Some tiresome shite about religion below the fold.
Ross Douthat finds this post interesting, which says something about Douthat. Via Drum. If you use more and bigger words, the argument will get better and better.
Thus, abstracting from the universal conditions of contingency, one very well may (and perhaps must) conclude that all things are sustained in being by an absolute plenitude of actuality, whose very essence is being as such: not a “supreme being,” not another thing within or alongside the universe, but the infinite act of being itself, the one eternal and transcendent source of all existence and knowledge, in which all finite being participates.
Yawn. Meanwhile, did you know Richard Dawkins has a website? Did you know know it’s an emetic?
In other news, May 20th is “Draw Muhammad Day.” (That cartoon is cute!) It even has its own facebook group, which, as you’d expect, is the very soul of wit. (There’s also an event page, the creator of which seems to be less of an asshole.) So I’m working on my own drawing! Forgive the limited sketching skills.
54 comments
April 25, 2010 at 11:17 am
dana
I think I’ve read better undergraduate papers on the cosmological argument, and even they realized that necessary beings are dull.
April 25, 2010 at 11:18 am
dana
It’s also interesting to see a theist clamor excitedly about the wonders of (if I understand him correctly) Spinoza’s god.
April 25, 2010 at 11:53 am
Neddy Merrill
That always struck me as an obvious problem, like, great, even if you get Being Itself or whatnot, you have to get the particulars about Ibrahim or whoever.
I love the uppity tone, as if the Five Ways were still taken to be pretty much right on target.
April 25, 2010 at 12:07 pm
dana
On the assumption that the traditional arguments work, you can get:
a) a necessarily existing being (that could just be the cosmos itself) or
b) a finite Designer that is capable of creating some complex things.
That’s if they work. Note we’re still many, many cubits away from getting anything that’s worthwhile to worship. There’s nothing particularly wondrous about it, either; so you’re a priority monist? So what? I can find you five at Rutgers, cheap. Reducing the idea of God to something an atheist could easily countenance isn’t a victory over the atheist.*
*there’s a philosophy of math article somewhere that has a response to it that says, basically, if your argument is right, you can prove the existence of God (meaning this as a reductio.) And in response the authors say something like, well, if we do prove the existence of God, at least it’s an Aristotelian little one, that just sits around unmoved thinking about itself.
April 25, 2010 at 12:50 pm
matt w
This from Drum isn’t super impressive, though:
It’s the last sentence I have a problem with — saying “There is no God” is an assertion that something is true, just as saying “There is a God” is. And I understand that’s what the New Atheists say (they’re not the New Agnostics), which means that they have just as much onus as theists do.
April 25, 2010 at 1:58 pm
Cosma Shalizi
I have never understood what difference knowledge of this sort of God is supposed to make. I mean, I find myself contemplating whether to take the last plum from the icebox. While I hesitate, it occurs to me that “all things are sustained in being by an absolute plenitude of actuality”. What is this realization supposed to change? Is there an even half-way comprehensible answer anywhere?
April 25, 2010 at 2:20 pm
ben
Is Spinoza’s god all-knowing, and if so how? Aware immediately of all changes in nature/itself? Creatively? Perceptually? This is just idle curiosity, mind.
April 25, 2010 at 4:38 pm
NM
Shorter Hart: fucking magnets, how do they work?
April 25, 2010 at 4:51 pm
rja
Hey, Hart has some trenchant cultural criticism going on there, eg atheism is like “Bridges of Madison County.” So, I can pretty much check out of this whole debate and sit back and wait for the lame ass movie to hit Lifetime in a couple of years.
April 25, 2010 at 5:01 pm
dana
Is Spinoza’s god all-knowing, and if so how?
Yes, and… that’s complicated. Spinoza’s god is just Being, or Nature (in the essence sense, not the trees and berries sense). It’s not a person, but mind is basically the one Being conceived under the attribute of thought. So its perfect knowledge consists in its intellect knowing how exactly it is extended (and all the other attributes, too.)
