Offended by Offence

As March 4-11 is “Israeli Apartheid Week”, it is appropriate to ask the question – can Israel be accurately chracterized as an “apartheid state”?  Various Zionist organizations claim that it is not, but instead of refuting the charge, they argue that such an allegation constitutes “hate speech” and therefore should be censored.  These arguments are now being taken seriously by politicians; a resolution was drafted by the provincial Conservatives in Ontario, which was supported by the Ontario Liberals and the NDP,  that accused supporters of Israeli Apartheid Week of “inciting hatred”.  Conservative MP Tim Uppal is now proposing a motion that, among other things, “explicitly condemns any action in Canada as well as internationally that would equate the State of Israel with the rejected and racist policy of apartheid”.

There are two issues that are of concern.  The first pertains to freedom of speech.  In a democratic society, should people be prevented from criticizing the actions of any state?  Even if these critics are wrong, should they be subject to legal prohibitions aimed at censoring their opinions?  Should being wrong be a crime?

This brings me to the second issue – are those who maintain that Israel is an “apartheid state” wrong?  According to Cheri DiNovo, a NDP MPP in Ontario, for example, the use of the word “apartheid” in the context of Israel is “inappropriate”, but is this actually the case?  The question is an empirical one, and a weighting of evidence, not political posturing, should be the means used to come to a conclusion on this matter.  To do this, one needs to identify the characteristics of apartheid and then determine if Israel meets these criteria.  If the answer to the latter is yes, then Israel is, by definition, an apartheid state. 

According to the Concise Oxford Dictionary, apartheid is “a policy of racial segregation”.  Na’eem Jeenah, an academic from South Africa, extends this definition somewhat by understanding apartheid “as a system of privileging and advantaging one group of people over others on the basis of race or ethnicity”   (http://web.uct.ac.za/depts/religion/documents/ARISA/2002_M4_Jeenah.pdf).  Jeenah maintains that such a circumstance does exist in Israel, especially with respect to the issues of citizenship and land ownership.   With respect to citizenship, Jeenah points to the Absentee Property Law and the Law of Return.  In the case of land ownership, Jeenah asserts that Palestinian citizens of Israel (non-Jews?) are prohibited from owning or using land that is classified as “national”.

Now, I have not studied the debates on this subject extensively, and so maybe evidence exists that would refute Jeenah’s assertions.  But prohibiting discussion on the question of whether Israel has policies and laws that privilege and advantage a group on the basis of ethnicity gets us nowhere.  Furthermore, asking which countries in the world constitute “apartheid states” is an important academic question, and studying this could shed light on political processes more generally.  The Canadian Israel lobby, and its expedient use of the accusation of anti-Semitism to equate criticism of Israel with racism, needs to be faced head on.  Historical injustices suffered by groups cannot be used as a weapon to prevent people from trying to understand what is happening in the world.

On Wednesday February 3, 2010, the CBC surpassed its usual efforts to promote irrationality.  The show in question was aired on the radio program, The Current, hosted that day by both Anna Maria Tremonti and a CBC producer, David Gutnick (www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/2010/201002/20100203.html).  Also featured was an interview with Wade Davis, the unctuous pontificator featured in an earlier post on this blog (Davis was selected by the CBC to present the 2009 Massey Lectures, where he celebrated a wide variety of dubious beliefs as ”ancient wisdom”).  Davis has been called upon again for his “expertise” because he is author of The Serpent and the Rainbow and Passage of Darkness – books that evidently “explore Haitian voodoo, magic and zombies”.

Tremonti, Gutnick, and Davis are all ardent supporters of voodoo, and the only opponent given air time is a silly Christian missionary with her own brand of religious nonsense to spout.  We are told by Tremonti et al. that viewing voodoo as a primitive relic is a “stereotype”.  One of the main practices of voodoo, the horrific spectacle of animal sacrifice, is not mentioned; instead “voodoo priests” are commended for instilling in people “a deep sense of responsibility toward the other”, helping the poor and downtrodden to “live with life and loss”, and providing “a set of ideas that tries to deal with the mystery that death implies”.  It is even pointed out that “there are a lot of people who think Voudou [sic] will actually play a major role in how Haitians rebuild their capital city for the 21st century”.

In addition to voodoo’s purported capacity to “help” people deal with suffering, the role of voodoo priests in “healing the sick” is also mentioned.  This viewpoint, however, fails to examine how the religion enables its practitioners to extract funds in the name of quackery.   Although Jean-Bertrand Aristide warned Haitians in his autobiography  to be “careful to distinguish the voodoo priest from the charlatan who deceives people through sleight of hand, and whose aim is to get rich”, how can a legitimate “voodoo priest” and a charlatan be differentiated from one another?  In the case of AIDS treatment, for example, a “voodoo priest” charges $1,400 to pray to “voodoo spirits for guidance”, administer an emetic, and to dispense vitamins “to promote blood flow”.  This is in contrast to a three-month supply of antibiotics to treat AIDS-related infections, which costs $350.   As the result of a belief in voodoo, ineffective and expensive ”cures” are provided in lieu of scientifically valid treatments. 

