While Christopher Hitchens is an amusing writer, his approach to argument can only be described as hopeless. To confuse anecdote with data is bad enough, but only Hitchens would seriously attempt to define good and evil by how he feels about things. Even Sam Harris, who is no expert logician, has a metric that can at least be theoretically applied to every individual. It’s certainly informative to know that Hitch was willing to give his flak jacket to a woman and tolerate the proximity of black men in the subway, but how, precisely, are his actions supposed to prove anything related to his assertions about morality, human nature, or the non-existence of God?
But these incompetencies are far from his worst mistake; as to that, it’s hard to choose between his pathetic three-paragraph climax of his ideal secular society and the incredible self-evisceration of the greater part of his book accomplished by his failure to provide any support whatsoever for dozens of the very sort of assertions he himself defined as auto-refuting.
UPDATE – Since the Atheist Demotivators have proved surprisingly popular, I’ve added a permalink to them in the TIA section on the right.
One vision, rooted in an “ethic of productivity” and efficiency, has, he tells us, already won the day; and the proof is that in the very colleges and universities where the life of the mind is routinely celebrated, the material conditions of the workplace are configured by the business model that scorns it.
The best evidence for this is the shrinking number of tenured and tenure-track faculty and the corresponding rise of adjuncts, part-timers more akin to itinerant workers than to embedded professionals.
Humanities professors like to think that this is a temporary imbalance and talk about ways of redressing it, but Donoghue insists that this development, planned by no one but now well under way, cannot be reversed. Universities under increasing financial pressure, he explains, do not “hire the most experienced teachers, but rather the cheapest teachers.” Tenured and tenure-track teachers now make up only 35 percent of the pedagogical workforce and “this number is steadily falling.”
What Fish fails to note is the effect of what Bloom described as “The Closing of the American Mind”. The reason there is no place for the traditional liberal arts education is that there is nothing liberal, in the original sense of the term, about the liberal arts anymore. Having abandoned their original purpose of offering a broad-based education to students in favor of attempting to instill left-wing ideologies into them, the university system no longer provides anything of value to anyone except technical training.
It should come as no surprise, then, that since the demand for technical training has replaced the demand for the illiberal arts, the supply has readjusted itself in line with the requirements of the market.
One of the most interesting things about all of the squawking and shrieking by various Internet atheists in response to The Irrational Atheist has been the way they have tended to complain about the contempt I show for their champions while failing to even try to refute the great majority of the charges. No one, for example, has serously attempted to defend any of Daniel Dennett’s logical blunders, which are particularly damning in an academic who is supposed to be a reasonably competent philosopher. At first I suspected this might due to the fact that they were so relieved I wasn’t blasting away at one of the New Atheists with both barrels for once that they didn’t even notice how the blatant errors in Dennett’s thinking tend to undermine the man’s reputation. However, after seeing the way one critic after another showed a near complete inability to competently address any of the many cases I have made, I was forced to conclude that merely seeing the words “division of doxastic labor” is enough to make their overheated little brains shut down and force them to skip ahead to the next chapter, which is a nice bit and also makes fun of the French.
Dennett’s rationale for not holding those who believe in science accountable for the same doxastic division of labor he calls “immoral” in religious individuals is not his only logical error in Breaking the Spell, but it is easily the least defensible. Perhaps if his editor had been capable of understanding the philosopher’s logic and done him the favor of it repeating it accurately to him, Dennett would have recognized the absurdity of his position and saved himself serious embarrassment.
That I will execute the office of President to the United States faithfully
That I will execute….(frown, blank look)
In the interest of sheer comedy, Obama should never be permitted the use of a teleprompter again. And it’s 43 presidents, Mr. President. 43. Remember that whole Bush ’41 and ’43 thing? That was the guy you just replaced.
A total of 11 men, including three juveniles, appeared at Portsmouth Magistrates’ Court facing charges of indecent chanting. They relate to offensive remarks made at the Portsmouth defender during a match against Tottenham Hotspur at Fratton Park, Portsmouth, on September 28 last year.
Somehow, I have the impression that none of the ArabBritish demonstrators who recently attacked the Israeli embassy in London are likely to ever be charged with “indecent chanting”.
In Dawkins’s view, there is a battle taking place in Britain between the forces of reason and religious fundamentalism and it is far from won. He is one of its most famous and prolific combatants – but the question might be whether he is among its most effective. The The God Delusion’s stated aim was to “convert” readers to atheism – but he admits that as a proselytising tool it has broadly failed….
