I was forcefully reminded of this tendency while listening to KQED’s interview with Karen Armstrong about religion and the new atheists like Dawkins and Harris. While I couldn’t find the actual interview I heard she says more or less the same thing in this salon.com piece (and if you really want you can watch her give a similar address). Like many religious progressives she makes her dissatisfaction with ‘simplistic’ notions of god clear but this doesn’t excuse the miscommunication caused by using ‘god’ to refer to certain kinds of (totally scientific/non-supernatural) experiences and brain states⁴. Ironically though Ms. Armstrong recognizes the fact that most other english speakers mean something totally different by the word god when she complains about monotheist’s talk about god loving people or willing things.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the vast majority of english speakers understand ‘god’ to describe some kind of conscious actor of vast supernatural power. If you don’t want to refer to a supernatural conscious agent pick another word. Sure it’s fair to use god to describe something other than the old man with a beard in the sky most Americans think of when you use the word but only if this is close to the notion you want to communicate. The level of double think required to believe using the term god to refer to some completely natural (non-supernatural) phenomenon isn’t misleading is simply astounding. A significant fraction of the US populace is waiting to be teleported to heaven at Christ’s second coming and 82% of americans believe in life after death. What sort of self-deception is required to think that ‘god’ is a reasonable way to communicate the non-supernatural (or not necessarily) phenomenon you have in mind to a general US audience⁵?

Still this would be just par for the course if she hadn’t gone farther and actually criticized Dawkins and Harris for using god to mean what everyone thinks it means. I’m not a fan of Dawkins’s book (he just stirs up the indignation felt by the average atheist at religious irrationality while making several fallacious arguments) but one thing he does is make it quite clear that he is only rebutting arguments for a supernatural personal deity and I’m sure Harris is even more consciousness. Surely if she has the right to redefine god so throughly as to include non-supernatural experiences they can define the word god to mean what everyone expects it to mean yet she dismisses them as “fundamentalists” for using god to mean a supernatural being. Not only is it absurd to think that the meaning you assign to a particular sound makes you a religious fundamentalist getting the terminology (consistently) wrong doesn’t justify dismissing their argument in the first place. I agree that Dawkins’s rhetoric is not the best way to actually convert religious people to atheism (not necessarily his goal) but recognizing that atheists should try to avoid seeming dismissive of people’s heartfelt experiences doesn’t justify misleading people to believe in god.

Of course no one person alone is responsible for the misguided faith of Americans in god but collectively intellectuals do influence our beliefs. The average american doesn’t have the time or inclination for deep theological pondering and they look to authorities for guidance. When those authorities endorse or just refuse to dismiss claims about god’s existence or the truth of religion the public takes that as confirmation of the fact that their comforting beliefs in a big dude in the sky are reasonable. It doesn’t matter that the person doing the talking might have trickily redefined the word the message that people walk away with is that belief in god is something reasonable people do and then substitute in their own understanding of the word god. If people like Ms. Armstrong actually said what she believed in a language that was straightforward and understandable to the average english speaker that would go a long way to changing people’s religious beliefs.

Of course not all types of undesirable prejudice rest on immutable characteristics. Certainly the unfounded bias and suspicion of catholics at an earlier time in our history is another black mark on our past. However, what made this a harmful prejudice rather than a reasonable disagreement over religious views is the nature of the suspicion that Catholics labored under. It wasn’t merely that people felt catholics believed stupid things or even thought this made their judgement suspect. This might warrant voting against them for president but wouldn’t stop you from being friends with them or accepting them into society. Rather there was a general antipathy toward Catholics that extended to viewing them as inferior people. There is no good reason to believe there is any substantial antipathy for Mormons the way there used to be for Catholics. Even hard core religious right types seems to view Mormons as merely having wacked out religious beliefs but generally being good people.

Still if you think that merely voting against someone on the basis of your religious views is prejudiced and unacceptable then Romney supporters don’t have much ground to stand on. After all Romney has repeatedly made statements about the importance of having someone of faith in the white house. You can’t have it both ways. Either religious views are reflections of the person’s identity and character and thus valid considerations for the voting booth or they aren’t and atheism shouldn’t be seen as a disqualifier for election.

I mean Jesus Christ this is like running on a campaign of ‘kicking out those damn wetbacks’ and then complaining that people didn’t vote for you because you’re black.

Before we even examine what Wills says it’s easy to see that his conclusion couldn’t possibly be true. If you accept a religious account of morality as every major religion does then all moral questions are religious questions. Now I dispute the idea that god could possibly be responsibly for morality¹ but short of throwing out traditional monotheism you’re stuck with the conclusion that abortion is a religious matter. A slightly more defensible claim that Wills could have made is that abortion is not a scriptural matter but this is only better in the sense that the entirety of modern religious moral teaching lacks scriptural justification² and it wouldn’t give him the conclusion he wants (religion should stay out of the abortion debate). So keeping this in mind let’s see what he has to say.

It is not demonstrable that killing fetuses is killing persons. Not even evangelicals act as if it were. If so, a woman seeking an abortion would be the most culpable person. She is killing her own child. But the evangelical community does not call for her execution.

About 10% of evangelicals, according to polls, allow for abortion in the case of rape or incest. But the circumstances of conception should not change the nature of the thing conceived. If it is a human person, killing it is punishing it for something it had nothing to do with. We do not kill people because they had a criminal parent.

For starters no one believes that all forms of killing deserve to be punished equally. Evangelicals might reasonably think that falsely believing a fetus wasn’t a person was a mitigating factor in their crime. Arguably it wouldn’t even be murder since they would be lacking the relevant intent to take a human life. Ultimately though at best he has shown that some evangelicals have compromised between the pull of religious teaching and mainstream social belief in an inconsistent way. It is of no relevance to the question of whether abortion is a religious question.

Nor did the Catholic Church treat abortion as murder in the past.

Uhh so? They didn’t used to consider the murder of infidels to be morally wrong either. Does this show murder isn’t a religious issue?

The subject of abortion is not scriptural. For those who make it so central to religion, this seems an odd omission. Abortion is not treated in the Ten Commandments — or anywhere in Jewish Scripture.

As I’ve already observed if we insisted that only things with clear cut scriptural support counted as religious we would have to throw out almost all the teachings of every modern religion. The dirty secret of modern religious practice is that we decide what teachings we want to believe in and then search for things that support that view in our holy books. This is a compelling argument that religion is an absurd internally incoherent practice but it is misleading to raise a general failure of religion as if it were of specific relevance to abortion. In any case it brings us no closer to the claim that abortion is not a religious issue since obviously not every matter of religious importance is addressed in scripture.

Much of the debate over abortion is based on a misconception — that it is a religious issue, that the pro-life advocates are acting out of religious conviction. It is not a theological matter at all. There is no theological basis for defending or condemning abortion. Even popes have said that the question of abortion is a matter of natural law, to be decided by natural reason. Well, the pope is not the arbiter of natural law. Natural reason is.

Gahh, huh? So the question of whether a soul is implanted in a just conceived fetus isn’t a religious question? People who would say yes wouldn’t be making theological arguments? This doesn’t make any sense. As far as the pope this sounds like yet another time people take the complex technical statements that characterize catholic theology and confuse them with their natural language notions. Besides, the idea that there is some bright line division between natural law and religious fact is just flat out wrong. Whether christ rose from the dead is clearly a matter of religion and theology but whether or not any human body ever ceased pumping blood for 3 days before starting to function again is clearly a scientific one and yet one can’t be true without the other (hence the reason to believe they are both false).