What is particularly outrageous is the CBC’s promotion of Max Beauvoir, “a friend and mentor” of Davis - a person referred to as the ”pope of voodoo”.  Beauvoir, a person educated in scientific methods in the U.S. and France, had no interest in voodoo until his dying voodoo priest grandfather beseeched him to follow in his footsteps.  He now has a grand residence on the outskirts of Haiti where he and his followers “dance around a giant totem to the beat of drums”,  ”light bonfires to summon the spirits’, and “drain the blood of animals like that scrawny white goat to, among other things, heal the sick”.  This “voodoo priest” is not universally admired.  On the contrary, Amy Wilentz, in her book The Rainy Season: Haiti Since Duvalier, describes Beauvoir as an opportunist who has “the oily manner of a man whom you wouldn’t want to leave alone with your money or your child”. 

Even more disturbing is the fact that Beauvoir has been linked to the Duvaliers - the brutal dictators that controlled the country for decades while bleeding it dry – and even had to flee to the United States after Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier was exiled.  Part of the Duvaliers’ power, in fact, was made possible by the “voodoo priests” that the CBC is legitimizing.  It has been noted, for example, that Francois (Papa Doc) Duvalier managed “to persuade and coerce Haiti’s leading voodoo priests to work with him to neutralize his enemies”, which helped him to instill widespread fear in the population.  As Claude Douge, a religious scholar, points out, “once he had the priests in his hand, he had the Haitian people”.

It goes without saying the Haitian people have suffered terribly over the last centuries because of colonialism, imperialism, and other horrendous circumstances that were not of their own making.  Unfortunately, however, many misguided people, such as many journalists working for the CBC, seem to think that supporting voodoo will somehow ”empower” the country.  But voodoo is merely a tool of the powerful to keep the Haitian people submissive, and it should be exposed for what it is – a collection of ancient superstitions that are preventing Haitians from understanding the nature of their oppression and fighting against it.  It is disgraceful that smarmy romantics  like Wade Davis are enabling charlatans like Max Beauvoir to increase their wealth and power by exploiting the ignorance and suffering of the Haitian people.

A few days ago, an old friend decided to share a video asking “What would Jesus do?”.  The intent of the video was to encourage Christians to engage in charitable activities, rather than consumerism, because this is what Jesus would have wanted, and that an important part of “worship” was to humbly follow HIS example.  When I responded by stating that there was no evidence that Jesus existed and that we should determine our behaviour through critical thinking rather than blindly following a mythology, I was informed that “it is a historical FACT that Jesus lived just like other people in history, Julius Cesar, Mohammed, ect…. [sic]“. 

Since it is December 25 – the day set aside to support the birth of Jesus, it is appropriate to investigate whether the man that everyone is worshipping actually existed.  When one looks at the evidence, however, the “best” support available is the Bible, which is not a form of evidence that historians would accept (it also talks about virgin birth, the creation of the earth in 7 days, etc., which further repudiates its authority).   In fact, there is not the slightest physical evidence to support Jesus’ existence; there are no artifacts, dwellings, or written works that can be linked to him. There are no contemporary Roman records that establish that Pontius Pilate executed a “Jesus” (although records for Pontius Pilate exist).  There are no eyewitness accounts or contemporary documents that refer to Jesus – all references appear well after Jesus is alleged to have died, and came from either people who had never actually met Jesus or were obtained from mythological writings.  These forms of “evidence” would not be accepted in a court of law or in rigorous scholarship. The case of Jesus’ existence becomes even more weak when one considers that he is not mentioned by any philosphers, scribes or followers from the period, despite the fact that he was supposed to be a person known far and wide.

Although the most “authoritative” descriptions of Jesus come from the four Gospels of the Bible – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, these were not the only instances of hearsay concerning Jesus’ life. The four Gospels that we know today were chosen by early church leaders, most notably Irenaeus of Lyons (200 AD). Irenaeus chose only four of the many after the fact accounts of Jesus’ existence, according to John Romer, because of the spiritual significance he believed to be associated with the number four: “like the four zones of the world, the four winds, the four divisions of man’s estate, and the four forms of the first living creatures– the lion of Mark, the calf of Luke, the man of Matthew, the eagle of John (see Against the Heresies). The four gospels then became Church cannon for the orthodox faith. Most of the other claimed gospel writings were burned, destroyed, or lost” (Testament: The Bible and History (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1988)).

Although Jesus’ existence does not shed any light on the really important matter that is on many minds at this time of the year, since establishing Jesus’ historical presence would not show that he was spiritually “connected”, we should resist any attempts by Christians to assert the existence of Jesus as fact.  While Jesus’ existence does not matter to non-believers, it does to Christians, and this gives them an emotional incentive to distort history to buttress their beliefs. And since Christian beliefs still hold a powerful influence on governments, institutions, and colleges, anyone doing research on Jesus, even those who are scientifically minded, deny the existence of Jesus at the peril of losing research funding, damaging their reputation, or causing embarrassment to their Christian colleagues.  Separating history from mythology matters, and until we see Christmas for what it is – a celebration of the myth of Jesus – we are allowing religious propagandists to control our understanding of the past.

Margaret Wente, in an article in The Globe and Mail – “When in doubt: an atheist’s Christmas” (December 19, 2009, p. A23, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/when-in-doubt-an-atheists-christmas/article1406082/) – maintains that she feels uncomfortable calling herself an atheist because people are hard-wired for faith (her argument is drawn from the book, previously mentioned on this blog, The Faith Instinct).  As a result, she prefers the designation “reluctant unbeliever”.   In response to Wente’s column, Albert Howard had the following comments, which I have reproduced below.