April 25, 2010 at 5:31 pm
Charlieford
A little to the side, but the best review I’ve read of Hitchens happens to be by a friend of mine:
Eugene McCarraher, “This Book Is Not Good”
http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/print/4190
April 25, 2010 at 8:30 pm
Robin Marie
“saying “There is no God” is an assertion that something is true, just as saying “There is a God” is. And I understand that’s what the New Atheists say (they’re not the New Agnostics), which means that they have just as much onus as theists do.”
This isn’t quite right. The difference between most atheists I know (and I associate with quite a few of them, and am one), and agnostics is ultimately more a matter of tone than certainty. Agnostics tend to be uncomfortable with organized religion as such but are quite uncertain as to how they would answer “the big questions.” Atheists, many of which if you ask would actually call themselves ‘agnostic atheists,’ (as I do) will say that they are pretty confident that there is no God, but of course do not know for certain that this is true. Even the super snarky Darwin named one of his sections in The God Delusion “Why There is Almost Certainly No God.” It seems to me that impressions that the New Atheists, as a whole, match their religious opponents in fundamentalism usually rests on an aversion to their affects, especially the most visible figures of Dawkins/Hitchens, less than what most of them will actually argue.
All of which is not to deny that Christopher Hitchens (since he was brought up elsewhere) is an asshole, or that his book is badly argued, lacks any historical sense and actually, he is bad debater in general. I don’t find him to be a good representation of the community, which I am involved with on a grass roots level (really, I attend meetings of the local agnostic/atheist association on campus).
But one other thing about your argument; even if atheists were making equal truth claims as theists, that doesn’t necessarily mean their onus to prove their point is as heavy as theists. Theists argue for the existence of something, and therefore have to provide evidence for its existence. Atheists look at said evidence and find it quite shortcoming, for dozens and dozens of reasons. Atheists are arguing a negative, ie something does *not* exist; so the type of evidence they present is quite limited, insofar as it quite difficult to prove a negative. (Hence why most ‘atheists’ will admit along with the rest of us that at the end of the day, they don’t know Truth either.) But my point is that it is theists (usually) who are positing that something for Certain exists, adding an additional “truth” onto the ones we all usually already agree on (ie microorganisms cause disease, the earth is round, etc.) So the onus is first and foremost on them to show sufficient evidence to refute the null hypothesis, which makes a judgment based on lack of evidence.
More simply: if someone said, “there is a flying ponycorn in here,” and you said, “no there isn’t” would you have just as much onus to prove the lack of a ponycorn as the person who insists, despite their lack of evidence, that there is?
Now I know some people get upset when atheists use simple metaphors like this to discuss religion, which has deep roots in nearly all human societies and the human psyche. But if you are actually arguing something exists in its own right, and not just because lots of people have believed it and/or found great comfort and inspiration in it, the same rules apply.
April 25, 2010 at 8:31 pm
Robin Marie
er, super snarky Dawkins. Darwin was actually quite a pleasant man as far as I know and not snarky at all.
April 25, 2010 at 11:16 pm
Vance
Charlieford, McCarraher seems to be testing Hitchens against “major theologians”, which is OK, but not obviously relevant to most. What’s unusual about that review, though, is the explicit class animus:
Whom does he approve of, I wonder, or expect us to approve of? Not the masses of men, I think, or he would mention them. (He scare-quotes the idea that the study of literature is “within the compass of the average person.”) Perhaps academics?
April 26, 2010 at 3:51 am
Charlieford
Good call, Vance. McCarraher is a socialist and he does, indeed, see class dimensions to debates that others usually ignore.
April 26, 2010 at 4:30 am
kid bitzer
spinoza’s god has omniscience via proprioception.
April 26, 2010 at 5:15 am
matt w
Atheists, many of which if you ask would actually call themselves ‘agnostic atheists,’ (as I do) will say that they are pretty confident that there is no God, but of course do not know for certain that this is true. Even the super snarky [Dawkins] named one of his sections in The God Delusion “Why There is Almost Certainly No God.”
