In other words, it’s all good and well to say that the universe was created by something we don’t (perhaps, yet) understand, but it’s a massive leap to go from that proposition to far more specific ones, such as “god is good”, “god wants me to wear plaid”, or “god wants you to give me money“. In short, we’ve got very little idea of how the universe came about, and the physics that “explains” it is highly speculative. Other physicists and philosophers of physics – even those who don’t believe in god themselves – have also been quick to point out that they don’t think Hawking is right or consistent on the physics.

But as one might expect, religious leaders and sympathisers have been quick to try to persuade us that regardless of the physics, god ain’t done yet. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, told The Times that “Physics on its own will not settle the question of why there is something rather than nothing”, and Eric Priest is in The Guardian telling us that physics can’t answer the question of why we are here, even though he seems prepared to do some goalpost-shifting and allow for science to answer the question of how we are here.

Priest’s first gambit is to say: “It is certainly possible that God sets up and maintains or underpins the laws of physics and allows them to work, so that being able to explain the big bang in terms of physics is not inconsistent with there being a role for God”. Yes, it is – but this is a fairly straightforward appeal to ignorance. What’s possible is not necessarily probable, and we would need independent reasons for believing in any possible alternative answer – the burden of proof is on the person making the claim. And here, one of the pieces of “evidence” historically cited to support belief is that god alone can explain the “how” we are here – so if Priest is prepared to allow physics that honour, then he should accept that a significant amount of his justification for god has been lost.

Furthermore, it’s not legitimate to move from “a role for God” straight to “exactly the role as defined in my religious text, or my belief system”, as I point out above. God’s role, if she had one, could have been that of a neutral observer, or a tea-lady, or as apprentice god to the design-team of gods who created this particular world. They may have let the apprentice god get a little too involved, on the evidence presented by earthquakes, floods and the like.

Priest goes on to say:

Furthermore, many of the questions that are most crucial to us as human beings are not addressed adequately at all by science, such as the nature of beauty and love and how to live one’s life – often philosophy or history or theology are better suited to help answer them.

Not yet addressed by science, no, and perhaps not ever (though this is doubtful). One could easily imagine the nature of beauty to have a scientific explanation, one perhaps beginning with an evolutionary preference for (for example) symmetry, which develops into far more complex preference-sets as cultural progress marches on. How to live one’s life might also have plenty of currently available scientific answers, as Sam Harris is busy trying to argue. But again, even if there aren’t currently available scientific answers, that does not licence you to make answers up, or to rely on answers that only made sense to people living centuries ago, who had access to virtually no science at all. It still gives us no principled reason at all to prefer the answers provided by the Christian version of god, for example, over the answers provided by Hindu gods, or even those of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (ramen).

Priest concedes that “Hawking may be able in future to say how the universe started, but as a physicist he cannot answer the question ‘why?’”. Again, perhaps not, but you can’t either, Mr. Priest. The fact that you believe a certain story does not make that story true, or give us reason to choose it over competing stories. Secondly, it is entirely unclear whether the question of “why” even needs an answer. From a personal perspective, I know why I’m here: to live as happily as possible, which involves satisfying my subjective preferences as much as possible (and those subjective preferences can of course include concern for the preferences of others).

The idea of a big metaphysical “why” makes the argument circular – we’ve never needed the answer to that particular question, except if we think that life has any metaphysical significance. But it doesn’t, and that question might therefore not be as meaningful. If we are going to ask the question, though, the honest and defensible answer is simply: I don’t know, and neither do you. It’s also worth pointing out that there is absolutely no reason to stop the “why” with the answer “god” – unless we swallow the god answer (which we have no reason to), we can ask as many follow-up “why’s” as your typical 4-year old child.

The so-called “God of the Gaps” is not part of modern religious faith. In this view, you invoked God to explain the inexplicable – at one time this would have been the weather or common diseases, and for Hawking apparently until recently the origin of the universe. Thus, when an alternative explanation arises, there is no longer any need for God.

The God followed by many people of a religious faith is not a God of the Gaps at all – rather a God who helps answer other nonscientific questions about why the universe and its amazing life exists and how to lead a good life. Also, they welcome the advances in understanding that modern science brings, since they reveal more of the incredible beauty, diversity and wonder of the nature of the universe.

You cannot prove whether God exists or not. But you can ask whether the existence or nonexistence of God is more consistent with your experience. It is up to each of us to reach our own conclusion, but for many of us it is and can make a profound and enriching difference to our lives.

I can’t help but to read those first two paragraphs as explicitly contradicting each other. First, Priest says that god’s job is no longer that of explaining the inexplicable, and then he says that god helps us to explain things that are nonscientific, ie. that can’t be explained by science. But here, Priest is confused about what an explanation is. An explanation does not consist in “goddidit”. Instead, an explanation rests on hypotheses and theories that can be tested and empirically verified, like for example our explanation of why it rains. As I’ve pointed out a few times now, goddidit is indistinguishable from “ceiling cat did it”, in terms of it’s explanatory force or usefulness.

Priest’s closing sentences are a lovely distillation of a head-in-the-sand approach. Appealing to the sympathies and ignorance of people who have no better answer, he exhorts us to simply check our emotional pulse, or our lived experience. Presumably, this is meant to work as follows: “Hey, wow. That sunset is beautiful. But there’s all sorts of wierd shit in the world that doesn’t have a scientific explanation. I could read up on the current scientific theories on these things, or I could dust off my centuries-old religious text and not do any thinking at all. So, goddidit.”

Of course it’s up to all of us to reach our own conclusions. But some conclusions are wrong – and ones which involve no argument, and reliance on ancient superstition and mythology, are more likely to be wrong than others. And perhaps for you, Mr Priest, this “can make a profound and enriching difference” to your life. Just as it’s made a profound difference to the lives of sexually-abused kids, people denied birth control, and people killed as a result of the religious beliefs of their parents, etc. Grow up already.

Waiting until you are married to have sex seems, in our sexually saturated culture, a rather old-fashioned, even idealistic, concept. In Western culture, moral standards seem to have slackened as more and more people are engaging in acts of copulation for recreation as opposed to procreation. Every sperm is no longer sacred! As people embrace their sexuality and desires, the practicality of our moral code is called into question. Why wait until marriage to discover the joys of sex?

