Notes and Comment

Der Spiegel takes a hard look at the Vatican's secretive ways with abusive employees.

According to the instructions from Rome, the bishops were to deal very firmly with each individual case -- so firmly, in fact, that everything would remain within the confines of the Holy Church...On the surface, the Vatican's objective is to protect the sacrament of the confession. In reality, however, it is trying to uphold the Catholic Church's claim to being a superior moral authority. Nothing can be allowed to besmirch this authority: not the sexual abuse of children and adolescents, committed by thousands of Catholic priests worldwide...

And there you have it - the Catholic church's total moral failure, in a nutshell. The failure is total because if the Church actually had any superior moral authority it would instantly realize - it would be aware without even having to pause to realize - that this attempt was an effort to square the circle - was an exercise in meaninglessness. An organization cannot perpetrate gross harms on vulnerable people and then try to uphold its claim to being a superior moral authority by failing to prevent further such gross harms. It's like trying to have your cake after you've eaten it by clinging like grim death to the empty plate. It can't be done - it's too late.

But the Church failed to realize that, thus revealing itself to be morally bankrupt, and actively assisting its employees to go on harming people. Secrecy about crimes against people have exactly that effect, and the Church cannot be such a moral imbecile that it is not aware of that fact. The result is that all it upheld is a façade of superior moral authority, behind which lurks suppurating moral rot of the most sinister kind. All it upheld is a glittering shell decorating a gang of child-abusers and their aiders and abettors.

Mark Vernon tells us that the key issue in Kant's Critiques was understanding the limits of human knowledge.

When Kant said that Enlightenment was maturity this is what he meant, being able to live with this finitude and not reach out for false certainty. So we have Enlightenment humanism as scepticism and grappling with the reality of human knowledge and experience. This I would actually relate to a tradition within religion, though it is one lamentably in decline today. It is called the ‘apophatic’, meaning ‘negative way’. It stands in marked contrast to the ‘cataphatic’, meaning ‘positive way’, the strident assertions of indisputable religious dogma and divine truth. The apophatic is a way of approaching what is ultimately unknown by identifying what that unknown cannot be. In religion it says God is not mortal (immortal), not visible (invisible) – note, saying nothing positive about God.

Okay...but if you say nothing positive about God, how do you know it's 'God' that you're talking about? Or to put it another way, why is whatever the [?] you are talking about called 'God'? Why that name in particular? Why not a different name, for a different subject, since this 'God' does seem to be a different subject. The 'God' that is usually meant by 'God' is not 'that which no one says anything positive about' - on the contrary. So why use that one name for two such different items?

Well, because we have to have 'God,' because it wouldn't be respectable not to, so we have to hang onto it by simply doing away with all the rules and saying God is this, God is that, God is not this or that, God is everything, God is nothing, God is whatever. God is just whatever you want God to be, darling, and nobody can tell you otherwise. We can be apophatic one day and cataphatic the next and there is not a damn thing those pesky secular bastards can do about it.

Anthony Gottlieb is not much impressed by the whole 'apophatic' thing.

Consider, for example, “The Case for God”, the latest of 22 books on religion by Karen Armstrong, who was once a Catholic nun but now espouses a vague, universalist religion of compassion. In her opinion, God “is not good, divine, powerful or intelligent in any way that we can understand. We could not even say that God ‘exists’, because our concept of existence is too limited.” Her main idea is that the only authentic and defensible God is one who utterly transcends human understanding and therefore cannot be described at all...What is even more baffling is the idea that one can talk about a wholly indescribable God who cannot be said to “exist” but who nevertheless in some sense “is”.

Quite. Gottlieb goes on to Eagleton next (Armstrong and Eagleton should form an act of some sort, like Abbot and Costello). Same kind of thing. He concludes sagely: 'A wiser response to the apparent inexpressibility of statements about God may be simply not to express them, and just get on with the gardening.' That's my view. If you're going to be apophatic, why not just move on and do something else? What is the point of saying you don't know and calling that 'God'?