FW

***

Wente’s argument, for religion as an instinct, is a common device of the god-believers who grab at even the most flaccid straws when all real possibilities of survival are extinct. First of all, a contemporary child, not offered irrational explanations for the universe, and all that is in it, would not come to unscientific conclusions. Since the enlightenment humans have the encouragement and opportunity to seek material explanations for phenomena. Since the more they understand, the more they realize how much more there is to be known, their real instinct is that of intellectual curiosity – not fairy tale answers.

Religionists have struggled since then to maintain the manipulative possibilities of belief without evidence. Whether true believers or charlatans, it is in their interest to defend the foolishness of irrational thought. Wente’s objectives, while having no apparent material basis, are still suspect because of her use of sophistry to support the baseless claim that we are “hard-wired for faith”.

Wente’s sophistry is in the form of the claims she makes to prove a kind of innate witlessness in all human beings. Only the most soft-headed of us will fail to notice the exchange of form for content as she gives example after example of the contrived comforts of everyday religious practices. Let’s look at them in order.

First there is that tried and true instrument of the agenda-laden writer, a realistic personal anecdote that we can all relate to in a minute. She lost her faith, yep! Then she reads Bertrand Russell (and Ayn Rand!), and gosh, if she didn’t realize that religion was senseless and the cause of endless misery in the world. Well, now we know we’re in the company of a fellow rationalist, our guard is down, and we’re going to be told it as it is. And how is it? Well, we all like to get together with people we like, and hang around the fire getting drunk and not have anything to do tomorrow. Church music can be divorced from its mindless motivations and enjoyed abstractly, and we can even see how, while it doesn’t turn our crank, Wente is thrilled by the rituals of religion – even the Muslim call to prayer, Jewish seders and that old chestnut – the Christmas Eve church-going.

One rationale for her argument is that she loves Renaissance art, and of course Renaissance art is loaded with religious imagery. Disregarding the historical reason for this, Wente tells us that we cannot dismiss the roots of this art as primitive superstition. Why not? That’s obviously what it is, but assuming our tacit acceptance, she barges on to declare that she was deeply moved by churches, synagogues and Mosques – as though that were relevant.

The urging of religious practice for non-believers continues with another heartwarming anecdote involving a “little picture-postcard church” in the country, where, after a Saturday Evening Post cover experience, she impulsively kneeled for communion, taking the wine and wafer. To keep the reader on side, we are assured that she “didn’t believe a word of it.” But that doesn’t matter, because she was so affected that she “could hardly speak.” This is where we find that it’s okay to feel uneasy about calling ourselves atheists – after all, we’ve agreed so far, so let’s opt for the fence-sitting “reluctant non-believer”. The only meaningful feature of this bit of ambiguity is that it is not atheism. And, of course, that is the point.

Now that we’re not atheists any more, but still not adhering to the inanity of blind faith, we can go ahead and enjoy the abstracted pleasures of religious ritual and practice. The balance of Wente’s article consists of trying to associate responsible social behavior with religious dictates. Even civilization is accountable to religious belief. Humanity would be an untamed social-Darwinesque jungle were it not for religion binding us together. Quoting Nicholas Wade’s The Faith Instinct, Wente tells us that religion’s role is to bind us together, making us “extraordinarily co-operative.” She doesn’t seem to notice the internecine slaughter of Muslim groups divided over who is the real descendant of Mohammed, or Sikhs fighting one another over furniture in their places of worship. These conflicts are caused by religion, and much more killing has gone on in the name of religious against other faiths as well as non-believers.

Wente also argues that ignorance is bliss, when she makes the dubious claim that the religious are “happier, healthier and more emotionally secure than the rest of us”. The singular quality that distinguishes us from other life forms is rational intelligence, and our happiness originates in the fulfillment of our humanity, not in the abstracted creature comforts that satisfy a cat. Wente’s argument is cited by Richard Dawkins as “believing in belief” – the view that justifies manipulation against intelligence, and shows a disbelief in the capacity of humanity to function rationally on its own volition. It is not only an insult to the human condition but, more importantly, a hypocritical and sophistic attempt to reinforce religion through non-religious practice of religious ritual.

Today’s episode (December 11, 2009) of CBC’s The Current, featured an interview with Nicholas Wade (www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/2009/200912/20091211.html), a Science Reporter for The New York Times  and author of The Faith Instinct: How Religion Evolved and Why it Endures.  Wade raises some very important questions about the evolution of religion.  Somewhat controversially, he argues that faith provides evolutionary advantages for the human species, and therefore we are genetically hardwired to embrace religion.

In the interview, Wade is somewhat critical of Richard Dawkins’ view that we are not necessarily genetically programmed for faith, but for obedience.  Dawkins argues that an evolutionary advantage is provided by “listening to our elders” and this tendency manifests itself in supplicating oneself before religious spokespeople.  Wade counters Dawkins’ position by arguing  that the survival of religion over a long period of time indicates that it is not just an accidental outgrowth of deference to authority; for religion to be selected by evolutionary processes, asserts Wade, it must be beneficial for humanity.  Dawkins’ failure to recognize this, in Wade’s view, is due to his prejudicial attitude that religion is detrimental to society.

The benefit that religion offers for humanity, according to Wade, is that a conjuration of spiritual forces leads people to emotionally involve themselves in a group and to defend it, even to the point of sacrificing their own lives. People need (want?) to believe in something “bigger than themselves”, and, as a result, faith in the supernatural helps to increase the size of social formations beyond what would have been possible without religion, enhancing reproductive success.  Furthermore, religion enables certain values that encourage social integration to be enforced and greater cohesion and group survival becomes possible.

