After having been made aware of this film – containing an extensive debate between Christopher Hitchens and Douglas Wilson – I found the internet correspondence which prompted its recording. The issue concerns the question of whether Christianity is, in Wilson’s words, “good for the world”. The internet communication contains a number of arguments and counters which will be broken down and presented by my particularly analytically skilled, and as I’m continually informed, small head… Ok, maybe it’s just small.

Hitchens’ first argument:

Although Christianity is often credited (or credits itself) with spreading moral precepts such as “Love thy neighbor”, I know of no evidence that such precepts derive from Christianity. To take one instance from each Testament, I cannot believe that the followers of Moses had been indifferent to murder and theft and perjury until they arrived at Sinai, and I notice that the parable of the good Samaritan is told of someone who by definition cannot have been a Christian.

To these obvious points, I add that the “Golden Rule” is much older than any monotheism, and that no human society would have been possible or even thinkable without elementary solidarity (which also allows for self-interest) between its members. Though it is not strictly relevant to the ethical dimension, I would further say that neither the fable of Moses nor the wildly discrepant Gospel accounts of Jesus of Nazareth may claim the virtue of being historically true. I am aware that many Christians also doubt the literal truth of the tales but this seems to me to be a problem for them rather than a difficulty for me. Even if I accepted that Jesus—like almost every other prophet on record—was born of a virgin, I cannot think that this proves the divinity of his father or the truth of his teachings. The same would be true if I accepted that he had been resurrected. There are too many resurrections in the New Testament for me to put my trust in any one of them, let alone to employ them as a basis for something as integral to me as my morality.

The Logic Police’s Reconstruction:

• P1. If moral behaviour predates Christianity then Christianity is not a necessary condition for moral goodness.
• P2. Moral behaviour predates Christianity.
• Conclusion. Christianity is a not a necessary condition for moral goodness.

Hitchens is also making the claim that:

• P3. The existence of a Human Society is a sufficient condition for the existence of some moral goodness.

This is good news for Hitchens since if Conclusion and P3 are true he has denied Wilson the possibility of claiming that Christianity is a necessary condition for moral goodness.

Wilson’s first counter:

Your first point was that the Christian faith cannot credit itself for all that “Love your neighbor” stuff, not to mention the Golden Rule, and the reason for this is that such moral precepts have been self-evident to everybody throughout history who wanted to have a stable society. You then move on to the second point, which contains the idea that the teachings of Christianity are “incredibly immoral.” In your book, you make the same point about other religions. Apparently, basic morality is not all that self-evident. So my first question is: Which way do you want to argue this? Do all human societies have a grasp of basic morality, which is the theme of your first point, or has religion poisoned everything, which is the thesis of your book?

The Logic Police’s Reconstruction:

Notice that although Wilson alludes to Hitchens’ first argument he does not address it directly. Wilson avoids doing so because he believes that two of Hitchens’ premises are in logical contradiction:

• P3 (Wilson’s altered version). The existence of a Human Society is a sufficient condition for the existence of moral goodness.
• P4. Many Human Societies are incredibly immoral.

By accusing Hitchens of believing both these premises, Wilson makes it seem as if Hitchens is claiming that a society’s existence guarantees its moral goodness, which, in turn, rules out the possibility of it being ‘incredibly immoral’. Since this involves a contradiction, either P3 or P4 must be false and Hitchens must decide which to abandon.

However, and here is the logical sleight of hand, Wilson can only make this accusation after removing Hitchens’ existential quantifier in Premise 3 — the word ‘some’. Without doing so P3 and P4 are not in direct logical tension since an ‘incredibly immoral’ society may contain some moral goodness. Of course, this is precisely what Hitchens believes. In removing the requisite quantifier Wilson has violated the principle of charity and either intentionally misrepresented Hitchens’ argument or committed a relatively shabby logical error. The contradiction is spurious and, as a consequence, provides no legitimate challenge to Hitchens’ original argument.

As it stands the score is as follows:

• Hitchens: 1   Wilson: 0

Make sure you check back for the Logic Police’s second installment of the Wilson Vs. Hitchens debate!