Like most rationalists, Dawkins tends to invoke people’s innate intelligence, and attribute their flawed ways of thinking to ignorance rather than stupidity. “But I don’t have any evidence,” he concedes. “I could be wrong. It’s a kind of ideal. It’s a sort of bending over backwards.” People might just be stupid, I suggest. “They might be, yes,” he cautiously agrees. “But at least my saying that ignorance is no crime is my defence against the charge of arrogance. Because if you tell people they’re stupid, that certainly isn’t the way to win friends and influence people.”
Dawkins once described the British Airways employee dismissed for wearing a gold cross to work as having “the stupidest face”. Did he regret saying it?
A slightly naughty smile flickers over his face.
“Well … well … yes, I do really. Yes. That was an unguarded moment. Although I think I said stupid-looking. Did you see the photograph of her? I think if you look up the story, and they’ve got the photograph … ” He checks himself, and stops. “But this is unkind.”
The reality is that most people, including Richard Dawkins, are idiots. They cannot be educated out of their idiocy and as a result they are doomed to repeat the mistakes of their historical antecedents over and over again. And everyone is observably irrational a significant portion of the time, so attempting to build a society on science and reason is not only a tried, tested, and failed concept, it is an inherently idiotic and irrational idea from the start. It’s not actually science that is losing to religion anyhow, it is merely the radical secularists who have falsely claimed that science is intrinsically on their side who find themselves in a bewildered retreat.
The fact that most people are idiots, however, does not excuse one who makes a habit of going out of his way, indeed, has downright made it a career, to baselessly assert that the great majority of the human race are idiots or ignoramuses solely because they do not share his disbelief in God. If Dawkins was not, like so many atheists, socially autistic, he would know that one must always convert the heart before one can begin to convert the mind. This can be done through love, it can be done through example, and it can be done through fear, but it cannot be done through a withering and completely unwarranted contempt.
People believe or don’t believe in the existence of God for a wide variety of reasons, but anyone who has read much of Richard Dawkins’s work will recognize that Dawkins doesn’t believe there is almost certainly no God due to either science or reason. Science has very little to say on that score, while I and many othere have pointed out the numerous flaws in Dawkins’s reason. And yet, he still clings stubbornly to his atheism. The inescapable conclusion is that Richard Dawkins doesn’t believe in God because of his own individual shortcomings, many of which fall in the area of his character.
The state will suspend tax refunds, welfare checks, student grants and other payments owed to Californians starting Feb. 1, Controller John Chiang announced Friday…. California is projected to be $346 million short of the funds it needs to pay all its bills in February. By March, the state would be so far in the red that even continuing to suspend payments would not cover the shortfall. California would be insolvent, making the issuance of IOUs likely.
Perhaps they could encourage the immigration of more Mexicans. That should help solve the problem. We’re told they’re good for the economy, after all.
Villful failure to zelebrate zee magical negritude ist strictly VERBOTEN:
“Inappropriate comments that may make other students, staff or families feel unwelcome or uncomfortable in school or on the bus will not be tolerated,” Superintendent Kevin Bright said in an e-mail sent to parents Monday, Jan. 12…. Jeff Schlaeger, Mason High School’s psychologist, said “inappropriate comments” occurred around election week when doctored pictures of Obama appeared at the school, including “derogatory caricatures” of him dressed like a terrorist and signs that read “Obama ’08/Biden ’09.”
As Spacebunny noted, it’s vital to teach them that freedom of speech doesn’t actually mean freedom of speech when they’re too young to notice the doublethink. One really can’t afford to have them learning to take their freedoms LITERALLY, after all.
The English people are being sold a whole herd of pigs in a poke, and they don’t even know what it will cost:
The Treasury has formally announced a scheme to allow banks to exchange cash or shares for a Government guarantee on their “toxic” debts, transferring any losses they suffer from the banks to the taxpayer. However, the Chancellor admitted he can’t estimate how much taxpayers’ money will needed in the latest bailout.
It will be interesting to see how many of the self-appointed financial whizzes I pointed out in today’s column, those who backed the first round of bailouts, will line up in favor of this one. Because there’s a pretty good chance that the banks will soon be pushing something like this on the American public.
UPDATE – Even Krugman is now pessimistic about the next round of bailouts:
I hope I’m wrong, but I suspect that taxpayers are about to get another raw deal — and that we’re about to get another financial rescue plan that fails to do the job.
I like the Cardinals and the Steelers today. Which isn’t saying much, considering the way in which my picks were 1-3 last week. But I think the Arizona passing game is enough to outshoot a very beatable Eagles team, and while I might have chosen the Ravens if they were healthy, I think Pittsburgh’s offensive line has improved enough to give Roethlisberger time against the depleted Baltimore defense.