Andrew Brown does love to yank the chain of non-believers.

Judges are paid to discriminate among prisoners before them, and to distinguish those for whom prison is the right treatment from everyone else. Defendants of otherwise good character should obviously get different sentences to habitual recidivists. The real disagreement is whether being a devout Muslim (or Christian) is in itself a sign of good character. Cherie Booth seems to be arguing that it is, though less important than his previously spotless record.

Right, Cherie Booth seems to be arguing that it is, and by implication that its absence is a sign of bad character, or else why mention it at all? She didn't say 'you have a spotless record and you drink Ribena' or ' 'you have a spotless record and you wear trainers'; she didn't make a random observation that no reasonable observer would construe as a claim about his character; she said 'you are a religious man.

For Sanderson and those who think like him, being a devout believer is quite the opposite. It's evidence of bad character. For Sanderson and those who think like him, being a devout believer is quite the opposite. It's evidence of bad character.

Interesting, except that Sanderson said nothing like that (and much less did 'those who think like him') so one is left wondering how Andrew Brown knows it. No one isn't, one is left marveling yet again at Andrew Brown's fondness for the truculent and untrue passing insult.

In Sanderson's world, judges should say things like "Although you have no previous convictions, you are none the less a follower of Pope Benedict XVI and so unable to tell right from wrong. I therefore find myself compelled to impose a custodial sentence."

There's another one. Not true, not pleasant, not justifiable.

I say this, of course, with the utmost affection.

Jerry Coyne and Orac have commented on Chris Mooney's article on how to deal with anti-vaxxers but I'll just add a thought.

Mooney asks what it would take to make the "vaccine-autism debate" (which isn't a real debate) go away.

A Lancet retraction isn’t going to do it, that’s for sure. For vaccine skeptics, that’s just more evidence of corruption and collusion in the medical establishment. Indeed, I doubt any individual scientific development has the strength to move these folks—because we aren’t dealing with a phenomenon that’s scientific in nature.

Quite right; we're dealing with irrational immovable conviction. What to do?

Instead, I believe we need some real attempts at bridge-building between medical institutions—which, let’s admit it, can often seem remote and haughty—and the leaders of the anti-vaccination movement. We need to get people in a room and try to get them to agree about something—anything. We need to encourage moderation, and break down a polarized situation in which the anti-vaccine crowd essentially rejects modern medical research based on the equivalent of conspiracy theory thinking...

As so often with Mooney, I have no idea what exactly he means by that. I do know vaguely what he means, because it's obvious enough, and it's all too typical - but I really don't know exactly. I know he means we need everybody to be nice, and try to heal this 'gap' or 'fissure' or 'polarity' by being nice and looking into one another's eyes and thinking 'this is just another nice person like me, after all'...but I also know he doesn't really literally mean that, because it's too silly. But what does he mean? I asked in a comment there (which I can do there! because I'm not banned there! because it's not The Intersection! it's so exciting):

How? How is it possible to do that when, as you say yourself, “we’re really dealing with something very irrational here”? What does it mean to “encourage moderation” when one side won’t take any notice of evidence or argument? What does it mean to talk of a “polarized situation” as if the issue were fundamentally political rather than empirical? What use is it to import the language of political discussion and compromise into a pseudo-controversy over medical evidence? What reason is there to think that absolutely everything can be translated into the language of politics and “framing” and manipulation?

What does he mean by 'moderation,' do you suppose? What kind of moderation can proponents of vaccination resort to? Talking in really soft voices? Smiling while they talk? What? It is not clear, because Mooney (as so very often, or even always) didn't make it clear. He just used some buzz words, and let it go at that. He's very lazy about this stuff, when you get right down to it. He's certainly not lazy in general; his first book was a triumph of energetic investigation. But he is very lazy about this; he thinks buzz words are all that's necessary.

And he thinks everything is political. I think that's where I disagree with him most profoundly - over this confusion of the epistemic with the political. I think 'moderation' on an empirical question is fundamentally meaningless, and I think making political noises about it just confuses things.

