Doesn't fit the narrative

Editing out inconvenient events. [Link]

So, imagine yourself as an NYT editor for a moment, if you can withstand the nausea. Why would you specifically take out the part about the Islamic terrorist proselytizing for Islam in the middle of the terrorist attack? Why delete this woman’s account of being threatened at gunpoint and being told to convert to Islam?

That’s easy. Because you’re one of America’s moral, ethical, and intellectual betters, and you don’t want it to be true. Your reporter hastily left that inconvenient truth in her story by accident, so you airbrushed it out, without any acknowledgment, to preserve the narrative. You turned it into, “Hey, maybe these guys aren’t so bad after all. They didn’t kill the women, right? Let’s not be too hasty.”

Because that’s your job.

The New York Times is garbage.

Update: In case you’re still confused…

@jtLOL Right on cue, other media outlets are distributing the sanitized, de-Islamized NYT version of the quote. http://t.co/UuA08UMToo

— John Hayward (@Doc_0) January 8, 2015

Update: From Radio France Internationale, translated into English.

Europe Under Seige

What we believe. [Link]

We in the West believe that blasphemy is a right and not a crime. And we in the West believe that Jews (and everyone else, for that matter) should be allowed to remain alive and have museums. (I would note, for those who believe that recent anti-Semitic attacks in Europe were caused by specific actions of the Israeli government, that a) anti-Semites cause anti-Semitism, not Israel; and, b) the Brussels attack occurred in May, well before the summer war in Gaza.)

The Charlie Hebdo massacre seems to be the most direct attack on Western ideals by jihadists yet. I’ve seen arguments advancing the idea that 9/11 represents the purest expression of Islamist rage at a specific Western idea— capitalism, in that case—but satire and the right to blaspheme are directly responsible for modernity. In the words of Simon Schama, “Irreverence is the lifeblood of freedom.”

The French president, Francois Hollande, said earlier today that, “No barbaric act will ever extinguish freedom of the press.” This statement is, as Claire Berlinski has pointed out, self-falsifying. This barbaric act, she notes, literally extinguished the press. The most recent iteration of the Islamist terror campaign in Europe has focused on Jews and cartoonists, but it will not end with Jews and cartoonists, unless it is comprehensively defeated.

The correct response

More speech, not less. [Link]

From Ross Douthat: 

If a large enough group of someones is willing to kill you for saying something, then it’s something that almost certainly needs to be said, because otherwise the violent have veto power over liberal civilization, and when that scenario obtains it isn’t really a liberal civilization any more. Again, liberalism doesn’t depend on everyone offending everyone else all the time, and it’s okay to prefer a society where offense for its own sake is limited rather than pervasive. But when offenses are policed by murder, that’s when we need more of them, not less, because the murderers cannot be allowed for a single moment to think that their strategy can succeed.In this sense, many of the Western voices criticizing the editors of Hebdo have had things exactly backward: Whether it’s theObama White House or Time Magazine in the past or the Financial Times and (God help us) the Catholic League today, they’ve criticized the paper for provoking violence by being needlessly offensive and “inflammatory” (Jay Carney’s phrase), when the reality is that it’s precisely the violence that justifies the inflammatory content.

Read the whole thing. Surprisingly, there are a number of readers who comment that this is the first time they’ve ever agreed with Douthat.

And in a bit of a disconnect, it’s ironic how Douthat’s piece is in the NYT but the paper has seemingly opted not to publish the Charlie Hebdo cartoon.

A stand for speech

Free speech must not be silenced. [Link]

Self-censoring out of fear means self-imposition of shari’a (Islamic law).

Self-censoring out of “respect” (actually just a euphemism for fear) means you are submitting to the terrorists’ worldview.

The way to overcome them in this instance is to overwhelm them with disrespect and mockery.

They can silence one magazine, but they can’t silence the entire Internet.

Every blogger, of every political stripe, be it left, right, and everywhere in between, needs to realize that freedom of speech and freedom of the press are the two keystones of your ideology, whatever it may be. You need to make a stand. You need to make these terrorists lose the ideological battle.

And the way to do that is to republish the Mohammed cartoons yourselves. Today. Right now.

Fill the world with images of Mohammed so that the terrorists realize they can never expunge them all.