If we are to decide the matter of abortion by natural law, that means we must turn to reason and science, the realm of Enlightened religion. But that is just what evangelicals want to avoid. Who are the relevant experts here? They are philosophers, neurobiologists, embryologists. Evangelicals want to exclude them because most give answers they do not want to hear. The experts have only secular expertise, not religious conviction. They, admittedly, do not give one answer — they differ among themselves, they are tentative, they qualify. They do not have the certitude that the religious right accepts as the sign of truth.

Huh? Wait is he really arguing because the experts disagree there isn’t actually a clear cut answer? The argument here is so bad I can’t even guess what he is trying to say. I mean I could create a religion tomorow that says right out in it’s holy book, ‘And on the third day god said abortion was immoral,’ and no failure of scientists and philosophers to agree with me could change the fact that my religion said abortion was immoral. I mean short of straight out arguing that religious belief is unscientific and should be abandoned this point has no grip whatsoever.

So evangelicals take shortcuts. They pin everything on being pro-life. But one cannot be indiscriminately pro-life. …. And if one were consistently pro-life, one would have to show moral respect for paramecia, insects, tissue excised during a medical operation, cancer cells, asparagus and so on. …. Opponents of abortion will say that they are defending only human life. It is certainly true that the fetus is human life. But so is the semen before it fertilizes; so is the ovum before it is fertilized. …. The universal mandate to preserve “human life” makes no sense. My hair is human life — it is not canine hair, and it is living. It grows.

God this guy is a fucking idiot. When people talk about “human life” they don’t mean any living human cells they mean the life of a human being. Now of course scientifically this term turns out to be imprecise and kinda meaningless but the central thesis of most religions is that humans poses a unique indivisible soul the presence of which is what they mean by human life. If pro-lifers religious beliefs are true they have a perfectly consistent position.

Are all the millions of embryos that fail to be embedded human persons?

According to most pro-life religious beliefs, yes. So what. God kills lots of people. True the belief that it is wrong for us to intervene and cause someone to die but not for god to kill them is absurd but it is another general problem with religious doctrine nothing specific to abortion.

The question is not whether the fetus is human life but whether it is a human person, and when it becomes one. Is it when it is capable of thought, of speech, of recognizing itself as a person, or of assuming the responsibilities of a person? Is it when it has a functioning brain? Aquinas said that the fetus did not become a person until God infused the intellectual soul. A functioning brain is not present in the fetus until the end of the sixth month at the earliest.

Why is that the question? Why should I give a fuck what Aquinas said? The question is whether it is immoral to abort fetuses not whether they can think, do arithmetic or play snood. Animals can think and there are plenty of animals seemingly as intellectually capable as a newborn human. The idea that there is a simple rule that killing is always wrong and that we just need to decide when an abortion is killing is the essential fallacy of the abortion debate. Killing isn’t essentially wrong it’s the harmful effects it causes like grieving relatives and the fear that someone might kill you that make it wrong. Thus birth is a nearly perfect psychologically salient boundary at which to draw the line at which we will no longer accept killing but this is way off the topic supposedly at issue.

It is not enough to say that whatever the woman wants should go. She has a responsibility to consider whether and when she may have a child inside her, not just a fetus. ….. Given these uncertainties, who is to make the individual decision to have an abortion? Religious leaders? They have no special authority in the matter, which is not subject to theological norms or guidance. The state? Its authority is given by the people it represents, and the people are divided on this. Doctors? They too differ. The woman is the one closest to the decision.

Gahh, there is no natural kind ‘child’ distinct from ‘fetus’ they are just names we choose to apply to stages of development based on our moral classification of them. But ignoring this is he really arguing that because the woman is the most emotional about the issue the most caught up in the events of her life she is the best one to make this decision?

Let’s try this argument elsewhere. Why not say that the decision on whether or not to kill your husband for his money is best made by the woman in question because she is the one closest to it? That’s absurd. In general we recognize that social and moral principles are best formulated by experts given time to deliberate and think. The reason that it should be legal to have an abortion is because on reflection the best arguments show that it is a net societal benefit not because it would be unacceptable for others to step in and stop them if they were doing something that inflicted massive societal harm.

Anyway if you want to argue that abortion should be legal and morally acceptable that’s fine but it really bugs me when someone like this uses laughably absurd arguments to try to pretend they aren’t taking a position on the issue just pointing out that others don’t have standing to really comment. Can there be better evidence that most people aren’t interested in logic but in feel good group affiliation than the fact that a total piece of crap like this piece was published as if it was a reasonable commentary on the morals of abortion?

Now if we are going to consider Coulter’s past for context in this situation we have to consider all of it and I think things like the fact that she appears to be dating a Jew is reasonably good evidence that she isn’t actually anti-Semitic. Moreover, the criticism in this case only makes any sense if in fact it was this interview where she clearly made anti-Semitic comments/revealed herself to be an anti-Semite. You can’t justify this criticism by saying you knew she was an anti-Semite all along so it’s okay to criticize her for expressing a perfectly bland position. The only way the prior context can justify the accusations if it appears that Coulter didn’t merely happen to make some claims that were interpreted as anti-Semitic but knew that given her history they would be so interpreted and instead of trying to avoid the implication deliberately courted the ambiguity.

It simply doesn’t get you anywhere with this criticism to point out that Coulter has a history of saying offensive, rude or inflammatory things about religion¹ (or other subjects). In fact, far from providing evidence of anti-Antisemitism this is evidence against it. After all merely being rude, shallow and offensive doesn’t make you an anti-Semite. What is required is some evidence of animosity towards or prejudice against Jews as Jews and the more inflammatory she has been in the past the less reason to suppose these comments express any anti-Jewish sentiment. Moreover, a history of making controversial and outrageous statements about religion and not being misinterpreted by mainstream organizations as saying something antisemitic makes it more reasonable for her to suppose that she wouldn’t be misunderstood here while expressing a pretty banal belief.

Even if we suppose (contrary to the evidence) that she was deliberately presenting the belief in an inflammatory way this doesn’t get us anywhere. People phrase their statements confrontationally all the time for tons of reasons. I certainly can’t deny that I will sometimes state my views in the most extreme version partially in the hope of prompting an interesting disagreement. Treating religious belief the same way you treat other topics doesn’t make one antisemitic unless you actually take up an antisemitic view. But the upshot here is that nothing about Coulter’s past can obviate the need to show a particular antisemitic view or expression of animosity towards Jews. Interestingly, while Ann Coulter’s past behavior may not show the statements she made were antisemitic it does provide a motivation for others to misinterpret these statements in such a way.

Luckily we don’t need any of these more complex arguments because the transcript in this situation is remarkably clear. A careful read reveals that not only did Ann Coulter not bring up the subject at every turn she tried to avoid even the slightest hint that she might be attacking Jews. Coulter simply answered the question from the host about what she believed and, being smart enough to realize that if Christianity is true than it would be better for Jews to realize this as well, couldn’t honestly answer in any other way. As the conversation continued Coulter was repeatedly the subject of personal insults and horrific moral comparisons because of her religious belief but, even though many people would be tempted in such a situation to turn the tables and attack the host’s religious belief (he’s Jewish) she went to great pains to emphasize she meant nothing beyond the simple point that everyone should believe in whatever religion is true. Now maybe if she had the time to sit down and think through her answers she would have been able to be even more clear but I honestly can’t think of any other interpretation of her statements.

Usually in these cases I’m content to write off the whole thing as a misunderstanding and say no one is really blameworthy. However, (short of the response/interview being deliberately staged by Coulter to sell books) the accusations of antisemitism are so throughly and completely unsupported by any reasonable theory I think the people making them are nearly as blameworthy as if they were anti-Semites themselves. Sure, they honestly believe this is the case but racists often honestly believe whites are the superior race and we hold them accountable for allowing their prejudice to so throughly color their judgment and false accusations of racism/prejudice aren’t much less damaging than false racial beliefs.

