Blair: the religious terrorist

Tony Blair, writing in the Observer, offers us his thoughts on war and and religion.  He writes "religious extremism has become the biggest source of conflict around the world".  Can he possibly be right?

Let's take the war he knows most about: Iraq v. US/UK.  As we know, this was a unilateral attack in 2003 by the US and the UK led by Bush and Blair.  This war caused between 600,000 and one million Iraqis to die (estimates vary wildly - the BBC's More or Less podcast explains why).  We also know (see, for example, The Downing Street memo) that both these men lied to their people about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (their justification for the war).  No doubt then that this war was a horrible example of aggression and that the BB leadership has to take full blame.  Where though does religion enter into the equation?

Blair himself is Roman Catholic and has admitted to praying to God when deciding whether or not to send UK troops to Iraq.  Presumably God gave him the go-ahead.  Bush, a born-again Christian when he was 40, is one of the most overtly religious presidents the USA has ever had.  There are very many examples of him claiming divine guidance during his presidency and at least one plausible claim that he believed he was charged by God to invade Iraq.

So maybe Blair has a point.

It could be, of course, that he doesn't see it quite in the way that I have presented it.  In his article he goes on to say "acts of terrorism are perpetrated by people motivated by an abuse of religion. It is a perversion of faith".  Oh, that's all right then.  As long as you commit acts of war not acts of terrorism, as long as you don't "abuse" your religion and as long as your faith is not "perverted" everything is fine and dandy.  Can Blair really subscribe to that sophistry?  At this very moment his own church is suppressing women throughout the world by doctrines that deny them access to manage their reproductive systems and thereby keep them in poverty.

No, Tony.  The Campaign to arrest Blair has got it spot on.  You are personally responsible for your actions.  You should face justice and you should stop hiding behind the cloak of your God.  Your article is self-serving hyprocisy and quite likely an attempt to begin the damage control that the Chilton inquiry is going to inflict on you when its report is made public this year.

But on a positive note: you are right in accusing religion as a cause of many wars.  Where you got it wrong was assuming that religions you don't subscribe to, and wars you are opposed to are because the religions became "perverted" or were "abused".  Christianity, Islam and Judaism (to name but three) have all done more than their fair share to deal out death, torture and destruction.  Would you care to widen your target and argue for their wholesale culpability?  And if you did that would you like to go the extra mile and denounce and renounce faith altogether?

Why does the world exist

I have just finished reading "Why does the exist" by Jim Holt.  It is account of Holt's quest to find an answer to the question "Why is there something rather than nothing?", possibly the hoariest philosophical chestnut of them all.  Holt's research methodology is quite simple: he interviews a number of philosophers, scientists and other thinkers, listens to what they say, offers his slant on what each great mind has told him, and then hops off to the next guru on his list.  It's an interesting read as a survey of the very different answers to this great existential question and Holt presents the ideas in an engaging manner often lacing the details with personal anecdotes.  Despite this I was left with a bemused feeling that Holt's greatest achievement was to expose the uselessness of philosophical thought at least in this particular area.

I do not accuse the great thinkers interviewed by Holt as intellectual con-men.  However, I cannot help comparing them with thinkers and practitioners in the much narrower domain of theism.  In the latter domain we have a myriad of mutually contradictory faiths defended by their advocates with an impressive array of intellectual fire-power.  But of course we cannot take any of them seriously: if you are a Mormon your beliefs are totally at odds with a Sunni Moslem.  And for any other two religious faiths you will find a huge amount of disagreement.  And all this despite the lengthy education of their most notable exponents at esteemed centres of learning.

As Holt's book makes very clear this level of disagreement is present when the domain of discourse is existential philosophy.  The difference is that the individuals that feature in Holt's book are heavyweight intellectuals: they are clever enough to marshall an argument to build complex structures to explain our existence but none of them come up with the same structure.

