for granted that, like GE Moore, I have two hands). This is labelled “absurdity” by many philosophers, like Mark Rowlands, and is thus central to all interesting and “important” dilemmas.

Absurd is of course another reason for the problem of lying; lying is thought to be bad for the simple reason that it is an echo of insanity. You are presenting reality as it is only to you, but reality does not actually exist like that. You lie and tell your parents that there is no girl in your bedroom, but there is one. Or perhaps you lie to your friends and say you were with a girl, when you were not. Both, if believed seriously by the speaker, would constitute madness since the girl is either there or not – independently of whether you assert it or not. Thus it only takes your parents checking in to confirm your statement. This makes lying, according to some philosophers, a resemblance to insanity, which is not a good thing if one is trying to formulate a coherent picture of reality. The only difference is that one is aware that the world is not as one says when one is lying; insanity, one does not know – or, rather, one believes the uttered falsehood.

Medea and her choices are “absurd” only to the extent that her inner feelings needed to find a balance or expression externally. This might be a reason for the need for humans to create art; our consciousness – which might be defined as the awareness of the incoherence of our external and internal spheres – allows us to take a full-throated cry of internal silence to a melodious utterance in the outer sphere of reality. (Reality, Nabokov once said, is the only word that was permitted to always be written in between quotation marks).

This is why we struggle to understand one another. We are already struggling to understand our significance in our immediate spheres and their ripples into the wider sphere of the world. Our creation of meaning is forever the building of sand-castles upon a stormy beach; we are fighting against a strong tide of reality, bashing against the rocks which themselves we hope will bleed. Reality will have none of it.

If we take this thought further into the sphere of the social world there are worse problems. Consider: the sphere which you represent, as a lawyer, academic or liberal fighter (for example) is part of a larger group. When you speak, you speak as “we”, which is nothing but a pluralised first-person viewpoint. Thus when you (plural) are fighting against, for example, the oppression of women, you are taking your internalised, important and, according to you, sensible beliefs into another wider sphere. It does not chime, it finds no harmony. Thus we have conflict, we have a forced view of reality thrust upon another sphere. We have the liberal secularist spheres attempting to free those who live under the conservative, Islamic one. For both, the absurdity does not rest with reason or logic or mutual understanding. It rests primarily with each sphere running down the rocks of reality and being pulled in by the tide of the external world.

One way we can begin to change does rest however in the use of reason to justify our beliefs and our ideas. This is why we need to begin to shift our own positions on many things we take for granted, which I will speak about next time. These might be thought of as the target areas of applied ethics, though one is often ignored by many: namely, the creation of new people. But with these thoughts in hand, I hope the reader will be able to follow me as I target key issues next time: things like science, drugs, creating new people and abortion, and animal ethics.

The influenza viruses are known for their ability to mutate. Any virus is highly capable of doing this at a fast rate, but the flu is infamous for its high rate of mutation, meaning your shot will be pretty much useless ten months from the day you got it. This is due to a virus’ ability to cut, copy, and paste their host’s and their own DNA practically anyway and anywhere they want it. They can swap genes with their host or even other viruses vacationing in the same organism. This means your immunities for last year’s virus is now out of style, and won’t protect you against the new strain.  If you are a rich masochist, this is wonderful news. However, if you are like many others who fear pain and/or needles, getting the flu doesn’t sound like such a bad thing after all.

How is this related to evolution? It is the fundamentals of the process. Evolution occurs when one or more mutations change an organism. Over time, these mutations allow the animal to adapt. Some mutations are useful to finches in gathering certain types of food; other mutations help viruses spread faster. The influenza viruses are constantly evolving. Every year the common strain will mutate, leaving the previous vaccine moot and ineffective. Although it has a mutation that can drastically effect the way it works, it is still an influenza virus. This is known as microevolution. A mutation will change the organism’s appearance or function, but it will still be of the same species. Many skeptics of evolution typically have a hard time believing in giant leaps in the process, also known as macro evolution. What many fail to understand is that macroevolution is simply many micro evolutions over time in a population to evolve into a new species.  In animals, the process of mutation takes much longer than a virus. It can take hundreds or thousands of years before enough micro evolutions occur and separate a group into its own species.

Viruses are constantly mutating and going through tiny microevolutions, but people hardly ever think of it that way. They just think their vaccine wears off and needs renewed. Remember the next time you go to the doctor to get your shot that it’s well worth the old lady musk and “bee sting” injection, because with every new strain your body has a lower chance of keeping the virus from running its full course.

Yes, we have people debating about the nature of a being whose nature is by definition unknowable; who discuss whether Jesus lived or died or was resurrected or flew to the land of the unicorns on a blue starfish called Zimbo; or perhaps to debate the merits of “both sides” of “science”, portioning out “equal time” to both astrology and astronomy – uh, I mean creationism and evolution. And yes, perhaps debating bishops is as impressive as debating crystal-gazers, astrologers or aromatherapists – but I would point out that critical thinking is still the undertone to the entire instigation in itself.