While I find Wade’s arguments fascinating, there are two main problems with them that can be identified.  First of all, there is a difference between the social effects of a religious belief and the belief itself.  Just because a religion embraces principles that are beneficial for society (thou shall not kill, for example), this does not mean that the opposition to killing, in itself, is religious.  The essence of religion is the belief in the supernatural, and this might prohibit or encourage killing depending upon the context (Islam, for example, maintains that adulterers should be stoned to death),  Wade’s assumption that religion is “beneficial” leads him to neglect one of its major characteristics – its use by those in power to con people into accepting their subordinate position. Shamans, one of the earliest religious figures, for example, use their ”spiritual status” to extract ”gifts” from their followers. 

The second problem with Wade’s arguments is the fallacy that because religion has existed for a long period of time, it will always exist.  This is an anti-evolutionary viewpoint.  To examine religion from an evolutionary perspective, one has to look at historical trends, and how one form of consciousness emerges out of another.  Although religious belief continues to exist, it is becoming much weaker than in the past (even expressing sentiments like I am today, for  example, would have been punishable by death in the past).  It is highly likely, in fact, that religion provided a survival advantage in the past, but that scientific progress has now made it detrimental to our survival.  Wade misleadingly makes the comparison between language and religion; while language is obviously a necessity for survival, belief in the supernatural appears to be superfluous to existence. 

It is important to recognize that, just because something existed for a long period of time, and therefore provided a survival advantage, this will not always be the case.   Slavery and feudal relations, for example, existed for thousands of years, but today they are either completely rejected (slavery) or regarded as an archaic historical relic (the British aristocracy).  Religious beliefs, because they cannot provide any evidence to support their existence, are gradually being rejected.  If one also accepts that there is a connection between economic exploitation and religion, it is likely that once class relations disappear, so will religion.

Much consternation has been expressed recently about the response of the majority of Swiss people to the building of minarets in their country.  One of the most severe critiques came from Doug Saunders, a columnist for The Globe and Mail (“Swiss minaret ban emboldens Europe’s extremists”, December 1, 2009, p. A19).   Saunders compares the banning of minarets with the “[Nazi German] rampage against synogogues” in 1939 and he refers to an anti-minaret advertising ”campaign of caricature and grotesque rhetoric aimed at the target population, including images of sacrificed animals, black-hooded women and armed terrorists”.  Secularly-minded Swiss are portrayed as “insecure” for their response, while Muslims demanding public acceptance of strident religious architecture are designated as “moderate” (the Balkan origins of most Swiss Muslims are perceived as meaning that ”they are as culturally and historically European as any Christian Swiss citizen”).  It is even argued that “the politics of Swiss Muslims are notably liberal and democratic, more so in many respects than in the rest of the Swiss population” (an assertion supported only by the “evidence” that few Muslims wear headscarves or advocate for Sharia law).

Although most commentators would not go as far as Saunders, many have seen the Swiss response as a double standard (Saunders also notes that Switzerland has a “steeple-pocked landscape”).   But this argument fails to recognize that Christian churches in Switzerland are a product of European history, and therefore their existence is a fact of Swiss life.  Also,  increasing rationality in Europe is resulting in an emptying out of the churches, and their subsequent conversion into socially positive spaces such as concert halls and theatres.  Muslim immigrants, on the other hand, are demanding that highly visible religiously inspired towers be introduced into Switzerland.  Furthermore, it is likely that these minarets will create a new cultural dynamic in the country since their purpose is to enable a call to prayer to be issued to the Muslim community five times a day.

The fact that Muslims are supposed to pray five times a day is an indication of the intrusiveness of the Islamic religion, and the threat that it poses to cultures that embrace the principles of the enlightenment.  This is a problem that is currently facing Europe, as well as Canada and the United States.  Consider the following occurrences:

- In Canada, the government of the day contemplated preventing the distribution of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses on the grounds that it might be perceived as ”blasphemous” and therefore be a form of ”hate literature”;

- The cartoons depicting Mohammad were censored almost everywhere because of fears about Islamic retribution; the response of “moderate” Muslims was that while violence against those publishing the cartoons was wrong, so too was the caricaturing of the person regarded as their prophet;

 - Some public pools in Canada have instituted times for female only swimming because Muslim groups do not want Islamic women in bathing suits to be seen by men;

- Islamic groups on campuses inform non-Islamic men about proper “etiquette”.  This concerns not shaking hands with Islamic women out of “respect” for them. 

- There are attempts in France to prohibit a national dish (pork soup) from being served by charities, since this is perceived as being ”spiritually unclean” by Muslim believers. 

One only has to visit the outskirts of Paris, which are now dominated by Islamic cultures, to observe the oppressive atmosphere that such restrictions have caused (unlike the ethusiastic sociability, especially between the sexes, that one sees in the rest of the city).

Europe has gone through hundreds of years of struggle to free itself from religious imposition, and these advances are now threatened by the cultural imperialism of Islamic groups.  This concern was recently expressed by Martin Amis, in an interview with The Globe and Mail (Margaret Wente, “Feminism’s unlikely ally – and radical Islam’s foe”, November 14, 2009, p. F5).  As Amis points out, “there is such a thing as universal values”, and these values are embodied in British law.  Amis goes on to stress that he is a supporter of immigration and thinks that racial diversity is beneficial for society; it is the unconditional support of anything “multicultural” that disturbs him, since such arguments are preventing universal values from being embraced and  entrenched in law.