That's the thought I wanted to add.

Chris Mooney is seeking suggestions for his new gig.

I may as well make clear I am not going into this with the goal of having big arguments with leading New Atheists about science and religion.My position on this topic is well known...

No of course not - arguments are never what he wants. What he wants is to say what's what, and have everybody listen quietly and nod soberly and say 'Good idea, I never thought of it that way, I shall put your suggestions into effect immediately.' He's not at all interested in what people who don't agree with him say. And if his position on this topic is not well known, that's certainly not his fault, because god knows he's been repeating it faithfully and imperturbably for lo these many months. That is precisely why I think he's the wrong kind of person to host a podcast on inquiry. He's not interested in inquiry.

Pakistan. A 13-year-old girl.

My brother used to tell me that the place for a woman is either at home or in the grave. I was always restricted to home. He said: "If you leave the house I'll cut off your head and put it on your chest." My brother had been to the local school and beaten the girls and the teachers. He said anyone who wanted to study was a friend of America. I wanted to be a doctor. I wanted it so much that once I dreamt I was sitting in a hospital, working as a doctor. I wanted to help the poor, those who cannot afford medical fees.

Oh no - that's not what her brother and her father had in mind for her, or for her younger sister, either.

My father and brother told me to carry out a suicide attack. They were pressuring me to do this. They told me: "If you do it you will go to paradise long before us." I replied: "Why don't you tell me I will go to hell long before you?"...They started beating me when I refused. They beat me non-stop. They made my life hell. I never had a single moment of happiness. They did everything other than kill me.

And as for that sister...

Good old Charles, always stirring the pot, and doing it in such a grand aristocratic irresponsible way.

“I was accused once of being the enemy of the Enlightenment,” he told a conference at St James’s Palace. “I felt proud of that.”

Ah did you, you darling wee man. Well it's easy for you, isn't it, because if all the lights go out you can just get a lot of servants to hold the candles for you.

The Prince, who was talking at the annual conference of The Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment , went on: “I thought, ‘Hang on a moment’. The Enlightenment started over 200 years ago."

He's been studying Madeleine Bunting!

It might be time to think again and review it and question whether it is really effective in today’s conditions, faced as we are with huge challenges all over the world. It must be apparent to people deep down that we have to do something about it. We cannot go on like this, just imagining that the principles of the Enlightenment still apply now. I don’t believe they do. But if you challenge people who hold the Enlightenment as the ultimate answer to everything, you do really upset them.

That would be partly because nobody holds that and people who do hold Enlightenment values get very stinking tired of being characterized in that stupid way. Nobody nobody nobody 'holds the Enlightenment as the ultimate answer to everything' you ignorant git so why don't you get it right if you want to say something?

Not to mention of course the absurdity of assuming that just because an idea is 200 years old therefore 'we have to do something about it' i.e. get rid of it. The monarchy is a good deal older than that but we don't hear Chuck saying we have to do something about it, do we!

Instead, the Prince advocated a holistic approach to the world’s problems...“What is the point of all this clever technology if at the end of the day we lose our souls, and the soul of nature of which we are a part?”...The Prince also made an impassioned call for houses to be built so that birds, such as swallows and swifts, could make their nests there.

Holistic approach; souls; birds' nests. For that he thinks he has to do something about the Enlightenment? I don't see the necessity, myself.

The Lancet has retracted Andrew Wakefield's article that suggested that vaccines could cause autism. Therefore...

Jim Moody, a director of SafeMinds, a parents’ group that advances the notion the vaccines cause autism, said the retraction would strengthen Dr. Wakefield’s credibility with many parents.

I see. Years of investigation that turned up conflicts of interest and 'the overwhelming body of research by the world’s leading scientists that concludes there is no link between M.M.R. vaccine and autism' will strengthen Wakefield’s credibility with many parents. What kind of thing would weaken it then?

