Posts Tagged ‘gender’
movie review – shadowless sword
Pour qu’une chose soit interessante, il suffit de la regarder longtemps.
Gustave Flaubert
The altogether too irreproachable So-Ha
I’ve done a couple of movie reviews in the past, and I think I might do them more regularly in the future, just to give some play to my more creative writing side.
The Korean film Shadowless Sword (filmed in China) begins with warfare and a fighting heroine Mae Young-Ok, who unlike La Pucelle in Shakespeare’s Henry VI, doesn’t need voices from heaven or magical powers to help her. This is a modern (2005) movie, though set in the tenth century (presumably the Christian dating is for we westerners’ benefit), and so the heroines are tough, highly skilled sword-fighters with flawless grace, spotless costumes and peerless beauty, which of course I’m all in favour of. Korean women can do anything!
At the outset, we’re told that the old Korean land of Balhae fell to the Georan, a northern tribe, in 926. The Georans renamed the area, but the vanquished people regrouped and fought to recover their homeland. Again, not unlike the situation in La Pucelle’s France in the fifteenth century… And a quick check of Korean history tells me this isn’t MiddleEarth make-beliieve. Balhae, which indeed came to an end in 926, was an empire that covered northern Korea and southern Manchuria for some 300 years. Not that this film’s director, Young-jun Kim, intends to be any more historically accurate than Shakespeare. Billed on SBS as a martial arts film (but it isn’t really, it’s a historical fantasy), Shadowless Sword takes as many liberties with the basic laws of physics, not to mention credibility, as it does with history. Swashbucklers fly through the air with the greatest of ease, disappear in a puff of chemicals, and swat enemy combatants like flies in battle scenes that would leave poor old Richard III scratching his hump in wild surmise. All of which I happily forgive in view of the film’s real heroine, the inscrutable Yeon So-Ha….
In the opening scene, Balhae’s capital Sanggyeong is raided by the Eastern Georan ‘Killer Blade Army’ under their leaders Gun Hwa-Pyung and Mae Young-Ok, and the crown prince is killed. The Balhaens, if that’s what they call themselves, are in crisis, and need to find a new leader, preferably of royal blood, to carry on the fight. This is a problem, as the Killer Blade Army seem intent on murdering every last member of the royal family, but there’s one possibly promising candidate, an exiled prince named Jeong-hyun. Balhae’s PM (probably not elected) sends the nation’s premier swordswoman, the aforementioned So-Ha, to seek out the prince and offer him the kingdom. So-Ha is of course totally stunning as well as prodigiously disciplined and effortlessly talented – probably better suited to recapture the greatness of the dynasty than any male… but her role is to serve.
She finds the quondam prince in a far-flung backwater, trading in the black market under the name of Sosam. When she makes enquiries about his real name, he tries to bump her off via his gang of thugs, which sets up the next scene of choreographed mayhem, this time played half for laughs. So-Ha then confronts Jeonghyun with the situation, that he must take up the role of king. The somewhat embittered Jeonghyun is unimpressed – considering that his motto now is ‘survive no matter what’, why would he take up the apparently lost cause of the Balhaeans? With that answer, he disappears in a burst of fire and smoke, as you do. But he’s not out of trouble, as his beaten-up gang has discovered his identity, and, at the same time, the Killer Blade Army have arrived in the region to dispose of the last remaining royal. Of course So-Ha arrives in time to rescue the prince, whereupon Mae Young-Ok arrives to kill him off. Appropriately, as the bad guy, she’s just slightly less beautiful than So-Ha. They exchange pleasantries – ‘great to meet you at last, I’ve heard so much about you..’ Then there are some attempted negotiations – ‘hand over the prince and nobody else’ll get killed’. The gang leader, a comic character, tries to team up with Mae Young-Ok and the KBA, in the hope of profit, but is slaughtered for his pains, to impress upon us the ruthlessness of the bad guys. In the ensuing violence So-Ha urges Jeonghyun to make a getaway, thus further binding him to her. There follows a lengthy chase over rooftops in the dark with the usual flying and acrobatics and swordplay, but of course they escape, and their relationship, still shaky and suspicious, starts to develop. They retire to a tavern, where the worldly Jeonghyun tempts our squeaky-clean heroine with alcohol and food, to no avail of course, she’s has no such material needs. In fact, this is one of the more interesting scenes, which takes it beyond a mere ‘martial arts’ movie (in fact it is described as belonging to the broad genre of wuxia, which literally means ‘martial arts hero’, a category that So-Ha fits squarely into, a category that includes popular literature, opera, TV and video games).
A group of uniformly clad individuals enter the tavern – their slightly outlandish outfits broadly represent the Georan style in the movie. Jeonghuyn recognises them as another of the ‘gangs’, who are are out for trouble because their leader has been killed. So-Ha, not much interested, suggests they move on, as they’re in constant danger. Our princeling, feeling trapped by this stranger who’s trying to force him into kingship, stands on his dignity, saying that nobody can tell him when to stay or go, and in an access of frustration, he hurls his cup at the gang sitting nearby. They react in the usual low-key but totally ominous fashion of martial-arts types, standing up and asking what might be the matter. Jeonghuyn, apparently improvising, says that his boss, indicating So-Ha, wants to ask if their leader died due to sexual over-indulgence. This of course leads to a confrontation, but before things escalate, a female figure, the former leader’s daughter, floats down from the ceiling, demanding to know what’s going on (I like how these female figures are given such prominence in what is clearly a patriarchal ancient society, a modern twist designed to appeal to both sexes). One of the gang members tells her what So-Ha is alleged to have said, whereupon she shoots the (male) messenger, a reminder of the arbitrariness of ‘justice’ in this world. The daughter, or spirit, than asks So-Ha to repeat what she ‘said’, whereupon the two women retire to the forest, not in the ‘let’s step outside and settle this man-to-man’ fashion of your Rambo type, but to sort things out rationally and truthfully. The spirit-daughter is made aware that it’s Jeonghuyn who’s causing trouble, but that he’s to be forgiven as he’s potentially the saviour of the kingdom. Alternatively, So-Ha may have told her a cock-and-bull tale… In any case the scene reverses old values: the male is infantile, the women are wise, and their cool heads must prevail.
Meanwhile, the KBA leader, Gun, is being castigated by the Georan leadership for not having captured Jeonghuyn or dealt with So-Ha. They’re also annoyed with Gun for his nasty habit of killing off the royal princes, when they want to bring them onside, to bring peace to the country. Gun, though, is driven by family and tribal revenge, as we see through a flashback of his father being tortured and killed before his eyes, and through his regular remarks about family honour counting for everything – the usual primitivist prescription. ‘If you want to achieve something big, you need to control your vengeful spirit,’ the royal courtier tells Gun, in one of the film’s most resonant lines.
Mae Young-Ok is in hot pursuit of our heroes, who are moving from resting place to resting place, all the while talking and arguing about evil spirits and the role of the sword in everyday life, with Jeonghuyn sometimes lashing out at the demands being made on him. While passing through a market town he makes a break for it, but is caught by one of the KBA leaders, at the same time that Mae Young-Ok catches up with So-Ha. There follows the obligatory martial arts scenes, with swordplay and magic and comedy. So-Ha bests Mae Young-Ok, who lives to fight another day, while Jeonghuyn comprehensively slaughters his adversary – another milestone on the road to kingship. The pair reunite and flee, chased by the KBA. Just before they’re caught, they jump in the lake, which leads to underwater swordfighting, which starts to make me wonder if this is all based on real events. At one point Jeonghuyn looks like drowning, but trusty magical So-Han gives him the kiss of life. They eventually escape through the sewers or something, where they have another heart-to-heart about kingship, duty and destiny, rudely interrupted by the magical arrival of Gun. More unbelievable swordplay ensues, with no conclusion – the good guys make their escape, with Jeonghuyn wounded in the back, and Gun is left looking murderous and steadfast.
