Sad/strange scenes at Council for Secular Humanism conference

Note: this post will be of limited interest to those readers who aren’t involved in secular movements, or who don’t keep up with the politics of such movements.

Some unpleasant scenes unfolded during the final session of the Council for Secular Humanism conference, that ended today. The last bit of today’s final session ended with questions from the audience, and first in line at the microphone was Paul Kurtz. The way things transpired left the audience feeling quite discomfited, and the same could be said for at least one panelist.

Devils in the City of Angels

I was planning to write up the first day of the Council for Secular Humanism conference, which I’m pleased to be attending in LA. But events (in the form of a late night, and Johnnie Walker) intervened. It was, however, a very good day. The afternoon session was particularly interesting, as Chris Mooney confirmed that he’s somewhat smug and superficial, Eugenie Scott showed how it’s possible to make accommodationist politics sound sensible (to audiences who aren’t paying attention), while PZ Myers and and Victor Stenger demonstrated saintly patience in the face of serious provocation. Those of you (South Africans) planning to be awake at 05h30 tomorrow can watch what’s sure to be one of the highlights live, when Sam Harris and Robert Wright debate where secular folk should stand on questions of religion and belief.

After the afternoon session we lurked in a courtyard for 90 minutes or so, before the “Gala Banquet”. The food was pretty good for a buffet, although no beverages were served (besides water and coffee). What was impressive, though, was the spectacle of Americans eating. I’ve seen it plenty of times, but it never ceases to impress. Food is there to be dominated, as if it might leap off the plate and escape if you don’t show it who’s boss. At my table of 8, three of the contestants wielded their cutlery as if engaged in mortal combat – forks and knives held in fists, and food hacked at in savage intent, before being deposited in mid-sentence mouths. All very strange, and slightly unsettling. Another thing (that two of them did) was to place their side-plates containing dessert onto their dinner plates, with food remnants in place, before re-commencing battle.

Once this refuelling was complete, Dawkins took the stage to accept an award (a $45 000 contribution to the Dawkins Foundation), and gave a wonderful speech. Funny, eloquent and insightful – will post a link when it hits the intertubes.

Offensive comments on the interwebs

Originally published on the Daily Maverick

As I’ve said before, Nicholas Carr is wrong to think that the Internet is making us stupid. But to hear all of my arguments for this, I’m afraid you’ll have to wait a good few years. By 2014 or so, I’ll either have finished that thesis, or have somewhat refuted it by no longer being able to construct a coherent sentence, thanks to excessive exposure to the numerous distractions available on the interwebs.

Despite my conviction that he and others are making false claims regarding the long-term effects of our reliance on the Internet for communication and acquisition of information, much of the evidence I have before me this morning can’t help but make me sympathetic to his thesis.

Sincerity is (probably) bullshit

Originally published in the Daily Maverick

It is common knowledge – or at least, it should be – that many of us exhibit significant flexibility in terms of the selves we present to others in different contexts. We might affect an accent in one context but not in another, or pretend to care more about a particular issue when trying to engage with someone who is concerned about that issue. And as much as we might not like to think about such things, our own perceptions of self are notoriously unreliable, and we are equally unreliable in recognising this.

Media freedom is not a black-and-white issue

As submitted to The Daily Maverick

I would hope that regular readers are by now in no doubt as to my commitment to the freedom of the press, and free speech in general, and that the following therefore doesn’t give anyone the idea that I’ve been offered a government contract. As I’ve frequently argued in these pages, no idea should be granted the status of being sacred or outside of the realm of criticism. It’s a legal defense – not a principled or philosophical one – to assert that something is enshrined in the Constitution (for example). The possibility is always open for the Constitution to be wrong on some issue, or for it to provide an inefficient mechanism for safeguarding and promoting goals that we agree are desirable.

It’s often not the product that’s defective – it’s us

As one of my contributions to the Lead SA campaign, I’d like to tell you all to stop your moaning and complaining. Unless, of course, you plan some concrete action to back it up. It seems impossible to read a local news story that doesn’t have a stream of whiny complaints appended to it, where everything is wrong, and it’s always everybody else’s fault. This pervasive negativity can also be self-perpetuating. Consider the @PigSpotter micro-saga:  There’s a confirmation bias at play there, in that many of the callers/bloggers/twitterers are focusing on the cops who fit whatever stereotype is at play, and forgetting that the majority (?) of cops don’t deserve this moniker. Second, any justified ire is more perhaps more appropriately directed at those who give the cops their instructions, not the cops themselves.

Don’t even burn the silly books

As submitted to The Daily Maverick

If Zehir Omar is reporting court proceedings accurately, then I and the other participants in a secular conference we attended this past Saturday should be arrested. We didn’t burn anything, but we certainly said and discussed things that would be guaranteed to cause offense to a significant number of Christians, Muslims and followers of other faiths.

Omar is an attorney who represents Scholars of the Truth, a Gauteng-based Muslim organisation. On Saturday, he successfully sought an interdict against the planned burning of a Bible by Mohammed Vawda. Vawda claims that his plans were motivated by his anger towards the similar intention of Terry Jones to burn a copy of the Quran on September 11.

According to Omar, the court “accepted [his] submission that freedom of expression is limited if the exercise of one’s freedom of expression will evoke offence in members of our community”. It’s worth noticing that this is quite a curious argument for Omar to have made, seeing as it is rather self-incriminating. He is, after all, the same person who demonstrated little interest in tolerance last year when he argued against the appointment of Justice Kathy Satchwell as a Constitutional Court. “God-fearing people”, he said, would find her lesbianism unacceptable.

More on Hawking and the (latest) death of god

As submitted to The Daily Maverick

Note to reader: While the opening paragraph is identical to a previous post on this subject, the rest of the content is new.

I’m not a physicist, so won’t be able to say much about many of the claims Stephen Hawking reportedly makes in his new book The Grand Design (co-written with Leonard Mlodinow, author of the excellent The Drunkard’s Walk). But based on reviews and responses to the book by other physicists, Hawking’s controversial claim – that God is no longer necessary to explain the origins of the universe – is premised on insights gleaned from a patchwork of string-theories known as “M-theory”.

Relegating God to the sidelines in this fashion has brought Hawking many headlines, and will no doubt help book sales. It’s also brought a swift flurry of responses from religious groups and leaders, who reject the notion of God’s redundancy. A summary of many of these responses consists of an admission that while Hawking may have provided insight into the “how” questions relating to the origin of the universe, he hasn’t helped us answer the “why” questions. Therefore, they say, God still has a role in helping us understand our lives on this dustbowl called Earth.

Hawking: science doesn’t need god

Unfortunately, I can’t say much about the physics underlying the claims Stephen Hawking reportedly makes in his new book The Grand Design (co-written with Leonard Mlodinow, author of the excellent The Drunkard’s Walk). First because I’m not a physicist, and second because I haven’t read the book yet. But one of the claims Hawking apparently makes is that god is no longer necessary to explain the origins of the universe. The extent to which god was ever necessary to explain the origins of the universe is of course itself highly debatable – especially if, by “god” we mean some particular version of god.

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.

What would it take to prove you wrong?

As submitted to The Daily Maverick

Metaphysical claims involving things like the Law of Attraction, astrology or homeopathy all share at least one feature: It’s very easy to find evidence for them. There exist a broad set of claims for which this holds true, and they are often collected under the summary term of pseudoscience. Pseudoscientific claims make predictions or offer explanations just as scientific claims do. Where they differ is in failing to offer a robust set of underlying laws, or even hypotheses, which can be empirically shown to justify those predictions or explanations.