The principal reasons for pledging purity are religious – to a sworn atheist, this seems absurd. There is no one biblical verse condemning sex before marriage; Christians suggest instead that this message can be inferred.

In Deuteronomy 22:13-22, for example, it is clear virginity when getting married is expected and sex before marriage is termed “a disgraceful act”. This is just one of many examples and the message is pretty clear. What the Bible fails to do, for me however, is provide adequate reasoning.
The only legitimate reason I can see for keeping sexual partners to a minimum is the risk of AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases. STDs are almost a symbol of promiscuity – the price of pleasure. And there is a belief that if everyone behaved responsibly the epidemic would end. So the church has made it its mission to ensure that everybody behaves.

In 1495, a new disease started appearing all over Europe and its symptoms were terrifying. A doctor at the time described it as “Boils that stood out like Acorns, from whence issued such filthy stinking Matter, that whosoever came within the Scent, believed himself infected. The Colour of these was of a dark Green and the very Aspect as shocking as the pain itself, which yet was as if the Sick had laid upon a fire.” Such was the explosive birth of syphilis.

Christopher Columbus and his crew have been accused of bringing the disease back with them from the Americas to Europe where it raged its way through the population, killing millions of people. During this period people’s attitudes towards sex changed radically. The church pushed its no-sex-before-marriage agenda hard and it to started win its battle.

Telling people they will die from disease if they have too much sex doesn’t work. We all need to believe that we will never die; that it can never happen to us, otherwise we would never be able to leave our houses.

However, if you make something deplorable, you attach stigma to it, and ensure that those who indulge in it will be ostracised; in this way people feel as though they can lose something tangible, something real. I am suggesting that the church has transformed pre-marital sex into a sin in order to protect its flock from real diseases, not hell. Once this disease was syphilis, now it is AIDS.

The moralistic preaching about sex before marriage has no place in our post-religious society. There is something profoundly wrong with telling people sex is dirty, therefore you must save it for marriage. Sex is not dirty.

For most of us, we have enough insecurities when it comes to the fuzzy tinkle times without having to worry about whether God is watching us and enjoying the show or not. This mindset imposed by the church had created guilt even when having sex with a steady partner.

This is wrong. Sex is about freedom, choice and exploration – and to be cheesy and romantic, love. And there is nothing wrong with that. Just use a condom.

Now, besides the apparent contradiction contained in the 2nd and 3rd paragraphs, this appears to be a reasonable opinion piece, and one that warms the cockles of my heart (no, I don’t have those either) in expressing a naturalistic outlook on the question of premarital sex. But for some, what Ms Mitchell says is completely beyond the bounds of decency and good sense. And no, I’m not talking about Taryn Hodgson or Errol Naidoo, but rather a soon-to-be graduate of one of the more demanding programmes at the University of Cape Town. Let’s call him “Gershwin”. Gershwin offers us some impassioned pleas, in an email that was addressed to 114 people (including some mailing lists, so probably many more). He feels so strongly about the matter that he even included the Vice-Chancellor in his entreaty. I did reply to tell him that this was spam, and in contravention of UCT email policies, but perhaps he thinks that those policies are evil too. Anyway, let’s see what he says:

I am writing too you out of serious concern because of what has been written in the 24 August 2010 Volume 69: Number 9 issue of the varsity newspaper. I have attached an electronic version of the article for you to read.

My concerns are :

1. This has serious damaging effect on the students who do not have an standpoint on the matter of sex before marriage and will be swayed into thinking that this article has any substance
2. UCT is a prestigious university and one does not expect writing and lack of depth of thought of this calibre.

This article is intellectually limited and carries too much harmful effects too be taken lightly.

So, besides the implicit claim in (1) that students who don’t yet have a standpoint on “this matter” should presumably adopt Gershwin’s standpoint (which we’ll hear about soon), we’re probably also entitled to ask for some defense of the claim that the article has no substance. Maybe Kathryn got some facts wrong? Gershwin will hopefully enlighten us. On point 2, no argument from me – just the observation that Gershwin might well be in the process of getting his own petard ready for some hoisting.

Please I urge to help me undo the damage that the author has Kathryn Mitchell has caused. Please give me your opinions on the matter so that we together may create a better and deeper understanding of this topic

Here is what my thoughts on the matter are:

1. I believe that sex should be preserved for marriage because it the most deepest connection you can have with your partner. if you are constantly having sex with many partners you have shared that deep connection with many people. This means that your deepest connection is worth less.
2. From a spiritual point of view, sharing your spirit with people constantly leads ones spirit to be torn up in the end and one would constantly feel empty.
3. From an empirical point of view their are psychological studies (I have looked them up) that prove that couples who engage in sex before marriage most times end up being divorced. Hence we have high divorce rates, dysfunctional homes and even abuse
4. From a moral point of view, it is simply wrong.

We need to paint a proper picture and not simply eradicate the author’s view. I have not even considered a moral argument as the author clearly, from the article, lacks this. It would seem she is using this article to hide from her own sexual immorality.

People do not need to make this mistake before they understand its immensity.
Pleading you understand

Well, he asks for opinions, so here are mine, addressing his points in order:

1. Why should we care what you believe, Gershwin? I, by contrast, think that wrestling escaped marmosets together is the deepest connection one can make with a partner. Sure, doing so often leads to sex, but that’s not why we do it. If you think that sex involves the deepest connection possible, that’s fine – go forth and live according to your chosen standard. But if you want it to be anyone else’s standard, you’ll need to tell them why.
2. Even if one believed in the idea of a “spirit” (and there’s no good reason to, Gershwin), we’d also need to know plenty about the nature of that spirit. Maybe it can handle being shared? Perhaps it’s robust enough to sleep around with some other spirits without getting torn up and all. And sure, meaningless sex can make you feel a bit shallow, some of the time. But we can get meaning from all sorts of places – and while one of those places might be marriage, marriage has no monopoly on interpersonal meaning.
3. Oooh, you’ve looked them up, have you? I’ve looked some stuff up too. One of my sources says you’re an idiot, but the data isn’t quite clear, so I’m happy to judge you on your words instead, which appear to come from a distinctly idiotic religious space. Other sources I’ve looked up tell me that divorce rates are highest amongst religious believers, that all so-called “happiness indexes” consistently rank secular nations above religious ones, etc. And I can actually offer my sources, and have often done so on previous posts here – instead of just asking you to take my word for it.
4. What does that mean? What moral theory or framework are you appealing to, Gershwin? Sure, people can be harmed in sexual interactions, but that can happen whether they are marital or pre-marital. You need to give us an argument here, rather than just tell us it’s “simply wrong”. It’s not simple at all – you are, for claiming that it is.

