Intellectual freedom: New atheists vs. everybody else

I only got round to posting about this conference just now, and do not know if anyone else did before, but note this:

Atheists have disabled the web page for the ID conference in Castle Rock this weekend. They are also calling the 800 number and trying to tie up the lines so others cannot get through. This is really ugly. I am re-posting the information on this event info below. They will take people at the door, but get there early. Despite the opposition, several hundred have already signed up. If so inclined, pray for the vicious souls doing this and for the success of the event itself. (October 29, 2009)

Two comments come immediately to mind:

1. The "new atheists" are not your granddad's atheists, who were usually just profs who didn't believe in God, for whatever reason. Those profs did believed in a free society, and were willing to concede that they could be wrong.

The "new atheists"are, in my experience, into power and definitely would act as described above. They are a whole different crowd, for whom the free society is a problem. Go here for more on that.

2. New atheists are quite clear about not believing in free will or the reality of the mind. This newsletter gives some sense of it. I would imagine that there are key people in the government of any country to whom the new atheists' view of citizens (99% chimpanzee?) would be highly welcome - even if those key people sit in religious centres at times, and blather about traditional religion on occasion, and assure us all that we have nothing to worry about.

Frankly, all that stuff is used to was and done to death and it will wash no more.

The rest of us think free will exists, and intellectual freedom is important.

Intellectual freedom: New atheists vs. everybody else

I only got round to posting about this conference just now, and do not know if anyone else did before, but note this:

Atheists have disabled the web page for the ID conference in Castle Rock this weekend. They are also calling the 800 number and trying to tie up the lines so others cannot get through. This is really ugly. I am re-posting the information on this event info below. They will take people at the door, but get there early. Despite the opposition, several hundred have already signed up. If so inclined, pray for the vicious souls doing this and for the success of the event itself. (October 29, 2009)

Two comments come immediately to mind:

1. The "new atheists" are not your granddad's atheists, who were usually just profs who didn't believe in God, for whatever reason. Those profs did believed in a free society, and were willing to concede that they could be wrong.

The "new atheists"are, in my experience, into power and definitely would act as described above. They are a whole different crowd, for whom the free society is a problem. Go here for more on that.

2. New atheists are quite clear about not believing in free will or the reality of the mind. This newsletter gives some sense of it. I would imagine that there are key people in the government of any country to whom the new atheists' view of citizens (99% chimpanzee?) would be highly welcome - even if those key people sit in religious centres at times, and blather about traditional religion on occasion, and assure us all that we have nothing to worry about.

Frankly, all that stuff is used to was and done to death and it will wash no more.

The rest of us think free will exists, and think freedom is important.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

Human evolution: FoxP2 and speech

A friend warns, wisely in my view, that we be skeptical about vast claims made in the popular science press about human evolution.

One paper asserts that FOXP2 was probably involved in the evolution of speech and language, but another paper has cautioned about being too hasty in making this conclusion.

Well, after the "Ida" fossil took in Michael Bloomberg, I'd be cautious about anything evolutionary biologists say. So should Bloomberg, herafter.

For what it is worth, I also don't believe that Flores man is really a separate human species, because I have seen proportionately formed women on the streets of Toronto who were not more than one metre tall. But it's just the sort of squabble no one cares about, and figures like Michael Bloomberg do not get involved.

Here's one assessment from the science literature: “The finding that FOXP2 is critical to speech and language does not by itself demonstrate the role of this gene in the origin of human speech, because the function of FOXP2 could have remained unchanged during human evolution while other speech-related genes changed.” (Jianzhi Zhang, David M. Webb and Ondrej Podlaha, “Accelerated Protein Evolution and Origins of Human-Specific Features: FOXP2 as an Example,” Genetics, Vol. 162:1825–1835 (December 2002).)

Here's a suitably cautious paper by by Alec MacAndrew on the subject:

No-one should imagine that the development of language relied exclusively on a single mutation in FOXP2. They are many other changes that enable speech. Not least of these are profound anatomical changes that make the human supralarygeal pathway entirely different from any other mammal. The larynx has descended so that it provides a resonant column for speech (but, as an unfortunate side-effect, predisposes humans to choking on food). Also, the nasal cavity can be closed thus preventing vowels from being nasalised and thus increasing their comprehensibility. These changes cannot have happened over such a short period as 100,000 years. Furthermore the genetic basis for language will be found to involve many more genes that influence both cognitive and motor skills

Human mind needs human cognition and human cognition relies on human speech. We cannot envisage humanness without the ability to think abstractly, but abstract thought requires language

One thing to keep in mind is that human language is also governed by the need to communicate things that no ape would need to communicate. So understanding language requires understanding mind.

