The fine art of denial

As I look out my window, I see a rich landscape of plants against a rather picturesque valley between quite imposing ridges of a mountain range. Closest to me are some familiar small trees, deliberately planted to provide a buffer from a road that is very busy on public holidays, but otherwise quiet. Beyond are a sprinkling of natives, some very large and old, some relatively young but pruned savagely to head height and other saplings finding their way into adulthood.

By happy accident, those closest to the house turned out to be a fire-resistant species and offer protection from wild-fire; those further away drop a layer of humus every year which accumulates into a tinder dry layer of fuel.

I have conscientiously grazed and cleared this areas, not just because they represent a fire risk, but I am paranoid about snakes, amongst the most venomous in the world; not because I am frightened of these snakes, per se, but because transporting someone bitten to the nearest emergency centre is a minimum of one half hour travel, not matter the transport medium - if one of my children were bitten, they would certainly die while waiting for anti-venom. I have coached my children to steer clear of snakes and this strategy has served many who live in rural areas well.

Further from the house, one can identify a line of the endemic species, the Manna Gum, along the river flats, isolated to a thin strip on otherwise completely cleared land. On the slopes even further beyond, a limited set of species of tree can be found with a distinct lack of undergrowth - you can walk freely to the top of the ridge, hindered only by your fitness in scaling slopes of between 20 and 30%.

To the untrained eye, this landscape is unremarkable. It is probably repeated in thousands of locations across Australia. With some exceptions. Few people are quite as fastidious about the trees they choose to plant. Some have little care for the native exotic divide; many do not investigate the properties of the trees they plant - their response to frost, fire, soil type and drought. I do, but only in regard to my block of land - I am not a botanical encyclopaedia.

Now imagine you came upon my block, in study mode, perhaps as a student of rural development. What might you conclude about the area in which I live? What scientific standards might you apply to your study? What kinds of evidence are more or less useful in ascertaining the truth?

From the road, you would note a species of wattle easily identified by its stone blue leaves. You would quickly observe that these are exceptional in the area - not a single instance of this tree can be observed in 20 kilometres of valley. You would quickly conclude that this is an introduced species. Since the trees are all young, you would conclude that this was recent. Furthermore, since the individuals are on private property, you would conclude that the introduction was via an agent under my control, whether it be deliberate or accidental planting. Accidental planting is less likely given the extent of plantings that are not endemic amongst the obvious signs of garden beds, selectively cleared areas and plants obviously pruned and managed.

What would confuse you, however, is the apparently random planting of these trees. Two stand close to one another, another is almost 100 metres away and another close by it. As you know the tendency of humans is to plant in clusters or rows, this might be explained by the planter having a kind of organic pattern in mind - don't plant things too regularly otherwise it doesn't look natural.

The truth is odd but not weird. Two original individuals of the same species were purchased and planted simultaneously. The intention was indeed to defy a regular pattern. One suffered from an natural ailment of wattles - old age - and rotted away. The other suffered an extraordinary event - it was hit by a car in an accident. Both (quite old) specimens had dropped seeds, some of which now flourish as saplings and came up, naturally, after a sequence of very hot then very wet weather. The rotten individual I cut down - the accident victim fell over and was eventually removed.

If you were a better student, you might have asked me about these plants and the truth would have been revealed promptly and more comprehensively. But relying on my witness is fraught with problems. First, my memory for many things is hopeless; I might just lie to you and I may be confused.Whichever way you approach it, getting to the truth is going to be difficult, problematic and laborious. You would have to find evidence of the original specimens or seeds spread in a pattern which could only indicate a mature individual reproducing.

On the contrary, putting a 'spanner' in the 'works' of your thesis is child's play. How do you know that the seeds have not been introduced by a vehicle that picked them up in their tyres and drove in both places? Could they not be an endemic species, long suppressed by grazing, emerging because of a unique set of conditions that I have imposed as custodian of this block.In terms of intellectual effort, discrediting a thesis takes almost no effort in comparison to forming and proving it in the first instance.

The discrediting or denial leans on a natural concept of justice - 'beyond reasonable doubt'. If you are going to be thrown into jail or I am going to invest billions on the basis of your thesis, I don't want to be wise after the event. I want all based covered. The science required to quench doubt is horrendous.

