I must apologise to readers for not saying anything about the "Blair talks to God" row that briefly flared over the weekend. Indeed, some people may have been under the impression that this was a story of some significance, given the attention the BBC was paying to it. However, as everyone now knows, what Blair actually said was completely unobjectionable. The fuss was caused not by his words, but by the BBC trying to generate publicity for its own television programme. The Beeb have recently brought Michael Parkinson, the king of chat, over from ITV at vast expense and badly need to justify the cost. Hence, their generation of artificial controversy where none should exist. In the end, we got a load of village atheists making fools of themselves and proving that they never check the evidence before spouting off (if you really care, you can read some comment by them here). I was particularly amused by the National Secular Society representative on BBC News 24.
Last night, we witnessed a bit more media fuelled hysteria on Channel 4 as Rod Liddle, actually quite a fine journalist, went looking for trouble at three schools run by Christian second hand car dealer (a contradiction in terms surely!) Reg Vardy. Despite his efforts, Rod failed to show that the schools were indoctrinating kids. Instead, we found that they taught evolution as they were supposed to be but that some teachers were brave enough to admit they didn't believe in it. I would disagree with these teachers but Liddle (who entertainingly lost his cool during an interview) seemed to imply that being a creationist should disqualify you from teaching. Now that would be bigotry. The show was actually quite a good advertisement for the school, showing neatly dressed kids sitting quietly in lessons getting excellent exam results. The school's tough approach to discipline did mean that some disruptive kids had been excluded. We met a couple and one couldn't help feeling that their exclusion was a further plus point for the school.
Britain is a notoriously irreligous country. But now secularists are beginning to worry that they are not going to have it so easy for much longer. I welcome an increase of religious sensibility and hope that we are seeing some sort of revival in Christianity as well as Islam in the UK. If that is the case, we can expect to see more ranting from the anti-religious. Eventually, though, they might learn that rants alone are not enough to win arguments.
Comments or questions? Post them at Bede's dedicated yahoo group.
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Yet More of Zero
A little while ago, I posted on the myth that the church tried to ban zero (the posts are here and here). Here's the sequel.
The other day, Dick Teresi, the author of Lost Discoveries emailed me about an unrelated matter. I took the opportunity to ask him about his contention about zero being banned. He said that Charles Mann, author of 1491, had already asked him about this because a blogger had challenged it. That blogger was actually my friend Chris Price (whose own blog post is here) bouncing off my own questions about zero. Anyway, Teresi did the same research as me and came to the same conclusion, that the story is untrue. It seems everyone, including Charles Seife, originally got it from Tobias Dantzig's book Number which has no reference.
None of these authors should be blamed for repeating a story which seemed totally plausible to them. But the whole thing does illustrate how myths can get going even among science writers. A learned explanation of resistance to Arabic numbers in general (not just to zero) is given by Alexander Murray in chapter 7 of his Reason and Society in the Middle Ages. He shows that the concern was about fraud rather than anything religious, even if the Church had some hand in policing the honesty of merchants. More to the point, Arabic numbers were widely used in the Middle Ages and eventually won universal acceptance because they were just too useful to ignore.
Comments or questions? Post them at Bede's dedicated yahoo group.
The other day, Dick Teresi, the author of Lost Discoveries emailed me about an unrelated matter. I took the opportunity to ask him about his contention about zero being banned. He said that Charles Mann, author of 1491, had already asked him about this because a blogger had challenged it. That blogger was actually my friend Chris Price (whose own blog post is here) bouncing off my own questions about zero. Anyway, Teresi did the same research as me and came to the same conclusion, that the story is untrue. It seems everyone, including Charles Seife, originally got it from Tobias Dantzig's book Number which has no reference.
None of these authors should be blamed for repeating a story which seemed totally plausible to them. But the whole thing does illustrate how myths can get going even among science writers. A learned explanation of resistance to Arabic numbers in general (not just to zero) is given by Alexander Murray in chapter 7 of his Reason and Society in the Middle Ages. He shows that the concern was about fraud rather than anything religious, even if the Church had some hand in policing the honesty of merchants. More to the point, Arabic numbers were widely used in the Middle Ages and eventually won universal acceptance because they were just too useful to ignore.
Comments or questions? Post them at Bede's dedicated yahoo group.
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
It's Not Been a Good Month for Freedom of Speech
In 1996, a British judge described David Irving as a holocaust denier, anti-Semite and racist after he lost a libel case he had brought himself. This all looked pretty fair to me. This week, Irving said he now accepted that the holocaust did happen after all. I have to say I am totally unconvinced by this change of heart which looks like an attempt to placate an Austrian judge. It didn't work and Irving was sentenced to three years in jail. Austria is a country with a seriously horrible skeleton in the closet. While it has successfully made out that World War II was all Germany's fault, the Austrians were enthusiastic allies. Worse, fascism is still popular and racism endemic. A couple of years ago a neo-Fascist party was even elected to join the government. Austria has long had a live and let live attitude to the multitude of Nazi war criminals that lived there. It is ironic that their only recent attempt to combat domestic fascism has been to imprison a British nut case. To liberals like me, this hypocrisy simply underlines Austria's credentials as the most fascist state in Europe.
