Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

From the annals of unlikely similes: "Religion is like a penis"

From the bowels of Twitter:

 

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire...due to homosexuality

According to the new Republican Speaker of the House, fundamentalist fanatic Mike Johnson from Louisiana:

“Many historians, those who are objective, would look back and recognize and give some credit to the fall of Rome to, not only the deprivation of the society and the loss of morals, but also to the rampant homosexual behavior that was condoned by the society,” Johnson told a radio host in 2008.

(Thanks to Chris Morris for the pointer.)

"Remarks on Religion" from philosopher Daniel Kaufman

I'm sure this will produce a lively set of responses!  An excerpt from the end:

When one examines the great religious traditions, all of which stem from antiquity, what one is confronted with are obviously, demonstrably archaic, primitive conceptions of the universe, values, notions of obligation, the respective roles of the sexes, economics, politics, and the like. One encounters shamanistic rituals, “lock-and-key” type metaphysical formulas of the “chant these words over there on the first Tuesday of every third month, and X will happen” variety, and hierarchies of deities and angels that look remarkably like ancient monarchic and Imperial hierarchies. All of which makes perfect sense in an Iron Age context. But it seems to me that it would take a good amount of self-deception – or at least, a sort of psychic indolence – to look at all of this and say, “Nope, these aren’t fascinating and often lurid snapshots from the messy, often ugly history of human development, but rather, eternal truths about the nature and operation of the universe and everything and everyone in it. Oh, and just my religion, not those other people’s.”

 

The current majority of the super-legislature does not care about gay people or discrimination against them when religion is involved

Just a brief note about the venal opinion in 303 Creative, authorizing religiously inspired bigots offering commercial services to discriminate against LGBT customers as long as their business has an "expressive" aspect (whatever that is) and they have "sincere religious" hatred of LGBT people.  (OK, the court didn't quite put it that way.)   The current super-legislature has long had a massive bias in favor of religious believers, and that is now running up against anti-discrimination law.  One hopes (but I confess I'm not sure) that they would draw a line at "sincere religious" hatred of Black people or interracial couples, which is to say that the real meaning of the decision is that religious bigotry against gays trumps the value of anti-discrimination protection for gays.  Professor Dorf's more measured, but critical, commentary is useful. [Link fixed]

ADDENDUM:  The decision is nominally grounded in general "free speech" principles, not religious free exercise, but I find it hard to believe the decision would have come out the way it did if the challenge to the anti-discrimination law were coming from a secular bigot.

Tenure in Texas: the aftermath

Tenure will remain at public universities in Texas, but new standards for revocation of tenure have been codified, including "moral turpitude" (without any definition or requirement for a criminal conviction) and "unprofessional conduct" that "adversely affects the institution."  What if a faculty member participates in a drag show?  Is that "moral turpitude"?  What if a faculty member tweets something controversial or vulgar, that attracts unfavorable media attention:  is that "unprofessional conduct" that "adversely affects the institution"?  There will be First Amendment challenges to some of the potential applications of these new standards, which are highly unusual and not at all part of standard AAUP criteria for tenure revocation.  Here's what the Texas chapter of the AAUP had to say:

"We do not believe that such a codification is necessary; furthermore, we are concerned with dangerously broad grounds for termination in the bill as well as the lack of the due process provisions recommended by the AAUP and adopted by more than 1,300 colleges and universities nationally, including many in Texas," said Brian Evans, vice president of Texas chapter of the AAUP. "Nevertheless, the legislation passed by the House and Senate improves dramatically on the original bill, and we are grateful to the legislators, faculty, staff, students, and professional organizations whose work contributed to the amended bill."

Montana Taliban trying to wreck science education

MOVING TO FRONT FROM JANUARY 24--UPDATED    

Religiously inspired stupidity isn't dead yet, as a new draft bill in Montana makes clear, which states that, "a scientific fact is observable and repeatable, and if it does not meet these criteria, it is a theory that is defined as speculation," and can't be taught in the public schools.  Oy veh!  Does the draft bill have any chance of enactment?   Comments from knowledgeable readers welcome.