Indulge me further with my analogy. In examining my property, the obvious planting of a fire-resistant species close to the house, combined with the clearing of a buffer zone, devoid of fuel, around my house, point directly at a consciousness about fire. Complementing this, the complete absence of fire scarring except in isolated burn piles demonstrates a regime of burning fuel to reduce fire risk. A line of trees of varied species, none fire-retardant, on the western side (the direction of the strongest winds), various heights in a pattern consistent with a wind break , indicate intentional planting for a purpose - thus, the fire control measures in planting are unlikely to be accidental.

The truth is, they all are. The burn piles are actually for the purpose of a New Year's bonfire - they are coincidentally useful in removing fuel. The cleared areas are snake prevention and grazing horses for recreation and coincidentally useful in reducing fuel. The fire-resistant species are completely accidental - I was dumbfounded to find that a species I planted close to the house because it grew well on our soil, was the right height, had a pleasant habit and soft leaves, turned out to be fire-resistant!

Your thesis was wrong. You might have introduced even more comprehensive proof of fire-planting and they would all have been wrong - yet, the thesis was compelling and not 'wrong' in any sense we consider erroneous. Only privileged information can strike it down. Or further science. The most comprehensive analysis of species across the block would show that several trees stand in positions which create a significant fire risk - most notably a blue gum at the corner of the garage, its fuel falling into gutters on the garage and on the ground in an area difficult to clear, creating a fire hazard.

When it comes to refuting a thesis, only more and more science can get us closer to the truth. Denialist claims, selecting just one item that breaks the thesis, may not be incorrect, as the example above illustrates. But, denial leaves no way forward. Only further theses, all equally breakable, with accompanying laborious, resource hungry science, can bring us closer to the truth.

What evidence could I muster to show that the landscape in which I live has been profoundly affected to nearly 200 years of grazing; endemic cedar and ironbark are completely absent from the landscape? What small detail could a denialist bring to show that my thesis of profound change is unfounded? Seasons have varied greatly lately, and this suggest that predicting the climate in this place over the last 200 years might be impossible, therefore making my thesis about degradation by grazing as likely as degradation by natural attrition.

Upon discovering the bones of a Diprotodon close by, a herbivore that could not be supported in a landscape so heavily wooded, could I conclude that human habitation and practices, most likely fire-stick farming by Aborigines, was responsible for a previous dramatic transformation of the botanical landscape from savannah to fire-adapted forests? Could a denialist bring evidence that humans co-existed with Diprotodons for a long time in some places as the 'chink in the armour' of this thesis?

As Andrew Bolt, that arch-denialist, adequately demonstrates in his blogs, the fine art of denial is to find one single item that throws doubt on the thesis and then let your audience's natural scepticism or self-affirming beliefs do the rest. After all, who is going to resource the science needed to support a revised thesis? And how easy it will be to find yet another vulnerable point! And how easy it is to see that, given all the right conditions, that denial could be just the right level of analysis needed to plunge an unsubstantiated thesis into oblivion, the only 'moral' path to take, in the service of us all!

In the US, science denial continues unabated. A court case was needed to establish that ID was not science and that its objections to evolution did not constitute grounds for teaching an alternative view or break evolution as a thesis. Perhaps, in the face of denialism generally, we need a Court of Scientific Integrity, established specifically to examine all claims to truth according to a standard of 'reasonable probability' based on the evidence available presented by advocates and experts.

Why Islam isn't a religion of peace

I have viewed recently the debate, Islam is a religion of peace at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGvMo47pw7Q

The late great Christopher Hitchens and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, two men I admire greatly, shared more than a massive intellect. They both believed that it was moral and right, by whatever means, to rid the world of dictators. It is a motherhood concept with which few would disagree. We all like to see the downtrodden get revenge on the bullies. Hitchens probably got his mindset from days at boarding school - Bonhoeffer was immersed in a sea of power plays in both his theological and day-to-day life.

But the rather disappointing element of the Hitchens and Bonhoeffer thesis, shared with that most articulate and compelling Islamic critic, Ayaan Hirsi Ali , is the disregard for the history that underpins the rise of dictators to power. There is something almost deliberately delusional about ascribing evil to a dictator, conveniently ignoring the mass of factors that sweep a dictator to power.

If you choose to see the Holocaust as the end game of a demented mind, then the answer obviously is to rid the world of demented minds. Much more difficult and complex, however, is deep analysis of what conditions prevailed that made that demented mind so attractive to a nation so noted for its depth of culture and thought. Did the fragmentation of the Holy Roman Empire by Protestantism create such disunity amongst Germans that any unifying force, no matter how sinister, was welcomed? Did the oppression of a newly unified German by wounded superpowers create such resentment by the 'underdogs' that the invasion by extreme ideology was only a matter of time, not personality?

