Right Reason

I have just gained an extra bit of respect for Michael Laws. In case you don’t know, he’s a well known talkback radio personality in New Zealand, and he’s the mayor of the New Zealand town of Wanganui.

The Prime Minister of New Zealand Helen Clark gave “advice” that the New Zealand flag on every public building be flown at half mast to honor the passing of the king of Tonga. Michael Laws and the Wanganui council did not comply. Why not? Because he thought that it would be wrong to lower the flag to honour the passing of a man who perpetuated a corrupt monarchy that bled the nation dry of all its resources and let the people live in desperate poverty.Laws went as far as to say on live national radio that King Tupuo was a “brown slug.” naturally, he upset a lot of people. But now he is hitting out at his critics. And you know what? He’s right. Here are a few Gems from the man:

Mr Laws today said Tonga, where a privileged few own all the land, controlled all the commerce and ran the government with little or no democratic input, was different to other South Pacific nations.

“In my view, you don’t honour a leader who maintained and even strengthened such inequity.”

Mr Laws said that he had “a benign, tourist brochure view” of the country until he went there at the start of last year.

“I was stunned at both the poverty and the corruption. It is not Fiji or Samoa – its institutions are medieval by comparison.”

Mr Laws said that a US State Department survey of Tonga, published this year, itemised “systemic human rights abuses including appalling and institutionalised royal privilege and gross sexual discrimination”.

“The facts about Tonga are self-evident. They don’t lie. As mayor, I cannot be a party to honouring those concepts and practices which are anathema to the New Zealand way of life.”

He added that he had received many phone calls and emails in support of his stance.

“It has been overwhelming.”

He will be hearing from me too. Well said Michael. And just look at the awful wrath he faces:

The Wanganui Chronicle newspaper reported today that Tongans from as far away as the United States have called for a boycott of New Zealand goods following Mr Laws’ comments.

Oh no. What will we do? Our economy is doomed.

Here is more from NZPA:

“They are a beneficiary country. We provide them with a good source of their income every year, which the royal family decide to misappropriate for themselves and they deny democracy for their subjects.”

Laws said Wanganui flew the flag at half mast for people who had made a contribution to the community, or events such as September 11 or the Boxing Day tsunami disaster.

“The death of the South Pacific king whose royal family is the equivalent of Robert Mugabe and his henchmen is not the sort of thing that one commemorates.

“Indeed I think it devalues the process of flying the flag at half mast.”

Kudos, Michael.

Just in case anyone cares, which I am inclined to doubt, I have finished my PhD.

My PhD Thesis in philosophy, titled: Religion in the Public Square: Liberal Political Philosophy and the Place of Religious Convictions, was handed in today at the philosophy department of the University of Otago.

It is finished.

The first suggestion I ever read that John Rawls was a relativist was in the book Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air, by Francis Beckwith and Greg Koukl. It was a fairly brief comment, and at the time I had never read anything by John Rawls, so I never thought about it for a while.

Now I’ve read quite a lot of what John Rawls has written. Is he a relativist? Well, here’s what I observed.

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The New Zealand Ministry of Education senior manager Martin Connolley is all upset that prayer takes place in some public New Zealand schools. Among other things, Christian Karakia (Maori prayers) are innappropriate, but karakia of “a more general nature” (i.e. indigenous Maori religion) are acceptable. [sarcasm]Of course, I mean, that’s neutral[/sarcasm].

But here’s what caught my eye:

Mr Connelly said under the Bill of Rights Act the practice of requiring students to “opt out” of religious activities could be seen as discriminatory.

Instead the ministry was proposing schools required students who wanted to participate to “opt in” — similar to other voluntary activities such as school bands or sports teams.

The reason for this is simple: The Bill of Rights guarantees basic human rights, like freedom of religion, freedom of speech and freedom of association. If students are, by default, expected to take part in religious activities unless they opt out, their right to freedom of religion is undermined.

This is where anti-religious hypocrisy enters the picture. The Ministry of Education, for many years, has tolerated students having no ability to opt out of situations that violate rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights guarantees freedom of association. But guess what. In New Zealand Universities, Student association/union membership is compulsory. In order for a tertiary student to not be a member, she must apply to be exempt on the grounds of consciencious objection. Even then, the association doesn’t have to let her abstain from membership. And even if they do, she is still forced to give her money to the association.