But where to get the pictures? Easy.

The Mohammed Image Archive, which I have hosted at zombietime since the day of the original “Mohammed cartoon crisis” back in May of 2006, has not only a full collection of the original cartoons, but more importantly the largest collection of Mohammed imagery ever assembled in the history of the world.

World Vision almost does the right thing

Luckily, conservative Christians were able to convince World Vision to continue to discriminate.

[Link]

World Vision's American branch will no longer require its more than 1,100 employees to restrict their sexual activity to marriage between one man and one woman.

Abstinence outside of marriage remains a rule. But a policy change announced Monday [March 24] will now permit gay Christians in legal same-sex marriages to be employed at one of America's largest Christian charities.

In an exclusive interview, World Vision U.S. president Richard Stearns explained to Christianity Today the rationale behind changing this "condition of employment," whether financial or legal pressures were involved, and whether other Christian organizations with faith-based hiring rules should follow World Vision's lead.

Stearns asserts that the "very narrow policy change" should be viewed by others as "symbolic not of compromise but of [Christian] unity." He even hopes it will inspire unity elsewhere among Christians.

[Editor's note: All subsequent references to "World Vision" refer to its U.S. branch only, not its international umbrella organization.]

In short, World Vision hopes to dodge the division currently "tearing churches apart" over same-sex relationships by solidifying its long-held philosophy as a parachurch organization: to defer to churches and denominations on theological issues, so that it can focus on uniting Christians around serving the poor.

Given that more churches and states are now permitting same-sex marriages (including World Vision's home state of Washington), the issue will join divorce/remarriage, baptism, and female pastors among the theological issues that the massive relief and development organization sits out on the sidelines.

World Vision's board was not unanimous, acknowledged Stearns, but was "overwhelmingly in favor" of the change.

And the Reverse. [Link]

Only two days after announcing it would hire Christians in same-sex marriages, World Vision U.S. has reversed its ground-breaking decision after weathering intense criticism from evangelical leaders.

"The last couple of days have been painful," president Richard Stearns told reporters this evening. "We feel pain and a broken heart for the confusion we caused for many friends who saw this policy change as a strong reversal of World Vision's commitment to biblical authority, which it was not intended to be."

"Rather than creating more unity [among Christians], we created more division, and that was not the intent," said Stearns. "Our board acknowledged that the policy change we made was a mistake … and we believe that [World Vision supporters] helped us to see that with more clarity … and we're asking you to forgive us for that mistake."

"We listened to [our] friends, we listened to their counsel. They tried to point out in loving ways that the conduct policy change was simply not consistent … with the authority of Scripture and how we apply Scripture to our lives," said Stearns. "We did inadequate consultation with our supporters. If I could have a do-over on one thing, I would have done much more consultation with Christian leaders."

"What we are affirming today is there are certain beliefs that are so core to our Trinitarian faith that we must take a strong stand on those beliefs," said Stearns. "We cannot defer to a small minority of churches and denominations that have taken a different position."

They were left with the painful choice of following their consciences or following their pocket books.

I think we all know which one they followed.

Atheism vs Theism vs Agnosticsism vs Gnosticism

Good chart. I'm an Agnostic Atheist who occasionally dips into being an Agnostic Theist. [Link]

Monsters

When you shoot up a mall, killing anyone who is not your religion, then yes, you are a monster. [Link]

A four-year-old British boy caught up in the Kenya mall massacre showed astonishing bravery by confronting a marauding gunman who ended up begging for his forgiveness, it emerged today.

The child told one of the terrorists that he was a 'very bad man' as he protected his mother who had been shot in the leg, and six-year-old sister.

Incredibly, the attacker took pity on the family and bizarrely handed the children Mars bars before telling them: 'Please forgive me, we are not monsters.'

His story emerged as sporadic gunfire continued to ring out from inside the mall early today as Kenyan security forces battled Al Qaeda-linked terrorists into a fourth day.

Despite Kenyan police assurances that they had taken control of the building, a security expert with contacts inside the mall said at least 10 hostages were still being held by a band of attackers, possibly as many as 13.

Kenya's foreign minister Amina Mohamed said 'two or three' Americans and one British woman were among those who attacked the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi.