Freedom of speech is a misunderstood concept. We actually do not need freedom of speech to say uncontentious things like the holocaust happened or poverty is bad. The freedom exists so that people can say things that are outrageous, offensive, wrong and abhorrent. A freedom that only applies to people who don't need to use it is pointless. Free speech is rapidly dying in Europe. Let me be clear that I do defend the right of people to make blasphemous or religiously offensive comments. I also have the right to argue stridently against the people doing so.
The problem with being a liberal is not that you have to defend the likes of Irving. Instead, it is being accused of defending him when you are only trying to defend rights that took centuries to achieve. Unless the media wake up soon, they will find that their freedom will have been eroded far more than they realised.
Scarely less craven is the British government's silence. If an old Stalinist was imprisoned in a far away country for denying the Ukrainian famine, all hell would break loose. But because they think Irving is beneath contempt (and let's face it, he is), freedom of speech can go to hell. Actually, the UK has just made glorifying terrorism a criminal offence. This is a stupid law and strongly suggests that fascism has even crept into the UK Labour Party.
Comments or questions? Post them at Bede's dedicated yahoo group.
Freedom of speech is a misunderstood concept. We actually do not need freedom of speech to say uncontentious things like the holocaust happened or poverty is bad. The freedom exists so that people can say things that are outrageous, offensive, wrong and abhorrent. A freedom that only applies to people who don't need to use it is pointless. Free speech is rapidly dying in Europe. Let me be clear that I do defend the right of people to make blasphemous or religiously offensive comments. I also have the right to argue stridently against the people doing so.
The problem with being a liberal is not that you have to defend the likes of Irving. Instead, it is being accused of defending him when you are only trying to defend rights that took centuries to achieve. Unless the media wake up soon, they will find that their freedom will have been eroded far more than they realised.
Scarely less craven is the British government's silence. If an old Stalinist was imprisoned in a far away country for denying the Ukrainian famine, all hell would break loose. But because they think Irving is beneath contempt (and let's face it, he is), freedom of speech can go to hell. Actually, the UK has just made glorifying terrorism a criminal offence. This is a stupid law and strongly suggests that fascism has even crept into the UK Labour Party.
Comments or questions? Post them at Bede's dedicated yahoo group.
Thursday, February 16, 2006
Another Bad Book on Christianity Being Good
Continuing on with Tuesday's theme, I reviewed Rodney Stark's For the Glory of God here a while ago. I gave it a bit of a pasting, I'm afraid. It seems that Stark has not learned his lesson and his new book, The Victory of Reason, sounds every bit as bad. It's reviewed by Alan Wolfe in the New Republic and you can read that here.
Now I probably don't see eye to eye with the reveiwer, Mr Wolfe, on many matters. But he has Stark bang to rights. Although Stark overstates his case, I don't think he is actually all that wrong. Rather he doesn't do his home work, ignores counter-examples and does know the field well enough to make such sweeping claims.
The most awful thing is that Wolfe cites Charles Freeman's The Closing of the Western Mind as putting Stark to shame. This is depressing because Freeman's effort is almost as inaccurate and one-sided as Stark's (although Freeman does know his sources better and is not nearly so polemical). So, not only does Stark fail to convince a hostile reader, he also allows Wolfe to continue clinging to his comfort blanket of the old anti-Christian orthodoxies.
Comments or questions? Post them at Bede's dedicated yahoo group.
Now I probably don't see eye to eye with the reveiwer, Mr Wolfe, on many matters. But he has Stark bang to rights. Although Stark overstates his case, I don't think he is actually all that wrong. Rather he doesn't do his home work, ignores counter-examples and does know the field well enough to make such sweeping claims.
The most awful thing is that Wolfe cites Charles Freeman's The Closing of the Western Mind as putting Stark to shame. This is depressing because Freeman's effort is almost as inaccurate and one-sided as Stark's (although Freeman does know his sources better and is not nearly so polemical). So, not only does Stark fail to convince a hostile reader, he also allows Wolfe to continue clinging to his comfort blanket of the old anti-Christian orthodoxies.
Comments or questions? Post them at Bede's dedicated yahoo group.
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Some New Books Say Christianity is a Good Thing. But Are They Any Good?
Thomas E. Woods, a right-wing popular historian, recently brought out a book called How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization. Woods' own plug for his book is hosted by a libertarian web site here. Woods has a PhD and something useful to say, but I fear that he has produced an extremely one-sided account of European history. That view was echoed in the Times Literary Supplement last week when they reviewed the book. You could argue, with some justification, that Woods has a right to be polemical. After all, anti-Catholic history has dominated the English speaking world since the Reformation. Worse, a good deal of Protestant propaganda has now been taken over by radical atheists as another weapon with which to beat Christianity.
Yes, the traditional history of the Catholic Church is almost completely wrong. There is a huge amount of work to be done overturning this orthodoxy and bringing the truth to light. I fear Woods isn't keen on doing the work. He has given a sustained case in favour of one side of the argument based entirely on secondary sources. He has done little to leaven that with some opposing views. The fact is you cannot get away with a history of the Church which ignores the Inquisition, makes out that Jewish and Greek thought had no input into European ideas and gives the Catholic Church credit for nearly everything. Protestantism can make its own claims towards furthering capitalism, human rights and natural science. So too can secularism. What we have to avoid are the old histories that refused to give any ground to opposing traditions. Secularism cannot claim science as its own, nor can it disown the tragedies that resulted from secular utopianism. But it can also lay claim to important ethical work such as Mills and Paine as well as a big chunk of post-Darwinian science (good and bad).
To replace a consensus requires a great deal more than preaching to your own denomination's choir. You have to start convincing people who are not already sympathetic to your point of view. Thus, you must not simply argue as a member of a particular minority. Nor can you allow your work to be ghettoised as 'Catholic' or 'Right wing'.
In fact, I think progress is being made. Back in the 1980s and 1990s it was still possible to write a book like William Manchester's A World Lit only By Fire or Daniel Boorstin's The Discoverers. Both were complete tosh. Nowadays, you have to nod at least towards a less anti-Christian view of history. Charles Freeman's The Closing of the Western Mind may be utterly wrong in its central argument, but at least it doesn't totally patronise Christian late antiquity. Anthony Gottleib's Dream of Reason is forced to spend a great deal more time on Christian philosophy than the author had bargained for (giving the book a weirdly overlong final chapter). Roger Osbourne's new book Civilisation is still old fashioned but, as Brian Appleyard noted in the Sunday Times, it can no longer just write off the 'Dark Ages'.
The challenge now is to move beyond the current situation. All the authors above set out to write an anti-Christian positivist history of ideas. On doing their research, they found the truth rather more complicated than they imagined. However, instead of ditching their thesis, they simply tacked on some up-to-date scholarship and tried to interpret it in the light of the traditional models. Now, we need to see the traditional models ditched completely. That will require a great deal more than the partisan works of Dr Woods.
Comments or questions? Post them at Bede's dedicated yahoo group.
Yes, the traditional history of the Catholic Church is almost completely wrong. There is a huge amount of work to be done overturning this orthodoxy and bringing the truth to light. I fear Woods isn't keen on doing the work. He has given a sustained case in favour of one side of the argument based entirely on secondary sources. He has done little to leaven that with some opposing views. The fact is you cannot get away with a history of the Church which ignores the Inquisition, makes out that Jewish and Greek thought had no input into European ideas and gives the Catholic Church credit for nearly everything. Protestantism can make its own claims towards furthering capitalism, human rights and natural science. So too can secularism. What we have to avoid are the old histories that refused to give any ground to opposing traditions. Secularism cannot claim science as its own, nor can it disown the tragedies that resulted from secular utopianism. But it can also lay claim to important ethical work such as Mills and Paine as well as a big chunk of post-Darwinian science (good and bad).
To replace a consensus requires a great deal more than preaching to your own denomination's choir. You have to start convincing people who are not already sympathetic to your point of view. Thus, you must not simply argue as a member of a particular minority. Nor can you allow your work to be ghettoised as 'Catholic' or 'Right wing'.
In fact, I think progress is being made. Back in the 1980s and 1990s it was still possible to write a book like William Manchester's A World Lit only By Fire or Daniel Boorstin's The Discoverers. Both were complete tosh. Nowadays, you have to nod at least towards a less anti-Christian view of history. Charles Freeman's The Closing of the Western Mind may be utterly wrong in its central argument, but at least it doesn't totally patronise Christian late antiquity. Anthony Gottleib's Dream of Reason is forced to spend a great deal more time on Christian philosophy than the author had bargained for (giving the book a weirdly overlong final chapter). Roger Osbourne's new book Civilisation is still old fashioned but, as Brian Appleyard noted in the Sunday Times, it can no longer just write off the 'Dark Ages'.
The challenge now is to move beyond the current situation. All the authors above set out to write an anti-Christian positivist history of ideas. On doing their research, they found the truth rather more complicated than they imagined. However, instead of ditching their thesis, they simply tacked on some up-to-date scholarship and tried to interpret it in the light of the traditional models. Now, we need to see the traditional models ditched completely. That will require a great deal more than the partisan works of Dr Woods.