(Thanks to Bradley Wood for the pointer.)

UPDATE:  I learn from comments by Glenn Branch, below, that this mischief has died in committee.

"Intelligent design" creationism basically finished

Biologist Jerry Coyne reviews the state of affairs.   My "Texas Taliban" alerts category was created some two decades ago precisely because of the efforts by those folks to wreck biology education in Texas!  (Years ago, a member in good standing even came to visit me in my office!  And see also.)

What happens in illiberal societies where zealots reign supreme

Iran for instance, where a PhD student in philosophy was murdered by the local thugs of the state. 

Please remember the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan!

(Thanks to Ruchira Paul for the pointer, and Reza Hadisi on Twitter for calling the issue to my attention.)

 

Pollitt on Rushdie and offending the religious...

...at The Nation; an excerpt:

The idea that religion should be protected from disagreement—that’s the problem. Why should the holdings of any faith be beyond critique, satire, even mockery? Religion is not a hereditary trait. It’s a set of ideas and behaviors and social practices. Those can be changed, and have been repeatedly throughout history. Blasphemy is part of that process, because it encourages questioning and independence of spirit and resistance to obscurantism and unjust authority. We progressives are supposed to take a side. Galileo or the Inquisition? Rushdie or the ayatollahs?

Two sides to every issue: the civilized and the barbaric

From CNN:

[S]everal hardline Iranian newspapers poured praise on Matar [Rushdie's assailant] on Saturday, including the conservative Kayhan newspaper, whose editor-in-chief is appointed by [Ayatollah] Khamenei.  

 

"A thousand bravos, a hundred God blesses. His hand must be kissed... Bravo to the warrior and dutiful man who attacked the Apostate and wicked Salman Rushdie. The hand of the warrior must be kissed. He tore the vein of Rushdie's neck," the paper said.

 

Another hardline newspaper, Khorasan, published a headline, "The Devil on the Path to Hell" while showing a picture of Rushdie on a stretcher.

 

Time to remember the Revolutionary Association of Women of Aghanistan:  "Fundamentalism is the mortal enemy of all civilized humanity."

The judge who presided over a successful Establishment Clause challenge to an attempt to insert "intelligent design" creationism into a public school curriculum...

...comments on the super-legislatures latest evisceration of the increasingly attenuated "separation" between church and state.

(Thanks to Glenn Branch for the pointer.)

Florida man, taking advantage of new "parental rights" law, asks school libraries to remove the Bible

Exactly right:

"My objection to the Bible being in your public schools is based on the following seven points, offered for your learned consideration," Stevens wrote.

Stevens proceeded to question whether the Bible is age-appropriate, pointing to its "casual" references to murder, adultery, sexual immorality, and fornication. "Do we really want to teach our youth about drunken orgies?"

He also took issue with the many Biblical references to rape, bestiality, cannibalism and infanticide. "In the end, if Jimmy and Susie are curious about any of the above, they can do what everyone else does – get a room at the Motel Six and grab the Gideons," he wrote....

"If you want to teach morality and ethics, do you really want to turn to a book that wants you to dash babies against rocks?" he told NPR, pointing to Psalm 137:9.

Librarian in Texas fired after refusing to remove book about a transgender teen

If one wants to see what the Repugs have in store for America if given the chance, see Texas.

Who will be a public school teacher in a "red" state...

...if craziness like this continues?

Fascist Lt. Governor of Texas Dan Patrick wants to end tenure, and ban teaching of "Critical Race Theory" in higher education

This really is becoming the McCarthy Era all over again, except that there is no foreign power committed to the CRT bogeyman:

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick is proposing to end tenure for new hires at Texas public universities and making the teaching of critical race theory a cause for tenure revocation. He said tenure should also be reviewed annually.

Currently state law says tenured faculty are subject to a performance evaluation “no more often than once every year, but no less often than once every six years.”

The goal is to eliminate tenure at all public universities in Texas, Patrick said during a Friday news conference. The issue will be a “top priority” and a subject of interim hearings as lawmakers prepare for the 88th Legislative Session that starts in January.