Als ich mir neulich die Kirchenaustrittsstatistiken ansah, fiel mir folgendes auf: Seit Anfang der 1990er Jahre sind die Kirchenaustritte bis 2006 ziemlich kontinuierlich zurückgegangen. 2007 stiegen die Austrittszahlen dann wieder an (um ca. 9%), und 2008 schossen sie dann quasi noch einmal um weitere 25% in die Höhe. Wie ist das zu erklären?

Nun, 2007 könnte die Erhöhung der Mehrwertsteuer für manchen ein Anlass gewesen sein, aus der Kirche auszutreten, um wenigstens bei der Kirchensteuer zu sparen. Was aber erklärt den starken Anstieg in 2008? (2009 dürften die Austrittszahlen auf einem ähnlichen Niveau liegen, d.h. kein weiterer Anstieg.)

Die einzige Erklärung, die mir bisher dazu in den Sinn kam, ist der Umstand, dass Ende 2007 die Bücher der drei bekanntesten “Neuen Atheisten” auf den deutschen Markt kamen: Im September “Der Gotteswahn” von Richard Dawkins und “Das Ende des Glaubens” von Sam Harris, und im Oktober ”Der Herr ist kein Hirte” von Christopher Hitchens. Diesen wurde ja beachtliche Aufmerksamkeit zuteil, die sich u.a. in zahllosen “Gegen-Büchern”, aber auch Fernsehdiskussionen niederschlug, vom Internet ganz zu schweigen.

Papst Benedikt XVI. ist ja auch immer gut darin, Anlässe für Kirchenaustritte zu liefern, aber seine Entscheidung bzgl. der Pius-Brüder schlug erst dieses Jahr Wellen – also 2009.

Damit besteht meine einzige Erklärung für den deutlichen Anstieg der Kirchenaustritte ab 2008 in der Diskussion um die “Neuen Atheisten”. Damit meine ich nicht nur die Bücher, sondern natürlich auch die Diskussion darum, Internet-Aktivitäten, nicht zuletzt auch Arbeit der Giordano-Bruno-Stiftung. Es würde auch erklären, weshalb der “Hauptgegner” der Kirchen nunmehr der Atheismus zu sein scheint, während dieser noch vor zehn, zwanzig Jahren kaum beachtet wurde und stattdessen “Sekten” von den Kirchen als “Buhmann” aufgebaut wurden.

Kennt jemand eine andere Erklärung für den Anstieg der Kirchenaustritte in 2008?

Great stuff

Stephen Fry

Christopher Hitchens

In the latest Vanity Fair, Christopher Hitchens tells the story of the popular writer Stieg Larsson, who died a few years ago at age 50.  The circumstances of that death are explored in Hitchens’ article.  Hitchens helps to correct a common misperception afoot here in the United States. Some of our demagogues use “fascist” and “communist” as synonyms, despite a long and detailed history that shows that communists are the sworn enemies of fascists.  How that distinction has been lost in some of the public discourse in the U.S. perhaps proves only some people’s inability to attend to history, coupled with a desire for delation. Christopher Hitchens reveals some of the stories that have been attached to Larsson’s death.

A report in the mainstream newspaper Aftonbladet describes the findings of another anti-Nazi researcher, named Bosse Schön, who unraveled a plot to murder Stieg Larsson that included a Swedish SS veteran. Another scheme misfired because on the night in question, 20 years ago, he saw skinheads with bats waiting outside his office and left by the rear exit. Web sites are devoted to further speculation: one blog is preoccupied with the theory that Prime Minister Palme’s uncaught assassin was behind the death of Larsson too. Larsson’s name and other details were found when the Swedish police searched the apartment of a Fascist arrested for a political murder.

Larsson’s The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest will be out in English in the U.S. next year.  If you cannot wait, the novel is available now in the U.K. (as of 1 October).

Foreskin’s Lament…with a title like that, how exactly do you review a book?  You try.  I got to know Shalom Auslander through his frequent, frequently hilarious contributions to This American Life.  (Try this one.)  He currently has one published book of short stories, Beware of God, and one memoir, Foreskin’s Lament.

So we’re back to that title.  Auslander grew up in an Orthodox (veering near ultra-Orthodox) community near New York, with an abusive father and a deep-seated belief that a vengeful God was out to get him.  I’m not quite sure why he only briefly connects those two facts of his upbringing, but he certainly seems to still carry the latter.

Auslander knows that he is being neurotic, but he can’t shake it.   Nor can he shake his belief that God is real.  And Auslander (and God) is angry.  Perhaps an excerpt is the best way to communicate the tone throughout the book.