Gershwin then tells us that he has not even considered a moral argument, which is of course clear from his letter. He does apparently seem to think that he’s offered some sort of argument, but all I can see are assertions, backed by unshakable prejudice. It’s bloody sad that 4 years of expensive education sometimes add up to this sort of stupidity.

God has recently opened some significant doors for Family Policy Institute. The evidence of my success is manifested in the daily demonization of the work of FPI by the liberal media.

Or, the evidence of how little sense you make, and how odious many (even some Christians) find your points of view to be, is manifested in the regular refutations and expressions of incomprehension that someone can be so pig-headed, morally blinkered, and opposed to all that makes a constitutional democracy worth living in.

My efforts to advance Biblical Christian values in Parliament, the media and general society have elicited the wrath of liberal secular humanists, who regard me as a grave threat to democracy.

Biblical Christian values are themselves a threat to democracy, dear Errol. So if you want to see them made law, so are you. How grave that threat is depends on which side of the fence you are. But your values, if applied literally and consistently, allow people very little choice in terms of things like who they can marry, what rights they have over their own bodies – even in terms of their attitudes towards gender equality. If you don’t believe that those things are worthwhile, that’s fine – you can try to make that case. But undermining those freedoms is unarguably a threat to democracy.

Significantly, what all of this does, is prove that Family Policy Institute is making inroads into areas the liberal elite consider their exclusive domain. Freedom of expression & other constitutional freedoms are defined by secular humanists and they alone decide what is acceptable or not!

Nope. They were defined by a consultative process which included many of your ilk. You’re free to spout your crap, and we’re free to tell you that you are a curious throwback to a primitive age, who wants us all to subjugate ourselves to (your interpretation of) the will of a creature from your favourite fairytale.

I believe our human rights and freedoms are a gift from God, and everything we do must reflect God’s sovereign rule in our personal lives and His supreme authority over our nation. That is why I battle daily on the frontlines of the culture war for your and my values. The Biblical Christian Worldview provides the only rational basis for a just, free and prosperous society.

Rational basis? Do you know what the word “rational” means? You may be right about the existence of ceiling cat, and I may be wrong – but the possibility of that is not premised on rational reflection. It’s about faith, and you don’t need faith when things can be known via rationality. Your own holy book can tell you these things, if you took your head out of your self-promoting pompous ass for long enough to think these matters through.

Following my submission on Gambling Law Reform to Parliament in January this year & later in May to the Dept of Trade & Industry in Pretoria, government’s policy on gambling seem to be moving in the right direction.

Damn, you’re so powerful. You remind me of a god, except perhaps with a little more ego.

Standing
Errol Naidoo

Well done.

At some point in the early or mid-80’s, our hosts at a dinner party complained about the escalating price of meat. I remember being struck by how curious this lament was, seeing as the hosts in question were undeniably rather wealthy – they had cars for every conceivable purpose (the shopping car, the beach holiday car, the high-tea-at-the-Nellie car), and lived in what seemed to my youngsters’ eye to be a house in which they might regularly get lost, such were the number of rooms, nooks and crannies.

But as the years have limped on, I’ve heard this sort of complaint regularly, and it has become clear that just about everybody wishes that their lives were better, no matter what their current social or financial status. And this is perhaps good, in that having aspirations is what drives us to better our lives. In many cases, bettering our own lives can contribute to the welfare of others also, and that’s certainly no bad thing.

There is however a difference between being aspirational and being delusional. The former could involve wishing you could afford any meat at all, and the latter perhaps that you could persuade Floyd Shivambu to express himself using coherent and complete sentences. And it is of course possible to make significant distinctions in the realm of what we aspire to, in that it’s somewhat offensive to complain about your lot when you already have more than most could dream of having.

Maintaining a sense of perspective has never been our strong suit as a species. As is well-known to even those who have only dabbled in psychology or behavioural economics, we’re prone to all sorts of biases and fallacious ways of reasoning. If you are savvy or exploitative enough, you can make plenty of money out of these human frailties, as Rhonda Byrne demonstrated with her bestselling self-help book, The Secret.

The Secret, for those of you who sensibly ignore this sort of nonsense, is a book (and later, DVD, coasters, coffee mugs, calendars, etc.) which teaches you about the Law of Attraction, whereby “that which is like unto itself is drawn”. This may require some translation. Essentially, think Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams (“if you build it, they will come”), except where Kevin wanted people to play baseball in his backyard, Rhonda wants you to imagine happiness, the partner of your dreams, and a business deal with Bheki Cele.

While the idea that your thoughts can affect the real world outside of your head is simultaneously incredibly simple as well as incredibly simple-minded, its simplicity has not deterred Byrne from offering us further guidance in these dark arts via a new book called The Power. She clearly feels that she’s spent enough time visualising a new generation of gullible readers, and that the readers of the first book won’t mind or notice that their lives remain sufficiently unimproved, thus meriting a fresh infusion of quantum-quackery.

The day after publication last week, The Power’s sales propelled it into the top 5 of Amazon’s book sales. While it repeats the primary claim made in The Secret (you can get want you want by wishing for it, and imagining that it’s already in your possession), it apparently adds some further revelations. One of these is the importance of being nice to your water.

According to Byrne’s new book, research has shown that “when water is exposed to positive words and feelings such as love and gratitude, the energy level of the water not only increases, but the structure of the water changes, making it perfectly harmonious”. Negative emotions, on the other hand, decrease the energy level of the water, and “chaotic changes occur”. Since “the inside of your head is 80 percent water”, it’s clear how important this information is. I’m afraid you’ll have to read the book to discover how one goes about being nice to water, but I imagine it at least involves not freezing it into little cubes and then adding it to inferior brands of scotch.