Three kinds of Rights and Atheists

Interesting and not just because I'm agnostic. [Link]

This leads me to the central reason that I think that modern atheists have an incoherent world view. (And, before anyone raises objections, this isn't to say that I think that atheists are bad people, bad citizens, behave less morally than theists, or anything else: it's merely a statement that the ethical construct is incoherent and lacking in rigor.)

The reason for arguing that modern western atheism is incoherent is not that it is irrational to disbelieve in God; I think that one can be entirely sane and rational and disbelieve in God (although I actually think that agnostics have beliefs that are much more consistent with pure rationality than either theists or atheists, but that's a side note).

No, the reason that modern atheists have incoherent views is that they simultaneously

1. assert that there is nothing beyond that which is visible (i.e. they are materialists)
2. they believe in rights, and not merely in a legal or social descriptive way, but in an absolute and prescriptive way.

Let me explain what I mean by point number 2.

The English language muddies many discussions of "rights" because it uses one term to cover three very distinct meanings.

The three meanings are:

1. the "rights" that society acknowledges a person has
2. the "rights" that government acknowledges a person has
3. the "rights" that a person actually has according to non-material abstract principles

I assert that almost everyone in the modern West, including "Brights" / "new atheists" / Ayn Rand followers / etc. acknowledges these three distinct things and acknowledges them as distinct. And it's that final one, the acknowledgement of non-material abstract principles, that puts the contradiction in modern atheism.

Before I go further, though, let's expand a bit on what these three things are and bring up some examples of how all of us treat them as distinct.

Let's start with an easy example:

• location / observer: Jim Crow south
• right: right of blacks to attend school as equals
• social acknowledgement: false
• gov acknowledgement: false
• modern view on abstract right: true

By this I mean that in the pre-Brown v Board of Ed era in Kansas, blacks did not have the right to attend school as equals according to either the social milieu in Kansas or according to the government in Kansas.

…and yet almost every modern atheist would choose to describe this not merely in flat factual terms, but in terms of "injustice".

What is an injustice? It is a violation of justice, which is itself a term with two meanings: the actual black-letter law, and also abstract principles of ethical behavior. Clearly anyone who calls legal racial discrimination in 1950 an injustice can not mean the former, because they have already acknowledged that it was legal – so they mean the latter, that there is some ethical principle that is being violated.

Why atheists can speak in the West

Something to think about the next time someone tries to say radical Christianity is equivalent to radical Islam. [Link]

Recently Bill Maher ripped into CSU San Bernadino professorBrian Levin for making the ridiculous equivalence between Christian extremism and Islamic extremism. The problem, which Maher pinpoints, is that Islamic extremism is not that extreme. By this, I mean that Islamic extremism (e.g., Muslim Brotherhood) has much greater broad based support than Christian extremism (e.g., Christian Reconstruction). The difference here is that you’ve heard of the Muslim Brotherhood, while far fewer have heard of Christian Reconstructionists. That’s because the former have democratic support in a populous Muslim country as the ruling party.

The standard liberal cant is to change the subject, and point to the past history of Christianity, or engage in unrepresentative comparisons. Since I know more history and religion than most of my interlocutors, I have little patience for this. Sophistry loses its power when the tactics are often so nakedly amateurish. And this is not simply abstraction. Let’s look at what’s been happening in Bangladesh, the country in which I was born, BANGLADESH’S ISLAMISTS CALL FOR DEATH OF ‘ATHEIST BLOGGERS’:

On April 6, hundreds of thousands of men and boys spread out across the sweltering capital Dhaka to call for, among other things, the hanging of atheists. The mass mobilization of Islamists was spurred by a handful of “atheist” bloggers who are supposedly so offensive to Islam that they should face the hangman’s noose.

“There is no place in this country for atheists,” was one of the friendlier refrains that a supporter of the organizers, Hefazet Islami, a Sunni Muslim outfit from the country’s second largest city, Chittagong, told me.

The Islamist marchers listed 84 bloggers who they demand be arrested or hanged, In February an atheist blogger named Rajib was stabbed to death a month after blogger Asif Mohiuddin was nearly killed for his beliefs.