Comments or questions? Post them at Bede's dedicated yahoo group.
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
The Biggest Threat to Science
I think that science is, in general, a good thing. While it is possible to show that science has done far more harm than some of its more one-eyed supporters claim, the good outweighs the bad. Of course, some foolish commentators think science has no moral status, that it is "the disinterested pursuit of knowledge." Quite how the atom bomb, eugenics and pollution have no moral facet escapes me. Nevertheless, I wholeheartedly support the interested and morally respectable work of most scientists.
So, an ideology that seeks to prevent scientists from doing their work is a bad thing. If that ideology backs up its claims with violence and intimidation, it is a very bad thing. In fact, here in the UK it is the biggest threat to science. Is it creationism? Of course not. Who has ever heard of creationists engaging in arson, grave robbery and assault. Most of them wouldn't say boo to a goose. Which is odd, because if you listen to the rhetoric of Dawkins, Grayling and their ilk, you might think that creationists are a serious obstacle to science.
In fact, the biggest threat to science are animal rights fanatics. In the last year, they have successfully prevented my university from building a new lab to carry out lifesaving medical research. They are presently engaged in a campaign where all the dons and students of Oxford are fair targets. I'm writing this in Oxford and I can't say the atmosphere of fear is palpable. Oxford students are too laid back for that. But it is a constant subject of concern and has further increased the security here.
Why, then have the so-called guardians of science not used their formidable public profile and powers of polemic against the animal rights crowd? I think there are a number of related reasons. First, it probably is fear. Frankly, I would not invite these guys down on my neck by making public attacks on them (Hang on, this is a public attack. Yikes!). Second, in the case of Dawkins and Grayling, their hatred of religion far outweighs their love of science. As I have said before, they want to encourage creationism so as to use it to beat Christians with. Their rhetoric all points towards a primary concern for atheism and not evolution. Third and most disturbingly, their philosophy is a direct support for animal rights fanatics. I have no doubt Dawkins deplores their activities, although it would be nice if he actually said so from time to time. But he also using fallacious concepts like 'speciesism' to downgrade humanity and provide intellectual ballast who for those who prefer children dying of leukemia to rabbits dying in their sleep. The worst offender is Peter Singer who, whether he likes it or not, is the major philosophical influence of the animal rights movement. He has always been slow to attack their violence and occasionally appears to support it.
Still, next time you are assaulted by someone who things it is worth losing much sleep over creationism, remind them about animal rights. I don't know for sure, but I expect rather more animal rights fanatics sign up to atheism than sit down on pews.
Comments or questions? Post them at Bede's dedicated yahoo group.
So, an ideology that seeks to prevent scientists from doing their work is a bad thing. If that ideology backs up its claims with violence and intimidation, it is a very bad thing. In fact, here in the UK it is the biggest threat to science. Is it creationism? Of course not. Who has ever heard of creationists engaging in arson, grave robbery and assault. Most of them wouldn't say boo to a goose. Which is odd, because if you listen to the rhetoric of Dawkins, Grayling and their ilk, you might think that creationists are a serious obstacle to science.
In fact, the biggest threat to science are animal rights fanatics. In the last year, they have successfully prevented my university from building a new lab to carry out lifesaving medical research. They are presently engaged in a campaign where all the dons and students of Oxford are fair targets. I'm writing this in Oxford and I can't say the atmosphere of fear is palpable. Oxford students are too laid back for that. But it is a constant subject of concern and has further increased the security here.
Why, then have the so-called guardians of science not used their formidable public profile and powers of polemic against the animal rights crowd? I think there are a number of related reasons. First, it probably is fear. Frankly, I would not invite these guys down on my neck by making public attacks on them (Hang on, this is a public attack. Yikes!). Second, in the case of Dawkins and Grayling, their hatred of religion far outweighs their love of science. As I have said before, they want to encourage creationism so as to use it to beat Christians with. Their rhetoric all points towards a primary concern for atheism and not evolution. Third and most disturbingly, their philosophy is a direct support for animal rights fanatics. I have no doubt Dawkins deplores their activities, although it would be nice if he actually said so from time to time. But he also using fallacious concepts like 'speciesism' to downgrade humanity and provide intellectual ballast who for those who prefer children dying of leukemia to rabbits dying in their sleep. The worst offender is Peter Singer who, whether he likes it or not, is the major philosophical influence of the animal rights movement. He has always been slow to attack their violence and occasionally appears to support it.
Still, next time you are assaulted by someone who things it is worth losing much sleep over creationism, remind them about animal rights. I don't know for sure, but I expect rather more animal rights fanatics sign up to atheism than sit down on pews.
Comments or questions? Post them at Bede's dedicated yahoo group.
Saturday, February 04, 2006
The Mohammed Cartoons Row
Who are the hypocrites?