In the next scene, the two bad guys contemplate their failure, and Mae Young-Ok is given one last chance to kill So-Ha. Meanwhile, So-Ha tends Jeonghuyn’s wound, the second serious wound in the back he’s suffered. Jeonghuyn makes light of it, but So-Ha reminds him of his youth, before his exile, when he fought bravely for the dynasty. Then we have flashback of the battle in which he received his first wound, and where, as So-Ha reminds him, he received the title of ‘General Splendour’ and the acclaim of the people. Clearly So-Ha knows more than one might expect, and all the while she’s trying to push towards acceptance of his destiny. Her faith in him, of course, comes with a degree of sexual tension.
Once Jeonghuyn has sufficiently recovered they travel on through the countryside disguised as Georans. They witness the suffering of the people and the brutality of the Georan overlords, all intended to sway Jeonghuyn to the side of righteousness. At the next resting-place, he starts practising his swordsmanship; he’s falling under the spell of the shadowless sword, apparently. Shortly after this, at a stream where Jeonghuyn catches fish, they’re ambushed by Mae Young Ok and her band. In spite of being sitting ducks, Mae Young-Ok’s gang misses them with their arrows – incredibly incompetent for a super-warrior. So we have another chase, with magical flights through the trees, and another inconclusive clash of the two woman-warriors. Somehow the good guys fight off the bad guys, but So-Ha has been struck by an envenomed dart, and she begins to weaken. This is the occasion for another piece of moralising, as So-Ha insists that she be left behind, for Jeonghuyn must continue onto his destiny. Jeonghuyn though, argues that if it is a kingly duty to leave his man behind to die, while preserving himself, then he wants nothing to do with kingly duties. So-Ha relents and allows herself to assisted.
They arrive at the home of a man So-Ha calls her uncle, who greets Jeonghuyn as a royal prince. So-Ha collapses, the venom is discovered, and she’s given no chance of recovery.
In the next scene we’re at Georan HQ, where they’re concerned that So-Ha’s uncle is raising an army against them. Gun’s men, the Killer Blade Army, having failed in their task, are to be replaced by the Golden Bow Army. Gun and Mae Young-Ok are pretty unhappy about this, but the Georan PM is adamant. However, he forces Mae Young-Ok to sleep with him, making vague promises to give her another chance. Gun, seeing this, remembers the promise that he made to his faithful warrior-servant, that once all the royal children were killed, they would create their own dynasty together. He’s not a happy chappie.
women warriors
So now it is Jeonghuyn’s turn to watch over So-Ha, who miraculously recovers. Gun kills the Georan PM, while Jeonghuyn recognises So-Ha’s uncle as the commander from the battle of his youth, who tended his wound. So-Ha rises from her sick-bed, recognising that Jeonghuyn is in danger, but Gun arrives to confront her. Her uncle, though, intervenes, and begins a fight with Gun which you know he’s going to lose. Meanwhile the KBA, or is it the GBA, attacks Jeonghuyn while he’s visiting his mother’s grave, but S0-Ha rescues him. Returning to camp, they’re attacked again, this time by Mae Young-Ok, who assures So-Ha that if she overuses her energy now, her arteries will become twisted and she will die. So much for ancient Chinese medicine. Anyway, after more inconclusive balletic battling, along comes Gun to save the day. It’s the moment of truth, at long fucking last. Gun squares off against So-Ha, informing her that he’s disposed of her uncle. He promises to do the same with Jeonghuyn, telling her that she can win only with a decisive killing blow. Can your sword kill? he taunts her. She responds with one of the film’s tropes – the sword is not for killing but for protecting valuable things. With that they commence their final whirligig battle, which ends when Mae Young-Ok tries to intervene and is run through by So-Ha. So-Ha stops, stunned, and Gun takes the opportunity to run Mae Young-Ok through in the opposite direction, in the process delivering what will be the mortal blow to So-Ha. This of course further emphasises Gun’s black nature, and Mae Young-Ok gives a ‘ya shouldna oughta done that, boss’ look to Gun before dropping dead.
Meanwhile Jeonghuyn comes to the party. He’s been on the periphery of things, but rushes up to tend to So-Ha. ‘Nothing can stand in my way,’ says Gun, ‘now watch me slice up this little princeling’. Jeonghuyn notices Gun’s sword, which he took from the crown prince when he killed him. Gun conveniently tells him that two identical swords were given to two princes. This brings on a flashback. He remembers when, as a youth, he taught an orphan girl (yes, the young So-Han) to fight with this sword, telling her it wasn’t for fighting but for protecting valuable things. So he takes up So-Ha’s sword and prepares to fight Gun to the death. Needless to say, he wins, being able to control the ‘internal injury’ (you’d have to see it, and you still wouldn’t believe it).
Returning to So-Ha, who’s still on her feet, brave warrior that she is, Jeonghuyn becomes emotional – ‘if it weren’t for you…’, and So-Ha responds ‘you have been the meaning of my life for the past 14 years’, and suddenly legions of armed men emerge from the bushes, not to fight but to pledge allegiance to their new king. Then suddenly they come under attack – signifying that there will be bloodshed in the kingdom for some time to come. Yet somehow, through the magic of film, our two good guys find themselves alone, which allows for a truly touching death scene, with tears dribbling down. So So-Ha will not become the power behind the throne, except in spirit. Jeonghuyn is now alone. We next see him leading his troops into battle, no longer resembling a Chinese Mick Jagger, and giving a stirring speech à la Elizabeth I or Churchill (sorry about the western references)….
So that’s Shadowless Sword, a marginally superior wuxia movie, I suspect, though I’m no expert – with an impossibly virtuous heroine, which does have a romantic appeal even to an old cynic like me. In some ways it takes me back to my own dreamy childhood, when, bedridden with the mumps, I spent my time reading a prose version of Edmund Spenser’s Tales from the Faerie Queane, and fell in love with the fair Britomartis, who donned armour to rescue her father from the wicked clutches of some black knight or other, in a world of dungeons, dragons and ugly old witches disguised as fair young maidens. Funny how vivid those childhood memories can be. Though no doubt distorted and inaccurate. What I liked too about the movie was the suppressed, or unexpressed sexuality of it all. So-Ha’s competence and unflappability made her sexy, not her dress, her walk, or anything ‘feminine’ about her. That again, took me back to Britomartis and Shakespeare’s Rosalind and other insouciant androgynes. There are certain types, it seems to me, that transcend culture, and I really love that.
he for she
I have to say, from a very young age, I considered myself a feminist. And then I read (sometime in the seventies, long before Emma Watson was born, bless her cotton socks) that you couldn’t be a feminist as a male, because it was some kind of uniquely female thing, whereas I, like Emma, thought it was a simple matter of believing that females were equal to men in every respect, and that it didn’t matter who did the believing – male, female, androgyne or alien.
Emma Watson’s Hermione is an iconic figure. Perhaps I should say J K Rowling’s Hermione, though millions identify Emma as Hermione. Yet, interestingly, Emma described herself in her speech, self-depracatingly, as ‘that Harry Potter girl’, inadvertently reminding us of her role as support to the main protagonist.
I don’t in any way want to disparage the Harry Potter novels, which I’m sure would have been just as successful with Harriet Potter as the heroine – at least I hope so. I personally have observed how much Hermione has inspired young girls, as an intelligent, level-headed problem-solver. So it was with great delight that I, along with many others, have been able to see that Emma was not just playing a part as Hermione; that she genuinely wants to use her prominence to push for the recognition of women globally.
I would go further – and I suspect she would agree, though she didn’t go that far in her speech – and say that the world would be better for having more women in prominent positions – that it would be safer, more collaborative, and more congenial. But maybe I’m being a little idealistic…
In any case, the ‘he for she’ initiative is one that I endorse whole-heartedly, because it allows men to have their say without experiencing any of the weird responses from both sides. It’s simply about equality, and respect.
What do we currently know about the differences between male and female brains in humans?
Having had an interesting conversation-cum-dispute recently over the question of male-female differences, and having then listened to a podcast, from Stuff You Should Know, on the neurological differences between the human male and the human female, which contained some claims which astonished me (and for that matter they astonished the show’s presenters), I’ve decided to try and satisfy my own curiosity about this pretty central question. Should be fun.