I did mean to talk about the most prominent spokesmen (honestly, I’m not sure who counts as a New Atheists besides the people who are writing the books). Sam Harris, for instance, has something up called “There Is No God (and you know it),” which is a pretty definitive claim. Dawkins’s “almost certainly” relieves him of some of the onus of proof, but there are some theistic philosophers who also claim that their arguments for the existence of God are probabilistic, so they have about as much onus as Dawkins. (As a rule I think those arguments are very bad, but that’s a question of whether they can meet the onus, not whether they have it.)
[I just found this, in which Dawkins said that he didn't want his bus advertisements to say "There is probably no God," but the organizers of the campaign didn't want to be as dogmatic as religious leaders. So those organizers would be examples of the New Atheists who aren't taking on the onus. OTOH, I think this means that Dawkins pretty much has it in full.]
Atheists are arguing a negative, ie something does *not* exist; so the type of evidence they present is quite limited, insofar as it quite difficult to prove a negative.
There are plenty of ways to prove a negative — see below. This is a bit of a pet peeve of mine. The techniques for demonstrating nonexistence may be different from the techniques for demonstrating existence, but they exist. And if you’re going to definitively claim nonexistence of something, you have to use them.
None of this is to say that atheists can’t meet their onus, or come closer to it than theists can. Just to say that a definitive claim carries and onus of proof, whether it’s a positive or negative existential. Someone who said “There isn’t a solution to the Fermat equation” had to provide a proof for it, just as much as someone who said there was would have.
if someone said, “there is a flying ponycorn in here,” and you said, “no there isn’t” would you have just as much onus to prove the lack of a ponycorn as the person who insists, despite their lack of evidence, that there is?
Well, the bolded phrase is key. I would have as much onus, and I’d be able to meet it, because I’d be able to say “I don’t see one, I can’t hear one, there’s no such thing, etc.” Who has the onus is a different question from who can meet it.
April 26, 2010 at 5:51 am
politicalfootball
Hitchens has intellectual pretensions, but his milieu is really Comedy Central.
April 26, 2010 at 6:48 am
Neddy Merrill
OMG, Kevin Drum wasn’t getting into the minutia of burden-of-proof arguments. Let’s call an emergency session of the APA.
April 26, 2010 at 6:52 am
dana
spinoza’s god has omniscience via proprioception.
That’s an extremely good way of putting it.
What is this realization supposed to change? Is there an even half-way comprehensible answer anywhere?
Not really. Hart seems to be confusing a mystical experience (which could be profoundly life-changing) with the cosmological argument, which even its adherents didn’t think got you all that much. Aquinas thought his Five Ways worked, but what they got you was an intellectually respectable, Aristotle-approved starting point for theorizing about God.
April 26, 2010 at 7:15 am
Paul Orwin
Since I’m procrastinating, I think I have to pick a bit at matt w :). I think that there is a pretty big difference between “there is no god” or “there is no evidence for god, therefore I assume the nonexistence of god” and “there is no solution to Fermat’s equation”. For the latter case, there is known mathematical statement, within the bounds of formal logic, that can be tested. There are also known and established methods for developing a proof and testing it to see if it holds up. In the former case, I can’t think of even a framework for developing such a thing (yes, I realize that there are centuries of philosophical writing and work on this, and I suppose we can debate what the term “formal logic” means, etc, etc, but I think/hope you get what I mean). Of course you can propose a logical argument about the existence or lack of a deity, but we don’t even have an agreed upon definition, for chrissakes! (this has been alluded to above)
What follows is a bit of a threadjack, so ignore it if you like, but I get pretty tired of undergraduate theosophy too…
I think here we get the same issue that comes up when philosophers of science interact with scientists (full disclosure, I make some pretense of being the latter). PoSs spend lots of time thinking and talking (and talking, and talking) about various “ways of knowing” and “epistemological issues”, while working scientists spend time thinking “I wonder how that enzyme works” and “did I do all of the controls properly”. So the phrase “prove a negative” takes on very different meanings. In formal logic and math, you can prove negatives quite easily (as your example suggests) but that doesn’t necessarily extend beyond, I don’t think. At the very least, you would have to show that it does first. In squishier realms of science (and I’d include the social sciences here) I don’t see how you can do so.