First, Bangladesh is a moderate Muslim country. The ruling party is secular. It is not an Islamic state. Rather, in an old fashioned 1970s socialist manner it is officially the People’s Republic of Bangladesh. But in deference to the religiously conservative nature of the populace there is still some mixing of church & state, as we would understand it in the West. But Bangladesh, unlike Pakistan, has not opted for a monotone Islamic identity. The national anthem was written by a Hindu.

Stop Apologizing

You do NOT apologize for Freedom of Speech. [Link]

I also get that you've been attacked by a howling mob that vastly outnumbers you, you have very limited defenses, and the willingness of the local constabulary to protect your lives is in doubt.

So I'm not going to fault you if you sweat and stammer and need a few minutes to get it together. It's scary. I understand.

But you know what? I'm not going to sit by quietly when you issue apusillanimous press release misstating and abandoning core American values.

The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims – as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions. Today, the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, Americans are honoring our patriots and those who serve our nation as the fitting response to the enemies of democracy. Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy. We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others.

Every sentence of this is chock-full of un-American bullshit. Yes, I said un-American. And I meant it.

First, U.S. Embassy in Cairo, you issued this because a mob attacked you because its members were angry about a movie they heard is being made. Mob violence against disfavored speech shouldn't result in a timorous "we're sorry you were offended" from the United States government. That encourages more violence, thus endangering people everywhere, and reinforces a view of speech that I will very deliberately call inferior and barbaric. You have no business whatsoever underming perhaps the most important American civic value.

Second, your second sentence is either a complete non-sequitur or a further capitulation. Do you mean to pronounce, on behalf of the government, that there's a "fitting" way and wrong way to commemorate 9/11, and that expression that offends people is the wrong way? We don't need the government to tell us that, thank you.

Third, "[r]espect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy" is a false statement. Respect for the freedom to worship — along with freedom of expression — is a cornerstone of American democracy. Government-enforced displays of respect, or government protection from offense, are not cornerstones of American democracy.

Evangelical About Face

We have always been at war with Eastasia. [Link]

In 1979, McDonald’s introduced the Happy Meal.

Sometime after that, it was decided that the Bible teaches that human life begins at conception.

Ask any American evangelical, today, what the Bible says about abortion and they will insist that this is what it says. (Many don’t actually believe this, but they know it is the only answer that won’t get them in trouble.) They’ll be a little fuzzy on where, exactly, the Bible says this, but they’ll insist that it does.

That’s new. If you had asked American evangelicals that same question the year I was born you would not have gotten the same answer.

That year, Christianity Today — edited by Harold Lindsell, champion of “inerrancy” and author of The Battle for the Bible — published a special issue devoted to the topics of contraception and abortion. That issue included many articles that today would get their authors, editors — probably even theirreaders — fired from almost any evangelical institution. For example, one article by a professor from Dallas Theological Seminary criticized the Roman Catholic position on abortion as unbiblical. Jonathan Dudley quotes from the article in his book Broken Words: The Abuse of Science and Faith in American Politics. Keep in mind that this is from a conservative evangelical seminary professor, writing in Billy Graham’s magazine for editor Harold Lindsell:

God does not regard the fetus as a soul, no matter how far gestation has progressed. The Law plainly exacts: “If a man kills any human life he will be put to death” (Lev. 24:17). But according to Exodus 21:22-24, the destruction of the fetus is not a capital offense. … Clearly, then, in contrast to the mother, the fetus is not reckoned as a soul.

Christianity Today would not publish that article in 2012. They might not even let you write that in comments on their website. If you applied for a job in 2012 with Christianity Today or Dallas Theological Seminary and they found out that you had written something like that, ever, you would not be hired.

At some point between 1968 and 2012, the Bible began to say something different. That’s interesting.

Even more interesting is how thoroughly the record has been rewritten. We have always been at war with Eastasia.

Occupy Providence protests Catholic Schoolgirls by throwing condoms at them

So does this mean the 1% are Catholic Schoolgirls? Catholic Schoolgirls are responsible for high student loans? Catholic Schoolgirls are greedy, fat-cat bankers? [Link]

Because nothing says speaking truth to power like standing up to little girls. Right?