It seems that perhaps we can hammer this final nail in the coffin of bad ideas that debating and defining bad ideas is itself the cure of them.

Engaging the art of rhetoric does not lead to evidence or the culmination of evidential claims, but certainly viewing them with the eye of articulation, eloquence and subtle imagery will help convey, even to those who do not believe, what our position is.

For example, CS Lewis attempts to answer how his god is one but three. In Mere Christianity, he says that the same way a single cube is drawn as three squares hints at how we should conceive of his deity, as being one (cube) but three (squares). It is quite lovely imagery but one I believe to be pointless, inane and thus derivative of most of Lewis’ enterprise. It does not however repudiate that claim that I understand his point. The art of articulating (notice the first three letters of said word) rests primarily in displaying your idea as fully fleshed – or at least partially clothed – as possible. Thus, whilst the idea or opinion may grab at its skirts like a Monroe-esque bimbo upon an airvent, it retains its attire long enough for you to see some hint of flesh.

When writing or expressing, it is important to focus on ones idea to the greatest extent possible. Not to the point of refusing to bow down when it is shown to be wanting, but to the point where, even if its proved wrong, one can show what it is that has been shown wrong. (I do not give this advice as an expert and I offer mea culpa if it has been conveyed as such. I do so only in the spirit of engaging with those who at the moment are coming to terms with complex ideas, opinions and defending them against those who are louder, articulate and boistreous.)

Thus I do not believe in a deity but I certainly understand Aquinas’ articulation of her. We can for example understand the First Cause argument – but it doesn’t mean we have to believe it. Understanding and believing, I am attempting to stress, are two different things. And we should not let our lack of belief undermine our attempts to understand. We must, of course, be sparing with how our knowledge is parcelled. Thus I do not think I would gain much in terms of knowledge – or applicable knowledge – by learning and reading 1000 theology books. Similarly, I would gain nothing by reading about Tarot cards – except maybe I can gaze at some gorgeous artwork. But, of course, how can I know unless I’ve tried? This is the Courtier’s Reply in new clothes, which is often offered as a response to atheist writers and commentators who do not believe but who are not interested in theology. The usual reply, as I believe, is does one have to read all of faerology to disbelieve in fairies?

I think not. Since it is not that we are completely unaware of the implications of things like fairies, hobgoblins and gods. Indeed, it is not books that will change whether we believe in them. Many people will say that someone like Bertrand Russell, Salman Rushdie or lately Richard Dawkins changed their views on god. But it is not just these great men. Ones own mind finds experience through all manner of incremental knowledge: conversations, television ads, dialogue between real and fictional characters, columns, and so on. Through years and years of interaction, we come to form our views on the world and opinions cement into a monument we call our reason. This means that we have dealt with fairies and gods enough to dismiss them, since there is nothing in the deep myriad of complexities which are involved in the subject matter of fairy-tomes or god-scripts which could alter that by themselves. I doubt that reading every theological piece of writing would change an atheist’s mind (I suspect he would be driven mad by pretty, but meaningless, sentences). The world is not blind to our experiences and it is not enfolded by our past exploits. We live and breathe and experience every day. This is part of our knowledge and our reasoning and thus we are able to engage with fairies and gods and ghosts.

Thus, when someone takes time to explain to us their position which would be the polarised opposite of our own, we are still able to understand them. What? You believe in ghosts – sure, I can imagine what that means. No I do not believe in them myself – but by nature of being human I can identify with you. It will rest however in ideas being shrouded in lucidity and tossed out of mouths with clarity and precision. Opinions must not be guards at the fences of our minds, but gate-keepers who allow brief passages to welcome visitors able to identify themselves. As soon as we all learn to be more articulate, more coherent, lucid and eloquent – one can never be too articulate, coherent, lucid or eloquent, it is a journey rather than destination – we might solve most of our insolvable problems. Most of them rest in the lack of understanding from two opposing parties. If they are each able to create the bridge from both sides, instead of tossing their ropes randomly to the other side blindly, we should be able to at least meet in the middle and gaze at the other side we so vehemently oppose.

The only way we can become more articulate is to cotemplate articulately. Why do you think what you think you think? What do you believe and why? It is no fault that most of philosophy is well-written, since by its (one of many) definition(s) it is a constant attempt to articulate, define, clarify and reify opinions and ideas. This is the mighty weapon against bad ideas. I think that bad ideas are bad not because they are (only) silly or illogical, but because if one was to articulate them, one would find them severely lacking as opposed to their opposites. Thus, for example, creationism is not at all beautiful but it is simple, whereas evolution is not only beautiful but simple. This does not make it true, but it begins to highlight the faults and faultlines of bad ideas. It is but a small point and perhaps one I am wrong on, but at present I do think there is a corollary between articulate and clear ideas being ‘good’ or worthwhile, and those which are bad being blurry, transient and incoherent.