I know that many of those interviewed by Holt's have reputations that they justly deserve.  But, cor blimey gov'ner, so far as throwing light on Holt's main question they are a load of posturing charlatans.

The Spirit Level: consequences of inequality

Over the last several years a very troubling social issue has boiled to the top of the political cauldron: the increasing income inequality in many countries of the world.  President Obama recently gave a speech in which he stated that reversing the growing gap between rich and poor was "the defining challenge of our time".  His speech did not, by any means, meet with universal approval.  For example, columns in the Wall Street Journal and The Atlantic were sharply critical of the idea that inequality in itself was a problem, and also challenged that it was a growing condition.

Nevertheless it does seem to be established that income inequality has become much more pronounced since the Reagan-Thatcher years.  If you doubt this have a look at this very compelling presentation of the US situation.  There are many other statistical analyses and I think that you have to be completely blinkered not to accept that income inequality is a growing phenomenon.

But is it a "problem" that we should be working to solve?  Maybe income inequality is a motivator to make societies stronger or more efficient.  And how can we judge the arguments for and against when clearly this is an issue that is likely to be politically polarised with the left arguing on the basis of social equality and the right arguing on the basis of rewarding the most industrious?

I have just finished reading "The Spirit Level" by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett.  Theirs is not a political text but they do come down completely on the "Income inequality is harmful" side of the question.  They demonstrate, by a large number of statistical analyses, that income inequality is correlated with a host of societal evils (poor social relations, poor mental health and drug abuse, poor physical health and lower life expectancy, obesity, low educational performance to name just some).  They display their results in graphs that plot, country by country (or US state by US state) how income inequality is correlated with particular social evils.

Now correlation is not necessarily the same as causation but the authors do consider in depth whether some other causal agent than income inequality might be present.  Coupled with arguments for how income inequality can be so pernicious they come to the very strong conclusion that very many societal evils stem directly from income inequality.

This part of their book - the case for income inequality having such negative effects - is the main take-home message.  I found it entirely convincing, so convincing in fact that I believe every honest politician should acknowledge its validity.  The remainder of the book begins a discussion about what to do.  Of course this is much less clear-cut but I found it valuable for two main reasons.  The first one is that we should be aware that there are multiple types of solution not all of which would be unpalatable to those on the political right.  

The second one brings in the other flagship problem of our age: to come to terms with our now rapidly changing climate and the inevitable adjustments it will being to our way of life.  It turns out that yet another strong correlation (arguably causal) is that nations with greater income equality are more seriously inclined to pursue vigorous policies to address climate change.

So to underline the principal message of the book: every nation should be aware that  most of their social problems will be alleviated if they can institute measures to distribute their national wealth more equitably.  This is not the politics of envy - it is the politics of our very survival as a species.

Women should .... and men should ....

There was a very interesting report in Global Voices last week.  It reported on an unusual way to measure negative attitudes to women's rights in different countries across the world.  Type phrases such as "Women should", "Women must", "Women shouldn't" etc into Google's search box and see what auto-completions are suggested.  These auto-completions are generated on the basis of previous searches conducted by users and so they measure the commonality of searches beginning with these phrases.  Some examples (from Google New Zealand):

• Women should not (speak in church, work, preach, vote)
• Women must not (teach, preach, wear men's clothing)

I was interested to compare these searches with corresponding searches where the word "Men" replaced "Women".  For the cases above I found

• Men should not (marry, wear shorts, wear sandals)
• Men must not (walk too late, cut down trees)

The Global Voices article gave many examples of "Women" searches in other languages.  It would be interesting to see the results with "Men" replacing "Women" there too.

In any case, this small experiment adds weight to the main point: that women remain disadvantaged and oppressed in many societies.

Dangers of benign faith

In a discussion between religious believers and atheists there are two fundamental questions: whether a particular faith is actually true or whether (irrespective of truth) faith can be an overall force for good in the world.  For the first question it is quite difficult for a believer to respond to the charge that not all faiths can be true, and the charge that one's particular faith is almost always determined by one's cultural background.  But the second question is more subtle: it depends on what you count in the balance sheet.  Which wars should you count as being religiously motivated?  If, on the surface they were religiously motivated (like the Thirty Years War), would they have occurred even if religion had mysteriously disappeared from the human condition?  Nevertheless, most theists will concede that, in the past, many things have been done in the name of religion that nowadays we abhor.

Often such a concession is accompanied by two mitigating comments: that nowadays religion is more benign, and that much community good work is carried out by churches.  I accept both of these comments, am happy to discount the past and to make a balance sheet purely on today's religious activities.

In this post I am not going to point to the many examples around the world where violence and intolerance are founded on religious grounds.  Nor am I going to criticise the many well-meaning, sincere church-goers of all faiths who care deeply about their fellow men and women and live their lives trying to improve our society.  Instead I wish to make a case that the very presence of faith-based behaviour in our society has negative consequences.

Is it harmless to "touch wood" (you know what I mean, you naughty people) just in case there might possibly be something in that old superstition?  Is it harmless to believe that "what goes around comes around" or that "everything happens for a reason"?  Is it harmless to believe that your life is overseen by some benevolent creator, or to believe that praying for a friend to recover from an illness is effective?  Aren't all those things (and many others like them) at the very worst just personal musings?

In my opinion these beliefs are damaging in a subtle way.  The fabric of religious belief contains many strands: the examples I have given are less damaging than some others (such as killing people because of a conviction you think is implanted in you from your god, or refusing a woman birth control because a holy book prohibits it, or marginalising a gay person).  But I use the fabric metaphor because these beliefs are connected.  If you believe that "everything happens for a reason" you have taken a step along a superstitious strand and you will take another unthinking step a little more willingly.  In bad cases you may become so superstitious that you may one day come to believe that you are charged by a god to act in a certain way, and for some fervent believers that way may be bad for society (or bad for you).

In other words what I am claiming is that superstition, or believing things for which there is no evidence, is a pernicious thought habit.  Once you let a smidgeon of it pollute you, you are in danger of wading a little deeper into the pollution.  Maybe you will resist the next superstitious thought that you meet.  But isn't it likely that, having admitted to some unthinking superstition, your critical thinking faculties may let you down once more, or twice more.

If you remain unconvinced consider the prevalence of religious belief in the United States.  That rich culture allows many scales of superstition to flourish and some of them are surely harmful.  For example Justice Antonin Scala believes that Satan is a real person.  Doesn't it make you uneasy that a member of the Supreme Court of the US, someone who has to judge on human wickedness, believes in a superhuman incarnation of evil?  Or what about Congressman Paul Broun who is a Young Earth creationist.  He is a member of the House Science Committee!  Do you trust him to understand the science behind Global Warming (to take just one example).  And then of course there are the tele-evangelists who amass large fortunes while promoting hatred of gays (and in some cases like Bob Larson and Ted Haggard are caught in mind-boggling hypocrisy).  Of course, these examples are outliers but my point is that such irrational behaviour is only unremarkable in a culture where faith is exalted rather than pitied.

The problems of life are very complicated and superstitious thought patterns are sometimes useful as rough and ready rules of thumb in order for us to make quick decisions (don't walk under ladders so that a paint pot will miss you when it falls).  But don't credit your superstitions with mysterious properties or you will lead a less examined life.  Socrates thought that such lives were not worth living and I agree.

Syrian weapons of mass destruction

Suppose your husband is acting rather distantly.  You suspect he is having an affair.  He denies it but, in due course, you are proven right.  Husband is contrite, you are forgiving.  A few years later you notice the same symptoms of distance.  Is he having an affair?  You ask him.  He denies it.  Do you believe him?  And, in a nutshell, we have the problem of trust.  Why should you believe his declarations?  Would your girl-friends advise you to be very wary?  Quite frankly you need an unimpeachable source and your husband just doesn't cut it.

Now we hear the claim that the Syrian government has unleashed chemical weapons on the rebel insurgency.  The US is outraged, sabres rattle, and we hear the familiar prelude to a US-UK intervention.  Should we believe what we are told?  Doesn't our memory go back to 2002/2003 when we were told with cast-iron certainty that Iraq - another oil-rich country - had WMD and that armed invasion was therefore vital.

The US and the UK have a credibility problem of gigantic proportion.  Let's leave aside the question of whether they have a moral obligation to go to war (I think not, but that is not the point I want to address here).  Let's assume that war could be justified if the WMD claim is true.

But how can we the ordinary voters know what to think?  After all, it wasn't just the leaders of the US and the UK who sold us a pup 10 years ago.  Our media, including the "quality press" (such as the UK Observer - see the expose by Nick Davis in Flat Earth News), bought in to and passed on as truth, all their government's propaganda.  Seriously, folks - what could convince us that Syria is not another Iraq?  The resemblance is uncanny.

I don't know what could realistically be said or done to make us believe the claims of chemical weapons.  Obviously what the US and UK governments say is worthless. Obviously, what the US and UK press say is tainted by their past behaviour.  The chickens of their lies have come home to roost.

We need some credible sources and those sources have to be clearly not beholden to the US and UK.  So, how about inviting the Chinese to investigate?  How about flying in the Libyans?  Or the North Koreans?  Or some representatives of America's down-trodden black community who have suffered the most in the financial fallout from the two trillion dollar spend in the Iraq war?  I am not joking - I would trust these sources more than I trust our official overlords.

Despairing of the UK: Scottish opportunity

We are culturally disposed to feel respect and loyalty to our country of birth.  On the whole I believe this is a good thing.  It makes us more likely to sign up to the social contract: cooperate with law enforcement agencies, pay our taxes, behave responsibly about litter, and a host of other things to make us good citizens.  But what do you do if you think your country is taking measures against the populace, overt or covert, which are clearly a breach of their part in the social contract?  And, worse, if they ignore the wishes of large sections of the populace leading them to a genuine sense of disenfranchisement?

This is the situation I find myself in as a UK citizen largely as a result of the revelations given to us by Edward Snowden.  Of course I am not alone.  Other British people are similarly outraged.  Furthermore, residents of several other countries - the USA and New Zealand spring to mind - are also outraged by the behaviour of their own security agencies.  Instances of these agencies over-reaching their mandate are too many to enumerate but the present furore over the harassment of journalist Glenn Greenwald's partner David Miranda is typical.

To return to my question: what should I do?  The sad answer is that I have no immediate recourse.  All I can do is to continue to make my views known and to use the democratic process to express my strong disapproval of the slide towards totalitarianism.  We are still a long way from an East German state so peaceful protest has still to be order of the day.

However, in the UK, there is a constitutional issue on the horizon that could enable a large swathe of the UK population to express their disapproval of HM's government in a very significant manner.  Next year there will be a referendum on Scottish independence.  Scotland has felt a sense of disenfranchisement for many years.  Currently it has only one Conservative MP (out of over 50 seats) and it would not be an exaggeration to say that the Conservatives are hated in Scotland.  The arguments leading up to the referendum are already becoming heated and, in some cases, quite silly (just recently the question of whether Scotland would continue in the British Commonwealth has arisen, as if the Commonwealth meant anything other than just a consortium of sporting nations).  But the mood from Westminster is chillingly uncompromising and, if I were a Scot, I would not hesitate to vote "yes" for independence.

So, if I were a Scot, I would be adding another injustice to an already long list suffered under the English jackboot.  This government has proclaimed loud and clear that it does not care about the civil liberties of its people.  The Scots have a chance to save themselves and who could blame them for seizing it?