From LifeSiteNews…

PROVIDENCE, RI, January 30, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – Demonstrators from the Occupy Wall Street movement threw condoms on Catholic schoolgirls, refused to allow a Catholic priest to give a closing prayer, and shouted down a pro-life speaker at a Rhode Island right to life rally on Thursday, according to its organizer. The event marked the third time protesters associated with the movement have disrupted a pro-life meeting in a week.

About two-dozen members of Occupy Providence hiked from Burnside Park to the 39th Annual Pro-Life State House Rally organized by the Rhode Island State Right to Life Committee on Thursday.

Classy… BTW, Aren’t these folks always saying they’re all about free speech? How exactly does shouting other people down qualify as a defense of free speech?

UPDATE I: As Glenn Reynolds points out, if you threw bacon at Muslims you’d be a racist.

I am pro choice and I am appalled at this. The more the Occupy crowd hangs around, the more reprehensible they appear. I do not think they get that.

Jewish Annotated New Testament

Fascinating. [Link]

Jewish scholars have typically been involved only with editions of the Old Testament, which Jews call the Hebrew Bible or, using a Hebrew acronym, the Tanakh. Of course, many curious Jews and Christians consult all sorts of editions, without regard to editor. But among scholars, Christians produce editions of both sacred books, while Jewish editors generally consult only the book that is sacred to them. What’s been left out is a Jewish perspective on the New Testament — a book Jews do not consider holy but which, given its influence and literary excellence, no Jew should ignore.

So what does this New Testament include that a Christian volume might not? Consider Matthew 2, when the wise men, or magi, herald Jesus’s birth. In this edition, Aaron M. Gale, who has edited the Book of Matthew, writes in a footnote that “early Jewish readers may have regarded these Persian astrologers not as wise but as foolish or evil.” He is relying on the first-century Jewish philosopher Philo, who at one point calls Balaam, who in the Book of Numbers talks with a donkey, a “magos.”

Because the rationalist Philo uses the Greek word “magos” derisively — less a wise man than a donkey-whisperer — we might infer that at least some educated Jewish readers, like Philo, took a dim view of magi. This context helps explain some Jewish skepticism toward the Gospel of Matthew, but it could also attest to how charismatic Jesus must have been, to overcome such skepticism.

This volume is thus for anybody interested in a Bible more attuned to Jewish sources. But it is of special interest to Jews who “may believe that any annotated New Testament is aimed at persuasion, if not conversion,” Drs. Levine and Brettler write in their preface. “This volume, edited and written by Jewish scholars, should not raise that suspicion.”

Jews who peek inside these forbidding covers will also find essays anticipating the arguments of Christian evangelists. Confronted by Christians who extol their religion’s conceptions of neighbor love or the afterlife, for example, many Jews do not know their own tradition’s teachings. So “The Jewish Annotated New Testament” includes essays like “The Concept of Neighbor in Jewish and Christian Ethics” and “Afterlife and Resurrection.”

At a panel discussion before the book party, Drs. Brettler and Levine conceded that the New Testament’s moments of anti-Semitism would be too much for some to overlook (especially protective Jewish mothers).

“I told one woman I knew that her son might really like this book,” Dr. Brettler said. “She said, ‘If he wants it, he can buy it for himself.’ ”

Thirty years ago, when Dr. Levine was starting graduate school, an aunt asked her why she was reading the New Testament. “I said, ‘Have you read it?’ and she said, ‘No, why would I read that hateful, anti-Semitic disgusting book?’ ”

But Dr. Levine insists her aunt, like other Jews, had nothing to fear. “The more I study New Testament,” Dr. Levine said, “the better Jew I become.”

When 'Christianists' Don't Attack

They still scare people unreasonably. [Link]

For decades now, shocked lefty journalists have gingerly ventured into the dark American interior, emerging with terrifying tales of “Christianist” plots to hijack American democracy and install theocratic rule.  There’s an endless appetite for these stories on the secular left, and the fact that none of these Christianists dictatorships ever appear doesn’t seem to diminish the credulity with which each new “revelation” is greeted by the easily spooked.