By way of example of what i mean (not proof), you can use proof by contradiction in formal logic, ie assume that a solution to Fermat’s theorem exists, then work back to an untrue mathematical statement (of course this doesn’t actually work with this example, I don’t think, but that’s beside the point).
In biology, if someone says “Protein X causes cancer”. You can evaluate the evidence they present, and design experiments to test it. But the statement “Protein X does not cause cancer” is much more diffiicult to deal with. It is easier and more productive to say “there is no evidence that Protein X causes cancer”. This does not constitute a proof that Protein X doesn’t cause cancer, but by convention, and necessity, we place that burden on the positive claim. In other words, rather than spending all of our time determining whether or not protein X causes cancer under all circumstances, we let someone try to find an instance of protein X causing cancer, if they so choose, while the rest of us get on with it.
So I guess what I’m saying is, philosophy is bunk…(that ought to do it) :)
April 26, 2010 at 7:19 am
Walt
Actually, science is bunk. Consult your Feyerabend.
April 26, 2010 at 7:33 am
Paul Orwin
I think he’s still out on the pitch :)
April 26, 2010 at 7:37 am
pv
Charlieford, thanks for that link: I enjoyed the review, and thought the class element was useful. Terry Eagleton says some similar things in his critiques, sensing a bourgeois belief in (and satisfaction with) “progress.”
April 26, 2010 at 8:09 am
Robin Marie
Matt W – I would agree with the objections that Paul makes above to the idea that “there is no evidence for God,” carries as much onus as “there is a God,” when dealing with questions of whether things actually exist or not, BUT, I will agree that those (Hitchens and Dawkins probably when he is being honest) who want to say “No, I KNOW there is no God” are taking on more onus than they can prove absolutely or, at least as much as the theologians are.
But that also has something to do with the sticky nature of debating with theists in the first place, who as far as the actual, contemporary believers you encounter day to day go, already have a magical metaphysical world view so proving a negative in the context of that debate between the two groups becomes nearly impossible.
Ie, as you pointed out I could say about the ponycorn, ““I don’t see one, I can’t hear one, there’s no such thing, etc.”
And to a tee, most of the people who *actually believe in this stuff*, not just professional theologians or Very Smart People who lived a long time ago will answer simply with, “but that doesn’t mean it’s not there.” Or, the more thoughtful sounding variant of that, “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” Under *those* terms of magical thinking, I think they up their onus considerably.
April 26, 2010 at 8:27 am
dana
It’s like watching the invisible gardener argument evolve.
April 26, 2010 at 8:43 am
Charlieford
Welcome, pv. Yes, Eagleton is coming out of the same general cultural space (but older): Irish, socialist, Catholic, deeply suspicious of all things English and Protestant and middle class–Slant and New Blackfriars and all that. McCarraher, who can write some beautiful and somber scholarly stuff, let’s fly when he reviews, which makes them fun (but sometimes open to charges of being ill-tempered). I’ll take it. For anyone interested, here’s the first of a three-part interview he did recently on … well, I don’t know what it’s on, but it too is fun: http://www.theotherjournal.com/article.php?id=924
April 26, 2010 at 9:47 am
matt w
I don’t have much time to post, but my problem with the line about “You can’t prove a universal negative” is that it puts “Kevin Drum has never been within half a mile of Neddy Merrill” in the same category as “Barack Obama has never decapitated an Indonesian schoolchild as a part of his initiation into Islam.” (That’s an actual allegation, or at least the negation of one!) I’m happy to say I know one of things but not the other, and if you think about my reasons you can see why. It’s true that in mathematical cases you can absolutely prove a negative, but in non-mathematical cases you can’t even absolutely prove a positive (admittedly in some cases you have to cite far-fetched hypotheses like brains in vats to show you lack absolute proof), so that doesn’t really prove that the slogan is right.