Below the break I include more of the transcript than I did last time so the reader can see for themselves just how absurd the claims is that Coulter is deliberately bringing up this issue/phrasing her statements to attack Jews.

This is where the transcript that everyone is getting upset about starts.

DEUTSCH: Let me ask you a question. We’re going to get off strengths and weakness for a second. If you had your way, and all of your — forget that any of them –

COULTER: I like this.

DEUTSCH: — are calculated marketing teases, and your dreams, which are genuine, came true having to do with immigration, having to do with women’s — with abortion — what would this country look like?

COULTER: It would look like New York City during the Republican National Convention. In fact, that’s what I think heaven is going to look like.

DEUTSCH: And what did that look like?

COULTER: Happy, joyful Republicans in the greatest city in the world.

So the interview starts out with Ann Coulter saying some stupid shit about what her perfect world would look like. The comment about heaven looking like New York City during the Republican National Convention is particularly dumb and is the one point in this transcript where someone might be able to make the case that Coulter was being deliberately provocative. Of course it could also be that she just had a really great time during that convention (maybe she hooked up with some really hot guy) or is just shooting off the cuff during an interview. However, at best this comment was politically provocative hyperbole. Even the host who goes off the deep end with her latter comments doesn’t even raise an eyebrow and she can hardly be expected to have known where the host would take things from here.

She talks about politics for a bit with the host until we get to the point where he suggests that her vision would create more divisiveness.

DEUTSCH: — I can give — I can give you an argument there would be more divisiveness, that there would be more hate –

COULTER: Oh, no.

DEUTSCH: — that there would be a bigger difference between the rich and the poor, a lot of other — tell me what — why this would be a better world? Let’s give you — I’m going to give you — say this is your show.

COULTER: Well, OK, take the Republican National Convention. People were happy. They’re Christian. They’re tolerant. They defend America, they –

DEUTSCH: Christian — so we should be Christian? It would be better if we were all Christian?

COULTER: Yes.

DEUTSCH: We should all be Christian?

COULTER: Yes. Would you like to come to church with me, Donny?

Notice it was the host not Coulter who made the Christian point an issue. Coulter is just trying to toss out what she thinks are positive properties of the people at the RNC and unsurprisingly as a Christian she views being Christian as a good thing. However, despite the suggestions to the contrary Coulter isn’t pushing the Christian point, rather Deustch homes it on it and asks her about it point blank. What else should she have done, lied and pretended this wasn’t a consequence of the belief that Christianity is true and good to believe in? Notice the question about coming to Church with her at the end. This is an attempt to defuse the situation by being sorta funny and informal (clear if you listen) so from the very beginning she is trying to gloss over the religious issue not make it more offensive.

They continue

DEUTSCH: So I should not be a Jew, I should be a Christian, and this would be a better place?

COULTER: Well, you could be a practicing Jew, but you’re not.

DEUTSCH: I actually am. That’s not true. I really am. But — so we would be better if we were – if people — if there were no Jews, no Buddhists –

COULTER: Whenever I’m harangued by –

DEUTSCH: — in this country? You can’t believe that.

COULTER: — you know, liberals on diversity –

At this point Coulter succeeds in diverting the topic to liberals and diversity for a little while. Needless to say she manages to say some stupid things about mixed race couples in New York and we only get back to the controversial issue when Coulter complains about the idea that Christians are intolerant.

COULTER: But yeah, I think that’s reflective of what’s going on in the culture, but it is completely striking that at these huge megachurches — the idea that, you know, the more Christian you are, the less tolerant you would be is preposterous.

DEUTSCH: That isn’t what I said, but you said I should not — we should just throw Judaism away and we should all be Christians, then, or –

COULTER: Yeah.

DEUTSCH: Really?

COULTER: Well, it’s a lot easier. It’s kind of a fast track.

DEUTSCH: Really?

COULTER: Yeah. You have to obey.

DEUTSCH: You can’t possibly believe that.

COULTER: Yes.

DEUTSCH: You can’t possibly — you’re too educated, you can’t — you’re like my friend in –

Once again Coulter is trying to clarify that she only means that believing the true religion gives spiritual benefits (she doesn’t even accept the widespread dogma that non-believers can’t be saved) while Deustch reframes everything she says into a more controversial version not to mention suggesting that her belief is something no educated person could believe.

COULTER: Do you know what Christianity is? We believe your religion, but you have to obey.

DEUTSCH: No, no, no, but I mean –

COULTER: We have the fast-track program.

DEUTSCH: Why don’t I put you with the head of Iran? I mean, come on. You can’t believe that.

COULTER: The head of Iran is not a Christian.

DEUTSCH: No, but in fact, “Let’s wipe Israel” –

COULTER: I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention.

DEUTSCH: “Let’s wipe Israel off the earth.” I mean, what, no Jews?

COULTER: No, we think — we just want Jews to be perfected, as they say.

DEUTSCH: Wow, you didn’t really say that, did you?

COULTER: Yes. That is what Christianity is. We believe the Old Testament, but ours is more like Federal Express. You have to obey laws. We know we’re all sinners –

DEUTSCH: In my old days, I would have argued — when you say something absurd like that, there’s no –

COULTER: What’s absurd?

DEUTSCH: Jews are going to be perfected. I’m going to go off and try to perfect myself –

COULTER: Well, that’s what the New Testament says.

Coulter is still just explaining a perfectly banal idea and the host goes and compares her to a tyrannical rabid antisemite and holocaust denier. At this point many reasonable people would walk off in disgust or sink to insulting the host or his religion in response but to her credit Coulter continues trying to explain. Indeed far from choosing her words to provoke she clearly picks the word perfected to avoid any implication that she is calling Jews flawed, evil or the like. But what happens when they come back from the break?

DEUTSCH: Welcome back to The Big Idea. During the break, Ann said she wanted to explain her last comment. So I’m going to give her a chance. So you don’t think that was offensive?

COULTER: No. I’m sorry. It is not intended to be. I don’t think you should take it that way, but that is what Christians consider themselves: perfected Jews. We believe the Old Testament. As you know from the Old Testament, God was constantly getting fed up with humans for not being able to, you know, live up to all the laws. What Christians believe — this is just a statement of what the New Testament is — is that that’s why Christ came and died for our sins. Christians believe the Old Testament. You don’t believe our testament.

DEUTSCH: You said — your exact words were, “Jews need to be perfected.” Those are the words out of your mouth.

COULTER: No, I’m saying that’s what a Christian is.

DEUTSCH: But that’s what you said — don’t you see how hateful, how anti-Semitic –

COULTER: No!

DEUTSCH: How do you not see? You’re an educated woman. How do you not see that?

COULTER: That isn’t hateful at all.

DEUTSCH: But that’s even a scarier thought. OK –

COULTER: No, no, no, no, no. I don’t want you being offended by this. This is what Christians consider themselves, because our testament is the continuation of your testament. You know that. So we think Jews go to heaven. I mean, [Rev. Jerry] Falwell himself said that, but you have to follow laws. Ours is “Christ died for our sins.” We consider ourselves perfected Christians. For me to say that for you to become a Christian is to become a perfected Christian is not offensive at all.

Actually, for a live TV interview, Coulter gives a remarkably cogent and careful explanation of the view that virtually every Christian (damn those Unitarians for making me right virtually everywhere) is logically compelled to believe. Anyway there is no more argument to be had because the issue is clear as night and day. If you think she was stepping over some line or being antisemitic the burden is on you to explain what she should have said instead.