I support free speech rather more robustly than your average liberal. That is, I support the right of free speech for people I disagree with as well as the ones who think like I do. I get the impression that for institutions like the BBC and the police, free speech only applies to causes they like. Examples abound.
Two racists were acquitted this week of stirring up racial hatred. The case was brought by a BBC undercover sting operation. On the charges where the jury did not reach a verdict, the Crown Prosecution Service is going for a retrial. Free speech? Not on the BBC's watch.
When a couple of old people complain to the local townhall about homosexual propaganda, the police come around and give them the once over. When a family campaigner says gays should not adopt on the radio the Old Bill are around in no time. Likewise, when a Moslem writes a letter to the Daily Telegraph that is unflattering to gays, the police get involved. Free speech? Not if you dare question homosexual orthodoxy.
Then we have the cartoon row where the British press (whether through principle or cowardice, I don't know) censor themselves and get a pat on the back from the foreign secretary. Which is odd, because Jack Straw did not feel a need to condemn the BBC for showing the deeply offensive Jerry Springer: The Opera last year. It is equally odd that the BBC won't show the Mohammad cartoons on its web site but did broadcast that musical.
Yes, Moslems over-reacted. They have a habit of flying of the handle and ought to grow up a bit. But they are the lucky ones. Institutional Britain won't stand up to their riots and insists we must respect their taboos. But Christians are fair game. As if you needed proof, no one seems to be particularly concerned that shock-artists Gilbert and George have a new show sonofgod pictures subtitled "Was Jesus a Heterosexual?". Don't even thing about what would have happened if they had picked on Islam instead.
Comments or questions? Post them at Bede's dedicated yahoo group.
I support free speech rather more robustly than your average liberal. That is, I support the right of free speech for people I disagree with as well as the ones who think like I do. I get the impression that for institutions like the BBC and the police, free speech only applies to causes they like. Examples abound.
Two racists were acquitted this week of stirring up racial hatred. The case was brought by a BBC undercover sting operation. On the charges where the jury did not reach a verdict, the Crown Prosecution Service is going for a retrial. Free speech? Not on the BBC's watch.
When a couple of old people complain to the local townhall about homosexual propaganda, the police come around and give them the once over. When a family campaigner says gays should not adopt on the radio the Old Bill are around in no time. Likewise, when a Moslem writes a letter to the Daily Telegraph that is unflattering to gays, the police get involved. Free speech? Not if you dare question homosexual orthodoxy.
Then we have the cartoon row where the British press (whether through principle or cowardice, I don't know) censor themselves and get a pat on the back from the foreign secretary. Which is odd, because Jack Straw did not feel a need to condemn the BBC for showing the deeply offensive Jerry Springer: The Opera last year. It is equally odd that the BBC won't show the Mohammad cartoons on its web site but did broadcast that musical.
Yes, Moslems over-reacted. They have a habit of flying of the handle and ought to grow up a bit. But they are the lucky ones. Institutional Britain won't stand up to their riots and insists we must respect their taboos. But Christians are fair game. As if you needed proof, no one seems to be particularly concerned that shock-artists Gilbert and George have a new show sonofgod pictures subtitled "Was Jesus a Heterosexual?". Don't even thing about what would have happened if they had picked on Islam instead.
Comments or questions? Post them at Bede's dedicated yahoo group.
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
The Numbers Game
My post on atrocities caused some excitement from the headbangers of the Internet Infidels Discussion Board. I'd originally noted my thoughts here and then another poster, keen to score some cheap points and unaware I had already posted elsewhere, repeated the exercise here. Before you click on these links, I'll warn you that the discussion doesn't go much beyond a load of anti-Christians shouting yaa-boo sucks. However, one interesting point did emerge - how we use numbers.
A notorious example of the numbers game is the claim that nine million women were executed as witches during the period of the witch trials. This gained popular currency from the writings of radical feminist Andrea Dworkin but dates back to the nineteenth century. Likewise, you will hear large figures bandied about for the number of inquisition victims, crusade victims and such like. If you get a kick out of that sort of thing there is a page of it here. However, there is a serious problem when we try to correct these misrepresentations and a trap that we need to avoid.
The problem is that if I counter a claim that nine million witches died, with a referenced rebuttal saying that the true figure is nearer 50,000, I still have a big number. It looks like I am belittling the death of 50,000 men and women, especially if I use the little word 'only' at some point in the discussion. The 10,000 or so executions of the Inquisition is also a much smaller number than usually given, but it is not a small number in an absolute sense. It leaves an open goal for the anti-Christian, who, without even acknowledging their initial gambit was way off beam, will accuse you of 'approving of' or 'rationalising away' these deaths. Eventually, you are guaranteed that someone will use the tabloid throw away line that "one death is too many". Frankly, I have no idea what to do about this. You can compare the actual figures to other events but that rarely helps as atheists always claim that atheism never causes anything bad to happen.