Angry, profane, somewhat over-the-top, but undeniably well written.  And again to the title.  There is a great metaphor that Auslander returns to several times throughout the book.  He, and those like him, who have been brutally cut off from their communities by their communities, are the foreskins, bloodied, bruised, tossed away.  The major hope is that there is a whole hill of foreskins out there (what does my ability to reference arcane and grotesque Scripture say about how I’ve been religiously formed?); they aren’t alone.  Not a ton of hope to me, but a survivor’s kind of hope.  Auslander is the foreskin lamenting.

For me, as you might guess, it was a depressing read.  It depressed me to read how damaged this author has been by his community, by his family, by his religion, because the things that are most important and most beloved in my life are my community, my family, and my religion.

Auslander and I seem to look at the world in totally opposite ways.  That is, I understand the miraculous to be God opening my eyes; it is an ongoing interpretive work of seeing the grace of God (love specifically and personally aimed at me) in all things.  Auslander instead sees the malice of God (specifically and personally aimed at him) in all things.  And both of us (perhaps he more than I) are aware that sometimes these thoughts veer into pure superstition.

As I read the book, I strongly resisted my tendency to believe that I understand where he stands.  I don’t.  And as I write this, I think that maybe the better take-away from this book would be for me, for the first time, to look at the devastation that religion can cause, to look at it straight in the face.  I admit I haven’t done that before.  The modern set of atheists (Dawkins, Hitchens, et al.) haven’t really interested me; if I want robust atheism, I’ll read Nietszche.  The major claim that I hear again and again from the new guys, that religion has done more harm than good in the world, is one that I dismiss out of hand.  Auslander gives me pause in how easy that dismissal comes to me.  He makes me realize the ways in which I already know religion does damage and has does damage–to women, to ethnic minorities, to LGBT people, to me (yes, in some ways, to me too).  I think he would be glad to make me question the goodness of religion, of Christianity.  I think that might be part of his point.  Not to say I should abandon my faith, but that I need to be honest about the damage it does.

Going beyond his point, my question (as always) is what this means for the practices of the Christian churches.  How do we talk about the Gospel as life-giving good news (which it most certainly is), but also choose to grow in our honesty and willingness to open our eyes to the fact that religion, Christian religion, yes, even the cross itself, continue to brutalize people?  Crap.  That’s a hard question.  Thankfully, God’s out to save me, not to kill me.

¿Y si Duesberg, Kary Mullis y Thabo Mbeki tuvieran razón, y el sida no tuviese nada que ver con el virus HIV? Una reciente película, House of Numbers, explora esta censurada controversia. ¿Es un fraude científico la hipótesis avalada por los gobiernos sobre el origen viral del sida? ¿Cuál es la definición precisa de sida? ¿Son fiables los tests? ¿No son peores los remedios que la supuesta enfermedad? ¿Es lo mismo el sida en Nueva York que en Africa? ¿Se trata acaso de una industria muy rentable construida sobre una no demostrada suposición? ¿Por qué Montagnier afirma que un sistema inmune fuerte puede evitar el contagio aun cuando haya habido exposiciones repetidas, e incluso puede destruir el virus semanas después de producido aquél, sin medicamentos ni vacunas? Él mismo reconoce que este hecho no se ha difundido, y que es algo que afecta directamente a la rentabilidad de las empresas farmacéuticas.

Lo siento, muchachos de la cofradía liberal-laicista. Si el mayor especialista del mundo en retrovirus, Peter Duesberg, estuviera en lo cierto, resultaría que el Papa también tendría razón: los males de Africa no se curan con condones —¡qué fácil sería!; y Cristopher Hitchens y otros neocons ateos tendrían que buscar nuevos argumentos para tapar las vergüenzas del paradigma que defienden

“The important thing is not to stop questioning”, Einstein.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig7/foye8.1.1.html
http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/5461313/questioning-the-aids-consensus.thtml
http://www.rethinkingaids.com/
http://www.theperthgroup.com/

On November 24, 1859, exactly 150 years ago, the world was treated with the popularization of the theory of evolution through the first edition of Charles Darwin’s “The Origin of the Species.”

Well, on this the 150th year anniversary call him the comeback kid: we have the likes of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitckens, militant neo-atheists—who would like nothing more than to rid humanity of any semblance of belief in God.