As an aside it seems pretty clear from the transcript that Deustch had the agenda of making Coulter say something controversial from the beginning. If he wants to do that I don’t really care too much but when the ADL and other mainstream Jewish groups start calling Coulter antisemitic for this while praising Deustch it’s really wrong

My claim is that a carefull look at the transcripts not only reveals that Coulter did not bring up or delibrately

DEUTSCH: Christian — so we should be Christian? It would be better if we were all Christian?

COULTER: Yes. …. DEUTSCH: That isn’t what I said, but you said I should not — we should just throw Judaism away and we should all be Christians, then, or –

COULTER: Yeah. …. DEUTSCH: You can’t possibly believe that.

COULTER: Yes. ….. DEUTSCH: “Let’s wipe Israel off the earth.” I mean, what, no Jews?

COULTER: No, we think — we just want Jews to be perfected, as they say.

DEUTSCH: Wow, you didn’t really say that, did you?

Amazingly these remarks have generated a huge outraged response. The Anti-Defamation League stated that they, “strongly condemns Ann Coulter for her anti-Semitic comment.” The American Jewish Committee is “outraged” by her remarks and the National Jewish Democratic Council is circulating a petition demanding networks stop inviting Coulter to be a guest on their shows. Even some catholic organizations are getting in on the action with the director of Catholics United being reported as saying, “I’m just dumbfounded that a Christian would even say this in America.” Of course the reactions in the blogosphere make these criticisms seem like high praise. The more sober criticisms merely saying her comments were anti-Semitic while more extreme reactions compared her remarks to Blood Libel. When Don Imus made his clearly faultable¹ remarks people seemed able to maitain a degree of distance but in this case people are taking this thing really personally. The number of people wishing death upon her in blog comments and this digg discussion seems way above normal.

This is totally fucking nuts! Of course it is better for people to believe true things. It would be better if Global warming skeptics realized their error and supported the science and similarly if Jews are mistaken about Christ it would be better for them to realize their error. Now I think believing in Christ or any sort of God is deeply mistaken so naturally I hope that religious Jews realize their error and convert to atheism. The idea this sort of belief makes one an anti-Semite is so absurd I can hardly believe anyone accepts it much less most Jewish organizations and many mainstream Americans. The day when Christians, Jews, and the rest of them become more perfect less severely flawed and finally give up on religion can’t come soon enough.

What should horrify people here is not Coulter’s statements but Deustch’s amazed offense at them (quoted below). I mean the irrationality and total lack of comprehension in the following segment just blew my mind yet he is being held up. Sam Harris is right, religious moderation is fucked up.

DEUTSCH: You said — your exact words were, “Jews need to be perfected.” Those are the words out of your mouth.

COULTER: No, I’m saying that’s what a Christian is.

DEUTSCH: But that’s what you said — don’t you see how hateful, how anti-Semitic –

COULTER: No!

DEUTSCH: How do you not see? You’re an educated woman. How do you not see that?

COULTER: That isn’t hateful at all.

DEUTSCH: But that’s even a scarier thought. OK –

COULTER: No, no, no, no, no. I don’t want you being offended by this. This is what Christians consider themselves, because our testament is the continuation of your testament. You know that. So we think Jews go to heaven. I mean, [Rev. Jerry] Falwell himself said that, but you have to follow laws. Ours is “Christ died for our sins.” We consider ourselves perfected Christians. For me to say that for you to become a Christian is to become a perfected Christian is not offensive at all.

Below the break I document in detail the fact that Coulter said nothing that isn’t contained in mainstream Christian dogma (and most other religions) and discuss what this means about the nature of religious faith.

So what reasons did these criticisms give for finding these remarks offensive? Well the ADL’s press release says:

Ann Coulter may be a political pundit but she clearly knows very little about religious theology and interfaith issues. Coulter’s remarks are outrageous, offensive and a throwback to the centuries-old teaching of contempt for Jews and Judaism. The notion that Jews are religiously inferior or imperfect because they do not accept Christian beliefs was the basis for 2,000 years of church-based anti-Semitism

Well the throwback they likely mean is the pre Vatican II Catholic doctrine that salvation could only be attained through the church. For instance, under this doctrine members of isolated native tribes (and babies dying before baptism) could never attain salvation. Now as one can see in this statement by Pope John Paul II (not Benedict) the church now grants that those who don’t know Christ through no fault of their own can also be saved. John Paul II explicitly remarks that being brought up in another religion is a social barrier to true faith so even Jews, Muslims and members of other faith can still be saved. However, even the relatively ecumenical Pope John Paul II is quite clear about the fact that faith in another religion is a barrier not merely another path to salvation and closeness with God.

In fact, whoever does not know Christ, even through no fault of his own, is in a state of darkness and spiritual hunger, often with negative repercussions at the cultural and moral level. The Church’s missionary work can provide him with the resources for the full development of Christ’s saving grace, by offering full and conscious adherence to the message of faith and active participation in Church life through the sacraments.

While for some reason the Catholics often get shit for being conservative they are actually far more ‘modern’ on this issue than protestant denominations, many of whom are still debating whether or not it is even possible for non-believers to be saved as most of the mainstream denominations subscribe to the notion of salvation through faith alone (often formulated as salvation through faith in Christ alone). There is no doubt in the official dogma of most mainstream christian denominations that faith in Christ is a virtue. In fact except for a few groups like the Unitarian Universalists, the Ba’Hai and some variants of Judaism all religions believe it is both good and important for people to have faith in their religion.

While some christians like this one try really hard (but without knowing enough theology) to square the idea that it isn’t worse for people to believe in other faiths with mainstream Christianity it just isn’t possible. Either it matters what you believe or not. If it is a virtue to believe in the true faith then by definition one is less virtuous for not believing in that faith and if you are less virtuous you are less perfect. Hell, even if you think, in direct conflict with the dogma of salvation by faith and all sermons stressing the importance of faith in Christ, that God doesn’t care what you believe so long as you think your religion is true then other things being equal people would be more perfect if they believed it. Either Christ was the son of God and rose from the dead after being crucified or he wasn’t. Either the Jews are persisting in a false belief or the Christians are deluded. Why wouldn’t it be better for everyone to stop believing false things and all agree on the truth?

The mere fact that other people used similar concerns in the past to justify religious hatred is mostly irrelevant. It perhaps suggests that one shouldn’t bust out with things like, “The Jews are flawed by their lack of faith,” but it can’t be allowed to suppress polite attempts to express reasonable logical consequences of widely believed ideas. It’s just a flat out fact that if Christ was the son of god then people should believe it just like they should believe in facts like global warming. Of course Christ wasn’t so they shouldn’t but the conditional point is clearly valid.

Other than merely repeating their outrage that someone could suggest that America would be better if everyone was a Christian the only other arguments offered were various versions of this one:

It is wrong to think Christians are perfect and Jews are not. It. Is. Wrong. All of us have the same potential for good and evil. It is what you do and how you treat others that counts – not your beliefs

Putting aside the fact that no major Christian denomenation I am aware of solely believes in salvation through works, i.e., faith doesn’t matter, this criticism just gets what was said in the interview totally wrong. Coulter was saying nothing of the kind and her language wasn’t even confusing. Imagine the following exchange between a British prime minister and an American journalist.

PRIME MINISTER: I think there are areas where the US could learn from us as well. For instance in the US even speech inciting people to racial hatred is protected by the first ammendment.

JOURNALIST: Are you suggesting that the first amendment was a mistake?

PRIME MINISTER: No, I want — I just think that your conception of free speech could be perfected.