The trap to avoid is down to us, though. We must not respond to anti-Christian exaggeration in one direction by minimising in the other. In 1099, a crusader army slaughtered the population of Jerusalem. No one has any idea how many people died. It is assumed no one escaped but we have no evidence of this. We also know of plenty of survivors later living in Damascus. A good researcher could come up with a maximum and minimum figure based on population density, how many Christians had already left the city and examination of all the sources. But ultimately, it would be a mug's game. The truth is probably between 10,000 and 40,000 but could be more or less than either of these figures. One of the Internet Infidels posters took great exception to my using a figure of 10,000 which is at the low end of estimates. So rather than get into that mess again, I am going to adopt a policy for numbers. I will take the lowest standard estimate and double it. That will be my base figure for any debate on numbers of deaths. Thus, for witch trials (usual scholarly estimate 40,000 - 100,000), I will say about 80,000. For the inquisition (usual scholarly estimate 5,000 - 10,000), I will say 10,000. For the sack of Jerusalem, 20,000.
The main point of the numbers game from an anti-Christian perspective is to show what a bad thing religion is. That's why they exaggerate the numbers. They need them to be big, especially now they have to compete with Stalin and Hitler. It is worth continuing to challenge these misrepresentations but it requires care not to veer too far in the other direction.
Comments or questions? Post them at Bede's dedicated yahoo group.
A notorious example of the numbers game is the claim that nine million women were executed as witches during the period of the witch trials. This gained popular currency from the writings of radical feminist Andrea Dworkin but dates back to the nineteenth century. Likewise, you will hear large figures bandied about for the number of inquisition victims, crusade victims and such like. If you get a kick out of that sort of thing there is a page of it here. However, there is a serious problem when we try to correct these misrepresentations and a trap that we need to avoid.
The problem is that if I counter a claim that nine million witches died, with a referenced rebuttal saying that the true figure is nearer 50,000, I still have a big number. It looks like I am belittling the death of 50,000 men and women, especially if I use the little word 'only' at some point in the discussion. The 10,000 or so executions of the Inquisition is also a much smaller number than usually given, but it is not a small number in an absolute sense. It leaves an open goal for the anti-Christian, who, without even acknowledging their initial gambit was way off beam, will accuse you of 'approving of' or 'rationalising away' these deaths. Eventually, you are guaranteed that someone will use the tabloid throw away line that "one death is too many". Frankly, I have no idea what to do about this. You can compare the actual figures to other events but that rarely helps as atheists always claim that atheism never causes anything bad to happen.
The trap to avoid is down to us, though. We must not respond to anti-Christian exaggeration in one direction by minimising in the other. In 1099, a crusader army slaughtered the population of Jerusalem. No one has any idea how many people died. It is assumed no one escaped but we have no evidence of this. We also know of plenty of survivors later living in Damascus. A good researcher could come up with a maximum and minimum figure based on population density, how many Christians had already left the city and examination of all the sources. But ultimately, it would be a mug's game. The truth is probably between 10,000 and 40,000 but could be more or less than either of these figures. One of the Internet Infidels posters took great exception to my using a figure of 10,000 which is at the low end of estimates. So rather than get into that mess again, I am going to adopt a policy for numbers. I will take the lowest standard estimate and double it. That will be my base figure for any debate on numbers of deaths. Thus, for witch trials (usual scholarly estimate 40,000 - 100,000), I will say about 80,000. For the inquisition (usual scholarly estimate 5,000 - 10,000), I will say 10,000. For the sack of Jerusalem, 20,000.
The main point of the numbers game from an anti-Christian perspective is to show what a bad thing religion is. That's why they exaggerate the numbers. They need them to be big, especially now they have to compete with Stalin and Hitler. It is worth continuing to challenge these misrepresentations but it requires care not to veer too far in the other direction.
Comments or questions? Post them at Bede's dedicated yahoo group.
Friday, January 27, 2006
The BBC on Intelligent Design
Last night, the BBC screened an episode of Horizon, their science strand, called A War on Science (link to BBC website). It was about the lawsuit in Dover, Pennsylvania where a school board was told that they could not have Intelligent Design (ID) taught in science lessons. I support that decision and believe ID to be mistaken on many levels, scientific and theological. However, the Horizon was still badly distorted in some ways and certainly did not give the ID crowd a fair crack of the whip. More dangerous, the programme tried to sell the idea that evolution was incompatible with religion. They did this is various subtle and less subtle ways.