In science it may be a good idea to disclaim knowledge of negatives (though I’m not sure that it wouldn’t be a good idea for someone to come out and say “MMR vaccine doesn’t cause autism”). But if you believe that, wouldn’t you also believe scientists shouldn’t assert negatives unconditionally?
It’s also a little odd to say “You can’t prove a negative” when we’re talking about God, since there are many arguments — often quite compelling — meant to prove that God is either a metaphysical impossibility or could not exist given the way the world is. (Specifically, how crappy it often is.) Those aren’t the only ways to argue that God doesn’t exist, but if they succeed they’d certainly prove negatives.
April 26, 2010 at 9:56 am
Cosma Shalizi
This seems relevant:
April 26, 2010 at 10:22 am
Charlieford
I came across what I think is a very nice definition of science, including, I suppose, social science and the humanities (such as history and philosophy) too maybe. It’s from Lew Binford, an archeologist.
Science, he said, is our most reliable way of diminishing ignorance about the natural world.
April 26, 2010 at 10:26 am
dave
“Eagleton is coming out of the same general cultural space…”
Self-satisfied pontificating wankerdom that, having given up on an earlier fixation with Marx, has now fallen back into the clutches of the clergy as death looms?
He’s welcome to it.
April 26, 2010 at 10:30 am
kid bitzer
sounds to me like an attribute of science, not a definition.
if that really is a definition (i.e., by “science”, i mean: whatever things are our most reliable ways of diminishing ignorance about the natural world), then we still have to figure out which ways are the most reliable ones.
for all that the definition tells us, science could be tossing the i ching or inspecting livers.
differently: most people think that science should be defined by reference to certain *methods*. binford seems to be suggesting it can be defined by reference to certain *results*.
“medicine,” he said, “is our most reliable way of curing diseases.” do we already know what medicine is, and this just makes a claim about its success-rate? or are we supposed to figure out success-rates first, and then call the high ones “medicine”?
April 26, 2010 at 10:31 am
Charlieford
“Self-satisfied pontificating wankerdom” has many forms.
April 26, 2010 at 10:31 am
kid bitzer
well, dave, if wankers can’t be self-satisfied, who can be?
April 26, 2010 at 10:35 am
Charlieford
“most people think that science should be defined by reference to certain *methods*”
Why’s that?
April 26, 2010 at 10:39 am
kid bitzer
beats me. feyerabend spent a career telling them that they were wrong. and yet they still do it!
aren’t you a lawyer, charlieford? check out daubert v. merrill dow for a good example.
April 26, 2010 at 10:43 am
Vance
I realize now that what got me about McCarraher’s classism was that he’s talking about me — the emotive part of his argument is, “Christopher Hitchens is wrong because he appeals to people like Vance.” The effect of this rhetorical strategy on Vances is strong but perhaps predictable.
Also, I wonder whether we could find a series of valid, attested English surnames, each differing from the last by the addition, removal or modification of no more than one letter, including the names Hitchens, Darwin, Dawkins, and Hawking.
April 26, 2010 at 10:45 am
kid bitzer
how to get from “dodgson” to “carroll” by doublets.
April 26, 2010 at 11:02 am
ben
“Spinoza’s god omniscience via proprioception” might or not by extreme (I defer to dana), but it’s not very helpful. For instance, it doesn’t answer whether the knowledge is by affection (we don’t want god to have knowledge by being affected by what is known, but there are people who think that that’s how proprioceptive knowledge is had).