Does anyone have the slightest difficulty understanding what was meant here? Was the imaginary prime minister claiming that the English laws on free speech were absolutely inerrant? Of course not. The use of the word ‘perfected’ like this communicates the fact that you don’t think that whatever your describing is bad or harmful just that it could be made even better. Anyone who isn’t gripped with outrage at the mere suggestion that it would be good for Jews to convert could easily see that the use of the word ‘perfected’ here is merely an attempt by Coulter to be polite and sensitive not a claim that Christians or even Christianity were perfect.

Now to be fair a few conservative blogs like The Volokh Conspiracy did defend Coulter but many of the others offered half-hearted defenses saying that they knew what she meant but criticizing her choice of language. In other words this is only paritally a partisan dustup, people really really believe this is offensive (but normal Christian beliefs aren’t).

Ultimately this whole episode has finally totally and utterly convinced me of the total irrelevance of reason to most people’s beliefs. I always knew basic religious assumptions were totally unjustified but apparently people can’t even draw basic logical conclusions about what they do believe. If people really believed in their religion in anything like the sense that I believe in global warming, the fact the earth is round, or that welfare is a small fraction of the US budget it wouldn’t even occur to them that it was unreasonable to suggest other people should convert to your faith. But apparently most people approach religion as if it was more like a question of style than a matter of fact. At least this finally explains why some people are actually offended by atheism. They really don’t understand that the atheist is disagreeing with a factual assertion made by religion and not just making meaningless rude noises.

Now if private companies want to give religious employees special exemptions I think it’s radically unfair but that’s their business. If you want to let your muslim cashiers call over someone else to sell alcohol that’s up to you and you’re the one who pays the price of annoyed customers. However, when we are talking about what effectively amount to government standards for the education of doctors that’s a whole other matter. Either it is important that we make doctors learn these skills and accredit them accordingly or it isn’t. Why the hell does it matter that you don’t want to learn it because of your religion rather than because you think it’s gross or just really really don’t want to?

Still, it might be a good idea to tolerate things like not treating women if this was a sufficiently widespread cultural practice (don’t think it is). Of course if I was the UK health system I would never hire such a person if there were alternatives but that’s another matter. However, refusing to learn about things like alcohol abuse significantly hampers a doctor’s ability to treat patients. It isn’t something like gender where the doctor could (theoretically) just avoid situations where the skill is required. Moreover, it is hard enough to get people to be honest and admit embarrassing issues like STDs if some doctors refuse to listen or call in their colleague to deal with the matter it poses a serious health threat.

This really fucking pisses me off. Saying some man in the sky told me to do it shouldn’t be a magic pass to do whatever the fuck you want. Having absurd stories about why it is important for you to do something shouldn’t make us more likely to accommodate you. Sure there is something to be said for increasing utility by respecting strong irrational beliefs but that’s no excuse not to create a general system to handle strongly felt preferences rather than behaving as if it was reasonable to have these stupid beliefs.

It shouldn’t have to be said but obviously I feel the same way about Christian doctors who refuse to properly console patients about the abortion option.

Religious tolerance, however, tends to work quite differently. Rather than viewing the religious individual as the unreasonable person and regarding the choice to avoid topics they find sensitive as a favor it’s just the opposite. Society doesn’t demand we pretend believing in UFOs is a plausible response to the evidence, only that we don’t shove it in their faces but religious tolerance demands we act as if religious belief was reasonable. For instance if one of the candidates for president admitted their long held belief that benevolent aliens were visiting our planet in flying saucers the media and folks at home wouldn’t think twice about suggesting this showed poor judgment and rendered them unfit for the presidency. However, apparently religious tolerance renders it unacceptable to criticize a candidate for believing that special underwear will help them become mini-gods in the afterlife or that there is some big dude in the sky who is nicer than anyone whose ever lived but would let us be eternally tortured for something we didn’t do but since he is such a just guy he can’t just not punish us so instead he tortures his son instead so that those of us who believe this story without evidence can be saved¹. Similarly as I complained about in a prior post even when it comes to academic rules we have to pretend that it’s totally reasonable to prioritize religious obligation over your studies but aren’t expected to pretend the same about going out to where you think the aliens are landing².

However, what got me started on this topic today was the choice by the Washington Post and many other newspapers not to run the two most recent opus comics because they might be offensive to Muslims. Now I don’t think there is any reason to get as worked up about this as for the danish cartoon controversy since there are no calls for government censorship nor the risk of rewarding violent protest. In fact despite all the claims of bias I don’t think the Post did anything much differently than they would for any comic with the potential for religious offense: they went around and asked the people in that religion how they felt about the comic. Indeed this mirrors the general way we decide if comments or jokes about one of our culturally anointed classes is off limits. It’s just that the average Christian in the newspaper business is probably going to be a lot more accepting of comics poking fun at Christianity. So it’s not that the Post has embarked on some sort of super PC campaign that says you can’t joke about Islam. It’s that the fundamental societal norms about religious tolerance is throughly broken.

I mean there is no doubt in my mind that if there had been a similarly mild cartoon mocking atheists no one would have hesitated to print it and the explanation is obvious: atheists don’t tend to raise a fuss when their views are criticized. Now as I said in the beginning there is nothing wrong with trying to be nice but since it isn’t the religious individuals we blame for being sensitive to criticism but rather those who offended them this practice creates serious and unacceptable bias³. There are plenty of books carried by major chains (even the Walgreen’s in Berkeley) which openly vilify atheists as evil and perpetuate lies about them when a similar book against Hindus would probably get at least pulled from the display. Where politicians generally don’t dare to openly criticize another candidate because they are Jewish or Hindu they will charge them with being an atheist.

In short this Opus story convinces me of the cocktail party theory of religious tolerance. Society views it as morally acceptable to mock a belief system or openly call it evil so long as doing so won’t ruin their cocktail party. Since members of most religious faiths will become overtly offended (or even get into a fight) with people who diss their religion people are quickly trained to view such comments as unacceptable. Since most atheists will ignore the relatively common remarks that implicitly assume religion is good or that atheism is bad or at most politely disagree atheism doesn’t get the same immunity from criticism that most religions enjoy.

My preference would be to have all ideas treated equally. We would all be responsible for being reasonably polite and avoiding insult but not expected to act as if we believed other people’s beliefs were reasonable, just not shove it in their face. Accommodations should be made for people whose holy day conflicts with an exam but also for people whose girlfriend will be in town for a conference that day. We would have religious tolerance as a consequence of general tolerance and accommodation. However, this is extremely unlikely to happen until atheists start being less polite but unfortunately I’m not sure if we will ever care enough. I mean it seems pretty fucking silly to me too to care about the whole “E plurbis unum” thing on our currency but I suspect it’s this sort of fussiness and easy offense which has gained religious beliefs their protected status.

In compliance with Education code, Section 92640(a), it is the official policy of the University of California at Berkeley to permit any student to undergo a test or examination, without penalty, at a time when that activity would not violate the student’s religious creed, unless administering the examination at an alternative time would impose an undue hardship which could not reasonably have been avoided. Requests to accommodate a student’s religious creed by scheduling tests or examinations at alternative times shall be submitted directly to the faculty member responsible for administering the examination. Reasonable common sense, judgment and the pursuit of mutual goodwill should result in the positive resolution of scheduling conflicts. The regular campus appeals process applies if a mutually satisfactory arrangement cannot be achieved.

Here is what the email says about musical or sports trips:

-It is the instructor’s responsibility to give students a schedule, available on the syllabus in the first week of instruction, of all class sessions, exams, tests, project deadlines, field trips, and any other required class activities. -It is the student’s responsibility to notify the instructor(s) in writing by the second week of the semester of any potential conflict and to recommend a solution, with the understanding that an earlier deadline or date of examination may be the most practicable solution. -It is the student’s responsibility to inform him/herself about material missed because of an absence, whether or not she or he has been formally excused.

