Critical Exponent

Ayaan Hirsi Ali asks in The New York Times where Islam’s moderates are. A better question, I think, is “what are progressives and moderates doing to prevent extremists of all stripes from hijacking social discourse?”

Right-wing Christians in the US bemoan a supposed assault on Christianity, since anything less than a state religion will not do. A presidential candidate needs to placate the religious right, reciting revised history in the process. Another candidate attributes his success to god alone. In American society at large, it matters much more that one invoke the name of the proper deity in the proper way than that one have sensible, concrete ideas to put ethical principles into action.

Do these folks not realize that conspicuous piety in fact speaks very poorly of their character, ethics, and value system?

Mark Lilla, writing the cover story for this week’s New York Times Magazine, uses the word theotropism. While a Google search reveals that this is not a neologism, I am delighted to run across such a succint term that captures the all-too-common drive to construe the world in divine, supernatural ways. My own speculation is that this is a mechanism for making sense of the environment that was useful in our infancy, as individuals and as a species—but which now all too easily leads us astray as sects feel called upon to enforce divine will on the unbelievers and apostates.

Here’s a good defense of atheism:

Fundamentalists do what they perceive as good deeds in order to fulfill God’s will and to earn salvation; atheists do them simply because it is the right thing to do. Is this also not our most elementary experience of morality? When I do a good deed, I do so not with an eye toward gaining God’s favor; I do it because if I did not, I could not look at myself in the mirror. A moral deed is by definition its own reward. David Hume, a believer, made this point in a very poignant way, when he wrote that the only way to show true respect for God is to act morally while ignoring God’s existence.

In a world where humanity is so content to hurt and marginalize others in God’s name, theists would do well to take note.

I am all for religious tolerance, and I happen to believe that the way Muslims often are marginalized in the Western World is wrong. However, the whole hubbub about the Danish cartoons is ridiculous and dangerous.

Yes, I understand that depictions of the Prophet are offensive to many Muslims. But guess what? These Muslims can choose not to depict the Prophet themselves, and not to read (or even to boycott) publications that do.

However, to be offended by a drawing, ink on paper or pixels on a computer screen, to the point of riots, arson, or worse, is to sacrifice the message for the symbol. Moreover, not all the world is Muslim, and it is ludicrous to hold others to one group’s standards, much less to impose these standards on the planet at large.

The people who are so outraged to the point of violence are no better than the fanatics of other stripes who would criminalize and persecute those who do not bow down before their idol, their dogma, their flag, or their party line. Instead of celebrating the strength and richness of Islam, they choose to put forward a face of an irrational mob that cannot be reasoned with.

There is a desire in the mainstream of Western societies, perhaps borne out of post(?)-imperialist guilt, to be sensitive to other cultures. That’s a worthy goal, but we must be careful, too, not to become so “sensitive” that we tear down the very framework of human values so laboriously constructed since the Enlightenment. Specifically, our governments and our press should defend the Danish newspaper’s freedom to publish such a provocative cartoon, even if they choose to voice their disagreements over the content or the decision to do so.

Slate’s Christopher Hitchens has a more detailed analysis, including the State Department’s and CNN’s tepid responses.

An executive committee member of the Southern Baptist Convention says “I was in the area pastoring to police.” (That’s a direct quote, according to the AP).

Religious conservatives are miffed that Pres. Bush, of all people, would send out generic holiday greetings rather than Christmas cards:

Many people are thrilled to get a White House Christmas card, no matter what the greeting inside. But some conservative Christians are reacting as if Bush stuck coal in their stockings.

“This clearly demonstrates that the Bush administration has suffered a loss of will and that they have capitulated to the worst elements in our culture,” said William A. Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights.

It’s the end of the year: Christmas and New Year’s occur within a week of each other, and they are legal holidays precisely because they are part of the majority religion. Is it enough to be thankful for having your faith’s celebrations be holidays? Apparently not. It is a time of the year when, quite apart from religious overtones, people celebrate, are in good cheer, and wish good will to all. Is it enough to spread the joy around? No. Apparently, nothing is enough until everyone bows down before the same crucifix and the masses are converted. After all, don’t you know that this majority religion with recognized legal holidays is so obviously in mortal peril because of those who express good wishes for everyone and not only for Christians?

Let me be clear: I don’t think it’s necessarily bad for the government to acknowledge a religious tradition, as long as it doesn’t endorse it. But to make this the leading social issue is to harp on words of tribute rather than deeds of faith, and smacks of hypocrisy.

“I think it’s more important to put Christ back into our war planning than into our Christmas cards,” said the [National Council of Churches'] general secretary, the Rev. Bob Edgar

The out-going president of the Royal Society warns of fundamentalism hampering our ability to deal with scientific challenges:

In his final speech as president of the Royal Society, Lord May of Oxford will say scientists must speak out against the climate change “denial lobby”.

He will warn core scientific values are “under serious threat from resurgent fundamentalism, West and East”….

“There are serious problems that derive from the realities of the external world: climate change, loss of biological diversity, new and re-emerging diseases, and more.

“Many of these threats are not yet immediate, yet their non-linear character is such that we need to be acting today.

“And we have no evolutionary experience of acting on behalf of a distant future; we even lack basic understanding of important aspects of our own institutions and societies.

“Sadly, for many, the response is to retreat from complexity and difficulty by embracing the darkness of fundamentalist unreason.”