It gets worse, as these things often tend to. The Power also explains that death itself is subject to the Law of Attraction. The “ancient texts” that Byrne has access to tell us that “People once lived for hundreds and hundreds of years”, but that we have since changed what we believe, and are therefore dying sooner than we should. The Law of Attraction has thus brought her and Deepak Chopra in sync, seeing as he’s on record as saying that you can “free yourself from aging by reinterpreting your body and by grasping the link between belief and biology”.

It’s easy for most of us to have a good chuckle at the expense of those who believe in this sort of woo-woo. However, many who don’t take the likes of Byrne and Chopra seriously nevertheless use language that’s not too dissimilar. When we speak of being “grounded”, for example, what is it that we mean? Apart from the grounding provided by the force of gravity, what else is there to be grounded to? Similarly, we might speak of “being centered” or “letting the universe decide”. We might read far too much into mere coincidence, or thank God for sparing our lives after having been raped, as a Pretoria mother recently did, saying “God was good to me” instead of asking the more pressing question of why God thought it appropriate that she be raped.

And to return to the intersection of these sorts of platitudes with class and economic power, it’s important to note that it’s more often the case that the haves, rather than the have-not’s, entertain ideas of actually changing the external world through bunkum like the Law of Attraction. Sure, there is a widespread acceptance of spirituality and mysticism amongst the poor, but it’s arguably of a far less self-important nature. When you have nothing, you might pray to be blessed with something, or anything, but you don’t think that it’s in your power to provide that blessing – it’s a beseeching of a 3rd force, or a higher power. By contrast, it’s largely the already privileged that imagine themselves to be able to generate further wealth simply by thinking about it.

As an antidote to this epidemic of positive thinking, Barbara Ehrenreich has written a tremendous book called “Smile or Die”, which traces the evolution of these delusional ways of dealing with the world. She reminds us that shit happens and that it’s perfectly natural – and should be expected – for life to not dish up all the treats you’d like, or expect to have. Given the prevalence of this sort of optimism in the United States, it should come as no surprise that the US edition of the book was titled “Bright-sided”, seeing as a title reminding us of our mortality might be considered a little pessimistic in the land of can-do.

PZ Myers has it right when he says: “The real secret is that the universe doesn’t give a goddamn about us, doesn’t dream, doesn’t wish, doesn’t hope. The real power is that science gives us the tools to wrench the pointless detritus of reality into the shape that we dream of, to impose our wishes on the substrate. We don’t achieve that by lying abed and hoping really hard, though — we do it with work and real knowledge. The shortcuts of lotus eaters like Rhonda Byrne are entirely illusory.”

And on the issues of class and power, the last word on positive thinkers should perhaps be those of Charles Bukowski, who said: “The problem with you people is your cities have never been burned and your mothers have never been told to shut up. Good night, here’s the next poem.”

Free speech is not the only value that democratic societies subscribe to. Nor does, or should, our commitment to free speech always have to trump competing values such as national security or personal dignity. But the principle of free speech nevertheless stands in need of exceptional, and exceptionally strong, counterarguments in cases where we are told that it is not permissible to broadcast or publish any particular point of view.

This commitment to an open marketplace of ideas rests on the belief that each person should have access to the points of view in circulation, so that he or she is able to exercise their right to moral independence by considering the ideas themselves. As Mill reminds us, compromising free speech costs us both the opportunity to hear things that are true, which can help to correct errors; and also to hear things that are false, where the truth is strengthened by “its collision with error”.

Besides the benefits involving promoting truth and undermining falsity, free speech – and in particular, a free press – provides a mechanism for holding power to account. If Lord Acton was right that power tends to corrupt even those who start out with good intentions, it is crucial that the media continues to be free to expose corruption and other evils, no matter who the perpetrators are.

But free expression can certainly cause harm. One such harm might be that one or more of your principles are offended, as seems to be the case with the ragtag collection of religious fun-damaging-mentalists who are advising Malusi Gigaba on his Quixotic plan to rid cellphones and the Internet of pornography. As I’ve argued previously, a commitment to free speech implies that we have the right to offend others, and it needs to be demonstrated that other, more significant, harms result from such expression before we can contemplate censorship.

Any secrets or forms of censorship are a threat to democracy, and can only be justified if we have compelling reason to believe that higher goals are served by these unpalatable means. In other words, the burden of proof is firmly on those who want to restrict access to information. This means that vague expressions of potential threats are not sufficient, and also that any proposed measures to combat these threats need to be as non-destructive to liberty as possible.

In the cases of both the Protection of Information Bill and of the proposed Media Tribunal, it is not at all clear that the measures are either warranted, or minimally invasive. The same is of course true of the Internet and Cell Phone Pornography Bill, and the rapid succession of suggestions of this nature cannot but cause concern to those of us committed to liberty.

The Protection of Information Bill is a concern, because its terms are so broad as to allow virtually anything to be kept secret. The Pornography Bill should worry us because it’s insanely impractical, and because it defines a national morality based on the views of those influenced by the ideas of ancient, illiterate goatherds. And now, the Media Tribunal, as if throwing millions of Rands into The New Age isn’t going to ensure enough pro-government press.

Of course, the Media Tribunal’s official purpose is not that of kowtowing to government – it’s simply going to correct various existing flaws in the media. President Jacob Zuma recently told us as much, explaining that the media does not mirror South African society, and is not in touch with what the majority of South Africans think and feel.

One plausible response to these ideas would be to ask “is that the media’s job, in any case?” Instead, one could argue that part of the role played by the media is that of shaping, rather than mirroring, South African society. It does so by introducing debates, exposing corruption, and generally doing all the things that make the political media so valuable. These tasks are often only possible when you’re not subject to external control, and would intuitively seem impossible when that external control is exerted by exactly the people you are reporting on.

There is therefore a structural problem with the idea of a tribunal, which relates to further entrenching a power asymmetry between the watchers and the watched. There are of course other problems too: The Gigaba example shows that we can’t trust individuals in government to be sensible moderators of debate, assuming they are willing to entertain debate in the first place.