Assume I have a car. Assume the mechanic at Canadian Tire is trying to explain to me what is wrong with my car.

I don’t know much about cars but I know that the car is not working. I accept his explanation and his promise to fix it. And my big question is, “What will this cost?”

That question assumes an exceedingly complex system of social transactions around that unpleasant subject, money.

I’d also like to know, “When will the car be ready?”

“Some time” won’t cut it around here. I need to know when to show up again on the transit, pay, and drive the car away. I have other things to do. So does the mechanic. He even has a time sheet. So do I.

But that assumes a “clock” view of time, again a complex human idea.

Also, that car is only drivable due to roads and bridges, which are again complex constructions, involving many social transactions that require language.

To me, the nonsense around ape “language” fails to distinguish the way in which human language conveys ideas about things that are meaningless in principle to animals.

If I were an ape, maybe I could solve all my problems by aiming a coconut at another ape’s head and then swinging rapidly through the trees.

Oh, you know what? Compared to paying $499.95 plus PST plus GST at Canadian Tire … maybe ... find someone who really irritates me, and ... WHACK!!!

Naw. He can’t help being an ape and I can’t help being human. Just how life is. Better to keep the coconut for Christmas baking.

Intellectual freedom in Canada: When prudes, plods, and vigilantes stop public discourse ...

Franklin Carter at the Book and Periodical Council's Freedom of Expression Committee sends me two stories:

Border police seize PG-rated gay films

Canada's border guards are holding prints of three films destined for a gay film festival in Ottawa, and they won't release them until they've had the chance to watch them from beginning to end.

That poses a problem for Inside Out, a Toronto-based film festival with an annual Ottawa satellite program. They intended to show all three films this weekend. Without the prints, they're left scrambling to find grainy lower-quality copies to show audiences.

Marcus McCann reports in Xtra:

In 2008, Matt Thomas spoke to film director Ella Lemhagen and Toronto International Film Festival programmer Noah Cowan about the Swedish film Patrick Age 1.5. The video is also in Xtra:

In this incident, Canada Customs has seized films--not books or magazines--but the procedure for seizing books and magazines is identical.

but just when you thought you knew the direction of censorship: Look at this:

A Kitchener mother says school trustees are violating their own rules by allowing Gideon Bibles to be distributed to Grade 5 students in public schools.

The Waterloo Region District School Board has a policy allowing religious material to be distributed through the schools if parents agree, and if the materials are not used in an attempt to convert the child to that religion.

For years, trustees have allowed Gideons International, based in Guelph, to give pocket-sized copies of the New Testament, plus the Hebrew Bible books of Proverbs and Psalms, to Grade 5 students.

But Fauzia Mazhar told trustees Monday night that she is “appalled” by this decision. The Gideons openly state on their website that their mission is “to win the lost for Christ, and our unique method is the distribution of Scripture in selected streams of life,” she said.

This duet beautifully demonstrates what is wrong with today's censorship. Every prude or vigilante across the country, on behalf of whatever cause, can try to get some article or book censored. It's not as if we have a national policy or direction. We just have plenty of prudes, plods, and vigilantes.

I am not even saying that censorship is always wrong. Obviously, if a person wrote a book claiming that you, dear reader, murdered your mom - and there is no evidence whatever for that proposition (for one thing, your mom is still alive, in the Sunset Retirement Villa) - you would be quite right to take legal action to get sales of the book suppressed. Your reputation as a law-abiding citizen is at stake, and the claims are clearly false or undemonstrable.

Similarly, I believe that head masters/ head mistresses should be in charge of what is offered to students in schools. The students are minors. No activist should be permitted to interfere with what is considered good education by responsible authorities - provided that no crime is occurring and a dissatisfied parent can easily switch the minor to a different school, if that is the only peaceable outcome.