April 26, 2010 at 11:18 am
Robin Marie
Matt — I understand your concern with the problems of proving a negative or not being able to, especially considering the paranoia that characterizes our political climate. For that I would say that I tangled us up too much in the idea of proof in the first place; for me, the evidence (or lack thereof) for God is weighted so considerably towards the atheist position that I can say with reasonable confidence that I think there is no God. That reasonable confidence for me operates nearly as well as “proof,” and I don’t get hung up on the questions of mathematical or philosophical purity. And I think for the vast majority of people in the vast majority of questions they come into contact with on a daily basis, this is enough. (And it is enough for the science question you asked; whether a scientist says “I am 99.9 percent evolution is true,” or “I am 100 percent evolution is true” is really the same to me, functionally.)
But, for most theists or the politically paranoid, the evidence is not enough to bring them to this level of comfort, but more to the point, no amount of it could. Hence again the problem, I say there is no ponycorn, someone says yes there is, at that point, I’ve fulfilled my onus and the ball is in their court. Yet most theists’ arguments come down to insisting, in one form or another, “trust me it really is there.” There is nothing I can do at this point.
As for the arguments against God you alluded to, those aren’t usually the ones I find compelling, personally; because after all, the world being crappy could be explained by an evil God, right? I find the *lack* of evidence *for* God much more compelling.
April 26, 2010 at 1:25 pm
Anderson
That always struck me as an obvious problem, like, great, even if you get Being Itself or whatnot, you have to get the particulars about Ibrahim or whoever.
Hume’s treatment in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion is classic, and worth quoting for anyone who hasn’t seen it:
April 26, 2010 at 7:20 pm
matt w
the evidence (or lack thereof) for God is weighted so considerably towards the atheist position that I can say with reasonable confidence that I think there is no God.
No argument with any of that. But this isn’t just “There is no X, yes there is”; you’re citing evidence that there is no X, which is the way to go.
Another way of thinking about this is that, when absence of evidence is evidence of absence, you can prove a negative. (Where “proof” needn’t be infallible or mathematical, as it usually isn’t outside mathematics.)
April 27, 2010 at 4:22 am
lawguy
Dawkins sight isn’t emetic although it might be soporific.
April 27, 2010 at 5:46 am
TF Smith
If theists spent more time trying to live up to the tenets of their faith, rather than talking down those who differ, they might make a better case for themselves…
i.e “Don’t tell me you are a Christian, show me…”
April 27, 2010 at 9:18 am
Charlieford
Excellent point, TF: If only Christians would have founded hospitals and orphanages, worked with prisoners, educated the children of the poor, cared for refugees, given to charities, volunteered their time, organized for peace and reconciliation, supported reforms such as abolition and Civil Rights . . . oh, wait . . .
April 27, 2010 at 11:58 am
grackle
Charlieford, McCarraher seems to be testing Hitchens against “major theologians”, which is OK, but not obviously relevant to most. What’s unusual about that review, though, is the explicit class animus:…Whom does he approve of, I wonder, or expect us to approve of? Not the masses of men, I think, or he would mention them. (He scare-quotes the idea that the study of literature is “within the compass of the average person.”) Perhaps academics?
Geez this criticism seems an awful lot like a Republican complaining that Progressive criticism of greed is class warfare. It implies that because Hitchens is basically ignorant about philosophy and theology, any response to him must adhere to the same low standards. I acknowledge the later comment Vance makes admitting how personally he took the review, but the criticism seems misplaced nonetheless.
Beyond that, the whole conversation appears to be taking place between mutually exclusive sets. Not much communication available in that case.
April 27, 2010 at 12:15 pm
Vance
grackle, the class stuff was irrelevant — both McCarraher’s dragging it in, and my responding to it.* Since I have no interest in Hitchens, and McCarraher has no interest in me (being of neither the right class nor the right faith), I ought to have left well enough alone. In my feeble defense, the article did come highly touted.
* By contrast, the class animus in Progressive criticism of greed was spot on.
April 27, 2010 at 3:36 pm
Tom Elrod
Charlieford,
That interview with McCarraher was thoroughly depressing. Good to know that gay rights have sold out because gay couples are now featured in Ikea ads.