This is not to say that the media is perfect, or that there’s nothing that can be improved about what is reported, and how it’s reported. But in almost all cases where the media is too quick to make accusations, the accused is someone who has the power to defend themselves. They could do this through publishing rebuttals or counter-claims, or otherwise they could take legal recourse, if appropriate.

It is not often the case that an “ordinary” citizen is maligned via the media. Far more typically, those citizens who are accused of some misdeed or other are wealthy or otherwise influential, or connected to others who are. What this means is that they have access to opportunities for rebuttal, and this is an opportunity often provided by the same free press that made the accusation in the first place. We can’t pre-judge who has the right to have both the first and the last – or in many cases the only – word on any given subject, as that would defeat the purpose of free speech.

A tribunal, in other words, is using a very blunt instrument to fix a quite subtle problem, and the unintended (hopefully) consequences might be severe. Some consequences are already known, and worrying: our press has been demoted from “free” to “partly free” in the 2010 Freedom House survey, leaving South Africa in 70th position internationally. The idea of a rainbow nation always seemed destined to become cliché – we just didn’t imagine it happening so soon.

Costs and benefits have to be weighed against each other. I’d far rather we have the means to enhance our lives, even if some of us use those means irresponsibly. One of those means is a free press. A key danger of these measures to limit the free flow of information is that they remove choices, and always protect those who already have power from having that power eroded.

Albert Camus tells us that “A free press can be good or bad, but, most certainly, without freedom a press will never be anything but bad”. The burden of proof remains on those who want to argue that censorship (however disguised) is the only way to ensure responsible reporting, and that case has yet to be made.

Most social interactions are likely to involve some measure of deception. This could range from feigning interest, or pretending to know more about the topic under discussion than you actually do, to calculated deception involving beliefs, character, or motivation. Many of these lesser deceptions are perhaps not even considered dishonest, but merely part of the everyday bargaining between our own multiple identities (which could vary according to context) and the identities of others.

Some more serious sorts of deception are of course legally actionable, and in many cases involve clear moral wrongs. One example of this is painfully fresh in many people’s memories, and involves entrusting financial investments to people who in the end misrepresented the extent to which they had the client’s best interest at heart.

But what to make of “rape by deception”, and in particular the case of Saber Kushour, recently sentenced to 18 months in prison for this “crime”? (The scare-quotes are of course not intended to indicate that rape is not a crime, or that it shouldn’t be, but rather to indicate that it’s not yet clear whether Kushour is guilty of rape at all.)

For those not familiar with the story in question, the bare facts are as follows: Kushour is a Palestinian man who met a Jewish woman in downtown Jerusalem in September 2008. They struck up a conversation in Hebrew, which Kushour speaks fluently and with no discernible accent. The conversation quite quickly led to a sexual encounter on the roof of a nearby office block. Kushour had told the woman (she gave her name as Maya) that he was a bachelor, but it later emerged that he was married.

According to Kushour, he did not present himself as being Jewish. When asked for his name, he replied that it was Dudu – apparently a common Israeli name, but also the name that Kushour had colloquially been addressed by since childhood. But Maya claims to have believed him to be Jewish. When she discovered that this was false, she laid charges of rape and indecent assault against him.

Once on the witness stand Kushour’s defense made these charges unsustainable, and Maya then admitted that she had lied, and that the sex was consensual. After learning Kashour lied to her, Maya reported that she had felt humiliated, and then went to the police to lay the initial charges. When the consensual nature of the sex became clear, the prosecution came up with a plea bargain whereby Kushour was instead convicted of rape by deception.

The district court judge Tzvi Segal ruled that the law should protect women from “smooth-tongued criminals who can deceive innocent victims at an unbearable price – the sanctity of their bodies and souls”. The deception involved was summarised by Mrs Segal as follows: “If she hadn’t thought the accused was a Jewish bachelor interested in a serious romantic relationship, she would not have co-operated”.

While previous examples of convictions of rape by deception exist, British legal experts believe this to be the first case where the alleged deception involves misrepresenting one’s race. And of course, in the context of Arab/Israeli relations, this particular racial deception could be especially fraught with tensions. However, the way the events unfolded gives rise to significant disquiet regarding apparent state-sanctioned racism, in that the verdict seems unjustifiably prejudicial against Kushour.

First, because in ruling that sex with an Arab can cost an Israeli woman the sanctity of her soul, Mrs Segal could be said to be making a direct comment on what she perceives as racial purity – sleeping with an Arab is a perversion or a corruption. There is no evidence that Maya was a virgin prior to this encounter, so the purity at issue is not the normal sort of “sanctity of soul” claptrap – the loss of purity relates directly to the offensive nature of a sexual encounter with an Arab.

Second, because it’s entirely unclear that any relevant deception took place, which brings the legitimacy of a guilty verdict into question. It is of course not commendable that Kashour was unfaithful to his wife – nor that he lied to Maya about being married – but these deceptions make him typical of a known sort of man, who employs typical sorts of falsehoods in pursuit of seduction. These falsehoods are not right, at all, but they are also not normally a legal issue.

Consider, for example, the deception involved in professing undying love – or even great attraction – for a prospective conquest. Hollywood leads me to believe that this happens all the time, and I certainly overhear snippets of conversation which lead me to believe that some actual humans do this sort of thing also. Again, certainly morally wrong, but not a matter for the law.

If Kashour was Jewish – or if Maya had reported the sex as being consensual in the first instance – it is unlikely that the case would have ever made it to court. More importantly, as Gideon Levy (a liberal Israeli commentator) asks: “What if this guy had been a Jew who pretended to be a Muslim and had sex with a Muslim woman? Would he have been convicted of rape? The answer is: of course not.”

We can also ask questions about the appropriateness of the sentence, regardless of the conviction itself. As Andrew Sullivan reports in The Atlantic, Kashour has no earlier convictions, “while in another ‘rape by deception’ case, which involved a lesbian masquerading as a man in order to have sex with women, she received only six months of suspended sentence. Kashour got 18 months of incarceration.”