One of the most interesting observations of Amis is that feminists today tend to support the demands of Islamic groups, even when they conflict with the principle of sexual equality.  He notes that feminist ideals are now seen as secondary to minority cultural preservation, because we have “the terror-stricken anxiety of seeming racist or anti-multicultural”.  This is a more general tendency for people who perceive themselves to be on the left.  Reactionary practices such as hajib-wearing in schools and Sharia law are seen as “progressive” because  Islam is perceived as being oppositional to western economic imperialism.  It is not understood that Islam is not opposed to the economic oppression brought by imperialism, only its assault on patriarchal religious values. 

Demands for “tolerance” of oppressive cultural practices is completely contrary to left-wing ideas – a circumstance that is leading to the increasing popularity of right-wing parties in Europe (because pseudoleftist parties refuse to oppose Islamic imperialism).   There needs to be an understanding that opposition to beliefs and practices cannot, in itself, be racist since these are learned behaviour, not genetic characteristics.  Being Islamic is a belief system, and people can reject the idea that God spoke to Mohammad in the desert if they choose to do so (although this is difficult since apostasy is often violently opposed by Muslims).  Once culture and race are delinked, the possibilities for actual progressive politics will dramatically increase.

Below is a comment from Jordan B. Peterson, Psychology professor from the University of Toronto, responding to my post “The Evolution of Religion”, November 20, 2009.  Due to the length of this comment, the ideas that it explores, and the fact that my incompetence in managing this blog prevented me from noticing this post earlier, I have decided to make his comments more accessible to readers.

For the record, it should be noted that “Marxist” is a label applied to me by various journalists, not a term that I would use myself.  I prefer the designation “historical materialist” or “scientific socialist” because I think that the views of Marx should be accepted or rejected on the basis of evidence, not wishful thinking.  It is not clear why Dr. Peterson has chosen to focus so extensively on the truth or falsity of these ideas, as they were not mentioned in the original post.  To do so has the effect of “poisoning the well”, rather than direcly addressing my main point (that to understand the “evolution of religion”, one first must decide whether or not the existence of “God” is probable).  Peterson’s participation on the TVO program appeared to support the belief in supernatural forces, because of the language that he used (“religious truth” and Hurricane Katrina being an act of a vengeful God, for example).  After reading his response below, I am not sure what his position is on this matter. 

FW

——

This posting was brought to my attention by Wodek Szemberge, a TVO producer for Big Ideas and The Agenda. He suggested I respond. The first thing I would like to say is that I think Frances Widdowson is a very brave and forthright person, and that she should be fully and unconditionally supported in her battle to bring clarity to the issue of aboriginal rights in Canada. I think attempts on the part of other academics to have her censured are a disgrace to the idea of academic freedom and, more importantly, a clear and present danger to freedom of speech.

Having said that, I would like to turn to her more specific comments on the Agenda show. Widdowson states that the program “turned out to be a shameless promotion of irrationality and silliness.” She also accuses me, personally, of being an “overt believer in unsubstantiated supernatural forces” who makes “nonsensical and vague references to religious truths.” I think that anyone who has publicly claimed allegiance to Marxist views (in Maclean’s magazine, for example) should be very careful about making such comments. As far as I am concerned, there is absolutely no excuse for anyone to profess Marxist views at this stage of the historical game. In fact, I think a strong case can be made, ethically, that professing Marxism is as ill-advised and immoral as professing National Socialism, and psychologically, that anyone who continues to do so is opaque to contradictory evidence in a literally pathological manner.

In every country that Marxist principles have been implemented, mayhem, destruction, oppression and murder have followed. The Russian Nobel-prize winning author Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s devastating critique in the 1970’s (The Gulag Archipelago)demolished the last remaining shreds of Marxist intellectual credibility. He estimated that 60 million people were killed in the Soviet Union from 1919-1959 as a consequence of internal repression alone. More cautious observers put the numbers at 30 million. Solzhenitsyn also estimated that more than 100 million were killed in China, for the same reasons. This is to say nothing of Cambodia, where the probability of being killed under the communists approached 1/2.2. My students at the university know about the Nazi holocaust, of course, but have been taught almost nothing about these other larger-scale genocides, in large part because twentieth century intellectuals were frequently enamored of leftist ideas, and thus less willing to point their fingers at the communists than at the fascists.