As an historian, I cannot respect the two-dimensional views of events as simply driven by personality. It is both too glib and too convenient. But far more dangerously, it forgives the masses of their crimes of collusion. In the fervour to rid Libya of Gaddafi, we lost the clarity of perspective that would lead us to conclude that Gaddafi was a rather loose cannon in the armoury of European and US foreign policy, courted when convenient, vilified at leisure. We also ignore the decades of collusion by the population of Libya in accepting him. Why didn't this Arab spring emerge two decades earlier? What kept people quiet?

And, in the West, we still tolerate the fascism of Saudi Arabia - or rather we turn that blind eye, that eye so very useful in absolving our guilt.

A close look at Islam and Mohammed tells a story that is neither extraordinary nor exceptional. Rejected amongst his own, Mohammed finds a ready audience for his religious fervour in a place where religious turmoil was hardly foreign. His personal quest to revenge the rejection he suffered in Mecca almost certainly complemented the political imperative of Medina to challenge the dominance of Mecca.

A sour zealot gets much too much traction for his ideas and rides the back of an unlikely military victory to notoriety. Such is the accidental nature of history. An almost failed assassination attempt by an obscure Serbian, accidentally successful, on an insignificant European aristocrat lights a fire in Europe which burns beyond any of the intentions of the assassin. In what sense can we attribute the cause of the fire to the match when the heat-wave and the mountain of fuel are so obvious?

If the unifying effect of Islam first on the Caliphate and later on arguably the most successful Empire of Europe - the Ottoman Empire - is down to one man, one book and one God, then its time for historians to close down their university faculties and go work at MacDonalds. If religion does more than simply post-rationalise ideologies that rise out of the ashes of failed power, then we really are doomed, because an American president, when things get really bad in the US, really will press the button to annihilate those whom God rejects.

It really is time we stepped out from behind the mantel of personality and religion based schemes of guilt and recognised the inherent propensity of us all to follow blindly the dictators, whatever they may be. There is no less compulsion in profligate capitalism, where a bank or country can be too big to fail, to serve a master than in the dark streets of Islamic Iran.

There is no religion of peace. Peace is that period when hawkish forces do not dominate. No religion creates this, just as no religion drives people to hostilities or atrocities. Only the human inclinations towards contentment or domination drive peace or violence, via the complex machinations of power structures. The whole "religion is the author of ..." thesis is fundamentally flawed and we should, frankly, "get over it".

You can quote as many Qu'ran verses as you like, make as many claims on Mohammed as you like and give as many facts about the actions of Islamist as you like, but in the end you are colluding with those who build elaborate smoke screens for human nature. No God, Bible or dogma makes you act either peacefully or violently - these are choices made from complex social and neural impulse and imperatives which we are still struggling to understand.

Real meanings of Christmas

In response to the The True Meaning of Christmas

It is something pitiable and sad in Christianity today that it cannot appreciate the 2 000 000 year old traditions of human consciousness, the real meaning (of anything, including Christmas) for themselves and all humankind, and that Christian continue to narrow their world until it is unrecognisable beyond their own mind.

The Gospels demonstrate how the (real) followers of this charismatic teacher are happy to form Jesus in their own image, as does Paul and then eventually Constantine through to Calvin. Each iteration, while demonstrating precisely that religion, like all cultural phenomena, is whatever you construct it as and has nothing to do with objective truth, at the same time proposes a more exclusive club or set of rules and mores to which one must subscribe; eventually at the end of a sword, stone or baton.

The whole 'keep Christ in Christmas' movement is so much self-righteous slop, arguing only for 'my exclusive version of God or salvation'.

Far more interesting than 'real' meanings for Christmas foisted upon us by fundamentalism is the reality of how quickly Christianity and Islam were able to spread, mostly without the need of a sword (which came afterwards) and become a veneer over local tradition. It demonstrates an inherent human tendency to favour unity over dissent or a single universal theory over fragmented ones or a single monarch, no matter how unpopular, over a bunch of nobles.

China was stronger under a single Emperor, the United Kingdoms were more influential united and the US graphically illustrates that even unity steeped in the blood of brother and cousin brings prosperity like no other political imperative.