Sullivan also tells us that one of the three judges in the Kashour case was Moshe Drori, who was embroiled in a 2009 scandal “when he refused to convict a very well connected yeshiva boy who admitted – and was filmed – running over a security guard with his vehicle. The security guard was an Ethiopian woman. Drori, a Jewish Orthodox, forced the guard to accept the apology of the yeshiva boy, and then invoked a judgment by 12th century scholar Maimonides, which says once an apology is accepted by the victim, the case is closed. And he closed the case.”

This ruling was later overturned in the Supreme Court, and is said to have cost Drori the chance of becoming a Supreme Court justice. But both of these cases – and perhaps countless others that don’t make the news – ask us to consider the extent to which deception is a moral matter, or a legal matter. More importantly, the Kashour ruling seems to be premised on something quite sinister: namely the notion that if an informed Jewish woman knew that a man was an Arab, then she would not (and perhaps, should not) have sex with him.

Legislated discrimination of this sort amounts to a form of public apartheid, and also an intrusion of the law into what should be a private matter. Here, the private becomes public, via a prejudice that should have no place in the modern world. But in a context where judicial rulings involve the “purity of souls”, the modernity of the world in question is perhaps itself a disputable issue.

On hearing that Christopher Hitchens had been diagnosed with oesophageal cancer, one response from a self-proclaimed man of god was the following post on Twitter: “God 1, Hitchens 0”. The motivation for such a callous response to a usually fatal disease (fewer than 5% of sufferers are alive after 5 years) is easy enough to trace: Hitchens, along with Dennett, Dawkins and Sam Harris, is one of the “4 Horsemen” of a groundswell of resistance to the unreason that is exemplified by religious faith, and he is thus a direct threat to the mysterious legitimacy that faith-based claims enjoy.

What our divine scorekeeper does not (of course) dwell on is the fact that according to his beliefs, all deaths are attributable to god, and that he could therefore just as well add another notch to this metaphysical bedpost if his mother, for example, were to die an equally unpleasant death. God’s victory is inevitable, as either she takes a believer “home”, or she smites down an unbeliever. Either way, a civilised response to human trauma is sympathy, rather than gloating.

Of course, this horrible man (the Tweeter, rather than the Hitch) is not representative of how most believers might feel. Yet I’d suggest that his is the sort of response that it is only imaginable for those who think that the moral calculus extends beyond our mortal existence, to be resolved in the hereafter rather than to the present. The reason they can contemplate saying such things is that there is a fundamental disconnect between the world that they actually live in, and a world in which elves and fairies might as well be prancing about – such is the absurdity of many of their foundational beliefs.

For some, it is of course plausible that fairies do in fact prance about – or at least watch over you from afar. For others, it remains plausible that arbitrarily defined constellations from the time of your birth affect your personality. (This belief is apparently not at all complicated by trivia such as the 3 major planets discovered since Ptolemy wrote the 1900 year-old textbook of this pseudoscience.)

I can understand how these collections of primitive fable and myth give some people comfort. What I cannot understand is why so many of us – speaking here of those who don’t endorse these insanities – so readily allow others to continue infantilising themselves, their children, and whomever else is unlucky enough to be in their sphere of influence. These delusions are not restricted to the illiterate or otherwise unfortunate. A respected South African weekly carries content from an author who endorses Deepak Chopra, and those of us who listen to talk radio are quite familiar with the babblings of Rod Suskind and his ilk.

Some might ask: “Where’s the harm?” Ask Kara, the Wisconsin child who died on the floor of her family home last year from a treatable illness, while her family stood around her and prayed. Or ask the Australian child who was also killed by her parents last year, because they insisted on administering homeopathic remedies (water, in other words) where regular medicine would have saved the child’s life.

Closer to home, you could speak to Leo Igwe, a Nigerian who is regularly imprisoned and harassed by police (along with his 77 year-old diabetic father, and other members of his family) for “crimes” such as campaigning against Helen Ukpabio, who makes a living from victimising children that she identifies as “witches”. Or, perhaps, to the Somalians in Du Noon who (amongst others) are also victims of a similar disconnect between reason and unthinking grand narratives, here manifesting in the belief that “we” are more entitled to live and trade in a certain area than “they” are.

All of these issues have at least two things in common: one, that they are premised on the absence of reason, and two, that they involve harms. In the particular case of religion, and superstition more generally, the problem for those of us who aren’t ourselves victims of these irrationalities is that the question of where the harm lies begins, and thrives, in the privileged space in which mysticism and quackery thrive.

There are no warning labels on the quackery you can buy at the pharmacy, even though the sugar pills and expensive water bought as homeopathic remedies can kill, if only through the complacent neglect that they allow for. Used responsibly (it is unclear what that might even mean), they would of course not kill, but the same can be said of motor vehicles and alcohol, which do carry warning labels. If the astrologer’s tepee was made to carry a sign saying “for entertainment purposes only”, or the homeopathic remedy to be labelled “only effective as part of a normal and sane existence”, I’d be less concerned.

But they don’t. And even those of us who dismiss these quaint follies when it comes to our own lives know someone who takes these things seriously, and we allow them to, because we think they do no harm. And they might not do harm to the Sandton socialite, no – but when someone who isn’t that privileged starts looking around for a remedy for their daughter’s illness, and sees just how well these “remedies” do in the marketplace, and reads the endorsements from those she perhaps aspires to be, is it not plausible that we become complicit in genuine harms?

As Sam Harris has persuasively argued in “The End of Faith”, the same could be true for religious belief, in that when violent extremists see that hundreds of thousands of regular folk believe the same things they do (albeit less fervently), how can that not provide encouragement to those prepared to actually invest their welfare – or their lives – in defending their beliefs?

Hitchens closes his memoir Hitch-22 with this: “To be an unbeliever is not to be merely ‘open-minded’. It is, rather, a decisive admission of uncertainty that is dialectically connected to the repudiation of the totalitarian principle, in the mind as well as in politics.” And this gets it just right, in that it is certainty, of some form or another, that allows us to feel justified when we enforce our will – despite incomplete or nonexistent evidence – on others who might not believe in the same things we do.