In fact, in an interview with CNN, Dawkins, professor at Oxford, says, “”I believe a true understanding of Darwinism is deeply corrosive to religious faith” (read entire interview…)

CNN: What’s your sense of Darwin’s influence around the world?

Dawkins: Evolution is almost universally accepted among those who understand it, almost universally rejected by those who don’t.

For a Richard Dawkins, belief in God is one of the world’s great evils, if not the greatest:

I think a case can be made that faith is one of the world’s great evils, comparable to the small-pox virus but harder to eradicate.  (quoted in Dembski’s The End of Christianity, p. 4)

The likes of Dawkins must be engaged and refuted intelligently.  Not dismissed a priori.

A few Christian thinkers are doing just that (see Alister McGrath The Dawkins Delusion?)

Nidal Malik Hassan

Når radikale muslimer/islamister går til voldelige yderligheder, skyldes det deres religiøse tilhørsforhold, som adskiller dem fra en række andre genkendelige minoriteter (sorte amerikanere, jøder, homoseksuelle), der velopdragent lader sig nøje med at appellere til offentlighedens sympati.

Christopher Hitchens

Omtrent sådan læser jeg Christopher Hitchens’ konklusion på sit indlæg Allahs amerikanske soldat i Information d. 20/11, angående major Nidal Malik Hassans nedskydning af 13 soldaterkammerater i Texas. Om de ”gode” minoriteter hedder det hos Hitchens: ”Men har nogen personer fra disse kategorier nogensinde reageret med massemord som svar? […] Ville de have opnået sympati og forståelse, hvis de havde gjort det?”

 Hitchens påviser – ganske overbevisende – en religiøst betonet drivkraft bag Hassans handling, og anklager Obama og hans administration for at neddysse opmærksomheden på disse forhold via formaninger om ikke at drage forhastede slutninger. Det primære problem ved denne offentlige håndtering synes, for Hitchens, at være, at den tenderer mod ”sympati og forståelse” for folk af Hassans specifikke type minoritet.

Hitchens ved, hvem vi er

Min anke mod Hitchens’ konklusion går ikke på, at den skulle være forhastet, for det er den ikke. Den er velunderbygget og velsagtens ganske korrekt, men samtidig malplaceret, unødvendig og ikke mindst vulgært idealistisk.

Hvorfor skal vi ikke have sympati med døds-majoren og hans slags? Det behøver vi åbenbart ikke, eftersom deres aggressioner angivelig ikke bunder i noget, vi har indflydelse på eller ansvar for, men derimod i ren og skær ekstrem religiøsitet. Dermed har vi fået samlet en stor mængde ubelejlige afvigere under en beroligende gruppebetegnelse og reduceret dem til deres grundlæggende idé eller essens: radikal islam.

Så belejlig er idealismen; den kan fortælle os, hvem folk i bund og grund er, og dermed fritage os for at overveje, hvordan de mon er blevet til dem, de er. Mange enkeltstående voldelige afvigere (tankerne falder på skolemassakrer som Columbine og Virginia Tech, samt på mere indadrettede tilfælde som Josef Fritzl) hensætter os til besværlige og foruroligende spekulationer over hvilke sociale, politiske og materielle omstændigheder, der mon skaber sådanne uhyrer. Vi kan ikke rigtig finde et entydigt label at sætte på deres form for afvigelse, og derfor bliver de genstand for – i hvert fald forsøg på – den af Hitchens forkætrede ”forståelse”.

 Og Gud da forbyde, at dette også skulle ske mht. Hassan og co., for når en gruppe vinder sympati og forståelse, så fører det jo til billigelse af deres handlinger, og dermed til optrapning af samme, ikke sandt, Hitchens?

Så hellere have en samlet fjendegruppe, som lader sig sammenligne med de andre klart definerede minoritetsgruppers eksemplariske velopdragenhed, således at vi andre enstemmigt kan råbe ad disse religiøse fanatikere, at de er forkert på den! Så holder de nok snart op med deres pjat, mon ikke, kære Hitchens?