Latest fad in reactionary religious mischief: empowering parents to destroy public education

First in Oklahoma, now Texas:

Under the Parent Bill of Rights, Abbott said any educator convicted of providing minors with "obscene" content will lose their educational credentials and state licensing, forfeit their retirement benefits and will be placed on a "do not hire" list. The state will also require schools to post the bill online for parents to access....

You can guess which books will be deemed obscene.

U.S. Free Speech Union calls out proposed Oklahoma legislation that would turn every parent into a state-appointed censor of school libraries

Really wild, even by the standards of the ass-backwards parts of America.

Texas legislator draws up list of 850 books dealing with race and sexuality...

...that could cause "discomfort" (or maybe even "feelings of exclusion" or "harm"?).

The Texas assault on reproductive freedom, and the complicity of the super-legislature known as the Supreme Court

This is a good explanation by constitutional law expert Michael Dorf (Cornell) of how pernicious SCOTUS's latest move is.  This is a classic case of the super-legislature--in this case, five conservative Catholics--doing their best to undermine a right they do not support, a half-century of precedent be damned.  (The right was created by an earlier super-legislature, fortunately, a more progressive one, and also one that didn't need to eviscerate precedent to do so.)

Arkansas Taliban...

MOVING TO FRONT FROM APRIL 20--UPDATED

...trying, again, to inject creationism (not simply "Intelligent Design" creationism) into the science curriculum.

(Thanks to Dean Rowan for the pointer.)

UPDATE:   Fortunately, the bill was (narrowly) defeated in committee.  (Thanks to Glenn Branch for the pointer.)

Yoga is banned in Alabama public schools...

...because it might, after all, lead to Hinduism!

(Thanks to John Styles for the pointer.)

Amy Coney Barrett, newest member of the super-legislature...

...delivers for her constituents, i.e., religious conservatives.   This is why she was chosen, it had nothing to do with intelligence or legal competence:  it was so she would exercise her power as a super-legislator on behalf of issues dear to religious conservatives, public health or the general welfare be damned.   Governor Cuomo should declare the Court mistaken, and ignore the ruling. After all, if Justice Ginsburg had not died, this case would have come out the other way, as everyone knows.  Her appointment in Samarra should not change constitutional law, a proposition even conservatives who profess commitment to the rule of law might agree upon.

"Fundamentalism is the mortal enemy of all civilized humanity," redux

Case in point.  RAWA knew.

Evangelicals and climate denial

Philosopher Adrian Bardon (Wake Forest) comments.

"The Best Schools" website list of "The Most Influential Living Philosophers" is an ideologically motivated fraud

Since the list periodically makes the rounds, be sure to share this earlier post with the gullible.

Fucking moron watch: Louisiana pastor to hold Easter services for 2,000...

...and he's even explicit about his "thinking":

“Satan and a virus will not stop us,” Rev. Tony Spell told Reuters. “God will shield us from all harm and sickness. We are not afraid. We are called by God to stand against the Antichrist creeping into America’s borders. We will spread the Gospel"....

“Like any zealot or like any pure religious person, death looks to them like a welcome friend. True Christians do not mind dying. They fear living in fear,” Spell told TMZ in an interview this week.

In one California county, 30% of COVID-19 cases are traceable to church gatherings...

...and yet one religious crazy is ready to fight for the right to sicken his parishioners!

(Thanks to Jill Landowski for the pointer.)

As usual, religious zealots are a threat to human well-being

Unbelievable.  And some of these morons think that the First Amendment protects their right to endanger public health:   it doesn't.

UPDATE:  Good news, one of the pastors breaking the law has been arrested.  A few civil suits down the line for reckless indifference to human life would be appropriate too!

Brazilian Taliban

The fascist Bolsonaro picks a creationist to lead the government's higher education agency.

The legacy of the Texas Taliban in school textbooks

On display in the NYT.

Everything is bigger in Texas...

...including the morons.