The safest course is undoubtedly this: to admit to uncertainty in cases where we can’t be sure (which is pretty much equivalent to “all the time”), and to in the meanwhile proceed in ways that are best justified by what we think we can, and do, know. Amongst the things we probably know is that (to quote Hitchens again) “the defense of science and reason is the great imperative of our time”. And the enemies of science and reason are not always somewhere else – they are sometimes next door to you, or even sharing your bed.

Yiull Damaso’s painting of an imagined autopsy of Nelson Mandela has provoked outrage similar to that generated by Zapiro’s recent Mohammed cartoon. The outrage is similar in its severity, and unfortunately also similar in its knee-jerk thoughtlessness. Most troubling, the similarities extend to having to hear yet another argument in favour of the censoring of free expression on the grounds of cultural or religious sensibilities.

The painting, adapted from Rembrandt’s “The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp”, shows a deceased Mandela being autopsied by Nkosi Johnson, while FW de Klerk, Helen Zille, Desmond Tutu and others look on. It is, of course, the portrayal of Mandela as deceased that is causing most of the consternation, on the grounds that this portrayal consists, variously, of witchcraft, disrespect, a violation of dignity, and a “insult and an affront to values of our society” – at least according to ANC spokesperson Jackson Mthembu.

As with the Zapiro cartoon, we can and certainly should ask whether images like these are in unacceptably bad taste. If they are, we should say so, and hope that we can persuade artists of the legitimacy of our point of view. Having fewer offensive artworks in our purview would no doubt make for a more comfortable life. But one person – or one group, no matter how large – does not have the authority to define what counts as unacceptable and what doesn’t, except within their own cultural universe.

All any person or group can hope for is to persuade others that one set of values should be thought to trump another. Here, we ostensibly have a conflict between a set of values that discourage the portrayal of dead people, especially when those people are treasured. Curiously, Mthembu has never spoken out regarding the witchcraft or offense that could be said to underpin paintings of the crucifixion of Jesus, despite the fact that poll data suggests that most Africans (the society to which he explicitly appeals) consider that person to be rather special – and also allegedly very much “alive”.

Perhaps this apparent contradiction is resolved by the impossibility of the death of Jesus. Or perhaps the cases are simply “not the same”, as we so often hear when people don’t want to think about consistency. One extent to which the cases could be said to be the same is with regard to the respect, admiration and perhaps even love that many South Africans have for both of these characters. But do we have these emotions for Mandela as a person, or Mandela as an icon – and can the two even be separated anymore?

Mandela (as a person) has a reputation for understanding and tolerance, and much of his iconic status could be said to derive from the generosity of spirit shown, and the example set, in forgiving those who caused him so much personal trauma. South Africa’s Constitution, which he signed into law in Sharpeville in 1996, emphasises the values of tolerance and inclusivity. While this might be said to argue against the alleged disrespect shown by Damaso’s painting, it also speaks to the requirement that we tolerate the culture of free speech, and the rejection of the sacred, which could be said to be implied in that painting – even if we don’t like it.

Mthembu’s press release clearly illustrates the divide between, on the one hand, the sorts of ideals expressed by Mandela, and on the other, those of a party that treats him as a convenient prop to be hauled out for legitimising anything they may choose. It accuses Damaso of racism, while indulging in the casual slur of dismissing his “so called work of art”. Meanwhile, the press release itself glibly tramples over the values of many South Africans, in saying that “the practice and promotion of the freedom of expression … which knows no bounds and only sees itself as the most supreme freedom that … tramples other people’s constitutional rights to dignity and privacy, and undermines our values.”

No, Mr. Mthembu, it does not. Freedom of expression has clear bounds, and they are bounds that your party agreed to when accepting the Constitution. You can call Damaso insensitive and rude if you like, but he is as entitled to exercise his version of culture as you are yours. And if we stop to think about it for a moment, instead of allowing ourselves these emotive outbursts, we might see that Damaso’s painting could be said to express values far closer to those of Mandela than Mthembu’s idolatry would have us believe.

This is because Mandela has always resisted our treating him as a saint. The humility and pragmatism of many of his public interventions have reminded us that it’s our job to pick up where he left off, and to continue the work of building a nation which tolerates significant cultural difference. We cannot rely on icons and myths to do that work for us, but should instead stay alert to the beguiling – and soporific – tendency to wait for someone to show and tell us what to do next.

Damaso’s painting could be interpreted as reminding us that Mandela will soon be dead, and that we will no longer have that unifying mythology to draw on. It could also be telling us that Mandela is already dead – at least in terms of how much of his legacy and influence has already been swept away in the rising tide of nationalism. Or, perhaps it’s simply an opportunistic and exploitative work of art, designed to attract notoriety.

Even if it is the latter, there’s no reason we need to allow it to be only that. Whatever the artist’s intentions, we can use the painting as an opportunity to debate the issue of South Africa’s future, post-Mandela, instead of using it as an excuse to define intractable oppositions. As Mthembu says in his press release, Mandela “is a man whose ideals would live forever and whom we should cherish and respect and forever hold dear”.

Let’s do so. But in doing so, let us remind ourselves that this means resisting the temptation to replace Mandela’s ideals with ones that threaten to take us back to a past that he helped us to escape from – a past where arguments could be resolved through simply insisting that one person or culture’s preferences trumps those of another.

His grievances are two-fold: first, he’s upset that we (myself on this site, and the AAS on their forum) published his correspondence with us. As I’ve explained previously, we were forced to do so because the reasons for myself and Tauriq withdrawing from the debate were being mis-characterised by Michael, as well as by websites run by Taryn Hodgson and Paintball Hammond. Despite the apology received, the mis-representations have not been removed from some^[1] websites, so this reason for publishing the correspondence stands, and leads me to publish extracts from the most recent correspondence here also.

Second, he’s upset because he’s now apparently being victimised, suffering “all kinds of insults”, and having become “the targets of some unknown male and Female ( Mostly Whites…), who have discriminated and
destroyed my Car everytime i have parked at UCT parking”. He then goes on to say “i did not find the reason to imagine that it might have links to your people who wanted to destroy what i do for God on This Campus and myself”. Which begs the question: Why the hell email the AAS about it, then? If he’s got no reason to believe that the alleged victimisation has something to do with the AAS, then perhaps he’s simply been obnoxious or dishonest with other people, who are victimising him as a result?