Besværlig materialisme

Og ja, Christopher Hitchens, det er da utroligt, at de galninge ikke kan finde ud af det, når nu vi andre godt kan (altså undtagen dem, der ikke kan, forstås). Men uanset hvor fortrinligt religions-prædikatet passer på Nidal Malik Hassans verbale og fysiske ytringer – samt på martyriets mange kedelige fortilfælde – så tror jeg altså ikke, vi kommer uden om den slidsomme opgave, at forklare hvilke følelser og oplevelser denne hadske religiøsitet er udtryk for, samt af hvilke omstændigheder samme følelser og oplevelser undfanges.

Det kan meget vel være, at den historiske materialisme (dvs. marxismen) led nederlag i sit forsøg på at ophæve klassesamfundet via optimering af produktionsforholdene, og at Freud har vist os, at vi alle har vores at slås med, inderst inde, uanset hvor vi bor, og hvem der mobber og håner os. Alligevel tror jeg ikke, at vi, hvis vi vil skabe et bedre globalt samfund, kommer uden om den besværlige materialisme, som aldrig ved, hvem folk i bund og grund er, og som er tvunget til at overskue enorme mængder politiske, økonomiske, industrielle, geografiske og historiske forhold – for at kunne forstå de pludselige voldsudbrud, vi ser på overfladen. Er sådanne bestræbelser det samme som ”sympati”? Nuvel, så må jeg vel finde mig i at bære betegnelsen ”martyr-sympatisør”.

How did I miss this???

Multicultural MasochismThe “war on terrorism”

didn’t cause the Fort Hood shootings.

By Christopher Hitchens

Posted Monday, Nov. 23, 2009, at 1:37 PM ET 

(The second article regarding the Fort Hood murders)

 

 

 

 

Palin’s Base Appeal

 

By Christopher Hitchens | NEWSWEEK

Published Nov 14, 2009

From the magazine issue dated Nov 23, 2009

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hard Evidence

Seven salient facts about Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan.

By Christopher HitchensPosted Monday, Nov. 16, 2009, at 11:46 AM ET

  

I have been on the trail of Christopher Hitchens and his influencers like David Icke and Michael Tsarion, we shall know them by their friends.

Anyway tell me what you think of the video which looks in depth at evidence for Jesus existence.

Christopher Hitchens and his new age friends are not giving much of reason to doubt Jesus’s existence. The only reason why they doubt it is because it happened a long time ago. It is a cheap attack from a cheapen crowd.

This past Thursday was a good philosophy day. In the afternoon my friend Shanon Kimura and I went over to Notre Dame to interview Alvin Plantinga for a journal that our Phil. of Religion class is working on. It was a great experience getting to meet and speak with the man whose arguments and theses we have been hashing through this semester.

Later on in the day I along with a couple others had the privilege of heading over to Chicago with Chad Meister for the Midwest premier of the documentary Collision. The documentary is about a series of debates and dialogues between Christopher Hitchens and Douglas Wilson, coauthors of the book Is Christianity Good for the World. The dialogue was interesting to say the least, in the end leaving the issue primarily where it was to begin with. While Wilson seems to hold his own against Hitchen’s onslaught, I wasn’t pleased with his defense of Christianity on some issues due to some major theological differences.

After the documentary there was a panel including Chad Meister and Hemant Mehta (the guy who sold his soul on ebay). The dialog revolved mainly around exploring the basis of morality in the world. Mehta argued that it was grounded in humanity and everyone just knows right from wrong, while Meister countered that a system like that would be completely subjective.

Here are a few pictures from the day:

I am completely torn over this. The people who brought you the Atheist Bus Campaign are now bringing us a billboard campaign in which a young child asks us ‘Please don’t label me’. The campaign is the shop window for the brash evangelical wing of atheism, the Dawkins–Hitchens tendency.

First of all, the real political issue behind ‘Please don’t label me’ is faith schools. Regardless of a certain moral panic among secularists, the number and popularity of faith schools in the UK have been increasing. This has happened due to a complex network of reasons that are not all that easy to unravel. I want to talk about the political issues around faith schools first, and then the philosophical issues around the labelling of children. I’ve given the two sections under headings below, so you can skip whatever does not interest you.