Die-hard modern Marxists (and that is an apt term) state, of course, that none of this murderousness and soul-shattering callousness was “real” communism, by which they mean, essentially, “if I had been in charge, with my true understanding of communist writ, then utopia rather than genocide would have reigned.” Such a stance merely adds narcissistic arrogance to ideological delusion. If a seed produces poisonous fruit, no matter where it is planted, the seed is to blame, and not the soil. Communism has failed, excruciatingly, everywhere it has taken root. There are other reasons why the “true communism has never been tried” argument fails, as well. Solzhenitsyn took Marxism apart, axiom by painful axiom, and demonstrated to the point of agonizing clarity how the ideological premises, attractive as they were (”to each according to his need”) inevitably produced their deadly consequences. So no Marxist who dares to still exist and to publicly proclaim such allegiance after the brutally ideological twentieth century should ever presume to accuse anyone else of purveying nonsense. Marxism is nothing but the primary exemplar of the kind of simple-minded ideological reductionism that proves almost irresistibly attractive to those for whom, in Nietzsche’s prescient terms, “God is dead.” Individuals who abide by the axioms of such ideologies play a dangerous but understandable game: they identify a single strong human motive, and then explain everything using a story derived from that motive. Marx did it with economics, Foucault did it with power, Freud did it with sex. Because all human endeavors are grounded, to some degree, in economics, power and sex, such stories can be made credible and coherent. However, and this is true in a technical, philosophical, sense, they cannot be made complete, because they leave so much else out. There are primary human motivations for play, exploration, aesthetic experience, religious experience, love… none of which can be reduced without catastrophic loss to economics, power or sex. All attempts to do so merely constitute tyranny — and such tyranny is generally imposed, as fast as possible, and regardless of the consequences, by the true ideologue, who maintains belief for the psychological security and certainty that it provides, rather than for any love of the truth. It might also be pointed out that many of the axioms of Marxism are simply wrong, scientifically: there is, for example, a extensive scientific literature demonstrating the falsehood of the idea that class identity is the primary determinant of destiny in a modern society, where individual intelligence and trait conscientiousness, both strongly genetically influenced, account for more than half of an individual’s class status at the age of forty, with the circumstances of birth taken into account. Furthermore, as Daly and Wilson of McMaster University have demonstrated (in a genuine intellectual tour de force) — what tension does exist between “classes” in modern societies is generated by relative, not absolute poverty, which makes the problem psychological (jealousy, envy, resentment) rather than economic. There are similar examples too numerous to name.

Now we might turn our attention to Widdowson’s comments on religion: First, to claim that Christianity tells its believers “not to rebel against the existing order” is a comment that only a die-hard Marxist, ossified into a predictable ideological viewpoint, could possibly make. Christ, historical or archetypal, was crucified precisely because he rebelled against the social order. The Pharisee Caiphas said about Christ what tyrants everywhere have always said about individuals who follow the dictates of their conscience and dare to oppose the state: “…it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.” With regards to New Orleans: Mythological representations, like those characteristic of Yahweh in the Old Testament, hold that the moral decay of society and the individual is indistinguishable from the wrath of God (if the archaic writings are read with some sophistication and some consideration for the intelligence of the pre-empirical writers). This is not merely my opinion; it is also the opinion of very informed historians of religion such as Mircea Eliade. There is a simple reason for this: corrupt societies are much less likely to prepare properly for “God’s anger” – experienced, not infrequently, as natural or social disaster. The US Army Corp of Engineer was, after all, publicly censured for its failure to pay attention to its own data with regards to the strength of the New Orleans levees (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/24/AR2006032401819.html). Furthermore, New Orleans in particular and Louisiana in general is famously corrupt in its political and economic society. It doesn’t take genius to note what it means in the Old Testament by the idea that Yahweh does not tolerate sin (hamartia, in Greek: to miss the target – an archery term): Unprepared societies, willfully blind, undermined in their efficiency by their own corruption, inevitably bring the wrath of God down upon themselves. Think metaphorically, for a moment (in the manner the authors of the Old Testament would have thought): It wasn’t a hurricane that destroyed New Orleans, for God’s sake. The seawalls and dykes in Holland would have repelled Katrina without trembling, because they were built by a forthright and honest people, who responded to their own knowledge and their fear of Neptune with intelligence and care. The American dykes didn’t hold, because they were built by people who closed their eyes to their own data, and funded by corrupt politicians who squandered and pocketed resources that should have been devoted to saving the city. “God” obviously doesn’t approve of such behavior. Finally, with regards to the “empirical” knowledge of the Greeks: The Greeks might have been rational, but they weren’t empirical. The methods for formal scientific empiricism and the measurement techniques upon which it depends were simply not established until the time of Bacon, Descartes and Galileo. And anyone who has gone after the politically correct for inappropriately celebrating “native American” culture should be very careful about criticizing someone for “ignoring the entire body of knowledge accumulated by…. pre-modern cultures.” I don’t ignore that knowledge at all. It is for this reason that I have respect for religious beliefs, although I have never claimed to be and am not at all “an overt believer in supernatural forces.” I value archaic knowledge, but I never confuse it with science. So, to conclude: Frances Widdowson is brave, and her right to say what she wants should be supported at all cost. However, there is no excuse whatsoever for her Marxism, intellectually or morally. Furthermore, her critique of religious thought is completely empty, and worse, predictable, as it must be, given that it is entirely predicated on her merely algorithmic Marxism.

Before the beginning of the Grey Cup final, the head coach, Marc Trestman, led all the players of the Montreal Alouettes in a group prayer.  In other words, he asked, in the words of Ambrose Bierce, that “the laws of the universe be annulled on behalf of a single [or in this case multiple] petitioner, confessedly unworthy”.  Furthermore, Trestman was requesting that the “laws of the universe be annulled” so as to favour the Alouettes, at the expense of the players of the other team (the Saskatchewan Roughriders).

Throughout the game, it appeared that something had gone terribly wrong with this strategy; it looked as if the Alouettes were going to be soundly beaten.  Had they prayed to the wrong God (a distinct possibility considering the amount of competition)?  Perhaps they had not prayed “properly”, or maybe it was the Roughriders that God really liked, despite the fact that they had not prayed before the game (their ascent to the Grey Cup final, after all, had a slight resemblance the trials and tribulations encountered by the character of Jesus in the story of the Bible)?  Or maybe, God just had other plans for them.  In the end, however, God came to his senses.  He made Saskatchewan put too many players on the field, which then gave the Alouettes another field goal chance.  Then God dutifully guided the ball through the goal posts, enabling the Alouettes win by one point (28 to 27).