The clear sense these rules convey is that the instructor is expected to bend their rules if they might create difficulty or hardship for someone who wishes to respect a religious obligation but that a student who is going to be absent for some other extra-curricular activity undertakes a greater obligation if they want to miss class. Now one might justify such a policy on the grounds that some athletes or musicians are going to be out of town on a large number of dates or that religion is more important to people. However, it would be easy to give every student a certain number of absences they can exercise using the easier standard and there are many students who are more casual about the religious observances they ask to be excused for then athletes are about their games.

Worse it seems that students are given no allowance for non-official extra-curricular activities. Even if the student is really into launching rockets and the annual rocketing event is his favorite thing to do it appears the instructor doesn’t have to give him any accommodation as it isn’t an official school sponsored event. On the other hand someone who thinks ‘yah, I might as well go to church today’ gets all the accommodations mentioned above.

Anyway I don’t mean to critisize the Chancellor, his hands are tied by California law, but merely to point out the way in which non-believers (or even casual church goers) are treated as second class citizens. The things that we may really really care about get no accomodation while just someone has a ridiculous belief about some historical event we have to bend over to accommodate them. Now I fully understand that the potential for religious discrimination is great but if we weren’t implicitly endorsing religion as something more important than say a rocketry hobby we would use some fully neutral policy that gave everyone the chance to do what they really cared about.

While people like Behe clearly defend Intelligent Design for religious or spiritual motives this doesn’t change the fact that the thesis he advanced in this video and (at least according to wikipedia) the one he advanced in his book are ultimately a purely secular argument that is fully consistent with the conclusion that aliens made human beings in an irreducibly complex fashion. Since we obviously could get evidence for such a conclusion¹ what Behe is presenting is a scientific theory whatever his motives², just a very bad one.

But the portrayal of Behe in the media makes it clear that Behe’s proposal of irreducible counts as Intelligent Design, at least in the public’s understanding of these terms. Therefore to insist on saying intelligent design isn’t science is at best extremely misleading. Yes, intelligent design is just a cover for the teaching of religious beliefs in school but it is a cover not those beliefs itself. Of course teaching even Behe’s scientific theory to school children in a science class would falsely suggest that the biblical account of creation had scientific plausibility and that would violate the separation of church and state. However, it’s pretty swallow that most people would understand the claim “Intelligent Design isn’t science,” in this fashion. Now maybe this technically false claims is a necessary Machiavellian counter to the Discovery Institute’s schemes but it is still false and I worry that it will ultimately do more harm than good.

More on this subject and why the National Academy of Science’s definition of a scientific theory is misleading after the break.

One reason I worry the claim “Intelligent Design isn’t science,” will backfire is that scientists continue to present arguments like the following to the public.

It seems to me problematic for scientists to simultaneously present certain experiments that might have falsified³ evolution and highlight the results as proof of evolutions truth while essentially trying to argue that any alternative theory isn’t testable. I mean in it’s broadest terms evolution is really the theory that people are the result of random chemical/physical reactions that somehow engage in self-organizing behavior. If we really falsified that theory it seems the next best one would be that we were designed rather than the result of random chance.

Besides this furthers the absurd and misleading idea that there are two separate and disjoint realms, science and religion. Once again this may be a useful social fiction but it just isn’t true. If the world had turned out to be populated with angels and demons and prayer occasionally effected verifiable miracles people would no doubt put the same kind of rational analysis we do in physics today into discovering the nature of the angelic realm or using statistical analysis to discover what variables affected the efficacy of prayer. Maybe there is a small core of religious belief that deals with in principle untestable assertions but most religious beliefs are no different than highly theoretical scientific theories. We can rationally infer certain things about the probabilities of future observations from many religious dogmas (be these observations about historical digs in Jerusalem or the discovery of extraterrestrial intelligent) making these testable theories no different than string theory. Well except for the fact that string theory has a small bit of (indirect) empirical support while almost every religious belief has a mountain of evidence a mile high arrayed against it. Obviously I don’t think it makes for good PR to tell people science and religion are in direct conflict but I do think we ought to avoid the issue rather than drawing attention to it with shaky claims about Intelligent Design not being a scientific theory.

Now I’ve been using the term ‘scientific theory’ throughout this post as a synonym for an empirically testable proposition that some possible experimental outcomes might make you rationally accept. Not everyone defines the term this way. It turns out that the National Academy of Sciences defines a scientific theory this way:

Theory: In science, a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses.

Obviously under this definition Intelligent Design isn’t a scientific theory because it isn’t ‘well-substantiated’ and while this is a reasonable definition it is misleading to use it in the intelligent design debate. Sure on their definition Intelligent Design isn’t a scientific theory but it is a scientific hypothesis:

Hypothesis: A tentative statement about the natural world⁴ leading to deductions that can be tested. If the deductions are verified, it becomes more probable that the hypothesis is correct. If the deductions are incorrect, the original hypothesis can be abandoned or modified. Hypotheses can be used to build more complex inferences and explanations.

Since the statement “Intelligent Design isn’t science” and “Intelligent Design isn’t a scientific theory” are used virtually synonymously it would be downright deceptive to say, “Intelligent Design isn’t a scientific theory,” when you mean it’s only a hypothesis. Besides, the reason people are trying to deny that Intelligent Design isn’t a scientific theory is to avoid the debate about whether it is likely to be true. So if you agreed that some versions of Intelligent Design are composed of testable statements about the natural world and wanted to be understood why wouldn’t you just say that Intelligent Design is a bad scientific hypothesis and avoid the whole theory argument all together?

Perhaps it’s a bit silly of me to press so hard on such a minor point but I remember being a smart little kid and it was exactly the presence of little logical contradictions like this in religion that eroded my faith. I worry that their are reasonably smart young children out there in the hinterlands who are right now feeling smug and superior for having dissected the evolutionists contradictory arguments and becoming that much less likely to ever accept evolution or major in science. Besides I wanted to try embedding videos in my blog.

Rather than worry about atheists who may or may not find Islam’s claims offensive what about idolaters or polytheists. If one reads the Quaran (or the bible) one finds a great many passages saying very offensive things about people who engage in either of these practices. Additionally both of these books say very harsh and offensive things about magic/witchcraft which actually does result in discrimination/hatred/dislike of Wiccans.

Obviously this tells us we shouldn’t legally suppress material for being religiously offensive or insulting. If so the Quaran and the Bible would have to be the first things to go. However, I think we can take the argument a step beyond this. Simply being a Muslim (or Christian) and encouraging the spread of your faith or the continued printing of your holy book makes one just as guilty as Jyllands-Posten. In fact the evidence that Islam, Christianity and similar religions can incite hatred, violence and other atrocities is much stronger than evidence we had that mildly offensive cartoons could cause such harm. Therefore by teaching your children your religion, by openly expressing affiliation and thereby making it easier for others to join and especially by preaching or trying to convert people one is doing something much worse than Jyllands-Posten did.

Hopefully this is a more clear explanation of why I am willing to say that Jyllands-Posten did something unwise but not ‘blamable.’ Sure it probably would have been better if they hadn’t published but it sure as hell would be better if all the Christians and Muslims stopped advocating their religious beliefs (or better just stopped believing).

Also objections that the smack talked about idolatry, magic or polytheism isn’t really serious don’t fly. Some guy may be getting executed in Afghanistan for converting to Christianity so I think we can take it as given that many people take these crazy ancient rules seriously. Besides it is totally inconsistent to demand we look to what the Quaran says instead of what Muslims believe when asked if Islam encourages terrorism/violent jihad (disturbingly huge percents of Muslims in the middle east say yes) but then refuse to look at that book when we want to know if Islam is saying offensive things about Wicca.