Faith schools

The Church of England owns and runs a large number of schools throughout England. They exist for mainly historical reasons: the church was historically at the forefront of providing free education for all. Most of these are categorized as ‘voluntary controlled’, which makes them mostly indistinguishable from full state schools (technically called ‘community schools’). There are important differences, the local vicar is a governor and the head teacher should be ’sympathetic’ to the religious connection. The church has some ‘voluntary aided’ schools, which tend to have closer church ties, but I would still hope that the educational ethos of such places prevents them from being Anglican boot camps. My primary school was VC, and, as a vicar, I have served as governor to one VC school and one community school, and I can’t say that I noticed much difference in these school’s relationship with religion. This is somewhat similar to what a report by Theos says about faith schools.

The much bigger difference has been the New-Labourism of ‘foundation schools’ which became ten-years old last September. These schools are funded through the local education authority, but have employment, admissions and physical ownership vested indirectly in a charitable foundation. Most of these foundations are religious in nature. Giving other religions parity with the Church of England in running schools is a nod to multiculturalism, and makes certain sense, but the other part is the New Labour mantra of ‘public-private partnerships’ and ‘private finance initiative’. A decade on, PFI has become decidedly problematic and our approach to multiculturalism, even multiculturalism itself, is being questioned.

So, perhaps the Church of England is part of the problem. If we weren’t so eager to hang onto our schools, other religions wouldn’t feel obliged to have schools too. Perhaps it might be better if all schools that received state funding were under local education authority control, as ‘community schools’, and that if religions want to do education they have to do it in the private sector. However, buying out the Church of England alone would mean buying thousands of schools and making hundreds of employees of diocesan boards of education unemployed, and would have little practical effect at the chalk face.

So, perhaps we’re back to the moral panic and media hype about faith schools. After all, the New Atheist movement is almost entirely middle-class and middle-aged, a demographic for whom school admissions is the major battleground on which they fight to get their children a head start.

On the other hand, perhaps it’s time that the public side of public-private partnerships showed some leadership for the money we invest in faith schools. This could involve moves to scrap any religious qualifications for admissions, scrap ‘religious tests’ for the employment or promotion of certain teaching posts (which range from asking applicants to be ’sympathetic’ to requiring membership of a specific religious group), allowing only the LEA syllabus for religious education (banning the ‘faith-based RE’ option exercised in a minority of faith schools), and no longer accepting that assemblies can be ‘worship’. I think such moves by an education secretary would win such wide support in society that the Church of England would have to give in, and then other religious groups would be left in a reactionary minority.

Labelling children

At the Reformation, many reformers responded to the Enlightenment by declaring that a faith commitment can only be made once one is old enough to formulate it for one’s self. This led them to reject infant baptism and call for the baptism of adults only, and the rebaptism of those who were baptized as babies. The modern response from those, who like me, baptize babies is that this turns faith into a rational proposition and something to be arrived at rather than marking the commencement of a journey of faith. Maybe it’s no surprise then that the Evangelical Alliance have supported the posters. It is also interesting to see the comments on the Comment is Free article where the non-religious are going through the same arguments again: either labels require rational assent and children shouldn’t be labelled, or that parents have an important role in passing on what is important to them to their children. Atheism, like Protestantism, is based on the Enlightenment ideals of rational formation. Whereas sociologists (Weber for example), along with baptizers of infants, would point to the importance of the childhood ethos that leads to that rational formation.

Raising children is not a value-free activity, and education, however it is done, involves the imparting of a ethical framework to children, even the imprinting of such. Education and child-rearing is always based on some such ethical framework however ill-conceived or fragmentary. Thus, there is no such thing as a childhood exempt from values, and these values have labels attached. Although there is plenty of room for parental expression of these values (for good or ill), when education takes place beyond the family unit society’s collective values are used (for good or ill). In a multicultural society, we recognise differing, even conflicting, values, and, if we have no overarching ethical framework, this leads to fragmentation. This fragmentation is demonstrated by the idea of a plurality of labels being a Bad Thing. In this light the poster campaign is simply part of a moral panic about the fragmentation of society, admittedly done in a more United Colours of Benetton than Daily Mail way.

Ideas, values, philosophies and religions permeate every part of our society. All of us are participants in labelling however apathetic, and no child can be exempt without living in a bubble. What the New Atheists have done is put a soundbite on a billboard. Its philosophical depth is as shallow as much of their arguments (a discredit to the honourable traditions of atheist thought). There is a poorly articulated campaign behind the slogan, which could positively been seen as a call to develop an overarching ethical framework within which state education should function, but it is more likely to find greater engagement with middle-class moral panic over fragmentation in society, getting their children into the ‘best schools’ and an old idea that religion isn’t a nice dinner-party topic for conversation (leading to general desire to disengage). I’m sure many BoBos (bourgeois bohemians) will find the poster smugly satisfying, but in the end it is philosophically empty at best, reactionary and monoculturalist at worst.