The above link is to How Stuff Works, which I think is the written version of the Stuff You Should Know podcast, that’s to say with more content and less humour (and less ads), but I do recommend the podcast, because the guys have lots of fun with it while still delivering plenty of useful and thought-provoking info. Anyway, the conversation I was talking about was one of those kitchen table, wine-soaked bullshit sessions in which one of the participants, a woman, was adamant that nurture was pretty well entirely the basis for male-female differences. I naturally felt sympathetic to this view, having spent much of my life trying to blur the distinctions between masculinity and femininity, having generally been turned off by ultra-masculine and ultra-feminine traits and wanting to push for blended behaviour, which obviously suggests we can control these things through nurturing such a blending. However, I had just enough knowledge of what research has revealed about the matter to say, ‘well no, there are distinct neurological differences between males and females’, but I didn’t have enough knowledge to give more than a vague idea of what these differences were. The podcast further whetted my appetite, but writing about it here should pin things down in my mind a bit more, here’s hoping.
I’ve chosen the title of this post reasonably carefully, with apologies for its clunkiness. For the fact is, we still know little enough about our brains. I’ve mentioned humans, but I expect there are gender differences in the brains of all mammals, so I’m particularly interested in that part of the brain that distinguishes us, though not completely, from other mammals, namely the prefrontal cortex.
Here’s an interesting summary, from a blurb on a New Scientist article by Hannah Hoag from 2008;
Research is revealing that male and female brains are built from markedly different genetic blueprints, which create numerous anatomical differences. There are also differences in the circuitry that wires them up and the chemicals that transmit messages between neurons. All this is pointing towards the conclusion that there is not just one kind of human brain, but two. …
Men have bigger brains on average than women, even accounting for sexual dimorphism, but the two sexes are bigger in different areas. A 2001 Harvard study found that some frontal lobe regions involved in problem-solving and decision-making were larger in women, as well as regions of the limbic cortex, responsible for regulating emotions. On the other hand, areas of the parietal cortex and the amygdala were larger in men. These areas regulate social and sexual behaviour.
The really incredible piece of data, though, is that men have about 6.5 times more grey matter (neurons) than women, while women have about ten times more white matter (axons and dendrites, that’s to say connections) than men. These are white because they’re sheathed in myelin, which allows current to flow much faster. On the face of it, I find this really hard, if not impossible, to believe. I mean, that’s one effing huge difference. It comes from a study led by Richard Haier of the University of California, Irvine and colleagues from the University of New Mexico, but this extraordinary fact appears to be of little consequence for male performance in intellectual tasks as compared to female. What appears to have happened is that two different ‘brain types ‘ have evolved alongside and in conjunction with each other to perform much the same tasks. Other research appears to confirm this amazing fact, finding that males and females access different parts of the brain for performing the same tasks. In an experiment where men and women were asked to sound out different words, Gina Kolata reported on this back in early 1995 in the New York Times:
The investigators, who were seeking the basis of reading disorders, asked what areas of the brain were used by normal readers in the first step in the process of sounding out words. To their astonishment, they discovered that men use a minute area in the left side of the brain while women use areas in both sides of the brain.
After lesions to the left hemisphere, men more often develop aphasia (problems with understanding and formulating speech) than women.
While I’m a bit sceptical about the extent of the differences between grey and white matter in terms of gender, it’s clear that these and many other differences exist, but they’re difficult to summarise. We can refer to different regions, such as the amygdala, but there are also differences in hormone activity throughout the brain, and so many other factors, such as ‘the number of dopaminergic cells in the mesencephalon’, to quote one abstract (it apparently means the number of cells containing the neurotransmitter dopamine in the midbrain). But let me dwell a bit on the amygdala, which appears to be central to neurophysiological sex differences.
Actually, there are 2 amygdalae, located within the left and right temporal lobes. They play a vital role in the formation of emotional memories, and their storage in the adjacent hippocampus, and in fear conditioning. They’re seen as part of the limbic system, but their connections with and influences on other regions of the brain are too complex for me to dare to elaborate here. The amygdalae are larger in human males, and this sex difference appears also in children from age 7. But get this:
In addition to size, other differences between men and women exist with regards to the amygdala. Subjects’ amygdala activation was observed when watching a horror film. The results of the study showed a different lateralization of the amygdala in men and women. Enhanced memory for the film was related to enhanced activity of the left, but not the right, amygdala in women, whereas it was related to enhanced activity of the right, but not the left, amygdala in men.
This right-left difference is significant because the right amygdala connects differently with other brain regions than the left. For example, the left amygdala has more connections with the hypothalamus, which directs stress and other emotional responses, whereas the right amygdala connects more with motor and visual neural regions, which interact more with the external world. Researchers are of course reluctant to speculate beyond the evidence, but as a non-scientist, but as a pure dilettante I don’t give a flock about that – just don’t pay attention to my ravings. It seems to me that most female mammals, who have to tend offspring, would be more connected to the flight than the fight response to danger than the unencumbered males would be??? OMG, is that evolutionary psychology?
It’s interesting but hardly surprising to note that studies have shown this right-left amygdala difference is also correlated to sexual orientation. Presumably – speculating again – it would also relate to those individuals who sense from early on that they’re born into ‘the wrong gender’.
Neuroimaging studies have found that the amygdala develops structurally at different rates in males and females, and this seems to be due to the concentration of sex hormone receptors in the different genders. Where there’s a size difference there appears to be a big difference in number of sex hormones circulating in the area. Again this is difficult to interpret, and it’s early days for this research. One brain structure, the stria terminalis, a bundle of fibres that constitute the major output pathway for the amygdala, has become a focus of controversy in the determination of our sense of gender and sexual orientation. As a dilettante I’m reluctant to comment much on this, but the central subdivision of the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis is on average twice as large in men as in women, and contains twice the number of somatostatin neurons in males. Somatostatin is a peptide hormone which helps regulate the endocrine system, which maintains homeostasis.
What all this means for the detail of sex differences is obviously very far from being worked out, but it seems that the more we examine the brain, the more we find structural and process differences between the male and female brain in humans. And it’s likely that we’ll find similar differences in other mammals.
It’s important to note, though, that these differences, as in other mammals, exist in the same species, in which the genders have evolved to be codependent and to work in tandem towards their survival and success. Just as it would seem silly to say that female kangaroos are smarter/dumber than males, the same should be said of humans. The terms smart/dumb are not very useful here. The two genders, in all mammals, perform complementary roles, but they’re also also both able to survive independently of one another. The amazing thing is that such different brain designs can be so similar in output and achievement. It’s more impressive evidence of the enormous diversity of evolutionary development.
on transcendental constructions: a critique of Scott Atran
Some years ago, when watching some of the talks and debates in the first ‘Beyond Belief’ conference at the Salk Institute, I noted some tension between Sam Harris and his critique of religion generally and Islam in particular, and Scott Atran, an anthropologist, who appeared to be quite contemptuous of Harris’s views. Beyond noting the tension, I didn’t pay too much attention to it at the time, but I’ve decided now to look at this issue more closely because I’ve just read Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s powerful book Infidel, which gives an insider’s informed and critical view of Islam, particularly from a woman’s perspective, and I’ve also listened to Chris Mooney’s Point of Inquiry interview with Atran back in April, shortly after the Boston marathon bombing.
The interview, called ‘What makes a terrorist?’ was mainly about the psychology of the more recent batch of terrorists, but in the latter half, Atran responded to a question about the role of Islam specifically in recent terrorist behaviour. It’s this response I want to examine, not so much in the light of Sam Harris’s contrasting views, but in comparison to those of Hirsi Ali.
In bringing up the role of Islam in terrorism, Chris Mooney cites Sam Harris as pointing out that ‘there’s something about Islam today that is more violent’. Atran’s immediate response is that ‘this is such a complex and confused issue’, then he says that ‘religions are fairly neutral vessels’. This idea that religions, especially those that survive over time, have a degree of neutrality to them, has some truth, and in fact it served as the basis for my critique of Melvyn Bragg’s absurd claims that Christianity and the KJV Bible were largely responsible for feminism, democracy and the anti-slavery movement. But there is a limit to this ‘neutrality’. Religions are clearly not so ‘neutral’, morally or culturally, that they’re interchangeable with each other. Fundamentalist, or ultra-orthodox, or ultra-conservative Judaism is not the same as its Islamic or Christian counterparts. In fact, far from it. And yet these three religions ostensibly share the same deity.
The interaction between religion and culture is almost impenetrably complex. I wrote about this years ago in an essay about traditional Australian Aboriginal religion/culture, in which it’s reasonable to say that religion is culture and culture is religion. In such a setting, apostasy would be meaningless or impossible – essentially a denial of one’s own identity. Having said that, if your religion, via one of its principal texts, tells you that apostasy is punishable by death, you’ve already got a yawning separation between religion and cultural identity – the very reason for the excessive threat of punishment is to desperately try to plug that gap. It’s like the desperate cry of a father – ‘you’ll never amount to anything without me!’ – as the son walks out the door for the last time.
These major religions – Judaism, Islam and Christianity – are embedded in texts that are embedded in culture. Different, varied texts interacting complexly – reinforcing, challenging, altering the culture from whence they sprung. Differently. Judaism’s major text, always arguably, is the Torah. Christianity’s is the New Testament, or is it the gospels? Islamic scholars – but also those believers who rarely ever read the sacred texts – will argue about which texts are most important and why. Nevertheless, Judaism, Christianity and Islam all have a different feel to them from each other, even given the enormous variation within each religion. Judaism is profoundly insular, with its chosen people uniquely flayed by their demanding, unforgiving god. Christianity is profoundly other-worldly with its obsession with the saviour, the saved, the end of days, the kingdom to come, the soul struggling for release, not to mention sin sin sin. Islam, a harsh, desert religion, somehow even more than the other two, is about denial, control, submission, and jihad in all its complex and contradictory manifestations and interpretations. The status of women in each religion, in a general sense, is different. Christianity gives women the most ‘wriggle-room’ from the start, but its interaction with the different cultures captured by the religion can sometimes open up that space, or close it down. The New Testament presents a patriarchal culture of course, but in the gospels women aren’t given too bad a rap. Paul of Tarsus notoriously displays some misogyny elsewhere in the NT, but it isn’t particularly specific and no detailed restrictions on women’s freedom are presented. More importantly, the dynamism of western culture has blown away many attempts to maintain the restrictions on women’s freedom dictated by Christian dogma – pace the Catholic Church. In any case, Christianity has no equivalent to Sharia Law, with its deity-given restrictions and overall fearfulness of the freedom and power of women. And neither Christianity nor Islam has the obsession with ritual and with interpretation of the deity’s very peculiar requirements that orthodox Judaism has.
To return, though, to Atran. He argues that the reason the big religions survive and thrive is precisely due to their lack of fixed propositions – which is why, he says, that we need sermons to continually update and modernise the interpretations of texts, parables, suras and the like. I’m not sure if the Khutbas of Moslem Imams serve the same purpose as priests’ sermons, but I generally agree with Atran here. The point, of course, is that though there is much leeway for interpretation, there are still boundaries, and the boundaries are different for Islam compared to Christianity, etc.
What follows is my analysis of what Atran has to say about what are, in fact, very complex and contentious matters relating to religion and social existence. Whole books could be, and of course are, devoted to this, so I’ll try not to get too bogged down. I’m using my own transcript of Atran’s interview with Mooney, slightly edited. Occasionally I can’t quite make out what Atran is saying, as he sometimes talks softly and rapidly, but I’ll do my best.
So, after his slightly over-simplified claim that these big religions are ‘neutral vessels’, Atran goes on with his definition. These religions are:
… moral frameworks that provide a transcendental moral foundation for large groups coalescing – for how else do you get genetic relatives to form large co-operative groups? They don’t have to be necessarily religious today, but it involves transcendental ideas. Take human rights, for example, that’s a crazy idea. Two hundred and fifty years ago a bunch of intellectuals in Europe decided that providence or nature made all human beings equal, endowed by their creator with rights to liberty and happiness, when the history of 200,000 years of human life had been mostly cannibalism, infanticide, murder, the suppression of minorities and women, and so [through the wars?] and social engineering, they took this crackpot idea and made it real.
I have a few not so minor quibbles to make here. Presumably Atran is using the term ‘transcendental’ in the way that I would use the term “over-arching’ – a much more neutral, and if you like, secular term. The trouble is – and he uses this term often throughout the interview – Atran uses ‘transcendental’ with deliberate rhetorical intent, taking advantage of its massive semantic load to undercut various secular concepts, in this case the ‘crackpot’ concept of human rights.
This isn’t to say that Atran objects to human rights. My guess is that he regards it as a somewhat arbitrary and unlikely concept, invented by a bunch of European intellectuals in the Enlightenment era, that just happened to catch on, and a good thing too. That’s not how I see it. It’s just much much more complex than that. So much so that I hesitate to even begin to explore it here. The germ of the concept goes back at least as far as Aristotle, and it involves the increasingly systematic study of human history, and human psychology. It involves the science of evolution, and it involves pragmatic global developments in commerce and diplomacy. Eighteenth century Enlightenment ideas had a catalytic effect, as did many developments of the scientific enlightenment of the previous century, as did the growth of democratic ideas and the concept of systematic universal education and health-care in the nineteenth century, in the west.
My point is that, though I have no problems with calling human rights a convenient fiction – nobody ‘really’ has rights as such – it’s based on a this-worldly (i.e. non-transcendental) understanding of how both individuals and societies flourish and thrive, in terms of the contract or compromise between them.
Atran goes on:
But, in general, societies that have unfalsifiable and unverifiable transcendental constructions win out over those that don’t – I mean, Darwin talked about it as moral virtue, and said that this is responsible for the kind of patriotism, sympathy and loyalty that makes certain tribes win out over other tribes in […] competition for dominance and survival, and again, without these transcendental ideas people can’t really be blinded to [exit strategies], I mean, societies that are based on social contracts, no matter how good they are, the idea that there’s always a better deal down the line makes them liable to collapse, while these societies are much less prone to that. And there are all sorts of other things associated with these sorts of unverifiable propositions.
Presumably these ‘unfalsifiable and unverifiable transcendental constructions’ are religions, and I’ve no great objection to that characterisation, but I’m not so convinced about the positive value for ‘dominance and survival’ of these constructions. One could argue that my kind of scepticism can only flourish in a secure environment such as we have in the west, where such ‘undermining’ values as anti-nationalism and atheism can’t threaten the social cohesion of our collective prosperity and sense of superiority to non-western notions. There are just no ‘better deals down the line’, except maybe more health, wealth and happiness, commitment to which requires the very opposite of an ‘exit strategy’. In other words, western ‘social contract’ societies, in which religious belief is rapidly diminishing (outside the US), are showing no sign of collapsing, because there is no meaningful exit strategy, unless a delusional one. There is no desire or motivation to exit. We’re largely facing our demons and rejecting overly ‘idealistic’ solutions.
Perhaps my meaning will be clearer when we look at more of Atran’s remarks:
So now, the propositions, these things themselves can be interpreted, however, depending on the political and social climate of the age. Islam has been interpreted in ways that were extremely progressive at one time, and at least parts of it are extremely retrogressive, especially as concerns science for example, the position of women in the world, especially parts of it in many countries it’s extremely retrograde. But, Islam itself, I mean does it have some essence that encourages this kind of crazy violence? No, not at all – that truly is absurd, and just false.
Atran’s becoming a bit incoherent here, and maybe he expresses himself better elsewhere, but his base argument is that there’s no ‘essence’ to Islam which renders it more violent than other religions, or transcendental constructions (eg communism or fascism) for that matter. He overplays his hand, I think, when he claims that this is ‘absurd’ and obviously false. We could call this ‘the argument from petulance’. Islam does have some essential differences, I think, which makes it more able to act against women and against scientific ideas, though I agree that this is a matter of degree, and that it’s very complex. For example, the growth of Catholicism in Africa has combined with certain aspects of tribal culture and patriarchy to make African Catholic spokesmen very outspoken against homosexuality – and a recent local television program had a Moslem leader speaking up in favour of gay marriage. So, yes, there is nothing fixed in stone about Islam or Christianity with respect to human values.
The thing is that, for writers like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and I suspect Sam Harris too, the question of ‘essentialism’ is largely academic, for right here and right now people are being targeted by Moslems (under the pressure of cultural connections or disconnections), because they are apostates, or critics, or women trying to get an education, or women dressing too ‘immodestly’, and this is causing great tension, even to the point of death and destruction here and there. In fact, Hirsi Ali, in calling for an enlightenment in the Moslem world, is backing a non-essentialist view. It’s the culture that has to change, but of course religion, with its transcendentalist, eternalist underpinnings, acts as a strong brake against cultural transformation. To engage in the battle for moderation is to battle for this-wordly, evidence-based thinking on human flourishing, against transcendentalist ideas of all kinds.
Atran, I think, relies too heavily on his notion of ‘transcendental constructions’, which he uses too widely and sweepingly, even with a degree of smugness. Let me provide one more quote from his interview, with some final comments.
But again, I don’t see anything about Islam itself… you need some kind of transcendental ideal to get people to sacrifice for genetic strangers, for these large groups. Religion is the best thing that human history has come up with, but there are other competing transcendental notions of which democratic liberalism, human rights, communism, fascism, are others, and right now the democratic-liberal-human rights thing is predominant in a large part of the world and it’s a salvation [……..] and people don’t want that or feel left in the driftwood of globalisation, they are looking for something else to give them equal power and significance.
Methinks Atran might’ve been spending too much time in the study of religious/transcendental ideas – he’s seeing everything though that perspective. I myself have written about democracy, in its various manifestations, from a sceptical perspective many times, and I’ve been critical of the over-use of the concept of rights, and so forth. It’s true enough that people can take these concepts, along with fascism or communism, to a transcendental level, making of them an unquestionable given for ‘right living’ or ‘a decent society’, but they can also be taken pragmatically and realistically, reasonably, as the most serviceable approaches to a well-functioning social order. Social evolution is moving quickly, and we can make sacrifices for genetic strangers, based on our growing understanding, as humans, of our common genetic inheritance. We’re not so much genetic strangers, perhaps, as we once thought ourselves to be. Indeed, it’s this growing understanding, a product of science, that is expanding our circle of connection beyond even the human. We need to promote this understanding as much as we can, in the teeth of transcendentalist, eternalist, other-worldly ideas about submission to deities, heavenly rewards and spiritual superiority.
how to debate William Lane Craig, or not – part 7, objective moral values and duties
ceci n’est pas Jesus
Dr Craig’s sixth claim, that his god is the best explanation for objective moral values, is one I want to dwell on at some length, so please sit back in your electrified chairs and enjoy my reflections if you can. But please note that I dwell on the subject for my own interest’s sake, not because I find Dr Craig’s views require much work to overcome – far from it.
I suppose it’s fair to say that when it comes to moral issues, unlike with matters scientific, we all like to consider ourselves experts, and we’re all a little more committed and vociferous, because – it’s personal. So I’ll begin with some personal stuff. From earliest childhood I’ve always felt very emotional about issues of cruelty and injustice. I was often in tears on witnessing kids in my class being bullied – more often than not by teachers. When I was a little boy I read the Hans Andersen story, ‘the little match girl’, a simple but devastating story about a young girl out in the cold snow, trying to sell matches for her impoverished family, afraid to go home without having sold any. She finally dies, out in the cold, on the last night of the year. This tale of unfairness and cruelty and indifference, had me awash with tears at the time, and literally haunted my childhood. I think it’s fair to say that a sense of empathy was well developed in me from an early age. Needless to say, ethical ideas based on the harm principle, such as those articulated by the liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill, held great appeal for me, but further than this, active moral programs to protect and support individual human beings, such as those enshrined in the universal declaration of human rights and in the many conventions and protocols that have followed from that declaration, are programs that I hold dear.
The point I’m making here is that the starting point for my own moral values was an emotional one, a visceral one, if you like, and not something derived from any ‘higher consciousness’ or reflectivity or rationality. And I suspect that’s quite a common experience. We don’t generally choose to cry over or be haunted by an injustice. So where do these deep emotional feelings come from? I have absolutely no reason to associate them with a non-material being who has, as far as I’m aware, never communicated anything to me. Nor was I, during my childhood, convinced that everyone would feel the same way as I did if exposed to the story of the little match girl. Some would, I was sure, but others would be cruelly indifferent, and there would be a whole variety of responses along the spectrum. In short, my observations of life, even from an early age, told me that people valued things and experiences very differently from me, and very differently from each other, to a rather bewildering and unpredictable degree.
So, from the fore-going I hope it won’t come as a surprise to you that I don’t believe in objective moral values, but that I’m far from believing that this entails some kind of moral nihilism or amorality. In Dr Craig’s presentation of this argument, he suggests that those who don’t subscribe to objective moral values, by which he means, values that come from a male supernatural being, don’t see anything ‘really’ wrong with the massacre of schoolchildren. Let me put that in another way. He argues that my own deeply felt disgust, shock, anger and pain, when I hear about, and see, played out on my tv screen, those sorts of crimes, is not really real, because it isn’t connected to a non-material creator-protector god, which is how he defines objective morality. I find this a ridiculous argument, as well as an offensive one.
Firstly, Dr Craig’s version of morality is a sham because it exists nowhere. Dr Craig will not be able to give you a single instance of a command from his favoured deity. The decalogue, the ten commandments, were written by men, and though some of them may seem uncontroversial – don’t lie, steal, don’t kill – even these aren’t absolute. A starving person, in my view, would be justified in taking food belonging to another person, who had an abundance of such food, if the alternate was death. I have no difficulty with that. Some people would, as they have the view that private property is sacrosanct. And I could make similar arguments to justify lying, and even killing, under certain special circumstances. To me, there are no absolutes. Other commandments, such as keeping the sabbath day holy, I don’t take at all seriously, because I don’t believe a supernatural being made the world in seven days, though had I lived several thousand years ago, I might well have believed that. And so my morality would have been different then, just as my morality would be different if I were born, on the same day that I actually was born, but in the city of Basra, to a devout Moslem family. My morality, that I hold so dear, and which gives my life so much meaning, is the result of my particular upbringing, my peculiar variety of experiences and influences, the culture that I was born into, my genetic inheritance, and I’m sure there are other factors that I’ve left out. One thing I’m happy to leave out, though, is the command of a deity. I’ve never experienced such a command, and I have no reason to believe anyone else has either.
Now, there are atheists I know who argue for an objective morality, but obviously not grounded in a deity. Personally I find such rational arguments a bit weird, and I’ll say no more about them here, except to make the obvious point that being an atheist doesn’t commit you to any specific moral position, as it’s simply an absence of belief in a deity. That’s all.
What I do want to focus on is the claim that morality without a deity is merely subjective and not really real. That’s to say, without a deity we can do whatever we like and call it morality. Well, that’s not how I feel about morality, and it’s not how morality, and laws relating to morality (and most laws have some sort of moral reasoning behind them) have developed in our increasingly secular society. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is entirely secular, and I think it’s a grand step forward in global human interaction. And it’s more of an effect than a cause, it’s symptomatic of a gradual shift in our attitude to other cultures, in our attitude to race, whether the concept is a valid one or not. In the attitude of men to women, in the attitude of heterosexuals to homosexuals, in our attitude to and respect for children, and in our attitude to and respect for other species on this planet. All of these attitudes have changed drastically in the past 150 years or so. Living in an eternal present as we often do, we can easily overlook how thoroughly transformational these essentially moral developments have been, and they’ve owed nothing whatever to religion, which has generally dragged its heels at the rear. Look, for example, at the Catholic Church.
I’m an avid reader of history, and as such I’ve noted the social changes, particularly in western Europe, that occurred over the past 400 years or so. What has always struck me, in reading about the Thirty Years’ war or the English revolution of the 17th century, or the early slave trade, is how often and regularly God (the Judeo-Christian one) is invoked in the primary documents of those times. God appears on every page, often several times on every page, of every legal document. I’ve described the 17th century, and the centuries before, as a ‘god-besotted age’. And yet the everyday brutality, the callous inhumanity, the cruelty, the viciousness, the inequity, the impoverishment of basic human values of those times, were everywhere on display. If you think you’ve got problems now, transport yourself back to pre-Enlightenment Europe for a wake-up call. Arbitrary rulers, upstart priests, popular revolutionaries, all invoked the divine in order to invest themselves with authority, as still happens today. Think of the divine right of kings, and papal infallibility, and the dear leader and great leaders of North Korea, who promoted themselves as divine. In the past, monarchs regularly passed laws in the name of the god whom they represented. Nowadays, elected politicians pass laws in the name of the people who elected them. It seems to have been a great improvement.
Our morality and our laws are grounded, it seems to me, in our common, but changing, evolving human nature. This is not mere subjectivity. In fact it’s all we have to go on. We don’t make up our own morality as individuals because we’re essentially social beings who rely on each other for our survival and our thriving. We’re empathic because we see ourselves in others and others in ourselves. And we’ve evolved that empathic capacity to embrace species other than our own, which I think is a great step forward.
The theist has no ground for objective moral values because no single moral value, claiming to be objective, has ever been shown to come from a deity. I have no doubt that they’ve all come from human beings.
more cardinal sins
protesting too much
Lauryn Oates, an admirable woman in every way, has written an incisive little essay here, wishing the backward-facing hierarchs of the Catholic Church a hearty good riddance. Of course it’s all wishful thinking, of the kind all positive-thinking humanists indulge in, but you have to wonder why it is so many apparently educated, humane, intelligent people still cling to this awful institution. Is it force of habit? Is it fear of offending family and friends? Is it faith, whatever that may mean? Or is it, dare I say, profound intellectual analysis and reflection?
And let’s face it, the evidence of this institution’s awfulness is everywhere. Oates wrote her damning little piece before the latest scandal involving Keith O’Brien, the most senior Catholic clergyman in Britain no less, who has made admissions regarding sexual molestation accusations by a number of fellow priests. After all the focus, the relentless focus, on exploitative priests and cover-ups, we still find this sort of thing going on at the very top. However, O’Brien’s admission (it was feeble and vague – ‘I haven’t lived up to the standards expected of me’, and it’s unlikely anything further will be dragged out of him) is particularly devastating – and some illustrious figures would say, inevitable – because he was so rabidly homophobic in his pronouncements. So, now that his hypocrisy is revealed, the LGBT community is having a field day, and why not? (They recently named him their Bigot of the Year). I’ve just been acquainting myself with the many contemptible remarks this individual has made against homosexuality, and some interesting reflections on him, now that he stands exposed, so to speak. Some to the effect that he’s obviously a deeply troubled person who might be treated with compassion. The thing is, though, we can always find ways to more deeply understand, and even sympathise with, the behaviour of people who have done immense damage to others, but we always have to weigh the suffering they cause against the suffering they experience. And it seems to me obvious that O’Brian’s depredations, combined with his regular and lashing condemnations of the freely chosen sexual activities of others, from a position of exalted religious status, represents something pretty fundamentally disgusting and only partially mitigated by his own inner turmoil. Another mitigating factor, of course, is the gay orientation of many senior Catholic clergy, encouraged and cemented in their youth in seminaries the world over.
O’Brian has now been ‘retired’, and will take no further part in the Catholic Church, but he still retains his title of Cardinal, and he was planning to retire later this month anyway. There are those, though, who’ll be fighting to visit a more fitting punishment on the man, and I wish them well. The Church itself is to conduct an investigation into his activities, but I can’t take that seriously. The secular route is best, but it’s unclear as yet whether his behaviour has contravened the law. It may well be that he’ll end up being let off, if not exonerated, by the very liberal regime that he affects to despise.
atheism plus comes to town, perhaps
The other day I attended my first local atheist meetup here in Adelaide for quite some time. Not that I was particularly avoiding them, they’ve just been clashing with other commitments, but it turned out to be an interesting time to return, because it was posted that we might like to have a semi-formal discussion on the ‘atheism plus’ push which is causing a bit of a stir on Free Thought Blogs and elsewhere, and if and how we want to incorporate it.
Controversy! Flying Sparks! Noses out of joint! Death threats! Trolls! Witches! Indifference!
In other words I wasn’t at all sure what to expect. What I did find pleasantly surprising was that the topic got a reasonably good airing and the group came to a more or less loose consensus about behaviour at meet-ups, in order to maintain the sorts of standards that might be expected at club meetings, gabfests and the like. That’s to say, no blatant sexism, racism, intimidation or offensive behaviour, with the convenor, presumably after consultation with the respective parties, or having witnessed the abuse, making an executive decision about behaviour having crossed the line sufficiently far as to require intervention, such as politely but firmly asking the offender to desist, or to leave, or even imposing a ban. Doubtless none of this is particularly binding or enforceable, but it’s only a pub meet-up group after all, Amazing tho’ our Meetings might be.
All of this is certainly Good Progressive Stuff, and it might open up an avenue of complaint for some who have avoided meetings because of one or two blowhards who’ve behaved offensively in the past, but does it put as all in the Atheism+ camp? In other words, is Atheism+ anything more than a movement to encourage or impose civility?
This issue was discussed at the meeting, as were the origins of this movement, or proto-movement; the experiences of Jen McCreight, the elevator affair [not so much a storm in an elevator as a storm outside one], the Dawkins response, and harrassment in general, with a variety of views expressed and criticised. Also discussed was the general issue of the way men treat women, and vice versa. I detected plenty of underlying tensions between some males and some females [for the record, though I can’t recall all the conversation, I can say with some certainty that seven males and two females spoke up on this issue, which is almost more revealing than what was said], with the ‘males don’t have an easy time of it either’ line featuring heavily.
We’d just about reached a positive conclusion on the matter, despite the slightly grumbling note of one or two men, when a late male arrival was asked his opinion of the whole A+ thing. He announced to us all that he considered feminism ‘a travesty’, a remark obviously intended to create a splash. A moment later, he added ‘I mean academic feminism’. Needless to say, academic feminism, and whatever reaction one might have to it, was not at issue at the meeting. What was at issue was civility, particularly between men and women, and the creation of an atmosphere that would make everyone, but particularly women, comfortable and enthusiastic and willing to go on attending and contributing – especially given that the group, like most atheist meet-up groups – was dominated by males. To arrive late to a meetup in which he knew that Atheism+ was to be discussed [the same individual had earlier posted a response to the convenor’s announcement about the topic, which clearly mocked the whole thing], thus indicating his lack of interest, and then to state, as his first contribution to the meetup, that feminism is a travesty, was clearly a deliberate provocation, and it had the obviously desired effect of upsetting at least one of the female minority attending, who was passionately concerned to raise the issues around A+, civility and inclusiveness, precisely because she’d been avoiding meetups in which these kinds of arrogant and bombastic statements were being aired.
There are a few lessons to be drawn from this. First, that it only takes one or two insensitive males, or one or two insensitive comments, to spoil a whole evening, or even a whole movement, for those who feel targeted by them. We should all be aware of this, as we all remember the nasty comments directed at us more clearly than a thousand compliments. Second, it’s very important not to let those comments go unchallenged, as silence will feel like assent to those who feel offended by them.
And to describe feminism as a travesty is offensive. I felt personally affronted, and I’m only a male, but a male who grew up in the seventies, at the height of second-wave feminism, with its vital historical perspective on patriarchy’s distortion of female value. It profoundly influenced my intellectual development, and still does. Of course I didn’t agree with all feminist discourse, just as I disagreed with some of the discourse on black power that was prevalent at that time, but I fully agreed with the prime thrust of both these movements, equality. Equality of opportunity, equality of treatment, equality of power. How could anyone object to that?
It seems to me that a job of empowerment, in gender terms, still needs to be done within the atheist community, if we’re to call ourselves a community. That might need more than just civility, but it’s a damn good place to start.
jensen’s submissionary position
I suppose I come across in these posts as a fairly reasonable, analytical sort of bloke, but I actually have to suppress quite an upwelling of emotion, especially angry emotion, from time to time. For example when I witness bullying behaviour, even if only in a movie, I become agitated, unable to keep still. If I’m alone I’ll start pacing up and down, I’ll change the channel, but too late, I’ll remonstrate with the bully, I’ll expose him, humiliate him, perhaps even murder him, or her. And then I’ll tell myself to calm down, why do I over-react like this, where does all this anger come from, almost with the flick of a switch, is there something really wrong with me, etc etc. I’ve gone through this little cycle – the flaring up of anger, followed by the calming-down, the wondering at my semi-unhingedness, the concern about my sanity – literally a thousand times. It can be brought on by stories told to me by third or fourth or fifth persons, or by something I’ve witnessed or been subjected to, or unreliable memories, or my reading of ancient history. But no matter how much I admonish myself, like Beckett’s Krapp telling himself to stop eating bananas, I’m unlikely to change.
Certain benighted characters, from Josef Stalin to Gordon Ramsay, can trigger this cycle in me through the mere mention of their names, and some of them, like the current Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen, don’t even seem to fit the general profile of a bully. It’s a puzzlement. But while I can’t expect to cure myself, I can perhaps reduce the symptoms by a little tried-and-true analysis.
So, to Jensen.
My most recent sighting of him was on ABC-TV [I think] the other day, in relation to a quirky little piece on a recent marriage ceremony in which the female party chose to submit to her husband. This ceremonial wording, apparently deliberately chosen by the devout couple, has caused a bit of a stir, apparently. Switch to Jensen’s smiling dial as he ‘explains’ that men and women are different and need to have different roles within a marriage, because a man, you see, is a man, and a woman is a woman, and therefore, well, the conclusion is obvious, surely, and it’s so good that we’re having this debate at last.
Jensen is, of course, a staunch conservative, who’s totally opposed to the ordination of female clergy in the Anglican church, as well as gay marriage and homosexuality generally. The CNNNN team did a great job of questioning the Biblical basis of his views here, and though you could argue that the man was ambushed, he did a notably poor job of defending himself. For this reason I’m a bit uncertain of the value of this post. The fellow seems so feeble-minded, and his views so laughable, that I’m really not sure he’s worth expending energy on, or that his views should be given even the tiny piece of promotion my blog can offer.
However, for my own equanimity’s sake, I will continue. Jensen expands on his views in this article in the Sydney Morning Herald, and that’s what I’ll focus on.
Marriage really matters. Thank God we are talking about it. As Professor Patrick Parkinson said in these pages last week, marriage is ”by far the most stable, safe and nurturing relationship in which to raise children”. However, fewer people are choosing marriage as a way of relating to someone of the opposite sex and fewer people are nurturing children in a family with marriage at its heart.
I can understand that. Individualism leaves us with little reason to join our life to that of someone else. Apart from that, for many marriage has become an arena of suffering, exploitation and disappointment. We choose to bypass it. Yet I would say that we need to go back to biblical principles and understand, improve and support marriage rather than abandon it.
I freely admit that for me, the earthly title and vocation I cherish most is ”husband”. It all began with promises, and each day I try to live out the commitment I made. Marriage is not always easy and I know that for some it proves painfully impossible. But, mostly, making our promises before witnesses and trying to keep them is what works best.
Public promises make a marriage. Marriages are founded on promises of lifelong, exclusive bonding. Provided that the promises commit both man and woman in good times and in bad ”till death do us part”, and that both intend to relate only to each other, the promises are effective in creating the marriage. Husband and wife can certainly make identical promises.
But promises can reflect something even more profound. Since they unite not simply two people but a man and a woman – two different bodies for whom marriage holds different consequences, needs, expectations and emotions – the promises can express these differences, and traditionally have done so.
Many of our young people want to be ”wives and husbands” rather than simply ”partners” and in their weddings they come as ”bride and groom” rather than simply two individuals. They believe that expressing these differences, including different responsibilities, makes for a better marriage.
Both kinds of promise are provided for in the Sydney Anglican diocese’s proposed Prayer Book, which has been the subject of commentary this week.
There is nothing new in this – it is the same as the Australian Prayer Book which has been used for decades.
Where different promises are made, the man undertakes great responsibility and this is also the wording of the book, as it has always been. The biblical teaching is that the promise made voluntarily by the bride to submit to her husband is matched by the even more onerous obligation which the husband must undertake to act towards his wife as Christ has loved the church. The Bible says that this obligation is ultimately measured by the self-sacrifice of Christ in dying on the cross.
This is not an invitation to bossiness, let alone abuse. A husband who uses the wife’s promise in this way stands condemned for betraying his own sworn obligations. The husband is to take responsibility for his wife and family in a Christ-like way. Her ”submission” is her voluntary acceptance of this pattern of living together, her glad recognition that this is what he intends to bring to the marriage and that it is for her good, his good and the good of children born to them. She is going to accept him as a man who has chosen the self-discipline and commitment of marriage for her sake and for their children. At a time when women rightly complain that they cannot get men to commit, here is a pattern which demands real commitment all the way.
Secular views of marriage are driven by a destructive individualism and libertarianism. This philosophy is inconsistent with the reality of long-term relationships such as marriage and family life.
more on religion and atheism from a gender perspective, and damn statistics
whatever
While reflecting and doing some googly research on women, woo and religious belief, I came upon an article, ‘Religion and Atheism from a Gender Perspective‘, by Tiina Mahlamäki, a lecturer in Comparative Religion at the University of Turku, Finland. The article got my back up after only a couple of paragraphs, so I’ve decided to explore my irritation here.
Two early comments immediately got me offside. First, there’s this, from the first para: ‘both (second wave) feminists and atheists consider religion from a relatively narrow point of view’. Note the moderator ‘relatively’ here. It has no real meaning, its function in the sentence is to soften the punch, an old academic device. While I can’t speak for feminists, the ‘narrow’ focus of atheists is generally upon truth, which I suspect Mahlamäki is going to tell us is boring, à la Alain de Botton. We’ll see. Next, this, from the second paragraph:
As an ideological statement and a form of irreligiousness, atheist discourse provides interesting data for the study of religions. Although atheism and secularity are not institutionalised forms of religion, they can be seen as ideologies because they are not merely describing the world; they also want to change it (Davie & Woodhead 2009: 525). For my part, I do not position myself as an atheist, nor as a member of any religious community.
The bullshit antenna is trying to yank itself out of my head here. An ideologue is someone who wants to change the world? You mean, like a researcher who wants to cure cancer, or a neurologist who wants to tease out the mechanisms of consciousness, or a physicist who wants to solve the mystery of dark matter? Or anyone who wants to make a difference in the world? For to change our understanding of the world is most certainly to change our world. These are ideologues? And here was me thinking that an ideologue was someone whose fixed notions of the world were impervious to evidence. Gee, am I dumb. As to Mahlamäki’s potent point that ‘atheism and secularity are not institutionalised forms of religion’, I’m so glad she set us all straight on that one. And then she finishes off by telling us that she isn’t so limited as to position herself anywhere, or maybe she positions herself everywhere, or whatever.
By this time I was wondering who this woman was, where she was truly coming from. Flipping to the end of the article, I noted that her interests included the nexus between religion and Finnish literature, as well as gender issues. Some of her recent writings have been on the literary influence of Emmanuel Swedenborg in Finland. Swedenborg was an eighteenth century Christian theologian, philosopher and ‘mystic’, once very influential. Oh dear. Certainly nothing remotely sciencey in Ms Mahlamäki’s background.
She goes on to point out the overwhelming maleness of the new atheist movement, a not unreasonable point, but her treatment of the ‘war between science and religion’ is wholly inadequate. Take this, for example:
Evolution is, of course, a biological fact, but for the new atheists it ‘has become a powerful quasireligious myth by which atheists such as Dawkins confer meaning on the world’. It has become ‘a powerful folk-tale about human origins’. (Beattie 2007: 12, quoting Mary Midgley.)
Of course, no explanation is given by Mahlamäki or Tina Beattie [the book quoted from is The New Atheists: The Twilight of Reason & The War on Religion. Oh dear again] or the redoubtable Midgley as to how a biological fact can also be a powerful folk-tale about human origins, or how we can learn about human origins without evolution. It’s quite preposterous.
Mahlamäki goes on to treat us to a lesson in the aforementioned science-religion war. Her account starts off reasonably enough; religion and science began to separate in earnest, at least in the minds of some individuals and within certain limited circles, during the Enlightenment, and proceeded during the nineteenth century when separate scientific disciplines began to be more fully mapped out and professionalised. However, her description of the sharpening of the struggle as we move towards the modern era invokes power struggles and the tools of rhetoric, but says nothing whatever about truth, or evidence, or even such staples of the philosophy of science as coherence, explanatory power, or the way a scientific theory’s effectiveness is consolidated by the rich research programs it gives rise to. Take this little piece of complacency, for example:
Similarly, the concrete conflict between science and religion at the end of nineteenth century was not born, according to Tina Beattie, from ‘a struggle between religious and scientific ways of explanation’ but merely from a struggle of power and authority between men of science and men of God. ‘The triumph of science over theology required the total discrediting of theological knowledge.’ (Beattie 2007: 20.) This active discrediting is still being continued by the new atheists.
Again, Mahlamäki uses the polemical Beattie and seems reluctant to speak for herself. And what she quotes is rubbish. The triumph of science has consisted in its ability to generate further knowledge, much of which, in applied form, has transformed our world. Theology has discredited itself in making no headway, that’s to say in generating no further knowledge of how the world works, in almost 2000 years, in its Christian form. Few scientists have bothered to engage in discourse with theologians, positively or negatively. Why would they? Atheists, on the other hand – some of whom are also scientists, and many of whom are philosophers, like Dennett, or naturally combative types like Hitchens – are often interested in discrediting theologians and their ‘deepities’, generally by pointing out their massive hidden assumption, that the object[s] of their often interminable discourses and analyses have actual existence. Similarly, we seek to discredit belief in reincarnation and astrology because they’ve taken us nowhere in several thousand years, whereas ‘belief’ in, say, the photoelectric effect has taken us into a digital age that was unimaginable a mere century ago. Science works; it’s applicable [because testable]. I can’t imagine what an applied theology would look like.
By this time you might be wondering what all this has to do with gender. Well, Mahlamäki does write about this, but very inconclusively. She emphasises the appeal of religion to women, and she trots out a few of the more familiar possible explanations, without wholly endorsing any of them. She supports the feminist movement in its attack on the patriarchalism and misogyny of much established religion, and wonders aloud at why so many women are supportive of this oppression, but forty years on from the heights of second-wave feminism, she has no new insights to offer on the issue, leaving me wondering about the point of the exercise.
It seems at least partly an excuse for attacking so-called ‘new atheism’, and I’m not sure if it’s an attack ‘from within’, since Mahlamäki refuses to position herself [or rather, refuses to be explicit about her position, which of course is a different thing]. She dwells on the maleness of the current atheist movement, and its problems in attracting and accommodating women. This is a valid point, but somewhat exaggerated. There are prominent female atheists, and the atheist/sceptical movement is growing among women as it is among men, but again the percentages always seem to be higher for males, and this is a conundrum that needs to be explored through the tools of science, most notably experimental psychology and its connection with neurophysiology. To describe the gender difference here as biological is too simplistic. We are biologically social creatures, with nature and nurture operating interdependently. All of this isn’t to say we shouldn’t be working always on a pragmatic level to encourage more women into the movement.
I’ll end with another bone of contention. Mahlamäki makes some statistical claims, limited to Finland, about the percentage of people who claim to be non-religious versus those who claim to be atheists. She quotes the World Values Survey, 2005, which apparently found that between 3 and 5% of Finns identify themselves as ‘convinced atheists’. I don’t know if any other category of atheists is mentioned, or how this identification was made, but Mahlamäki’s main purpose here was to look at the gender breakdown: 2% of females and 5% of males. The same survey found that 36% of the population identified themselves as non-religious. No comment is made about the extraordinary finding, to me at least , that something like 90% of these non-religious people don’t claim to be atheist, or ‘convincedly atheist’. What do they claim to be? Then she quotes another survey by the International Social Survey Programme (2008) which found that ‘Approximately 8 per cent of women and 15 per cent men have no belief in God,
Spirit, or Life Force.’ This sounds like convinced atheism to me, and the figure, cutting the gender division in two, comes in at about 11.5%, maybe three times the figure for the other survey. And these figures should be seen in the context of a nation whose figures for religiousness regularly come in well below those for Australia. They just further indicate how statistics can be heavily skewed by survey methodology and interpretation. I should also point out that the gender findings of both these surveys, with more than twice the number of men being non-religious as women, don’t fit with the findings from other countries, including Australia. The gender gap is there, but it’s generally not so wide.
I could chase up these different surveys and check out their methodologies, as far as I’m able, but I have better things to do. Suffice to say that, with these widely varying results, it’s highly unlikely that any of these studies will be definitive. In the end, what people think on these matters is personal and complex, and box-ticking questionnaires are unlikely to enlighten us about the answers. Perhaps we should just accept the crudity of these figures however skewed one way or the other, and take them all with a grain of salt.
religion, ‘woo’ and gender
something to look into
All the statistics indicate that women are more religious than men, and also more into astrology, numerology, tantric sex, reincarnation, tarot readings and other forms of fortune-telling, tantric sex, ‘alternative’ medicine, reiki, homeopathy, and I almost forgot to mention tantric sex.
Okay, I’m not sure about the tantric sex, but there’s no shortage of statistical evidence re the superior gender’s greater penchant for matters spiritual and such, and there’s also no shortage of attempts to explain this. The most common of these highlight the generally more caring and sharing and community oriented temperament of women, which of course is sheeted home to the nurturing, maternal instinct. Here’s a typical example. There may of course be something in this, despite Margaret Thatcher, Judge Judy and Xena, Warrior Princess, but though this might seem to account for the preponderance of women in community service work [religious or secular], it doesn’t really cut it for those spiritual fields which don’t obviously involve service and obedience to a [male] Lord and Master.
A slightly more interesting explanatory account comes from evolutionary psychology. According to this account, women are more risk-averse than men, and studies have shown that religious people tend to be more risk-averse than non-religious people. Religious people are religious at least partly because they like to feel protected, while atheism removes the safety net, making it much more appealing to ‘man versus wild’ types. Of course this need for protection is seen as evolutionarily associated with human females, who spend a certain period of time in the vulnerable state of motherhood.
It’s an interesting one, but some people might feel it a bit of a stretch associating, say, astrology, with the sense of being protected. Perhaps it’s a protection to feel that the world is predictable, that your star-sign will define your range of behaviours. This ‘tames’ the world in some sense. The same may go for fortune-telling, and perhaps even reincarnation – everything goes in cycles without end , the ‘world’, or the forces of ‘nature’ protect you even from death.
I wonder, though, how affluence, feminism, lower pregnancy rates and other aspects of social evolution are complexifying the picture. I have to say – to be anecdotal for a moment – that most of the women I know who are into woo [and many of them are] don’t strike me as shrinking violets in any way. They’re strong-willed, independent, and generally more career-oriented than I am [which isn’t saying much]. Of course, the most basic instincts are hardest to shift, though they’re often disguised or channelled into modes of thought and behaviour that can’t be easily traced back to primal causes. And the fact is that the social evolution of humans in terms of gender roles is quite recent and varies markedly from region to region, and between religions.
All of this is as much to say that I really don’t know why women are more into superstition than men, beyond the few clues offered here. Fortunately, there are plenty of exceptions to the rule, and our social world is never static. Always room for hope.