First, the title of the programme and the whole approach suggested that science was under threat from religious fanatics. This is rubbish. ID is not a threat to science, it is a threat to lazy scientists who cannot be bothered to explain things to the public. The proponents of ID were interviewed in a fairground, a small town cafe and on a ferry. The proponents of evolution sat in their studies, behind desks or in a lecture theatre. Cunning. One of the spokesmen for evolution was David Attenborough, a secular saint here in the UK. However, the programme dishonestly described him as a 'zoologist', which he isn't, rather than a maker of natural history programmes, which he is. The most dishonest distortion was that the programme never said that Kenneth miller, the main advocate of evolution, is a practicing Catholic. They interviewed him extensively and never mentioned this. When they needed a Catholic point of view, they asked a Jesuit priest instead (who was also anti-ID, of course as this is the official Catholic position). The programme tried to drag the Church into the dispute on the side of ID and ended up having to admit that a single cardinal had been caught out of line.
Essentially, Horizon did not want to admit that evolution is compatible with Christianity. It wanted a conflict between science and religion, so resorted to underhand tactics to produce one. Its choice for main spokesman for evolution - Professor Richard Dawkins. Who else?
Evolution has two interconnected problems which contribute to creationism and ID. The first is that you can't put a bacteria in a lab and watch it evolve into an elephant. The evidence for evolution is diffuse, sometimes obscure and requires a good deal of hard work to get to grips with. While it is extremely convincing taken as a whole, each part of the puzzle alone cannot do the job. To actually do the legwork to put the whole picture together and understand it takes both hard work and a certain amount of goodwill towards the theory. The second problem is the goodwill is missing. This is largely the fault of atheists who want to use evolution to push their own agendas. Last night's Horizon was a good example of this. This means that Christians who support evolution have to fight both sides at the same time. The best thing that Dawkins could do for evolution is announce that it is fully compatible with religion and he was wrong to say otherwise. Then he should shut up and never say another word for as long as he lives. Presently, his ilk are the best recruiting sergeants that creationists have. He won't shut up because he wants to encourage Christians to be creationists so that he can pour scorn on them.
So the needless battle goes on.
Comments or questions? Post them at Bede's dedicated yahoo group.
First, the title of the programme and the whole approach suggested that science was under threat from religious fanatics. This is rubbish. ID is not a threat to science, it is a threat to lazy scientists who cannot be bothered to explain things to the public. The proponents of ID were interviewed in a fairground, a small town cafe and on a ferry. The proponents of evolution sat in their studies, behind desks or in a lecture theatre. Cunning. One of the spokesmen for evolution was David Attenborough, a secular saint here in the UK. However, the programme dishonestly described him as a 'zoologist', which he isn't, rather than a maker of natural history programmes, which he is. The most dishonest distortion was that the programme never said that Kenneth miller, the main advocate of evolution, is a practicing Catholic. They interviewed him extensively and never mentioned this. When they needed a Catholic point of view, they asked a Jesuit priest instead (who was also anti-ID, of course as this is the official Catholic position). The programme tried to drag the Church into the dispute on the side of ID and ended up having to admit that a single cardinal had been caught out of line.
Essentially, Horizon did not want to admit that evolution is compatible with Christianity. It wanted a conflict between science and religion, so resorted to underhand tactics to produce one. Its choice for main spokesman for evolution - Professor Richard Dawkins. Who else?
Evolution has two interconnected problems which contribute to creationism and ID. The first is that you can't put a bacteria in a lab and watch it evolve into an elephant. The evidence for evolution is diffuse, sometimes obscure and requires a good deal of hard work to get to grips with. While it is extremely convincing taken as a whole, each part of the puzzle alone cannot do the job. To actually do the legwork to put the whole picture together and understand it takes both hard work and a certain amount of goodwill towards the theory. The second problem is the goodwill is missing. This is largely the fault of atheists who want to use evolution to push their own agendas. Last night's Horizon was a good example of this. This means that Christians who support evolution have to fight both sides at the same time. The best thing that Dawkins could do for evolution is announce that it is fully compatible with religion and he was wrong to say otherwise. Then he should shut up and never say another word for as long as he lives. Presently, his ilk are the best recruiting sergeants that creationists have. He won't shut up because he wants to encourage Christians to be creationists so that he can pour scorn on them.
So the needless battle goes on.
Comments or questions? Post them at Bede's dedicated yahoo group.
Friday, January 20, 2006
Atheist attrocities
Is it co-incidence that the world's worse mass murderers just happened to be atheists? Probably not.
Communism demanded that anyone who got in the way was liquidated. Now we should say, "Hang on a moment, just going around liquidating people is wrong and evil." But because communism was the highest authority, this objection didn't carry much force. A Christian, on the other hand, should be bound by a higher moral code that would strongly object to mass murder. Thus, although Stalin and Mao didn't kill because they were atheists, the fact they were atheists meant that they lacked the Christian moral compass that should have prevented them from taking the path they did.