The Ministry of Education has known this for a long time, but now when it comes to Christian prayer, all of a sudden Mr Connolley is oh so concerned about the Bill of Rights not being upheld in educational institutions. They have utterly ignored every complaint about students being compelled to belong to a political organization, contary to the Bill of Rights and contrary to the United Nations declaration on human rights, but when it comes to a view they don’t share, heaven help anyone who tries to force it on people! Double standards are useful like that.

My last post was about visual forgery, deception by caption, and outright lies.

The following photos are not doctored. They are not from hard to access war zones, they were taken in downtown London. Nobody doubts their authenticity because thousands of people were witnesses.

Reuter’s has had to withdraw all of its photos from one of their sources (now an ex source) in Lebanon, a Muslim gentleman by the name of Adnan Hajj. He had been found to be doctoring photos to make the damage done by Israeli forces look more extensive than it actually was. It’s not the only type of fraud by photo that has occurred either. Here’s another recent example. A photo in Beirut, dated 24th July 2006, shows a clearly identifiable scene, with one of the buildings having been flattened. The story tells us that “Journalists are shown by a Hizbollah guerrilla group the damage caused by Israeli attacks on a Hizbollah stronghold in southern Beirut, July 24 2006. (Adnan Hajj/Reuters)” But then what’s this? Later, on August the 5th, a different photo of the exact same spot with a woman walking past is released, and we are told “A Lebanese woman looks at the sky as she walks past a building flattened during an overnight Israeli air raid on Beirut’s suburbs August 5, 2006. (Adnan Hajj/Reuters)” That’s either some really fast rebuilding, or some super fast talking. But it doesn’t end there.

See this photo? Here’s what we are told: A Lebanese woman wails after looking at the wreckage of her apartment, in a building, that was demolished by the Israeli attacks in southern Beirut July 22, 2006. REUTERS/Issam Kobeisi (from Yahoo News) Sounds tragic, right? Whatever happened here may well be tragic, sure. Now observe:

Have you seen this woman before? Here’s what we are told this time: A Lebanese woman reacts at the destruction after she came to inspect her house in the suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon, Saturday, Aug. 5, 2006, after Israeli warplanes repeatedly bombed the area overnight.(AP Photo/Hussein Malla) (from Yahoo News) There’s no propaganda like free propaganda. Hezbollah have more than they need with the combined force of Reuter’s, Allied Press and Yahoo, along with anyone else who publishes whatever Lebanese correspondents who are party to the conflict give them.

Glenn Peoples

I saw something a few minutes ago on nationwide television that nobody should ever have to see.

It was an advertisement, promoting the University of Victoria in Wellington New Zealand. There’s nothing exceptional about that, of course, but what the advert said broke the irony meter. This is a University – an institute of higher learning. A place where knowledge and scholarly integrity flourish. Right?

The ad began, and this is nearly verbatim: “In the 14th century most people were sure that the earth was flat.” This was accompanied by a witty animation of a ship falling off the edge of the earth. Ha Ha, what a bunch of idiots they were in those days, huh? Then came the sales pitch: “What are you sure of?” Then a list of subjects appeared on-screen: philosophy, science, history etc. You can come to Victoria University and let them educate you in those subjects!

Science? History? Philosophy? You’re kidding right? You want to encourage people to come and study these things while you peddle this absolutely absurd caricature that compeltely ignores the scientific and philosophical acumen of the middle ages and displays a mythical view of history that no respectable scholar of history would take seriously?

Do just a tiny bit of reading before embarrassing yourself by releasing promotional material like this. If it’s too much effort to actually open the cover of a book, pick up the phone and call someone at your University who teaches on these subjects for goodness’ sake! Heck, even Google could have saved your hide here.

When Prentice-Hall published a book that fell prey to such silly myths about the ignorance of dark age dummies, they were torn to shreds. For example, Lawrence S. Lerner, professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at California State University, Long Beach, tore strips off them in an article entitled “nonsense in schoolbooks.” It includes such gems as the label “ignorant fakery” for what Prentice-Hall did by presenting the book at all.

This attrocious misrepresentation of history is debunked at Wikipedia as well.