And here's why:

In any case, if anybody in America ever establishes a theocracy, it is unlikely to be evangelicals.  Almost all American evangelicals come out of religious traditions that were persecuted in either Europe or the US or both by “established” churches tied to the government.  It became an article of faith for the persecuted evangelicals that church and state should be kept at arms length.  Even in apocalyptic fiction like the Left Behind series, the merger of church and state is one of the signs of the approach of Antichrist and signals the start of a great persecution.  For the most part, American evangelicals viscerally loathe the idea that church and state should act together to enforce religious orthodoxy.

That is still the overwhelmingly dominant position among the roughly one fourth of Americans who consider themselves evangelicals (and their cousins the Pentecostals).  That hasn’t changed in 200 years and is very unlikely to change in the next 25.

Atheists Sue to Block Display of Cross-Shaped Beam in 9/11 Museum

Sigh. Just because something may have religious significance does not mean it does not have historical significance. Once again, a strident group of atheists feel the need to piss in everyone else's cheerios. [Link]

In the days after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, some workers and mourners at the World Trade Center site seized upon a cross-shaped steel beam found amid the rubble as a symbol of faith and hope.

For the past five years, the 17-foot-tall cross was displayed outside a nearby Catholic church. On Saturday it was moved again, to the site of the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, where it is to be in the permanent collection.

But the move quickly provoked a lawsuit from American Atheists, a nonprofit group based in New Jersey. It argued that because the cross is a religious symbol of Christianity and the museum is partly government financed and is on government property, the cross’s inclusion in the museum violates the United States Constitution and state civil rights law. The lawsuit, in turn, provoked the ire of the American Center for Law and Justice, a conservative public interest law firm, as well as others.

Now, the dispute over the “World Trade Center cross” is becoming the latest in a string of heated conflicts over how to memorialize the Sept. 11 attacks. It comes less than two months before the 10th anniversary of 9/11, and in the wake of a feverish debate over the construction of an Islamic cultural center and mosque within blocks of the trade center site.

Marc D. Stern, who is the associate general counsel of the American Jewish Committee and has long studied church-state issues, said the lawsuit presented “an extra-difficult case.”

“It’s a significant part of the story of the reaction to the attack, and that is a secular piece of history,” he said. “It’s also very clear from the repeated blessing of the cross, and the way believers speak about the cross, that it has intense present religious meaning to many people. And both of those narratives about this cross are correct.”

I am an atheist, but I usually refer to myself as an agnostic for exactly this kind of behavior as well the smugly superior attitude many display towards those who do believe something.

There seems to be two kinds of atheists:

• The first, do not have belief, do not feel spiritual, but have no animus towards those who do.
• The second, treat it as religion. (And it infuriates them when you point this out)

A European Revolution in the Muslim World

The birth rate is dropping to European levels. [Link]

But here's the problem. In just the last thirty years or so, those very Middle Eastern countries that used to teem with children and adolescents have gone through a startling demographic transformation. Since the mid-1970s, Algeria's fertility rate has collapsed from over 7 to 1.75, Tunisia's from 6 to 2.03, Morocco's from 6.5 to 2.21, Libya's from 7.5 to 2.96. Today, Algeria's rate is roughly equivalent to that of Denmark or Norway; Tunisia's is comparable to France. Counter-intuitively, that remark about "the closer to Rome" also holds good on the southern, Muslim, side of the Mediterranean.

Just what is happening here? Everything depends on the changing attitudes and expectation of the women in these once highly-traditional societies. Across the region, women have become increasingly involved in higher education, and have moreover moved into full-time employment. That sea-change simply makes it unthinkable for women to manage a rampaging tribe of seven or eight children. Often, too, images of women's proper role in life have been upended by extended contacts with Europe. Migrants to France or Italy return home with changed attitudes, while families who stay at home find it hard to avoid the media portrayals of Western lives they see via cable and satellite dish. Maybe Europe and the Middle East are merging into one common Eurabia - but it's far from clear which side is doing a better job of imposing its opinions on the other. Presently, it looks as if the Maghreb is becoming European.