It doesn’t matter what these rules say, there simply isn’t any objective set of rules which can prevent religious offense without banning justifiable criticism and likely giving unfair benefit to the religious over the non-religious. It is certainly possible that Islam is encouraging suicide bombing and a responsible suggestion of this idea, e.g., this argument, should surely not be effectively censored by this ‘voluntary’ code of conduct, and a religious groups determination to be horribly offended at any criticism should not change this determination. Yet the difference between this sort of speech and the islamic cartoons was a matter of responsibility, foresight, and good sense. If is entirely possible that the propositional content of the mohammed cartoon with the bomb on its head was just this. Any guideline is either going to be unable to make such a distinction or be so vague that it allows all parties to read in their own interpretation.

Moreover the entire idea of this sort of voluntary code is just stupid. If it is truly voluntary the public will hold the media responsible only to the extent they personally find some speech problematic or bothersome. In other words the same thing they do now but perhaps making it harder to do something most people find offensive. Yet it is exactly the offensive speech that the majority of the population finds attractive and won’t hold media accountable for that is the most dangerous. So long as the offended group has much public support only their egos are going to get bruised.

A Quote (emphasis mine):

Also, because Muhammad will apparently be blown to bits when the bomb goes off, Muhammad himself is depicted here, in a sense, as a suicide bomber. Willing to forfeit their own lives in order to kill many others, suicide bombers are the most dangerous element of so-called Muslim extremists – and most would agree that such extremism is not part of Islam’s teachings, and that, indeed, such bombers are not Muslims at all. Thus, to call equating such extremism with the Prophet “provocative” is an understatement.

Well most may agree but unless the author is knowingly trying to mislead she is suggesting that this is a true or reasonable belief. However, the idea that extremely religious suicide bombers who attend their mosque and engage in all outward signs of islamic observance are not Muslims is linguistically absurd. Might as well claim that no Christians participated in the Holocaust because participating in the Holocaust shows them to be non-Christian. Why not just simply say that Muslims are required by their faith to be good and thus all Muslims are good people. Or say that Muslims are required to know simple basic truths about god (he is merciful or whatever) and thus if you are an atheist like me you would have to think there are no Muslims (none of them have any true beliefs in god). Clearly the idea that they are somehow not Muslims because they have done something ‘Islam forbids’ is just absurd. At best you might argue they are bad Muslims.

Even this is an unintelligible claim. Sunni and Shiite Muslims both don’t follow each other’s religious observances so do we have to pick one as right and call the other group ‘bad Muslims’? If this is a question of overall size, i.e., suicide bombers do something disapproved of by most Muslims, then why not say Sunni Muslims are bad Muslims too? Unfortunately it seems that the percent of Sunnis in the Muslim world and the percent of Muslims who support suicide bombing is actually of the same order of magnitude (not sure which is bigger). If this isn’t a matter of size are we making some judgment about what is the correct interpretation of the Qua ran? Should we call anyone who takes the Qua ran as not literal be termed a bad Muslim? Or maybe those that do? Even if we do take the Qua ran literally it seems unclear if it can be read to give a definitive rejection of suicide bombing, i.e., non-contradicted principle that would prohibit suicide bombing.

It is perfectly possible that the cartoon instead represents the idea that suicide bombing is going to blow Islam apart if not stopped. After all it is mohammed, arguably a symbol for the religion as a whole, who is going to be blown to bits in a scene which immediately yells suicide bomber at the viewer. Even if it is suggesting some connection between Islam and violence/suicide bombing is this really unreasonable? I tend to think that the increased incidence of suicide bombing, and other unpleasant acts in islamic cultures has more to do with societal organization, i.e., they are still where Europe was in the middle ages and you can just imagine how the medieval Christians would have reacted to an invasion of skimpily clad women and female world leaders. However, it seems a plausible hypothesis that there is some particular feature of Islam (a stronger tradition of literalism?, better preservation of the original scripture (Christian texts were made ‘nicer’ over time)?) which makes it more inclined to produce suicide bombers and support thereof.

UPDATE: I also think the argument the author makes about the intent of the cartoons misses the point. Sure the editor of Jyllands-Posten both says he didn’t intend the cartoons to offend and that he published them to spark debate on free speech. The author misses the fact that these two statements are perfectly compatible. Offend in this sense doesn’t mean make upset or even actually make someone feel offended, rather it means something like make an attack that is ‘objectively offensive’ or something like that. If I am talking about going to eat an orange for lunch I do not intend to offend someone who finds any use of the word ‘orange’ deeply offensive even if I know they will find it offensive. Surely the publisher knew that the cartoons would create outrage but his two statements both imply that he expected some people to get upset but that he didn’t think he was really insulting them, i.e., they are being unreasonable in getting upset.

The ‘illegal occupation’ language is just silly. To the extent that there is something called international law the legal status of the occupied territories is highly debatable. However, even if we grant some notion of international law which makes the occupation illegal it is just a red herring. The only relevant question is whether the occupation is morally right. If international law is wrong it ought to be ignored (this isn’t arguable it is by definition).

The reason these arguments from international law sound convincing is because they draw on our (correct) presumption in everyday life that abiding by the law is generally the right thing to do. However, this presumption only exists because we live in situations where we have a strong and relatively fair system of law enforcement. Engaging in vigilante killings, deterrent murders or other illegal behavior to protect ourselves is a bad thing because we have a police force we can generally trust to enforce reasonably fair laws without letting tit-for-tat violence spiral out of hand. If one lived in the old west and one could gun down a violent gang who you had good reason to believe would kill many others not only should you not avoid doing so because of some distant unenforceable law against murder but you would actually be morally required to do so. When the UN starts putting police on the streets in the west bank and really enforcing prohibitions on arms/militant groups the ‘illegal occupation’ argument will make sense but until then the situation is a great deal like the old west.

Ultimately the question is whether Israel’s actions with regard to the west bank are morally reprehensible. While on first glance ones intuition might say that punishing ‘innocent’ (they may have been tacitly encouraging the anti-israeli bombs) palestinians for the actions of a few (bulldozing houses, curfews, fences etc..) is clearly wrong it is really no different than plenty of actions the church tolerates. Sanctions against misbehaving regimes punish innocent citizens to encourage compliance, WWII killed many innocent germans (conscripts or just civilians) to stop the nazis, and in general any sticks in international relations are guaranteed to hurt some innocent people. The relevant question is whether the harm caused is more or less than the benefit achieved. However, this is obviously a very complex question about policy and delicate psychological predictions and reasonable people all adhering to the core values of the anglican communion can reasonably disagree. There are plenty of issues right on the Church of England’s doorstep where christian values cry out against the way people are behaving and they should concentrate on those issues.

However, while it is undoubtedly true that the church and people in the first world generally criticize Israel more for their debatable actions than they do places like sudan for clearly egregious actions it just isn’t anti-semitism. Actually just the opposite. The sense is that Israel is part of the western world and answerable to the same standards and expectations as other first world countries. Churches, protest groups, and other organizations don’t concentrate on North Korea, Sudan or other misbehaving countries as much because these countries are just outside the sphere of rational discourse. Unlike Israel which is a democracy and can be reasoned with people treat these countries as outside the sphere of reasonable discourse and thus don’t bother to critique them. Crying foul because Israel comes in for more criticism than Sudan makes about as much sense as getting upset because liberals in the US spend more time criticizing Bush for violating human rights than they do Hu Jintao (Chinese leader). Far from anti-semitism the extra criticism is actually a sort of backhanded compliment. Israel is considered a part of the responsible first world in a way the palestinians just aren’t. Though of course none of this is to say their aren’t some people who critique israel for anti-Semitic reasons but I hardly think the Church of England or other mainstream organizations are amoung them.