Andre Agassi, in his recent book Open, castigated Michael Chang for the same behaviour that was exhibited by Trestman: “He thanks God – credits God – for the win, which offends me. That God should take sides in a tennis match, that God should side against me, that God should be in Chang’s box, feels ludicrous and insulting. I beat Chang and savor every blasphemous stroke.”  I also think that Agassi remarked, although I cannot find the quote, “as if God doesn’t have better things to do!”.

If an all-knowing, all-powerful, Creator of the universe (i.e. matter) does exist, which is, to say the least, highly improbable, are we to take seriously the assumption that He is looking down from the sky and watching the Grey Cup final?!  The actions of Trestman would constitute just the nonsensical actions of one individual, but imposed team prayers during sporting events are a common occurrence.  What about those players who don’t believe in God and feel uncomfortable supplicating themselves before unsubstantiated supernatural forces?  To object would result in the accusation of not being a “team player”.  Why are these activities not being publicly opposed?

On November 7 and 8, 2009, the BBC broadcast the intelligence² debate on the question of whether or not “the Catholic church is a force for good in the world” (http://events.intelligencesquared.com).   In defence of the motion were Archbishop John Onaivekan, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Abuja, Nigeria, and the Right Honourable Ann Widdecombe, Conservative MP and Catholic convert.  The speakers against the motion were Christopher Hitchens, columnist, broadcaster and author of God is not Great, and Stephen Fry, actor, author, comedian and television presenter.

Although the exchange was entertaining and exposed the vacuousness of the Catholic propagandists – the number of audience members supporting the Catholic church declined during the debate from 678 to 268, while the number who maintained that the Catholic church was not a force for good rose from 1102 to 1876 – there were two major problems with the debate and the discussion that it provoked.  The first was that Hitchens and Fry focused on the actions of the church hierarchy, not the essence of Catholicism as a religion.  The sexual abuse of children, for example, is opposed in Catholicism, and for Christopher Hitchens to provide this as a refutation that “the Catholic church is a force for good” is unconvincing.  The argument that the church should just “reverse” its doctrine with respect to women priests, condoms and homosexuality was prominent throughout the proceedings, but this demand misunderstands the nature of religion: Catholic dictates are not followed because they are socially convenient, but because they are believed to be the word of an almighty “Creator”, who can punish or reward us in the afterlife if we choose to disobey or obey “Him”.

This is a fundamental problem of religion more generally – that believers follow religious dictates on the basis that they are the “word of God”, not because they have been critically analyzed to determine if they are beneficial for humanity.  Stephen Fry even maintains that the Catholic church’s “own[ership of] a billion souls at baptism” presents an “opportunity to do something remarkable to make this planet better”.  The problem, for Fry, is not that people can be controlled in this way by the deluded and/or corrupt, but that the benevolent use of  ”soul ownership” is “being constantly and arrogantly avoided”.   This comment fails to recognize the actual problem – the unsubstantiated belief that certain organizations can “own” souls gives them a tremendous capacity to take advantage of the ignorance of their followers.  In fact, there is no evidence that a “soul” even exists.

This avoidance of the general problems of religious belief are related to the second problem of the debate and discussion – that Catholicism is singled out for rebuke.  Christopher Hitchens, in fact, appears to hypocritically avoid the wider issue of the irrationality and destructiveness of religion by reinterpreting, and thus defusing, a question from the floor.  In response to a question asking whether Hitchens “is only against the Catholic Church or against all religions“, Hitchens responds as follows: “the lady in front began by asking me do I only reserve this condemnation for the Holy Roman Church and not for other Catholics, for example like Byzantine Catholics and Protestants and so on; I think that they are all the same equivalent glimpses of the identical untruth [emphasis added]“.

Catholicism, in fact, is singled out for public ridicule because it is an easy target.  Because it is willing to engage in public debate, it receives more than its fair share of criticism.  Imagine, for example, a public debate on whether or not Islam is a “force for good” in the world, or if the Jewish religion is socially beneficial.  In the case of the former, one would risk a fatwa, and with the latter the smear of “anti-semitism”.  Although it is important to expose the hypocisy and deceit of Catholicism, we should ensure that all beliefs in the supernatural are subjected to the same fearless and critical gaze.

On November 17, 2009, TV Ontario’s “The Agenda” with Steve Paikin featured a panel discussion entitled “Religions: Old, New, Borrowed and Blue”.  The participants included Jordan Peterson, a clinical psychologist and psychology professor at the University of Toronto; Lorna Dueck, the Executive Producer and host of Listen Up TV - a Christian take on news and current events; Gretta Vosper, the founder of the oxymoronic Canadian Centre for Progressive Christianity; Gerald Filson, the Director of the Office of External Affairs for the Baha’i Community of Canada; and Shabir Ally, the president of the Islamic Information and Dawah Centre (http://www.tvo.org).