Our old friend Lawrence VanDyke just got whacked by the American Bar Association

It seems like not much has changed in the last fifteen years.

Hope for America...

...assuming the decline is among evangelicals:

The religious landscape of the United States continues to change at a rapid clip. In Pew Research Center telephone surveys conducted in 2018 and 2019, 65% of American adults describe themselves as Christians when asked about their religion, down 12 percentage points over the past decade. Meanwhile, the religiously unaffiliated share of the population, consisting of people who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular,” now stands at 26%, up from 17% in 2009.

Both Protestantism and Catholicism are experiencing losses of population share. Currently, 43% of U.S. adults identify with Protestantism, down from 51% in 2009. And one-in-five adults (20%) are Catholic, down from 23% in 2009. Meanwhile, all subsets of the religiously unaffiliated population – a group also known as religious “nones” – have seen their numbers swell. Self-described atheists now account for 4% of U.S. adults, up modestly but significantly from 2% in 2009; agnostics make up 5% of U.S. adults, up from 3% a decade ago; and 17% of Americans now describe their religion as “nothing in particular,” up from 12% in 2009.

Patriotism may be the last refuge of a scoundrel, as Dr. Johnson noted...

...but religion is surely in the top three, as this noxious blather by the disgraced Attorney General William Barr nicely illustrates:   a mix of historical falsehoods, confusions about cause and effect, and right-wing talking points.

(Thanks to Jerry Dworkin for the pointer.)

Evangelical Christianity as public policy, an ongoing saga

More viciousness towards transgender people from the religious fanatics surrounding Trump.

Texas moves to regulate male masturbation

About time this threat to all the future humans in a man's semen got some protection.

More reactionary Christian viciousness

Justice Department defends anti-trans discrimination by businesses.

Today in Trump Administration viciousness...

...a proposal to basically strip transgender people of Title IX legal protections from discrimination.   This is evangelical Christianity as public policy.  Whether the courts will go along with such a proposal remains to be seen:  many courts have already held that Title IX applies to discrimination based on gender identity.

Texas Taliban continues its war on public education

Alas, some things don't change:

History curriculum in Texas remembers the Alamo but could soon forget Hillary Clinton and Helen Keller.

As part of an effort to "streamline" the social studies curriculum in public schools, the State Board of Education voted Friday to adjust what students in every grade are required to learn in the classroom. Among the changes, board members approved the removal of several historical figures, including Clinton and Keller, from the curriculum.

The board also voted to keep in the curriculum a reference to the "heroism" of the defenders of the Alamo, which had been recommended for elimination, as well as Moses' influence on the writing of the nation's founding documents, multiple references to "Judeo-Christian" values and a requirement that students explain how the "Arab rejection of the State of Israel has led to ongoing conflict" in the Middle East. 

(Thanks to Mike G. for the pointer.)

One thing my former colleague Rob Koons (Texas) and I agree on

 Namely that,

[T]here is no good reason [if God does not exist] to give special protection to religious liberties [as argued by] my former colleagues Brian Leiter ("Why Tolerate Religion?") and John Corvino ("Debating Religious Liberty and Discrimination"). Given their atheistic assumptions, they are quite right: James Madison’s arguments for the First Amendment explicitly presupposed the existence of God. In his "Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments" (1785), Madison wrote, “It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage and such only as he believes to be acceptable to him. This duty is precedent… to the claims of Civil Society.” Our right to religious liberty rests logically on the reality of our supreme duty to God our Creator.

As to the other "scientific" evidence for the existence of the non-existent Being:  no comment!

Why the Colorado baker who doesn't want to sell wedding cakes to gay couples enjoys no First Amendment protection for his discriminatory practices

This short brief sums it up succinctly.