It is this sort of behavior which makes the Bush administration truly dangerous. Sure I’m not a fan of Bush’s conservative policies or his tax cuts for the rich but these issues are to a great extent a distraction. Any administration makes a huge number of decisions that never attract public attention but the consequences of these decisions can be significant, both to the people involved and the country as a whole. The health of our government and way of life depends on these decisions being made well and this can not happen when dissident views are simply shut out or ignored. Sure sometimes one needs to go forward with a decision despite the fervent objections of a few people but it is important that the decision makers hear those objections and consider them. Clinton, for instance, had a policy of listening to dissenting views and hearing them argued out in front of him and I doubt (though I could be wrong) that previous republican administrations had this sort of lock-step attitude but whether or not it has past precedent it is very dangerous.

Also a few final words on the cartoon business. My last post should not be taken as any kind of softening of my attitude on the protesters or those demanding restrictions on free speech. Nor should it be taken as any kind of endorsement of a social standard which takes it as inappropriate to criticize someone’s religion, even if that religion is singled out for criticism on its own. While I tend to think that the difference between Muslims and Christians mostly stems from the fact that many Muslims still lie in old-fashioned patriarchal and tribal cultures it is perfectly appropriate to ask whether Islam plays any particular role in encouraging terrorism. (I’m sure both Christianity and Islam both do so to some degree but I’m unsure if Christianity would be any less bad in the same circumstance).

I most certainly do not support any type of social rule of conduct which demands any criticism of Islam be balanced by a criticism of Christianity or Judaism nor do I think that the cartoons in question went to far in any sense. I still believe that some Muslims’ overreaction to the cartoons should not be rewarded. All I am saying is that (assuming Jyllands-Posten didn’t have inappropriate motivations) the choice to publish the cartoons in this fashion may not have been particularly good strategy and ultimately may cause some harm without aiding the cause of free speech substantially.

In other words my attitude toward Jyllands-Posten is the same as my attitude towards google would be if they had chosen to stand on principle and not censor search results for the Chinese (assuming valid motivations in both cases). Just as it would inappropriate to hypothetically scold google because they didn’t realize their principled stand might actually harm free expression in China it would be inappropriate to scold Jyllands-Posten because their principled stand to publish completely reasonable cartoons might cause similarly negative consequences.

Of course if goes without saying that if Jyllands-Posten published these cartoons with the intent of whipping up hatred of a religious minority such an action would be dispicable. However, the explanation that they gave claiming their intent was to inspire debate on self-censorship over depictions of the prophet even in positive lights seems at least facially plausible especially given the fact that many of the cartoons are quite respectfull or critical of the project itself. Not having information casting serious doubt on this explanation I think it would be hasty to accuse them of anything except an unwise deciscion. In particular I am hesitant to say that the paper should not have published these cartoons as this suggests that beyond just having negative consequences the choice actually violated some reasonable societal standard of acceptable speech and this is a much sterner standard than just having bad consequences. Assuming Jyllands-Posten had the frame of mind they claim I think their publication is more similar to a hypothetical situation where Michael Jackson came out of the closet than a newspaper publishing an editorial rant claiming blacks are inferior to whites. Just as it would be unwise for someone suspect of child molestation like Michael Jackson to admit his is gay as it would further negative stereotypes of homosexuals so too it might have been poor judgement for Jyllands-Posten to publish the choice of cartoons that it did but in neither case should we deem this error in judgement beyond the pale. There is a great deal of difference between directly making harmfull statements and not properly weighing the consequences of people’s interpratations of your speech. This is the same reason we don’t blame the parents of the protestors for choosing to teach them islam in such a fasion which made them liable to be offended by such charecterization.

However, once the cartoons were published and there were protests against the Danish deciscion not to legaly censure Jyllands-Posten I think it was important not to reward such protests. Had the protests merely been against Jyllands-Posten for publishing I probably wouldn’t have reposted the cartoons but given the boycott against Danish products in general I think it was an important point to make that getting really upset at criticism will not (and should not) protect your religious beliefs from criticism. In other words the justification to republish the cartoons is the same as the justification for not negotiating with terrorists (no suggestion of moral equivalence), don’t encourage demands for censorship. Besides the deciscion facing the republishers was significantly different than that facing Jyllands-Posten. Given the context given by comments from the vatican and other officials a deciscion not to republish the cartoons sent the message that religious beliefs deserved special protection from criticism. Of course it would have been better if the solidarity publications also published cartoons critical of christianity and judaism as well (and I’d be more than happy to do so if someone wants to send me some) but they hardly have the obligation to put additional non-newsworthy items on their pages. To be absolutely clear let me emphasize that I think there was absolutely nothing over the line or inappropriate about the pure content of the cartoons, however, it is quite possible that expressing this content that particular context could have negative repurcussions.

Finally I should point out that while I am greatly concerned about things like the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill (which failed to pass in England only because Tony Blair didn’t bother to stay around to vote) which would have made insulting, abusive or reckless speech about a religion illegal (language taken out in the ultimate version) the ability to critisize islam should not be our greatest fear. Political correctness and this unfortunate attitude that just because something is a religious belief it is beyond criticism will only go so far in protecting minority viewpoints. What I am truly worried about is what over at Volokh they called censorship envy. In other words once we start restricting, or even deeming unacceptable, speech critical of islam in the admirable goal of avoiding ignorant hatred other larger groups will demand the same protection on issues they find offensive. I think we already see this happening with the UK’s ban on glorifying terrorism, an ambigous term which could very easily be interpreted to make it illegal to argue that Palestinian terrorism in response to Isreali occupation are justified. I suspect part of the reason this statute was passed was to avoid criticism that labour was willing to restrict the rights of UK citizens to critisize islam they would not act to make speech that offended Britons by glorifying the London bombins illegal. While I certainly don’t agree that Palestinian terrorism is justified this claim, as an abstract philosophical point not a call to violence, is certainly within the realm of political/scholarly discourse. After all if you believe that terrorism will be effective in gaining a Palestinian state, the Isreali occupation is as morally bad or worse than British colonial occupation of the US, and the US revolution was justified, three not particularly extreme views you are inevitably lead to this conclusion (though I tend to doubt all three points).

In other words it is always the minorities who suffer the most when freedom of expression is abrogated and I am afraid that all the calls to restrict statements that offend the islamic faith will ultimately backfire on muslims. Nationalistic and christian groups will demand equal protection for speech that offends them and ultimately juries will punish minorities not majorities. However, the question is how will the minorities and majorities form. The worst case scenario is a return to racial hatred or a ganging up of public opinion against Islam. Admitedly I have probably underestimated the likelihood of this scenario because in the circles I occupy (Berkeley among others) it is unthinkable and it is inordinate respect for religious belief which is more likely to restrict expression. However, I am just as concerned that the impression of greater protections (legal or pragmatic) for Islam will fuel the anger as I am that things like the Jyllands-Posten cartoons will inflame it. At the very least particular criticism of Jyllands-Posten seems an inappropriate focus when anti-immigrant rags are a common feature of European politics. Given the dichotomy between the reactions to these everyday ethnic attacks and the strong criticism of the cartoons, particularly from religious sources, I cannot avoid the conclusion that far from being a proportionate response to a publication that might inflame racial tensions the response by Americans and Europeans to the cartoon controversy reveals a inappropriate deference to religious sensibilities that would not exist if we were talking about other sorts of beliefs like political affiliation.