In the end, I’m still torn. I think there’s an important discussion to be had here, but the manner of the proposition means that it’s not going be had.

Der neue Atheismus ( Link ) (DVD)

Der neue Atheismus

An dieser Stelle mal ein Hinweis auf eine DVD, die vielleicht ganz hilfreich sein mag für den einen oder anderen. Es geht schlicht um das Verhältnis zwischen Wissenschaft und Glaube, John Lennox spricht hier ( komplett auf Deutsch ) vor einer Menge Studenten an der Uni Salzburg. Das Publikum bei diesem Vortrag ist also nicht christlich, er erklärt schön langsam, warum er Christ ist, wie er das als Wissenschaftler mit der Wissenschaft vereinbaren kann und wo Fehler der sogenannten “neuen Atheisten” ( Richard Dawkins ( “Der Gotteswahn ) , Christopher Hitchens ( “Der Herr ist kein Hirte” ) ….) liegen.

Das Thema Glaube und Wissenschaft kann wirklich Bücher füllen und man sollte von den Vorträgen gewiss nicht Antwort auf alle Fragen erwarten. Für jemanden, der sich sehr wenig mit dieser Thematik befasst hat, kann die DVD wirklich wunderbar sein, sowohl für Christen als auch für solche, die es nicht sind. Wer sich damit schon sehr tief befasst hat, der wird logischerweise wenig neues hören, aber die kleinen Anekdoten über Dawkins u.a., die John Lennox bringt, sind durchaus interessant.

Die Vorträge sind vor allem darauf ausgerichtet, zu zeigen, dass es keinen zwingenden Grund gibt, daran zu glauben, dass es keinen Gott gibt und, dass es genug Evidenz gibt, an den lebendigen Gott zu glauben, der sich – nicht nur durch seinen Sohn Jesus Christus – selbst geoffenbart und gezeigt hat in dieser Welt. Weiterhin zeigt er auf, welche Probleme im Atheimsus z.B. bzgl. der Ethik aufkommen können. Auch geht er der Frage nach, ob Religion an sich generell gefährlich ist, wie z.B. von Dawkins behauptet wird.

Die Titel der Vorträge lauten:

1. Hat die Wissenschaft Gott wirklich begraben?
2. Ist Religion gefährlich?
3. Ist Moral auch ohne Gott möglich?

Dazu gibt es noch einiges an Bonusmaterial – z.B. eine Frage und Antwort-Runde, in der sich John Lennox den kritischen Fragen stellt, die unter den Studenten während der Vorträge aufgekommen waren.

Weiterführende wissenschaftliche Literatur:

95 Thesen gegen die Evolution

Darwin im Kreuzverhör

Fakten des Glaubens

Die Tatsache der Auferstehung

Weiterhin ein Hinweis auf eine kleine Linksammlung zum Thema: “Verteidigung des Glaubens”

John Lennox Website

Und nun ja. Ihr seht, ich kann es nicht lassen:

Ohne Entschuldigung – Paul Washer ( Den Text findet man HIER )

Debate – Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett vs Dinesh D’Souza, Shmuley Boteach, Nassim Taleb. Neutral: Robert Wright. La Ciudad de las Ideas 2009 Re-evolution

George Scialabba will be speaking at Powell's Bookstore Friday night.

It can be hard to write what is in essence a review of reviews.

Fortunately, George Scialabba’s wit, erudition, political and moral sensibility and sheer depth of knowledge make the task a lot easier.

All are on abundant display in What Are Intellectuals Good For?, a collection of pieces Scialabba wrote between 1984 and 2005.

Scialabba will be talking about the work on Friday from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m.at Powell’s Bookstore, 2850 N. Lincoln Ave.

Thanks again to uber-connector Danny Postel for getting me a copy of the book.

Scialabba’s passion for language and bone-deep pleasure in reading shine through each of the 250 pages of this memorable work.  He is unafraid to take on titans of the left, right and formerly left who turned right-read Isaiah Berlin, Matthew Arnold and Christopher Hitchens, respectively. 