However, what we have here in Canada today is this: Anyone with a grudge, a gripe, or a grievance can complain to the government via "human rights" commissions and various other bodies about anything they want - and damage our national life by limiting discussion to fluff like "What's wrong with the Toronto Maple Leafs?"

If you are a Canadian, you deserve better. If you are a loyal citizen of any free society, be very wary of schemes for censorship whose supposed goal is shutting down "hate." If you are a citizen of an unfree society, I pray for you. We are now starting to get free again here. It's fun.

While we are here: A reader points me to this "authoritarian personality" wheeze fronted by an apparently failing TV network in the US. That is, people who prefer to listen to some other outlet must have something wrong with them.

If there is a better way to chase off viewers, please let me know.

I wouldn't want to meddle in US internal affairs, just as I would prefer that Americans didn't meddle in ours, but - that said - I have always maintained that government has no business interfering with media - whether the genius's idea is localism or fairness or anything else.

Government is as dependent as any other type of organization on the dissemination of information through media. People who work in government are just as happy with favourable coverage and just as unhappy with unfavourable coverage as any other entity. So they can't and shouldn't try to be judges.

People often ask, "what about shouting 'Fire' in a crowded theatre"? 99.99 per cent of people who ask do not know that the phrase was part of a judgement by Oliver Wendell Holmes against people who opposed the draft in World War I - and it was considered a bad judgement, reversed on appeal. But it remains to haunt us, as long as society is full of apparatchiks and freelance busybodies who do not want their fellow citizens to be able to make reasonable decisions about what to pay attention to.

Franklin Carter at the Book and Periodical Council's Freedom of Expression Committee also advises me of recent media articles on the seizure of films: Late last week, Canada Customs seized three imported gay movies that were destined for a film festival in Ottawa.

CBC News reports.

Canada Customs denies any wrongdoing in seizing the films.

Marcus McCann grills a Canada Customs spokesman over the agency's explanation for the seizure of the films.

Aerlyn Weissman comments on the detention of the films. Weissman is the filmmaker who documented the censorship dispute between Little Sister's bookstore and Canada Customs in the 1990s.

Craig Takeuchi reports in Vancouver's Georgia Straight.

As a traditional Catholic Christian, I warn everyone away from the gay lifestyle, on principle. But just as I want the freedom to make that case, I grant to the gay lifestyle advocates the freedom to make theirs. And I do not need someone growing a fat rear end behind a civil service desk either promoting or opposing my views. Unless real laws are broken (= minors or illegal immigrants are raped or held in bondage, or something similar), I think government should just stay out of it.


Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

Books: Frank Turek on Signature in the Cell

Steven Meyer's Signature in the Cell (Harper One, 2009) seems to be waking people up to the basic stupidity of modern Darwinism. Here:

Most of Turek's column riffs, quite rightly, off "climategate":

“You mean science is not objective?” No, unless the scientists are, and too often they are not. I don’t want to impugn all scientists, but it is true that some of them are less than honest. Sometimes they lie to get or keep their jobs. Sometimes they lie to get grant money. Sometimes they lie to further their political beliefs. Sometimes they don’t intentionally lie, but they draw bad scientific conclusions because they only look for what they hope to find.

Misbehavior by scientists is more prevalent than you might think. A survey conducted by University of Minnesota researchers found that 33% of scientists admitted to engaging in some kind of research misbehavior, including more than 20% of mid-career scientists who admitted to “changing the design, methodology or results of a study in response to pressure from a funding source.” Think of how many more have done this but refuse to admit it! (The researchers said as much in their findings.)

Whether people believe in the Christian or Muslim or Hindu conception of God - design is a reality in our universe. The rest is just infighting. Not untrue or unimportant. But a row among people who have got the most basic principles right. From that, trueth may emerege.

If Turek has got that right, he has got something very important right. For example:

Dr. Stephen Meyer has written a fabulous new best-selling book addressing those questions called Signature in the Cell (Harper One, 2009) in the Cell. Having earned his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in the philosophy of science, Dr. Meyer is at the top of the science food chain. In our August 8th radio interview, he told me he’s been working on his 600+ page book—which isn’t short of technical detail—for more than a decade.

I am working my way through it, but so far I certainly consider it a worthy shelfmate to Bill Dembski's Design Inference and No Free Lunch and Mike Behe's Edge of Evolution.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy: