Kicking Against the Brights

Rhea has one weak ass defense to the misrepresentation charge. Basically he argues that if the religious practice is widely accepted then it’s ok and, by extension, arguing against it is not ok. Does that go for female genital mutilation, Rhea? It’s widely accepted in Africa. Slavery was once widely accepted in this part of the woods. Better go think up some better arguments if you want to argue with a bright.

Never mind the evolutionary explanations for why “frequent masturbation may protect men against prostate cancer”, what’s the creation scientist’s explanation?

As an atheist with an only sibling (a sister) who’s an evangelical minister, this is not merely a theoretical issue for me.

First, I should mention that I couldn’t manage to read beyond the first few paragraphs of Dennett’s op-ed, even though I like Dennett quite a lot. But, as an atheist physicalist, this whole “bright” thing embarrasses me. ‘Nuff said.

My closest friend, also an atheist, has long been puzzled by the degree to which I am tolerant and respectful of most theism and theists even though I think most theism is at best mildly foolish and at worst horribly malignant.

I suppose the first part of the reason for my attitude is that I find a great deal to like and admire in the very best examples of theism and theists. I also find the stereotypical rabid atheist’s hostility to theism to often be uninformed, simple-minded, and even bigoted. I probably go out of my way to disassociate myself from that sort of thing.

And then there is simply the fact that most people in this world are theists and I pragmatically prefer not to be in a perpetual state of war—a war that I cannot expect to see my side win in my lifetime.

But the larger part of my tolerance is my general intellectual tendency to acknowledge the possibility that I’m mistaken either in my assumptions or reasoning (or both)[1]. I could be wrong, they could be right; and while many examples of theism and theists are either pitiable or deplorable, those are not properties inherent to theists or theism.

As long as a theist pursues his/her beliefs earnestly, thoughtfully, good-heartedly, with at least a minimum of respect for differing beliefs, without directly negatively interfering in my life, and as long as their actions are not egregiously offensive to the common good (as I imperfectly comprehend such a thing), I find little to complain about and am inclined to see the believer in a positive light.

I think it’s perfectly appropriate for them to say that I’m wrong, even (in the case of Christians) that they believe I’m going to Hell, just as I believe it’s appropriate for me to claim that they’re wrong. I think it’s appropriate for them, in the context of democracy, to assert their morality and worldview via the political process. I think it’s appropriate that I oppose them when I disagree with their goals.

As an extreme example, I am willing to accept a certain moral nobility in the actions of abortion clinic bombers, provided I believe they are honestly and chiefly motivated by a belief that they are attempting to disrupt organized murder. That doesn’t mean that I agree with them, nor that I think they shouldn’t be prosecuted under the law.

In short, I don’t feel the need to vilify everyone with whom I have a substantial disagreement. I am perfectly aware that reasonable and informed people can, in good-faith, come to very different conclusions and beliefs than I have. I reserve my contempt and anger for those who act contrary to what I consider the common good as a result of beliefs that are not reasonable, not informed, and (most importantly) are not arrived at in good-faith. That’s my dividing line between the good guys and the bad guys, and it’s a way of seeing the world and other people that seems odd or incomprehensible to most but is essential to my nature.

I get along well with my sister, even though her beliefs are quite different than mine, because in my opinion she’s on my side of that dividing line. Some people she’s known who share her beliefs are on the other side of that line, and this has caused a not inconsiderable amount of conflict for her. Even though our assumptions and conclusions about the world are in many ways very much at odds, she and I often find that our essential values are not.

[1] I should be clear that this does not prevent me in the least from having the courage of my convictions. Or, for that matter, from having convictions.

Jack: yes, but in doing so he seems to be (as I understand it) inadvertently strengthening the case the theists make that atheism (or, as they put it, “secular humanism”) is a belief system taxonomically equivalent to their own. In the US, where there is supposedly a seperation of church and state, that assertion has important political implications, which is the reason they favor it.

But atheism is not the same sort of thing as theism, they are not symmetrical. I sympathize with the desire for atheism to be a socially acceptable position in the US–and it’s not (something that tends to amaze most Europeans)–and for atheists to feel they have a “place at the table”. Believe me, I deeply sympathize with that desire. But sitting down to dinner with the theists means that we’re not opting-out of the context of dinner…which is the whole freakin’ point, in my opinion.

So has anybody done the follow-up study about whether prostate cancer rates are significantly different in places with and without guilt-inducing attitudes toward masturbation? And if they are, does that give us a license not to tolerate and/or respect religions with cancer-inducing anti-masturbation clauses?

Better go think up some better arguments if you want to argue with a bright.

And that typifies my annoyance with the Brights, as described by Dennett’s article:
the smug sense of intellectual superiority is nearly as irritating as the religious fundamentalists’ sense of moral superiority.

Dennett’s squeamishness about Santeria is misplaced unless he’s a vegan, or at least an ethical omnivore; an animal suffers no more in such rituals than it does in modern agricultural operations.

As for the offense of misinforming a child, while I oppose teaching Creationism in schools (if for no other reason than that we’ll never get them to teach Hindu creationism, obviously the correct version), I think misinforming children or adults about the origin of the species is a much lesser offense than misinforming them about issues that actually are relevant for modern citizens.

A friend once said that he had stopped worrying about religion because he realized that his decisions didn’t rely on whether there was a God or not. I can’t think of a decision that would rely on whether God created the world lickety-split in 7 days, or directed its changes over millenia, or doesn’t exist at all.

On the other hand, misinforming people about what happens in a “partial birth” abortion, or whether Saddam Hussein has been proven to bear responsibility for the 9/11 terrorist attacks, is a terrible offense because people make decisions based on this information.

Anyway, what it all comes down to is that brights are convinced that there is an objective reality that proves them to be in the right and all believers to be in the wrong.

And this is why I can’t be a bright; I’m not that sure. I refuse to pretend that I believe in any supernaturality, but I can’t tell someone who feels spirituality that he’s wrong, any more than I could tell someone who feels like he’s “in love” that he isn’t. I can’t dictate what goes on in other people’s souls, nor determine whether it is True.

THEISTS IN PHILOSOPHY

Rea complains about the disrespect theists receive in the field of philosophy:

————-
In fact, in Dennett’s own field (philosophy), the so-called “brights” are well in the majority and are often quite aggressive. It’s not at all uncommon to meet religious-believing students who have been repeatedly intimidated by the aggressive anti-religious hostility of their atheist professors. Nor, unfortunately, is it terribly uncommon to hear of religious-believing faculty being targets of the same open hostility and disrespect from their atheistic colleagues
————-

There is no doubt plenty of disrespect flying both ways (depending on which group is in the majority at a particular department or conference or whatever) — and also occasions on which everybody gets along fine. But I’d like to add a word of caution here. I recall being “grilled” during a long on-campus interview for my first “real job.” At times, on many topics, things got a little rough, and I’m sure the tone was far from respectful. For better or for worse, that’s how it goes in a lot of philosophical discussions. I try not engage in ultra-aggressive “grilling” of junior candidates, mainly b/c I don’t think that’s how you get the best indication of how good they are. Others think “trial by fire” is the best test. Anyway, for better or for worse, it goes on a lot in philosophy, and I was rather enjoying the sharp debate on this occasion. Then, when the discussion turned to phil. of religion, which I did (and do) have (and listed on my CV) as an area of interest, and things continued with the same tone (a question concerned whether my theistic beliefs were to even be taken seriously, given how they were so easily shot down by the problem of evil), the chair of the dept. intervened, and told the questioner he shouldn’t be asking about that, at least in that way, and that I didn’t have to answer. I appreciated (and sitll appreciate) why the chair did this, but insisted on answering, and on allowing the questions to keep coming w/o worrying about the tone. My views in epistemology and metaphysics had been aggressively challenged in the why-should-that-even-be-taken-seriously? mode, my views in philosophy of religion were equaly also part of my philosophy, and it seemed they shouldn’t be exempted from similar attacks.
All this just a cautionary note (not aimed particularly at Michael): If we theists want our theistic work to count as philosophy (as I do), then, given the tone with which (for better or for worse) a lot of philosophical discussion generally takes place (a far from respectful tone), we shouldn’t be surprised or even especially troubled when these aspects of our views are attacked in a less-than-fully-respectful way. That’s just how it goes generally in our field.

Michael also expresses the opinion that anti-religious bias hurts philosophers in getting jobs or tenure. Ralph is right that this is a serious charge that needs to be looked at carefully. It’s also very tricky, in ways I can’t resolve. Candidates get passed over because their views in metaphysics or epistemology or whatever are “dumb” – or are considered “dumb” by key members of the hiring departments. Or because their area is considered to be unimportant. (“She’s smart, but she works in X. Do we really need *that*?) Should philosophy of religion get a special exemption from such treatment? Well, lots of tricky issues here, like: What about theists who don’t ever write professionally in PoR, but are “openly theistic” (not “in the closet”)? Should that be different than, say, an ethicist who doesn’t write professionally about metaphysics, but openly expresses views in metaphysics that those hiring consider idiotic? Can that be taken into account against the candidate? All tough stuff worth thinking about. But whatever we end up thinking about the legitimacy of holding theistic (or atheistic) beliefs against candidates, my impression is that theists are usually allowed to compete on at least a fairly level playing field for most “secular” jobs. (I did end up getting, and very much enjoying, that job the interview for which is described above.) Which is a lot more than can be said for jobs at Christian colleges.
So, I do suspect that this much is true: On the whole, being a Christian of a fairly traditional stripe is professionally more advantagous than being an atheist in the philosophy job market. The traditional Christian can compete (on most occasions, as far as I can see) on a fairly level playing field for most “secular” jobs, while, on the other hand, there a lots of jobs at Christian colleges where only fairly traditional Christians have any chance at all, and atheists “need not apply”. (There are of course legitimate reasons Christian colleges have for limiting their faculty in this way, and I’m not arguing that this is bad for them to do. Still, if this has the effect that over-all atheists have a tougher time getting jobs, we shouldn’t fail to point that out.) Many of these are not the best jobs in terms of pay or prestige (though some of them are quite good), but if a grad. student who is very good, but not quite good enough to have a great shot at jobs at the very top departments, is worried about the prospects of coming up completely empty, s/he has a lot more cause for concern if s/he’s an atheist.

Russell,

You have completely misunderstood my point. Science is not “subservient” to religion, just as religion is not subservient to science. They are different things that address questions in different ways.

There is no “project” here. I am just pointing out that science is the only way to get to scientific truths. But no scientist would claim that scientific truths are the only truths that there are.

When I went on the job market in the mid-1990s (as a Rutgers PhD) I interviewed with a dozen or so strong departments. One interview was with MIT (I hasten to add that almost no one present at that interview is still at MIT today — that department has had massive turnover). My publications coming out of graduate school were on a variety of topics in phil of mind and epistemology and my thesis was on “privileged access” and I had published on that topic as well. At the MIT interview we first discussed my thesis. When that initial discussion was finished, I was asked about philosophy of religion (which was on my CV as an AOC — though I had not at that time published work in the area, I had presented several papers at Society of Christian Philosophers conferences and had a letter from Al Plantinga in my file). I mentioned work I had done on freedom/foreknowledge issues and that I was reading lots of work on the problem of evil. I was then told (there was no question) “there’s really nothing more in religion after the problem of evil.” I responded by asking what that was supposed to mean and was told that a simple glance at the problem of evil ends serious debate about religion. I asked if the interviewer wanted to talk about this topic or if he was telling me these things so that the sophisticated literature on the problem of evil (including contributions from Alvin Platinga, David Lewis, and many other philosophers of non-trivial standing) wouldn’t mislead me into thinking this was a serious topic worth some philosophical attention. He thought it best to move on to other topics.

My teachers at Rutgers (including my advisor, Steve Stich) told me they were approached “more than once” informally by members of departments interviewing me to ask to what extent my religious views interfered with my philosophical work. I interviewed at only about 10 places total and almost all interviews were with “top 40” PhD granting departments.

During a UT Austin campus visit (UT Austin is one of the few reasonably strong PhD-granting departments besides Notre Dame with strong Christian voices in it) a refreshingly candid faculty member (non-Christian so far as I know) told me that “some” of his colleagues would work hard against any Christian candidate because they think there are too many of them in the department already.

I’m confident that stories such as these are common. I’m confident that many departments will hire philosophers whatever their religious beliefs. I’m also confident that most “top-40” or so departments contain some (my estimate: 3-10, varying mostly with the size of the department) faculty members who would never vote to hire a known theist. That might not be enough to stop one from being hired, but it does make things difficult in an already competitive job market. Some members of these departments are somewhat open about these views: at least in private conversations with longtime friends and colleagues they will acknowledge and defend their position on this issue — some have in discussion with me.

Keith DeRose is correct that theists *can* “compete for” most secular jobs. But let’s not pretend that theists do not compete with a handicap at almost all top 40 departments.

“But no scientist would claim that scientific truths are the only truths that there are.”

That sounds innocuous enough, until you couple it with the assertion that science cannot “prove” that the laws of physics were the same 6000 years ago as today, or that the world wasn’t created by a miracle, at which point it becomes apparent that the division of truths into scientific and other is meant to remove claims that creationists make about the actual physical state of the world and its history from scrutiny. IOW, it’s just a form of special pleading for calling certain falsehoods “different kinds of truth.” From the premise that there are truths that science cannot test, it does not follow that things that it can test and has found to be false are true, but in an untestable way.

This kind of reasoning is exactly how creationism is detrimental to education. I don’t know if you are a creationist, but if not it just goes to show how corrosive to reason their line is. It encourages people to tendentiously mischaracterize science (e.g. science is all induction, which is unreliable), and to tailor their standards of proof in a deceptive fashion (e.g. the level of proof required to show that the laws of physics were the same 6000 years ago is never demanded of things like the historical existence of certain religious figures or the accuracy of translation of documents the creationists claim to take literally). All practical reasoning relies on the same mixture of induction and deduction that science does, and if you adopt a posture of radical skepticism towards that reasoning as part of science, you are logically obliged to adopt it across the board.

Let me be clear: I agree that there are certain kinds of truths that science can never address, such as whether there is an ultimate purpose to the Universe or what that purpose is, but that the Biblical account of creation is literally true is not one of them.

PG, I think, inadvertently hit upon something very important here when he talked about his friend who found the question of God to be irrelevent to his decision making process. It’s not so much a question of what we can intuitively agree is a reasonable test for truth; it’s what we think it is important to test. If two of us have strong but contradictory opinions about X, there’s often a shared assumption that we’re approaching the question in a similar, intuitive, commensensical manner. So, you know, that means that one of is blind or an idiot. Or a blind idiot. And possibly willfully so. Why tolerate that?

That how it goes.

But while I think that we should try to approach everything in a rationally defensible, intuitive, “commonsensical” manner (those last two are included as an attempt to point to a least common denominator of rational inquiry), and I think that I do so more than most people….I have little doubt that only a tiny portion of my beliefs have been formed in this manner. In that context, I find it very difficult to assert that everyone else should have chosen to be rational about the very same beliefs that I have. I’m quite skeptical about the rationality of the process by which I’ve “chosen” what beliefs to approach rationally. I’m far more inclined to accept Dennett’s version of intellectual triage than I am, say, my sister’s; but I have a strong sense that the principal unexamined (and projected as nearly universal) belief on both their parts is their method of intellectual triage–and thus I’m probably far less inclined to be contemptous of contrary beliefs than they. Note that that doesn’t prevent me from denying them.

NB I feel more than a little inadequate playing around here in the company of professional philosophers. But then, I would ague that it’s impossible to avoid being an amateur philosopher and one must do the best one can and not be afraid to speak up.

I don’t know, drapetomaniac. There are large swaths of the US where it feels to me, anyway, as if the enlightment hasn’t happened there yet.

Like, you know, most of Texas outside my little oasis of Austin.

I agree witht the idea of atheists and secularists standing up a bit mroe for our rights.

But I think the choice of the term “bright” is well – dim.

I mean no matter what Dawkins says about “bright” having no opposite, anyone who heres the term will take it as calling everyone else “dim” or simply stupid.

After that, as the poor man says, brights ought to cut out the middle, man save everyone the trouble and simply beat themselves up.

Hey, if creationism were granted as little credence as the Brain In A Vat theory, I’d be perfectly satisfied. Nobody argues that a significant part of science education ought to be devoted to the proposition that we’re all just brains in vats. After all, there is no Brain In A Vat Science Institute trying to pressure legislatures and textbook publishers to include Brain In A Vat Science as an acceptible alternative to the “theory” that the external world actually exists….

Let me be clear. I am making two separate points that appear to be getting conflated. That was likely my fault:

Point One: I am not saying that Creation Science should be a chapter in my kids’ science textbook. Quite the opposite, I am saying that Creationism is not a science. To the extent it is ever mentioned in a classroom, it should be clear that it is not a science.

Point Two: Dennett is claiming that teaching Creationism to children (assumedly, and primarily, a parent teaching his child, not just a teacher teaching a student) is “lying” to them. That is where I most strenuously disagree. Teaching Creationism to your son or daughter is passing along non-scientific beliefs. If the child comes back later and says, “Dad, you lied to me” because he learned evolution is school, the response is that evolution is the best explanation available in a scientific framework. Creationism is an alternative explanation that has no scientific basis at all. We do not believe it because of science, but we also do not believe it despite science, because there is no scientific experiment that has falsified it.

Now, if Creationism is a “lie” because people believe it, while BrainVatism isn’t because people don’t, then I’ve got to brush up some more on my epistemology.

What exactly has Daniel Dennetts contribution been to science?

I should also mention that there are old-earth creationists who think the world is older than 6,000 years but think that species emerged through acts of special divine creation (the “intelligent design” advocates are usually in this camp). There are many, many flavors; again, talkorigins.org is a great place to read about them. And most of them make pseudoscientific claims to some degree or another. The ID people are slicker than the rest, but their claims of instances of irreducible complexity tend not to be convincing on further analysis.

With all due respect to some of the debaters here, any bias in academia against theists is hugely outweighed by the bias against unbelievers in the world at large. It is, for example, inconceivable that one could have a political career in the US without at least giving Ronald Reagan-like lip service to theism, preferably evangelical protestantism.

[Incidently, I post under “rea” on various boards, but I am no relation to this Michael Rea guy]

The “ex-MIT grad student” who responds to my post above is reading more into it than I said or intended.

I know full well that the job market is quite competitive and was very tough in the mid-1990s. I in no way think that I “deserved” a job offer from MIT at that time. I didn’t even deserve consideration and I received that much. Like all top departments, MIT had many strong candidates including some who fit area considerations better than I did and some whose work members of the MIT department judged superior to mine. There are other ways in which I think it’s clear that I was not a good fit (let alone the best fit) for that department at that time. That’s a normal part of the competitive job market and I think we all know that.

The “ex-MIT grad student” says that religion wasn’t a part of the discussion of my candidacy. Well, as I explained in my earlier post, it was part of the discussion *at the interview*! And it was part of the discussion with my teachers from Rutgers. I’m certain that religion wasn’t the only thing discussed. And I am not asserting that it was a “difference-maker” cutting against my getting a job offer. One prominent MIT faculty member of the time relayed to one of my Rutgers advisors that “Warfield’s work is difficult to understand – even impenetrable in places” and the point about my work being overly critical mentioned by “ex-MIT” was also raised. Those clearly are not religious criticisms and would be enough in most searches to stop a candidacy cold. The MIT anecdote is not offered as evidence of difference-making religious bias in that particular search. It is offered as one concrete example in which a candidate’s religious affiliation was taken to be a negative factor worth investigating and exploring (“does it hurt his philosophical work?”) and worth poking fun at even during a professional interview (“there’s really nothing in religion after the problem of evil”).

Here are some things a job candidate won’t get from *me* in an interview:

(to the candidate): “there’s really nothing to atheism after the ontological argument.”
(to the placement officer): “Does his atheism get in the way of his work on mental content?”
(to a faculty member from the candidate’s home institution): “Is his atheism a problem around the department?”

Theistic graduate students can expect similar remarks, questions, and inquiries as they contend for jobs in most strong philosophy departments.

In reply to Wedgewood: I think that perhaps Wedgewood is mistaking a “sharp rebuke” directed at Dennett and Dawkins for general disrespect toward those who disagree with me about religious matters. There are hard questions, of course, about the “appropriate tone” for polemical political discourse; but I’m inclined to think that the tone I took in my reply to Dennett’s article was not out of place. (Nor do I think that his tone in “Shame on Rea” was out of place, despite the fact that it was “fierce” and cast aspersions on my integrity.) The tone I took in my reply is not one that I would take with just anyone; but Dennett is a prominent figure both in the academy and in the public arena, and I think that makes a difference with respect to the propriety of the sort of reply I wrote.

As for evidence of anti-religious bias in the academy: I think that others have spoken well to this issue on the course of this discussion. For my part, I’m afraid the best I can say here is that my information comes from “unnamed inside sources”. I know that’s unsatisfying to some; but I think that enough people within the academy are familiar with the sort of bias that I’m referring to that this is all that needs to be said in a forum like this.

Finally, some may be interested to know that I’ve posted some qualifications and further reflections on my exchange with Dennett in a section labelled “addenda” on the page where our essays are posted.

Does anyone have a catchy word to describe those of us who feel our gorges rise when we read words like “memosphere”? The most logical term would be “amemist”, but I don’t think I’ll ever get NYT op-ed space for advertising it.

I don’t think I agree with DeRose’s claim that being a theist is actually an advantage with respect to securing an academic job. But even if he is right, the point isn’t really relevant to the point I was trying to make. Religious schools that practice affirmative action for religious believers are privately funded and are required to admit their preference for religious believers in job advertisements. If there were privately funded “naturalist” schools that did the same and then proceeded to discriminate against religious believers, I’d have no objection. What’s objectionable is when schools with no explicit religious (or anti-religious) bias nevertheless discriminate on such bases.

I should quickly add that in agreeing that private Christian colleges giving preference to Christians in the hiring of faculty is importantly different from the (alleged) discrimination against theists at supposedly “neutral” schools, I don’t mean to be automatically endorsing such discrimination against atheists at Christian colleges. That’s a very tricky matter, with lots of competing concerns and values in play, and I haven’t sorted it all out in my own mind. An important point here is that private colleges in our country, I think, all get a lot of support from the government in various forms, and atheists might well wonder about such support from their tax dollars going to schools that explicitly discriminate against them.

The issues here are pretty complicated. It’s hard to tell if being a theist, or being religious (not quite the same thing, of course) counts against you in the job market. My story might add a slightly different perspective, as it comes from Australia, where the profession is smaller, and the culture is less “Christian” — the universities here are, apart from three outlying cases, all state, nonreligious, institutions. [Apologies for the length of the comment. I’m just doing my bit to ensure that crooked timber has a truly long discussion thread.]

My most recent job interview was for my current position at the University of Melbourne. This was a tenured job, and a relatively senior one. I moved from Macquarie University, where I had a permanent position, so I was in a different kind of case to more junior candidates at entry-level positions. As is common practice at Melbourne, I was asked to teach a class while I was visiting for the interview. My AoS is philosophical and formal logic, so I took a strategic decision to teach a non-logic class, to assure the department that I was able to engage with other interests. The topic that came up in a slot for me to teach was on human nature — so I decided to give a lecture on Freud on religious belief. (I do this material in my philosophy of religion classes.) This managed to get the issue of my religious belief on the table, quite explicitly, when in the question time after the class, a student asked me head-on if I believed in God, and I hopefully reassured the philosophers that I was not unhinged, not merely a logician, and also not happy to ignore or hide my own beliefs.

As a result, the matter of my own religious position was raised in the interview, and in private discussion. Melbourne is an odd department, with probably the highest proportion of theists of one stripe or another outside the Australian Catholic University. However, it was also clear that a number of my current colleagues weren’t happy with how I handled that lecture, and weren’t happy with my position. I had no doubt that I wouldn’t have got that reaction had I given exactly the same lecture, but made it clear that I was irreligious. I don’t think the issue would have been raised if I hadn’t raised it, because my own areas of active research are seen as pretty remote from religious issues.

Does the fact that I was comfortable raising the issue of religion for discussion mean that I was confident that there was no discrimination on religious grounds? Probably not quite. I knew that it was an issue for some, so I would have rather had it made explicit for discussion and deliberation than leaving it under the surface.

So, as fas as I have seen it, religious belief is often an issue in ways that irreligious committment is not an issue, but I cannot point to any examples on the Australian scene of where religious discrimination has cost someone a job in philosophy. (I can point to examples where people haven’t got jobs because of prickly personalities and other ways of being terrible colleagues, but that’s not the same thing, even in cases where religion is involved.)

As a philosopher who is entering the job market in the upcoming year, the Warfield, Derose, etc. discussion is of great interest. However, in many ways it fails to really touch on the initial topic as raised by Dennett. I take the issue of ‘brights’ (an admittedly ridiculous term) as being an issue about the general acceptance of atheists in society, and accordingly I have two comments. Anecdotally, if we move out of the rarefied air of the academy, anytime I have suggested being an atheist at places I have worked (e.g. a gas station, Wal-mart, among others), the least that has happened to me is that I have been looked at as if I am “crazy” (I won’t mention the worst). On a different note, two or three years ago New York magazine presented a story where voting habits of Americans were discussed. In the course of the story a study was cited which found that one of the primary factors that would keep a candidate from being voted into office is if that candidate were an admitted atheist. The study listed a number of potential factors (whether the candiate was a: woman, african-american, jewish, homosexual) and the lowest on the pole was atheist. It is these sorts of points that I believe have prompted the ‘bright'(ugh) movement, and that are worth considereing.

Per Mynga Futrell, co-founder of the term, an agnostic cannot truly be a Bright…

See my correspondence and her comments…

Mynga’s emails

Be careful… they are misrepresenting a bit..

Jim Senderhauf

I am amazed that it is the considered opinion of such well-informed people as Profs Leiter and DeRose that being an avowed theist is likely to be a disadvantage on the job market at some top departments. Discriminating against theists, consciously or not, strikes me as so obviously philosophically dogmatic that it can have no place in a genuinely top department. It is an attitude that amounts to thinking of the following as the poorer *as* *philosophers* for being theists, and of their theism as *pro* *tanto* evidence that they are bad philosophers: Anscombe, Donagan, Dummett, Smiley, Van Inwagen, Cargile, R M and M M Adams, Plantinga, van Fraassen, Vlastos, Geach, Denyer. I doubt that anyone is in much of a position to condescend intellectually to thinkers of this rank. *A* *fortiori* when it comes to such founders and/or close students of the modern scientific worldview which is now so widely held, by philosophers, *obviously* to exclude the plausibility or even the intelligibility of theism: Descartes, Malebranche, Leibniz, Locke, Berkely, Kant. Oh, and Newton. *Newton!!*

Dan Dennett is doing some of the most important work in that which we call “the world.” This is not an understatement. As Matt Ridley has noted, the world changed in 1953, when Watson and Crick located DNA. Anyone who does not understand the profound philosophical impact of that discovery is simply ignorant.
How many innocent prisoners have we freed with DNA evidence? Ask a fundamentalist about DNA. Ask a fundamentalist about antibodies, genes, virusses, immunology, or anything else relating to the physical world, and what do get? An empire of obsolete mythology.
There has been a lot of talk here about “tolerance” and “respect” for different religions. We know what this is: it is a hopeful delay against the inevitable, which is the obvious realization that all of our world religions are incommensurate. They cannot possibly be true, not all of them at the same time! Oh, no, but that means we need to reconsider everything!
The “respect” nonsense should have been destroyed forever by September 11th. It should have been ruined again by the Bush administration’s reaction to Septermber 11th.
I think we should quit pussyfooting around with religion. As John Kennedy said, “We all care about our children’s future.” I dread the idea of a future in which all of our children are forced to endure more bronze age mythic terror. If we are going to trust our massive military strenght, including nuclear weaponry, to the bronze age God of battles, then we should expect many more September 11th-type tragedies. We should be surprised that it didn’t happen sooner.
It is quite obvious that Rea must see himself as a night in shining armor, trotting out the Old Book for one last battle in the name of truth. However, he has seen too many movies, read too many prehistoric books. The Fallwells, the Bushes, the Husseins and the Bin-Ladens are the most dangerous entities on the planet–likeable to the AIDS virus. The Reas of the world, the seemably sane people who insist on perpetuating this nonsense, are almost more dangerous. At least the others are obvious idiots.
People like Dawkins are Not overstepping their bounds at all when they say you would have to be stupid or insane to not believe in evolution. As Dennett says, “Arithematic is right.” Religious faith IS a mental illness, and it should be given no more respect than the AIDS virus. Both threaten the future of the human species.