To accomplish their goal, they network with each other in a complex hierarchy. We can compare the workings of this network to that of a corporation. Just like companies have CEOs, executives, managers, and workers to look after their daily operations, the body has various genes working at different levels of control. This hierarchy in the body is called its pleiotropy. The senior genes have the power to shut down, change, suspend, or accelerate operations based on the needs of the body. This system allows the “critical stages” of development as discussed in a previous article.

In corporations, several people work together to accomplish something an individual cannot accomplish by themselves. These genes in our bodies are doing the same thing. By working in a network, the composite bodies of these genes accomplish seemingly magical tasks – such as thought and communication. On a broad scale, all bodies involved in the network affect the workings of all other bodies surrounding them, quite intimately.

The nucleus of all somatic cells in the body contain two pairs of genes – they are diploid. One pair from the father and one from the mother. The only cells in the body that are haploid (one set of genes) are the sex cells. Textbooks teach that the genes that make it to these cells are there by “random selection”. But of course we know that is not how it works. In reality, every gene is fighting for its place on a chromosome. This is called it’s ‘meiotic drive’ – it’s drive to be included in the process of meiosis.

The fight can rise to such dramatic proportions that some genes could even take a position that is damaging to other genes, or even the rest of the cell. In “The Extended Phenotype”, Richard Dawkins calls such genes ‘outlaws’ (not his term originally). It is in the interest of the rest of the genes of the cell to subdue this outlaw. So here, we see a collective effort emerge between genes at other loci to make sure that the outlaw is not selected. But on the other hand, any outlaw that can somehow beat the system is greatly increasing its chances of making it to the next generation, so selection would certainly favour it greatly.

Things become more interesting however when outlaws appear on sex chromosomes. Any driving gene on an X or Y chromosome, could easily alter sex ratios drastically and hence even lead a population to it’s demise. If a Y-driving gene is successful enough, the next generation will see only males being born (in mammals for example) leaving them no one to mate with. This method has also been tested as a weapon against pests. In labs and simulations, the introduction of an intentional outlaw driving towards a particular sex, destroyed the entire population in as few as four generations.

The workings in nature of one such outlaw have been witnessed in mud-daubing wasps. The females of this species build their own nests, lay a prey in it for their new-borns to feed upon, lay their eggs on the already dead or dying prey, seal the nest, and then begin the cycle again. As opposed to most other wasps, the males here are also present at the laying and in fact, during it, force the female into a strange ritual dubbed ‘holding’. The whole process begins when the female, having already laid the prey in her nest, goes head first into it with her abdomen facing outside. The male, who is outside, then copulates with her in this position. Then the female turns around, pops her head outwards from the nest and faces her abdomen inside it. She feels for the prey with the tip of her abdomen as if about to lay her egg. At this point, the male grabs her head with his forelegs and proceeds to pull her antennae outwards for about half a minute, to prevent the lady from dropping her egg just yet. Then the female again turns around and copulates with the male, only to turn around again and make another attempt to lay her egg. The male does the same thing. This repeats several times until the female finally gets to lay her egg.

It is hypothesized that the male here is trying to influence the sex of the egg. In Hymenoptera, unfertilized eggs usually result in males and fertilized ones in females. So perhaps by not letting the female lay her egg immediately, the male is trying the make sure it has time to fertilize in the oviduct, or perhaps he is trying to overflow her internal tracts with sperm, so the egg has more of a chance of fertilizing. Both of these actions would lead to a greater chance of new born being a female, giving the male more mating opportunities. Of course, the resistance of the female is necessary, not only because more unfertilized eggs mean more males for her, but also because without it, the entire population might perish.

In ways like these, outlaw genes and other interesting types (segregation distorters, other germ-line replicatiors) cause strange behaviours in our world, and make evolution seem even more implausible. But as always, there are breakthroughs and paradigm-shifts in Science that show us the way. “The Extended Phenotype” is a brilliant book, and deals with several such cases, and all in all, gives one a wonderful perspective of genetics. Dawkins had said before that he considers this book to be his best work; I don’t know if he still considers that true, but if you’re looking to do some interesting reading on evolution, there is no better book I could recommend than this.