...an investigation by a British journalist found financial and scientific conflicts that Dr. Wakefield did not reveal in his paper. For instance, part of the costs of Dr. Wakefield’s research were paid by lawyers for parents seeking to sue vaccine makers for damages. Dr. Wakefield was also found to have patented in 1997 a measles vaccine that would succeed if the combined vaccine were withdrawn or discredited.

Would that do it? No? I suppose it would take a shaman and Tom Cruise doing a joint press conference saying no it's not vaccines it's the anger of The World Spirit. Or something.

Hey, why not ask the pope to host Point of Inquiry? He's a reasonable guy - rational, thoughtful, fair-minded, generous, liberal.

The Pope confirmed today that he will make an official state visit to Britain this September – and immediately launched an attack on the Government’s plans to introduce stronger equality legislation for gay men and women. In the first official announcement from the Vatican that the head of the Roman Catholic Church will tour Britain, Pope Benedict XVI called on his bishops to continue campaigning against the Equality Bill which he said threatened religious freedom.

That's nice, isn't it? A German fella who's the boss of a large church based in Rome is telling British bishops to campaign against equality legislation - because it's really up to Ratzinger to decide what kind of laws the UK should have. Not to mention the whole business of making a big public show of resisting equality in the first place.

In a letter to the Catholic bishops of England and Wales, many of whom are currently in Rome on an “ad limina” visit, Pope Benedict publicly criticised Britain’s equality legislation for the first time. “Your country is well known for its firm commitment to equality of opportunity for all members of society,” he wrote. “Yet as you have rightly pointed out, the effect of some of the legislation designed to achieve this goal has been to impose unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs. In some respects it actually violates the natural law upon which the equality of all human beings is grounded and by which it is guaranteed.”

Yes, there speaks the voice of the papacy and the church - the one that likes to deliver occasional announcements about the 'natural law' that dictates that women are different from men and had damn well better not forget it. Reactionary bastards.

In a separate warning to any bishop thinking of deviating from the Vatican’s lead on such controversial issues, Pope Benedict also reiterated the need for the Church to “speak with a united voice. In a social milieu that encourages the expression of a variety of opinions on every question that arises, it is important to recognise dissent for what it is, and not to mistake it for a mature contribution to a balanced and wide-ranging debate,” he said. “It is the truth revealed through scripture and tradition and articulated by the Church’s Magisterium that sets us free.”

Yes indeed, and arbeit macht frei. There's no freedom like the freedom of scripture and the Church’s Magisterium, so kindly recognize dissent for what it is and STFU.

This is not good news.

The Center for Inquiry has announced that there will be three new hosts for its popular podcast, Point of Inquiry. Joining the podcast are Chris Mooney, Karen Stollznow, and Robert Price...Mooney is expected to host about half of the approximately 50 new shows per year.

DJ Grothe, who was the host, left in December for a job as President of the James Randi Foundation. I was pleased at the time for DJ and for JREF, but worried for Point of Inquiry. DJ was a very good host.

Chris Mooney seems to me to be a very peculiar choice for that job. (He and Matthew Nisbet were both protégés of Paul Kurtz's - Nisbet in particular used to make a great point of this, and for all I know still does.) Mooney is not: Thoughtful enough. Inquiring enough. Reasonable enough. Fair enough.

He's especially, I think, not inquiring enough. He doesn't even seem to get what it is to be inquiring - it's not his thing. His thing is advocacy. Now advocacy is very useful, and it's good that there are people who do it, but that doesn't mean they're the right people to host podcasts about inquiry. Mooney is if anything hostile to inquiry - he's a results guy. I can't see him having the right kind of curiosity and open-mindedness to do a good job with PofI.

And then the fairness issue I think is a major stumbling block. Since the recent regrettable events, I wouldn't trust Mooney to be fair to anyone who had disagreed with him in the last eight months or so - and that covers a hell of a lot of people, many of whom are naturals for PofI. That's a huge change from DJ. It really seems like an odd choice - and not in a good way.

Addition: here's the Point of Inquiry I did in 2007. And here's Russell's from last October.