Such a wrenching change cannot fail to have political implications. In a country with a Third World fertility rate, it is very unlikely that women will seek or be granted education: their designated career path as mothers is starkly clear. Meanwhile, adolescents and young men proliferate, and provide ample cannon fodder for armies or militias, to whom life is cheap. (Yemen's fertility rate is still over 5.0, Somalia's is 6.4). But then imagine a newer, more European society, in which men and women are intensely concerned about their nuclear families, and have invested their love and attention into just one or two offspring. As citizens become more educated, they are not prepared to accept the demagoguery and systematic corruption that has long passed for government in those regions. They see themselves as responsible members of a civil society, with aspirations that demand to be met: they feel they deserve full democratic participation. Of course the recent turmoil began in Tunisia, with its very low fertility rate and its intimate ties to France.

Sudden demographic change also seems to be closely linked to secularization, a point of potentially great significance in the Middle East. Smaller family sizes can result from a decline in religious ideologies, but falling fertility can itself drive such a decline, as has happened in modern Christian Europe. When children abounded, as they did in the 1950s, strong pressures kept families close to religious institutions, as they sought common religious training and religious rituals. parents attended churches to ensure their children received the familiar cultural heritage. Church prestige rode high when priests were shepherding hundreds of local children through annual confirmation classes. But as the children became scarce from the 1970s onwards, so the churches emptied. At the same time, couples highly concerned with their own personal and emotional fulfillment became increasingly impatient about clerical attempts to enforce morality laws. Women, especially, became highly disaffected from the mainstream churches.

Koran Burning == 11 Dead

Murderous overreaction. [Link]

The only people responsible for murders are those who commit them, and those who specifically incite them to kill.  Any other position eventually wipes out free speech, free religious practice, and freedom altogether.  If we held others responsible for the acts of every nutcase whose violent reactions may or may not have connections to something they did or said, we would have no speech at all — a point we made repeatedly during the Left’s Loughner frenzy, which they conveniently forgot during the Madison protests.

James Joyner warns today about acknowledging the “murderer’s veto”:

Should Jones have burned the Koran? No. But not because doing so might incite some evil people halfway around the world to commit atrocities against innocents. Rather, he shouldn’t have done it was needlessly hurtful without adding any value to the debate. Indeed, aside from generating publicity for himself, he’s likely generated sympathy for Islam and disdain for churches of his ilk.

But Jones is not the slightest bit culpable for the actions of others. Yes, he was warned that violence might ensue. But we’re not responsible for the evil, illegal actions others might take in response to our freely expressing our thoughts. Even if they’re ill-informed, half baked, bigoted thoughts. If we allow the possible reaction of the most dogmatic, evil people who might hear the message to govern our expression, we don’t have freedom at all. It’s worse than a heckler’s veto; it’s a murderer’s veto.

The responsibility for these murders lie with the people who committed them, just as with the murders and violence following the publication of the editorial cartoons in Denmark a few years ago.

Burning a religious book is offensive, but rioting and murdering is ridiculous. Why are they held to a lower ethical standard?

Cognitive Dissonance

Religion of peace overreacting. [Link]

Unable to find Americans on whom to vent their anger, the mob turned instead on the next-best symbol of Western intrusion — the nearby United Nations headquarters. “Some of our colleagues were just hunted down,” said a spokesman for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, Kieran Dwyer, confirming that the attack.

So they attacked representatives of the UN, which is bombing Muslims, because they couldn’t find representatives of America, which is also bombing Muslims but more importantly is where some weirdo burned a Koran a few weeks ago. Okay. But don’t worry, Mr. Talky made it all better with his magic words:

In Washington President Obama issued a statement strongly condemning the violence against United Nations workers. “Their work is essential to building a stronger Afghanistan for the benefit of all its citizens,” he said. “We stress the importance of calm and urge all parties to reject violence.”

I was taken aback by this at first, considering what’s going on in Libya, but then I remembered that he’s not George Bush so never mind.

Well, the last people we should blame are the actual rioters. As JWF puts it: “Eight People Murdered for Book Burning Half a World Away.”

Social psychologist bombshells

Attitudes towards religion and non liberals in Social Psychology. [Link]

Social psychology has long been a haven for left-wing scholars. Jonathan Haidt, one of  the best known and most respected young social psychologists, has heaved two bombshells at his field—one indicting it for effectively excluding conservatives (he is a liberal) and the other for what he sees as a jaundiced and cult-like opposition to religion (he is an atheist).