David Bentley Hart did not like Edward Feser & Joseph Bessette's book offering a "Christian" defense of the death penalty

We've had so much amusement with the reactionary religious fanatic Ed Feser over the years, that it was inevitable that several readers would send me this devastating review of his latest; some excerpts:

This brings me to Feser and Bessette’s treatment of the Church Fathers. It is painfully obvious that neither of them bothered to read the patristic texts they cite; they merely went searching for anything that looked like a proof text, no matter how tenuous or fragmentary, and without paying even cursory attention to context. They claim, for instance, that in the Contra Celsum Origen affirmed the right of the state to execute criminals, but when one consults the passage they cite one finds nothing more than a rueful acknowledgement of the power of the state to punish crime with force. The same is true of their citation from Gregory of Nazianzus. They also treat an elliptical turn of phrase in Athenagoras as a declaration of the validity of capital punishment rather than, as is actually the case, a mere impartial recognition of its reality. Perhaps the greatest howler is a quotation they extract from Origen’s fourteenth homily on Leviticus concerning the way in which certain sins might be absolved by penal death. They fail to notice that Origen’s tortured reflections on the literal reading of the seemingly bizarre list of capital crimes in Leviticus 20 is prompted by his certainty that capital punishment is forbidden by the law of Christ. In fact, even when Feser and Bessette notice in passing that the Fathers they mention all seem to advise against use of the death penalty, they fail to grasp that this is not merely a matter of personal predilection. Once again, the question of whether the death penalty is in some sense “just” is wholly irrelevant in the context of Christian belief. As far as the Fathers were concerned, all of us merit death. This does not mean that they believed Christians are permitted to impose such a penalty....

The most appalling aspect of this book is finally not its shoddy reasoning or theological ignorance, but its sheer moral coarseness. For example, Feser and Bessette twice adduce the career of Giovanni Battista Bugatti—the official executioner of the Papal States who from 1796 to 1865 executed 516 convicted criminals, by decapitating them with an axe or a guillotine, or slitting their throats, or crushing their heads with a mallet, or having them drawn and quartered—as some sort of proof of the Catholic Church’s commitment to the essential justice of the death penalty. On neither occasion do they express the slightest alarm at, or disapproval of, either the number or the savagery of these killings. This is typical of the entire tone of the book: every page exudes an atmosphere of almost numbing callousness. There are times when a faint touch of false tenderness on the authors’ part would have been, at least, decorous.

I'm a moderate when it comes to Judith Butler's awful work

I don't think she should be burned in effigy, no matter how bad the work is.

Reaction formation watch: Roy Moore edition

Reactionary Bible-thumping, holier-than-thou zealot has a penchant for sex with underage girls.

Trump Admin steps up its pandering to religious fanatics...

...with a double whammy adversely affecting women and gay people.   The fingerprints of Mike Pence, the now ousted Tom Price, and Jeff Sessions are all over this maliciousness.

Soon-to-be Senator Roy Moore is a theocrat and a lunatic...

...so let's not pretend otherwise.

They REALLY are the Texas Taliban...

...and this piece from the Texas Observer makes it clear.

The crazy, crazy state of Texas

A long piece in The New Yorker, that sums up what Republican crazy is like these days.   When I arrived in Texas in 1995, George W. Bush was Governor, and a benign figure, interested in cutting taxes and "tort reform," and little else.   When he became President, Rick Perry became Governor, and went increasingly beserk.  By the time I left in 2008, right-wing crazy was ascending, and it's only gotten worse since.  It's a human tragedy.

Florida Taliban harass plaintiff's lawyer after federal court enforces First Amendment in an absolutely clear-cut case

Philosopher Brian Hood (West Florida) called to my attention this typically ugly behavior by the local Florida Taliban after a federal judge, obviously correctly, ruled against a public cross in Pensacola.

Is religious belief a sin?

Philosopher Arif Ahmed (Cambridge) comments; an excerpt:

Israel, the United States and Iran have among the best-educated populations in the world. These people must know that there is more evidence that climate change is not happening, that the 9/11 atrocities were faked, and that the moon landings were staged, than that the creator of the universe has a special interest in the children of Israel, that His son survived crucifixion or that His final prophet once met an angel in a cave. Yet millions of them believe, and so act upon and teach to their children, these and many equally impossible things, and not only before breakfast either but all day long.