While the program’s pretence was to provide some insights into the “evolution of religion”, it turned out to be a shameless promotion of irrationality and silliness.  Religious evolution, after all, is a scientific and anti-religious idea -evolutionary processes negate the idea of an all-powerful and all-knowing “Creator”.  But, to discuss this idea, The Agenda invited four overt believers in unsubstantiated supernatural forces in the universe.  The one, supposedly scientific voice, is a psychology professor who makes nonsensical and vague references to “religious truths”, argues that no empirical claims existed before 1500 A.D. (ignoring the entire body of knowledge accumulated by the ancient Greeks and other pre-modern cultures), and thinks that artistic sensibilities and religious beliefs are similarly “irrational” (failing to understand that while the response to art is emotional and not rational, it does not constitute an irrational belief in a highly improbable “Creator” of the universe).  At the end of the program, Peterson even misleadingly compares the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina to the actions a vengeful God.  After justifiably accosting Gretta Vosper (a Christian who does not follow Christ) for making “incoherent statements”, Peterson opines: ”One of the clear messages in the Old Testament is that if you’re not honest and you don’t walk a careful path then God will come along and wipe you out,  and as much as we might not like to like a God like that and think that is an archaic way of looking at things, I would say that’s exactly what happened to New Orleans, because people think that it was an Act of God so to speak that destroyed the city; it was a hurricane but it wasn’t a hurricane; it was the fact that New Orleans is an unbelievably corrupt city and no one paid any attention to the dykes and millions of dollars of public money were spirited into people’s pockets”.

Although one would understand why Christian (both fundamentalist and nebulous), Baha’i and Muslim representatives would embrace fairy tales, it is disturbing that a clinical psychologist and psychology professor would make such assertions.  In fact, no member of the panel seems to understand the difference between a belief in God and whether or not there is evidence to support the existence of the supernatural.  Ally even baldly states that there is such a thing as the “ontological reality of God”.  To support this assertion he relies upon the “first mover” hypothesis about the origins of the universe (that a “Creator” is needed to explain the existence of matter).  It should be noted that such a view contradicts the first law of thermodynamics – that energy cannot be created or destroyed, just transformed.  Therefore, one must assume that matter has always existed since the “creation” of matter is not possible.

The “evolution of religion” is an important topic of scientific study. If we are to assume that the apes and other pre-human lifeforms have not developed religion, we need to understand what human characteristics led to the emergence of a belief in the supernatural and its evolution.  We can see, for example, the transition from Animism to monotheistic religions involved the change from concern about controlling nature to an attempt to control human behaviour.  Christianity evolved out of Judaism as humanity needed to make the transition from tribal social relations (an eye for an eye) to societies determined by class relations (turn the other cheek, don’t rebel against the existing order).   Islamic texts, because they evolved out of Animism, not Judaism, still encourage a number of barbaric practices (such as cutting off limbs for stealing and stoning people to death for adultery), unlike the lessons of “peace and forgiveness” drawn from the New Testament.  This episode of “The Agenda”, because it is pandering to religious groups and tacitly assumes that God exists, cannot shed any light on this subject.

On November 7-10, in Montreal, a conference is being held on Religion in Quebec.  Of particular significance is the “Issues for Canada’s First Nations Peoples” panel, on Sunday from 1-2:30 p.m.   The papers being presented include the following:

Mark F. Ruml, University of Winnipeg
Respectful Methodology: Ethical and Procedural Guidelines for Aboriginal Research

This paper presents the conclusions of a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Research Development Initiative. The purpose of the project was to develop, through interviewing Aboriginal Elders, a set of ethical and procedural guidelines for Aboriginal research, grounded in Aboriginal language and worldview concepts. The results are uniquely tailored to fit research directly related to Aboriginal cultural groups in Manitoba, Northwestern Ontario, and Saskatchewan but are of value and relevance to Aboriginal research in general. Research has revealed that the Dakota concept mitakuye owasin (“All my relations”) and the Ojibwe concept gagige inakonige (“eternal natural law”) are central concepts expressing cultural values and ethics important for guiding research. In both of these concepts, “respect” is the underlying cultural value, hence the title “Respectful Methodology.” This paper provides a unique contribution to the emerging discourse related to Aboriginal research ethics and procedures.   

David Walsh, Arizona State University
Canada’s Traditional Knowledge Policy and Problems of Intercultural Dialogue 

In 1993 the Government of the Northwest Territories of Canada developed the first Traditional Knowledge Policy. The policy incorporates traditional knowledge assessments into government programs and services. This breakthrough in intercultural exchange publicly legitimizes indigenous worldviews in contemporary affairs. However, it is also bringing to light inherent misunderstandings by non-native people of indigenous religious worldviews, and more importantly the inability of governmental agencies and corporations to incorporate the traditional knowledge being presented in meaningful ways. Through analyzing transcripts of traditional knowledge assessments I will highlight the underlying epistemologies in statements made by First Nations people. This is contrasted to Frances Widdowson and Albert Howard’s criticism of the traditional knowledge policy in ‘Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry,’ 2008. My paper will explore the epistemological assumptions of the various parties, demonstrating how the policy brings to the forefront the problem of miscommunication that has plagued exchanges between First Nations and non-native peoples.  

Suzanne Owen, Leeds Trinity
Sources of Contemporary Mi’kmaq Spirituality  

Many Mi’kmaw spiritual leaders spoke of learning ceremonies from neighbouring and Plains Indian peoples. The Conne River Mi’Kmaq of Newfoundland host an annual powwow in July conducted according to established protocols. As evidenced in the powwow itself, centred on dance displays and ceremonies that have Plains Indian origins, individual testimonies also indicate an extensive inter-tribal sharing of traditional knowledge and ceremonies from spiritual leaders belonging to Mohawk, Cree and other First Nations. In turn, Mi’kmaq are sharing their ceremonies with Labrador Inuit and other visitors. As well as challenging the category ‘indigenous religion’, this paper examines the question of indigeneity itself, particularly in the Newfoundland context where, until recently, only the extinct Beothuk were considered ‘aboriginal’.