Now anti-Christians will be jumping up and down and saying "I'm moral! I'm moral!" I'm sure you are. But your morality is secular humanism which is little more that Christianity without God and with more sex. If we replaced your democratic liberalism (which says be nice) with communism (which doesn't) what's going to stop you becoming mass murderers? Nothing except your residual post-Christian humanism. History fully bears out my contentions. When we look at the history of European socialism we see that the major split was between atheistic communism and Christian socialism. The later gave birth to the UK Labour Party, German Social Democrats and various other democratic socialist and social democrat parties. All have done enormous good in Western Europe. On the other hand, we know where the communists ended up. Of course there are plenty of atheist democratic socialists but their morals tend to be exactly the secular humanism they inherited from Christianity. That's why they rejected communism too.
What about all the atrocities committed by Christians? They were terrible, too. They were also committed by true Christians much of the time, but look what happens when you take away Christianity. Modern estimates suggest the Spanish Inquisition executed about 10,000 in three centuries. The anti-Christian Jacobins managed to execute three times that number in a mere three years of French revolutionary terror. And the inqusition still form the basis of European jurisprudence. I can't say the same for Jacobin show trials.
I think the main example that people have in mind of Christian crimes are the Eastern crusades. They get the impression that these were large scale wars. In fact they weren't and there were relatively few major engagements. We can't say that without the crusades no one would have been fighting anyone. Europeans might have been fighting each other. Religion determined who the enemy were rather than whether a war happened somewhere. 'Atrocities' during the crusades involved the three days of pillage allowed after a city had fallen by assault. This was the rule of war at the time and meant to encourage cities to surrender if they knew no relief was on the way. About 10,000 died in the fall of Jerusalem when it fell to the crusaders in 1099. In 1187, Christian Jerusalem surrendered in turn to Saladin and that is why he let many people go free on payment of a ransom. Many others were enslaved. Had Saladin taken the city by storm, he would have certainly been much less generous.
On some anti-Christian websites you'll see figures of millions of deaths given for the crusades, witch trials and inquisition. These are exaggerations by a factor of a hundred. The reason they peddle these lies is because they know that the actual figures for Christian crimes can't compare with atheist ones. Hence, they have to bump the figures up.
Comments or questions? Post them at Bede's dedicated yahoo group.
Communism demanded that anyone who got in the way was liquidated. Now we should say, "Hang on a moment, just going around liquidating people is wrong and evil." But because communism was the highest authority, this objection didn't carry much force. A Christian, on the other hand, should be bound by a higher moral code that would strongly object to mass murder. Thus, although Stalin and Mao didn't kill because they were atheists, the fact they were atheists meant that they lacked the Christian moral compass that should have prevented them from taking the path they did.
Now anti-Christians will be jumping up and down and saying "I'm moral! I'm moral!" I'm sure you are. But your morality is secular humanism which is little more that Christianity without God and with more sex. If we replaced your democratic liberalism (which says be nice) with communism (which doesn't) what's going to stop you becoming mass murderers? Nothing except your residual post-Christian humanism. History fully bears out my contentions. When we look at the history of European socialism we see that the major split was between atheistic communism and Christian socialism. The later gave birth to the UK Labour Party, German Social Democrats and various other democratic socialist and social democrat parties. All have done enormous good in Western Europe. On the other hand, we know where the communists ended up. Of course there are plenty of atheist democratic socialists but their morals tend to be exactly the secular humanism they inherited from Christianity. That's why they rejected communism too.
What about all the atrocities committed by Christians? They were terrible, too. They were also committed by true Christians much of the time, but look what happens when you take away Christianity. Modern estimates suggest the Spanish Inquisition executed about 10,000 in three centuries. The anti-Christian Jacobins managed to execute three times that number in a mere three years of French revolutionary terror. And the inqusition still form the basis of European jurisprudence. I can't say the same for Jacobin show trials.
I think the main example that people have in mind of Christian crimes are the Eastern crusades. They get the impression that these were large scale wars. In fact they weren't and there were relatively few major engagements. We can't say that without the crusades no one would have been fighting anyone. Europeans might have been fighting each other. Religion determined who the enemy were rather than whether a war happened somewhere. 'Atrocities' during the crusades involved the three days of pillage allowed after a city had fallen by assault. This was the rule of war at the time and meant to encourage cities to surrender if they knew no relief was on the way. About 10,000 died in the fall of Jerusalem when it fell to the crusaders in 1099. In 1187, Christian Jerusalem surrendered in turn to Saladin and that is why he let many people go free on payment of a ransom. Many others were enslaved. Had Saladin taken the city by storm, he would have certainly been much less generous.
On some anti-Christian websites you'll see figures of millions of deaths given for the crusades, witch trials and inquisition. These are exaggerations by a factor of a hundred. The reason they peddle these lies is because they know that the actual figures for Christian crimes can't compare with atheist ones. Hence, they have to bump the figures up.
Comments or questions? Post them at Bede's dedicated yahoo group.
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