Here he is on the treatment of conservatives:

I submit to you that the under-representation of conservatives in social psychology, by a factor of several hundred, is evidence that we are a tribal moral community that actively discourages conservatives from entering. … We should take our own rhetoric about the benefits of diversity seriously and apply it to ourselves. … Just imagine if we had a true diversity of perspectives in social psychology.  Imagine if conservative students felt free enough to challenge our dominant ideas, and bold enough to pull us out of our deepest ideological ruts. That is my vision for our bright  post-partisan future.

And here he is on religion:

Surveys have long shown that religious believers in the United States are happier, healthier, longer-lived, and more generous to charity and to each other than are secular people.  Most of these effects have been documented in Europe too. …Atheists may have many other virtues, but on one of the least controversial and most objective measures of moral behavior -- giving time, money, and blood to help strangers in need -- religious people appear to be morally superior.

Religious discrimination

Richard Dawkins calls for discrimination against those who might be evangelical. [Link]

Some background: in 2007, Gaskell was up for a position at the University of Kentucky. He was a hot contender, but one of the members of the search committee researched his religious beliefs and concluded that he was "potentially evangelical." He was questioned about his faith in his interview, and ultimately didn't get the job-- despite, according to one committee member, being "breathtakingly above the other applicants in background and experience."  E-mails sent among the search committee submitted as evidence in the case make it clear that Gaskell's religious beliefs-- which don't play a role in any of his peer-reviewed work on quasars and supermassive black holes-- were pretty much the only factor in the committee's decision not to hire him. Gaskell is not a creationist, and accepts the theory of evolution-- things which would be unlikely to turn up in his work anyway. All of which renders that phrase "potentially evangelical" even more chilling. Gaskell was rejected not because he wasn't the right guy for the job, and not even because his beliefs conflicted with his duties. He wasn't even rejected for beliefs that he actually held. He was rejected because of his membership in a group that also contains individuals whose beliefs are in conflict with a related department to the one in which he was applying to teach. It was a clear-cut case of religious discrimination, and the school has settled the case out of court for $125,000.

Enter Dawkins, who concludes from this that all kinds of beliefs, religious and otherwise, should justly and rightly serve as grounds for dismissal or rejection of employment, laying out several hypothetical cases-- none of them bearing more than a superficial resemblance to the Gaskell case-- in which he feels discrimination would be just. He even laments that "the word 'discriminate' carries such unfortunate baggage." The piece reads like an opening salvo in a witch hunt for "the creationists among us": it is a call for greater prejudice. 

The entire argument rests on the faulty assumption that religious ideas are protected and non-religious ideas are not. I'm no lawyer, but it seems to me that if I were dismissed from my job because I believe in a subterranean super-race of mole people, I would start taking notes for my wrongful dismissal suit. Unless that belief interferes with my completion of assigned tasks (I am an excavator operator who will not break ground on a building project for fear of angering the mole people) or it interferes with my coworkers, clients, or customers (sales are down at the hardware store because I keep scaring people away with talk of their underground masters when all they wanted to do was buy a hammer). My personal beliefs-- religious or otherwise-- are personal, and if they don't interfere with my job, then there is no cause for termination. 

In the Gaskell case, of course, it's even more preposterous: Gaskell doesn't believe that the Earth is 6,000 years old any more than he believes that the mole people are preparing to reclaim the surface world. But Dawkins' entire article is framed to mislead the reader into believing Gaskell is a secret creationist. The attempt to paint Gaskell with the creationist brush has its roots deep in Dawkins' views of religion in general, and the idea of God in particular. Dawkins will only grant that Gaskell "claims... that he is not a full-blooded YEC [young earth creationist]." For Dawkins it can only be a "claim," not a fact, and that use of "full-blooded" shows that he is only capable of considering religious people as holding some degree of creationist ideas. Dawkins includes a selectively-clipped quote from Gaskell, " I have a lot of respect for people who hold this view because they are strongly committed to the Bible," Dawkins quotes. A-ha! A creationist! But here's the remainder of the quote: "...but I don't believe it is the interpretation the Bible requires of itself, and it certainly clashes head-on with science." Gaskell does what Dawkins cannot: see multiple ways of reading a text.

Dawkins is narrow minded in exactly the same way he claims those who are religious are.