Also, if these people are “unknown”, it’s unclear how Michael knows they are “Mostly Whites”. If he’s seen them, then he knows something about who they are. If these incidents are regular, he can presumably hide behind a (non-burning) bush, with a member of campus security, and catch these Whites red-handed. God certainly doesn’t seem to provide revelations related to initiative – at least not to Michael, it appears. It’s also unclear how Michael thinks these nasty people got to know what he or his car look like. As far as I know, no AAS members ever met with him – everything was arranged by email. And even if someone knew what he looked like, we’d still have to be following him as he arrived on campus, so as to know where he parks in order to proceed with our futile attempts at “destroying” his apparently indestructible car.

The main reason for contacting us, however is to ask us to remove all correspondence with him from this, the AAS, and other websites. If we “do not remove it in the next 48 Hours, i will take further actions because i consider that after all they have done as a Threat, Trespass and  an attempt to destroy me. i speak to you with Love as a Man of God”. This demand is timestamped 12:46 on July 12, which means that Tauriq, myself and others have just over 24 hours left before we get struck down by lightning, or something. By (or via the interventions of) a loving Man of God, no less.

Pastor Michael, if you read this, then please take note of what the mothership said: “I will urge Pastor Michael to send you an apology. I do agree with Jordan that Michael’s communication and conduct towards you was often deceptive, rude and unchristian.” If you’d care to apologise for spreading misinformation about us – and if you ensure that all such misrepresentations are removed from websites on which they appear – then I’ll gladly give you all due credit for doing so. Until then, I sincerely hope that whoever is victimising you stops, whatever their reasons for doing so might be.

1. ^[1] The ACA website was edited in February to more accurately reflect the events ↩

Last Saturday, in an act of flagrant disregard for the faiths of others, Pastor Ray McCauley had planned to promote his brand by exploiting paranoia around tourist safety at the World Cup. Unfortunately for Pastor Ray, a heart attack meant that he could not attend. But while tickets for the “National Day of Prayer” for a safe World Cup might as well have been accompanied by homeopathic remedies for xenophobia (which would be equally effective), the event still raises questions. Firstly, why do we need his god to help out with policing those pesky foreigners and other threats to World Cup harmony, like Ivo Vegter? Is Ray saying that the other gods aren’t up to the task or even – sotto voce – that they may not exist?

If so, the matter is presumably on the Muslim Council of Theologians’ radar, as denying the existence of Allah is clearly a more serious transgression than pictorial representations of Mohammed are. We can therefore move on to the broader issue of the continued eagerness on the part of government to invite policy feedback from people such as McCauley, who appear to be only marginally more qualified to provide such feedback than my pets are. This is because at least faith-heads can talk.

But when they talk, they always say the same things – and these are things we already know. We know that according to most religious doctrine, our laws are overly permissive, and that if some groups had their way we would outlaw abortion, bring back the death penalty, ban gay marriage, and maybe even do a little stoning. To the extent that policy issues should be influenced by the sensitivities of various sectors in society, we already know what policies the NILC would vote for.

It is, in other words, difficult to see the value added in soliciting the feedback of those who have a prior commitment to unprovable and unknowable propositions, where they don’t also have some demonstrable expertise in economics, politics, philosophy, or any other field with a clear connection and commitment to the (presumably) intended outcome of maximising the welfare of South African citizens.

The case in point is the recent comedy act from our Deputy Minister of Home Affairs, Malusi Gigaba. Mr Gigaba has introduced the “Internet and Cell Phone Pornography Bill” to the National Assembly, in which he proposes that all pornography accessible through the Internet and mobile phones – not only the already illegal forms such as child pornography – be made illegal. The bill does not provide any clarity on how he expects to be able to track and block (if necessary) the 136 000 new internet domains registered in the last twenty-four hours, nor all the ones that could get registered before he figures out how to shut down the internet.

Besides the mysterious desire to introduce bills that can’t possibly be enforced, what is notable about this bill is Section 4, titled “Consultation”. In this section, it is revealed that four organisations were consulted, of which three are explicitly Christian, and one apparently so. What’s more, the three Christian groups are already on record as being in opposition to all forms of pornography – which, as indicated earlier, means that the nature of their input towards this bill would have contained no surprises.

Their input is clear in the Bill itself, which contains plenty of terms like “scourge”, “blatantly”, “cruel, degrading and violent”. What it lacks, unfortunately, is any attempt to weigh up known harms of the availability of pornography versus known benefits of free expression.

Given that the banning of pornography over the internet and cell phones would have significant implications for freedom of expression (on the production side) and freedom of consumption (on the demand side), one would think that the FXI (Freedom of Expression Institute) might have had something useful to say, as would the Tier 1 internet service providers, in terms of the feasibility of this bill in the first instance.

Gigaba apparently thinks that he has addressed the concerns of those of us who constantly bang on about the freedom of expression, thanks to further input from John J. Smythe, Retired Member of the Bar of England and Wales, and the Honorary Director of the Justice Alliance of South Africa. In Smythe’s opinion, this bill is a justifiable limitation of the right to freedom of expression, as it is in the best interests of “the children of South Africa” and the “dignity of women”. And also, because the bill does not attempt to regulate sex shops, everyone can still apparently get all the porn they want.

Except, of course, for those who don’t live anywhere near a sex shop, or those women who don’t want Gigaba (or anyone else) to tell them what impairs their dignity, and what doesn’t. As for the children – the poor children – here we find yet another instance where the buck is passed by absolving parents of the responsibility to raise their children in ways which conduce to a healthy respect for all other sentient beings, and which allow children to grow up in a world where one has to make difficult choices, which may sometimes come with unfortunate consequences.

But difficult choices and their consequences are what we learn from, and removing choices can make children more difficult to protect – simply because part of what you are doing by limiting choice is turning adults into children, and thereby making your problem larger. What’s more, all these children will no doubt need more paternalism in the future, because there will be even less they can figure out for themselves.

Let us pray, then.