Modest about his own considerable talents, Scialabba is clearly committed to advancing public conversation around key questions of this and other day: what, if anything, does life mean; what is justice; and how do we render truth?

He covers a wide range of disciplines on the journey to consider these questions. 

While What Are Intellectuals Good For? is firmly rooted in the humanities, within that space one learns about philosophy, the art of the essay, cultural history, and a twist of sociology and psychology.  Scialabba shows equal facility with fiction and non-fiction work alike, and is catholic-please notice the small c in this word-in his reading.

That said, I felt, and I could be reading too much into this, Scialabba’s affinity for his ancestral home of Italy.  

I learned about writers like Nicola Chiaraomonte and Leonardo Sciascia, whom I have not yet read, but whose works I emerged from Scialabba’s book eager to absorb. His essay about Pier Paolo Pasolini is similarly heartfelt.  In addition to evaluating individual authors, Scialabba also talks about movements, as he does in an engaging look at the demise of the New York intellectuals.  He brings his formidable evaluative talents to bear in each of these formats.

In some ways, the book reads like a fugue in that specific authors are introduced, their works become the subject of exposition and then kneaded into the fabric of the rest of the work.  Chiaromonte is one example of many of this tendency in the work.  Dwight Macdonald, a hero of Scialabba’s, is another.  I enjoyed this musical aspect to the book both because it helped me understand how authors’ works reverberated over time and because it gave the pieces a rhythmic sense of connection.

It bears mentioning that Scialabba has done all this work not within the context of the academy, but while working for nearly the past 30 years as a clerical worker at Harvard University, his undergraduate alma mater.  His work, then, is not only a stellar example of civic engagement by a “layman.”  Rather, Scialabba shows that, decades before journalism collapsed, he had figured out a way to do the work that he wanted on his terms and get it to a diverse set of audiences. 

I have not read all of Scialabba’s work, so cannot say whether the near dearth of writers of color or examination of authors from Latin America or Asia is a reflection of the choices for this collection or a more general absence in Scialabba’s reading.  While I did not know exactly what he would say in all instances, I did get a sense over time of standard elements in many Scialabba reviews: a clever opening; some textual exposition; some interweaving of the author’s personal life or contradictory aspects; a posing of major questions the author’s work raises; and a concluding thought.  Understanding architecture does not mean diminished pleasure in reading.  If anything, it could be taken as a compliment of the work that I read so many consecutive pieces that their structure felt familiar, and even a tad predictable.  

The massive reading list I got from this book notwithstanding, I plan to be at Friday’s event and hope a large group turns up to see and learn from this son of East Boston.  Through his work and career path, Scialabba has answered the question he posed in his book’s title.

Stuff I’m Reading this Morning…

What to make of the recent surge of IPO issuance.  (SmartMoney)

Hedgie Leon Black and his Apollo Management buying up the debt of CT’s Foxwoods casino.  (NYP)

Morningstar’s new Shareholders tab let’s you keep track of who else owns your stock.  (Morningstar)

Eric Sprott on the pickup in momentum for gold.  (TheGoldReport) hat tip Pragmatic Capitalist

Losing Like a Winner. (EvilSpeculator)

NY’s Daily News doubles down on print newspapers.  Good luck with that.  (NYT)

Christopher Hitchens on the Fort Hood Massacre.  (Slate)

Is Dennis Kneale gearing up for Victoria’s Secret Week?  Remember last year?  (Dealbreaker)

The History of the Internet in a nutshell.  Must Read.  (SixRevisions)

If you’re an atheist and you thought Doug Wilson’s arguments for Christianity were weak, or found yourself disappointed with degree of substance portrayed in the Collision Documentary, or you’re a Christian and likewise were disappointed, I suggest that you will find much more satisfaction listening to a more sophisticated/academic debate between atheist Gordon Stein and Christian scholar Greg Bahnsen.  It’s not as flashy and entertaining as The Collision, but if you are a true intellectual and can carefully follow arguments, you will find it much more satisfying of a debate.  In fact, this debate has since been often referred to simply as “The Great Debate,” without any further qualification.      

For a more recent alternative, try listening Daniel Dennett (renowned militant atheist) argue with Alvin Plantinga (retired head of the philosophy department at Notre Dame).