Jeffrey Burton Russell of the American Scientific Affiliation is on the money, in my ever so humble opinion, when he says that “Contortions that are common today, if not widely recognized, are produced by the incessant attacks on Christianity and religion in general by secular writers during the past century and a half, attacks that are largely responsible for the academic and journalistic sneers at Christianity today.” But “contortions” they clearly are, and that Victoria University propagate them is beyond explanation. As Burton goes on to substantiate, the contortion is itself a recent one, only arising after the trend to attack Christianity as unscientific. “No one before the 1830s believed that medieval people thought that the earth was flat.”

My two cents: Write to the University. Complain. No responsible educational institute should need to let their standards drop in this way. Secondly, study at the University of Otago instead. At least they won’t peddle fairy tales as history. Well, not this one, at least.

I like Penn and Teller. They’re a duo of magicians, and they’re really good. They’re funny too.

But philosophers they are not, nor theologians. That’s OK, not everybody is, and I’m thankful for that. But why do people have to pretend? Penn Jillette, one half of the dynamic duo (the fat one), likes to tell everyone that he believes that there’s no God. OK, everyone has a hobby. But please don’t try to wax philosophical without at least consulting some decent sources or learning the ropes.

For example, “I believe that there is no God. I’m beyond atheism. Atheism is not believing in God. Not believing in God is easy — you can’t prove a negative, so there’s no work to do.” No, Penn. Your enthusiasm for good definitions is admirable, but you’re wrong. You’re getting agnosticism or “weak atheism” mixed up with atheism. Atheism isn’t just the lack of belief in God. Here’s a quote from the very first (note, the very first) philosophical reference book that I could lay my hands on from my position sitting here at my desk, The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy.

Atheism (from Greek a-, ‘not’, and theos, ‘god’), the view that there are no gods. A widely used sense denotes merely not believing in God and is consistent with agnosticism. A stricter sense denotes a belief that there is no God; this use has become the standard one.

A lot of people who lack belief in God claim that they are atheists, and then insist that they have no burden of proof. This is a mistake, since atheism carefully construed is a claim about reality. This weaker kind of claim about atheism is usually made in non-academic “I have a chemistry degree and that makes me a philosopher” circles. The appropriate correction is to point out that such people are either agnostics, or they are just atheists who are neglecting their epistemic duty.

The appropriate correction is not to just buy this silly “I’m an atheist and I have nothing to prove” line and just go one better by saying “well I’m more than an atheist, I believe there’s no God.” That’s not more than atheism, Penn. That is atheism.

Interestingly, even though Penn says he’s willing to go the extra mile and make a claim in need of evidence, the entire article in which he points that out doesn’t contain any attempt to provide such evidence. What’s the point of boasting about it if it’s so little?

You’ve probably never heard of Brian Flemming. Especially if you’re a biblical scholar, a philosopher, a historian, or an intellectually responsible person. But apparently he’s a bit of a hero. Here’s a gem from his website, about the absolutely wonderful glorious masterpeice of scholarship (I’m being as fair as the video itself), The God Who Wasn’t There:

“Bowling for Columbine did it to the gun culture.

Super Size Me did it to fast food.

Now The God Who Wasn’t There does it to religion.”

Be afraid. It’s right up there with Michael Moore!

The thesis of the video is that Jesus never existed. Not merely was He not divine, not merely is Christianity wrong about many things, but there was never ever a Jesus of Nazereth, says Flemming. To prove that he’s really serious about reputable scholarship on New Testament history, he draws on such names as Richard Dawkins (move over N.T. Wright!) and Robert Price of the (wait for it) Jesus Seminar.

Stop Laughing. It gets better.

As some people who have offered to debate Flemming on the issue have discovered (thanks for the link, Dee Dee), he’s not exactly interested in defending his claims. Before he decides that anyone is worthy of his time, they must first sign a noterized statement of faith. They must agree to the following:

Take note. In order to debate whether or not God or the Holy Spirit did anything in the formation of Christianity (such as, say, sending Jesus into the world, and having Him rise from the dead), a person must first agree that those things never happened.

What’s amusing for a guy who has presumed to make a documentary about the “alleged” life of Christ is that in the first version of the statement, point 3 read: “I believe there are no written eyewitness accounts of the existence of Jesus Christ.” Six days later he posted this new version. Maybe someone handed him a copy of the New Testament for the first time?

In any case, my suspicion is that Mr Flemming’s – statement of faith will do its job, and he will be nicely protected from ever having to debate the issue.