April 28, 2010 at 4:53 am
Charlieford
Tom, you know what they say: “If you’re not depressed …”
Vance, I don’t think it was irrelevant of you to bring it up: It’s very much there in all of McCarraher’s work, because that’s what he sees as the most pressing development of our era.
Whether McCarraher is exactly right on all details is beside the point: He does help us to widen our focus, and look to see what broader issues may be bound up with discreet debates. For him, the Christian tradition involves a definite view of human nature and of human community that is at odds with capitalism. The project of modernity, broadly conceived, involves at one level the undermining of the theoretical basis of that Christian vision of community (the belief in God, most fundamentally) in order to clear the field for the capitalist vision.
Now, he may be very wrong about that. The “proof” will only be found in the venturing of the analysis and the responses it provokes. But “wrong” is not the same as “irrelevant.”
For a discreet and well-known example of how religion and economics intersect, I’d point to the history of 16th and 17th c. New England, where a rising commercial class moved away from Puritanism towards more liberal theology (ie, were becoming more “modern”) at the same time that they were looking for a less robust view of community, a less severe view of human nature, and hence a Christianity more congenial to and supportive of lifestyles that revolved around the accumulation of wealth (and all that that entailed).
A loose analogy (just as far as general approach is concerned) might be Carl Degler’s IN SEARCH OF HUMAN NATURE, where he shows how social scientific analyses of the biological basis of race were bound up with the vision of community–the political aims, if you will–of those doing the analysis. Again, Degler may be right or wrong in the specifics, but such questions (about the broader strategic aims of those advancing various tactical arguments) aren’t irrelevant.
April 28, 2010 at 5:44 am
Tom Elrod
Charlieford,
Don’t get me wrong, I agree with a lot of what McCarraher has to say, including his critiques of modern American liberalism. But as with many Marxists critiques, everything becomes a symptom of capitalist/corporate oppression. Just because gay rights advocates are no longer radicalized as they were post-Stonewall does not mean that they have acquiesced to the capitalist machine. It’s likely instead that, given the many great strides gay rights have made since 1969, representations of gay couples are no longer taboo. Does Ikea perhaps use such advancement a little cynically in their marketing? Probably, but that’s not the same as saying that gay rights (or women’s rights, or minority rights, etc.) is now beholden to capitalism.
April 28, 2010 at 5:55 am
Charlieford
Tom, I guess I would say, “not necessarily.” As for where we are at this particular moment, one doesn’t have to be an opponent of, say, marriage rights for gays or ending DADT to find it all . . . well, historically interesting. And that’s not to dump on gays or women or minorities, or to say there’s no worthy causes there anymore. It’s merely to acknowledge that this is how capitalism has worked for a long time: it doesn’t just roll over and crush its opponents, competitors or critics–it absorbs them. Back in the late 60s and early 70s, the womens’ movement offered a radical, root-and-branch, critique of patriarchy, capitalism, empire, etc. Whatever else we might say, it’s fair to point out that’s not exactly what the movement looks like today. A historian certainly is interested in investigating how and why that happened, and one strategy (among many) might be to follow the money.
April 28, 2010 at 5:08 pm
TF Smith
By their deeds, thee shall know them, Charlie…
Actually, I’m all for theists who do good works and live lives of example;p it’s the one whose concept of good works is telling others how to live that wear out their welcome…do unto others, and all that…
In hoc signo vinces
May 4, 2010 at 11:41 pm
saintneko
() people you’re insulting () people you should care about insulting.
People need to get over the whole Muhammad thing. Their religion is no more correct than any others and should not be allowed to dictate our actions.
That whole separation of church and state thing, yeah?
May 4, 2010 at 11:43 pm
saintneko
Or to put it another way ((people who’ve actually been involved in what the terrorists are mad about) and then there’s the rest of western society that terrorists have decreed must be wiped from the earth before they can rest.
)