I admit that I was intially and naively impressed with Rick Warren, believing that he was some sort of moderate who was trying to shift the focus of evangelicals away from the culture wars and towards more universal goals such as climate change and alleviating poverty. But after looking more closely at Warren’s ideology and the political initiatives he supports (most recently Prop 8), I have to conclude that Warren is little better than the Falwells and Robertsons – only with a much better PR machine to make him look like a moderate and much less ‘angry’. The video below pretty much sums everything up:

[youtube]Xz4O8j8MIhs[/youtube]

It’s pretty clear what Barack Obama is doing; evangelicals make up about 25% of the country (and supported McCain overwhelmingly), while gay people make up less than 10% (and supported Obama overwhelmingly). Thus it would make sense to try to gain votes with a larger section of the electorate… but then you would have to take into account Warren’s likening of abortion to the holocaust and being against stem cell research (60% of the country considers themselves ‘pro-choice’ and only 18% of the country believes that abortion right should be banned under all circumstances) and his right-wing foreign policy views. All three of these issues are central to the voting patterns of right-wing evangelicals, who are also notorious for being inflexible and exceedingly intolerant of dissenting opinions.

This is not even taking into account that we are dealing with a fundamental human rights issue (that Mr. Obama should be especially sensitive to, being an African-American…) and that if this were happening 40 years ago, Pastor Warren would be arguing for the separation of races based on biblical infallibility. If I were to try to woo the evangelical vote – not that I would even have to at this point after getting 7.5% more of the popular vote than John McCain and having a 68% popularity rating – I would get liberal evangelical Jim Wallis or former NAE president Richard Cizik to do the invocation, not some pseudo-moderate wolf in sheep’s clothing. That, and I would wait for the younger generation – who are generally more tolerant of alternative lifestyles – to take over the electorate.

Another possibility is that this could be just some sort of ploy where Obama tries to look more moderate while adopting left-wing policies (a reverse Rick Warren?); George W. Bush after all had left-wing Rev. Louis Leon during his 2005 invocation despite tacking hard to the right. But either way, it’s a bad day for the transition.

This week I will take two finals, which I am confident I will pass, and then I am finished.

I am graduating from college.

My approach to college, like most things in my life, has been unorthodox.

I started college at 25, unlike most college graduates, who begin at 18 or 19.

I dropped out of high school.

After I dropped out of high school I worked a phone job for a year, and then worked as a tattoo artist for several years.

During that time period I did things which would be unwise to disclose in detail in a blog written under my real name.

I also became a born again, charismatic, Sarah Palin-style Christian.

Christianity saved my life in hindsight. If I could disclose all the details I think everyone would agree it was an improvement, but it did not take long for Christianity to present me with its own problems.

I took my religion incredibly seriously, all of it. Including the magical thinking, more popular with Charismatics than anyone. I spoke in tongues, I believed God healed people with my prayers. I also believed the best thing in life was to persuade others to join my in a magical adventure in adoring Christ.

However this clashed with my own background in the punk-rock subculture, and its cynical and existentialist leanings.

I was beginning to feel Christianity had a low ceiling for me. The virtues it rewarded were not my strengths.

In time I became a radical leftist, though I persisted to do so in the name of my religion.

I traveled the US, and found myself active in the leftist youth culture of Santa Cruz, California, where I first got a real taste for politics first hand. Including some very proud actions against the Iraq War.

I returned to Lubbock from my beloved adventures in Santa Cruz ready to start the revolution, which would naturally result in Lubbock, TX. being a tofu eating, recycling utopia, of tolerance and independent bookstores.

It was in my aims to try to politicize Lubbock that I started a lawn business with my buddy Nick Simmons and started trying to organize meetings. A girl I had always known peripherally became my partner in political organizing, and we fell in love. I later married this girl.

My girlfriends mom told me that I was too broke to keep my girl long term. She suggested college. I took her advice.

I started at Texas Tech University as a Psychology major just a few months later. It was then that I began to learn about scientific thinking in my psychology classes. Particularly from Dr. Jeff T. Larsen. I couldn’t get enough.

In less than a year I was accepted into the HHMI Undegraduate Research Fellows program, where we were paid and trained to do professional level primary biological research. It was also the first time that I was in a culture of science, where all of the other HHMI fellows were very forward thinking scientifically informed individuals. I loved my peers in this program and have not felt the same as I did around them until I went to a CFI Leadership conference this summer.

Inspired by a new found love for biology I changed my major to neuroscience, and moved to Dallas with my wife who was getting a graduate degree in neuroscience.

It was shortly after this that both my wife and I read Richard Dawkins The God Delusion and I was persuaded that God did not exist. My wife came around a few months later.

College was an essential part of me coming to the ideas which now guide my life.

The love of inquiry.

A desire for humanity to have a greater cultivation of love for inquiry.

The idea that humanism should replace supernaturalism as the dominant ethics in culture.

The belief that science should have a strong voice in politics.

College was an incredibly positive experience for me. I suspect that most people who don’t go to college shortly after high school never do. I got to do a lot of interesting things in my life, and I count my weird days as a fundamentalist christian among those things. I have tattooed countless people, I sang in bands, I self published comic books, I traveled the country, but I still found great joy in the halls of the academy. It has enriched my life.