Just as curious in religion is the tendency for sheep like behaviour - the shepherd metaphor in Christianity, which should be derisive, since it seems to indicate little brain power to assert ones own thoughts, but instead is fostered - is none the less true. The iPod, iPhone, iSteve phenomena indicates another of our human attributes - that herd mentality. Yet this mentality can also lead the masses to overthrow a dictator. This, surely, is more interesting than whether you put an 'X' or 'Christ' in Christmas.

If there's a any message in Christmas its that we can be strong in unity while still appreciating our diversity.

Turning back the clock

Over at Painting Fakes, my fellow blogger, friend and relative Ted has suggested a satirical rendition of a very long debate on abortion between various members of my family and a person whom I know only through Facebook, Jereth Kok. The thread threatens to reach 500 posts, which it would easily have achieved, as Ted observes, had it not been censored by its owner.

While I am prepared to consider such a satirical evaluation of the manner of the debate as evidence of the exhaustion readers feel in engaging with such a debate, I suspect also that the debate appears to him to be intractable and therefore not worth engagement beyond agreement to disagree.

If this is the motive for the satire, then I am saddened that Ted has thrown in the towel so easily on an issue that must surely be close to his heart. I have be both enlightened and delighted in his series on Jesus and his mission because it diverges from the traditional position on Christ and presents someone more likely to rebuke the tired conservatism of the time with radical ethical positions (such as his rejection of the patriarchal Jewish cultural attitude towards women's infidelity) than someone pontificating on the need for doctrinal purity.

The need for the revolution in regard to the rights of women continues today just as ever. Despite the significant progress made in the liberation of women from traditional roles, the attitudinal basis for the enslavement of women continues, mostly as a preserve of neo-conservatives, given to shrill and hysterical comparisons of women choices and activities with all manner of unsavory events and conditions.

Two recent events in my life convince me that the struggles for women's rights continues. The recent 'slut walk' in several capital cities highlights that women who exercise their right to be as sexually obvious as they wish must still face both the palpable danger of rape and the scorn of men.

Closer to me, however, was the condemnation of a fellow professional for dressing up 'too sexily' and the unauthorised publication of images of her in a local newspaper. This, one week before a pedophile with 20 convictions had his image suppressed to 'prevent harm coming to him'. So incensed was I by the hypocrisy of the paper and the readers, some prominent members of the local community, who expressed their horror at my colleagues harmless antics, that I engaged in a campaign the nature of which I will not reveal in this blog. My Facebook profile has been of a burka covered person ever since. After all, only under Sharia Law could a woman be more shabbily treated.

Needless to say, the final liberation of women from the last shackles of social bondage is something close to my heart. I certainly will not resile for one moment in facing neo-conservatives; those who yearn for a return to 'proper Christian values' (which are neither) of the woman as the servant of men in a good marriage. For this reason, the most vocal and irrational of the neo-conservative combatants, Jereth, was given no quarter, nor a lot of respect, since his views represented either a statement of the bleeding obvious or simply a regurgitation of neo-conservative orthodoxy.

If we are serious about opposition to the imposition of slavery on women a la Sharia Law, as many of my relatives purport to be, then we cannot sit on the fence and agree to disagree.

Unforgivable forgiveness

On Q&A on ABC TV, in the forum dubbed A Spiritual Special, John Lennox, Oxford Mathematician and Christian apologist, declared, in a somewhat triumphal tone, that forgiveness was the core of the Gospel. It is an oft repeated proclamation of Christians, apparently requiring little or no qualification and argument and seemingly places Christianity in an unconquerable position in relation to all moral codes. "Christians," it appears to assert, "are those that conduct themselves in the most righteous of manners - forgiveness - forgiving as they themselves have been forgiven."

I find forgiveness a useful concept. When I built a house in my younger days, I chose a material, mud brick, that was intrinsically forgiving. Its rough and irregular texture hid my lack of precision as a bricklayer. It disguised a lack of competence that I share with the majority of the human race. It was also forgiving on the budget, as any major errors could be cheaply fixed for very little - a stuff-up had little practical impact on the overall mission because it did not blow the budget.

I also use the phrase regularly to prefix comments that might cause offense. "One might be forgiven ...". This signals that I realise that making the mistake that I am about to articulate in detail is an almost inevitable consequence of being human. Thus, I say this to address the mistake and to mollify the embarrassment and sense of responsibility and culpability felt by the person in making it. In these ways, forgiveness plays its proper roles - one, to disguise the foibles of being human and the other to reduce the negative tone of discussions about those foibles.

Oh, that this were the case in Christian forgiveness. Before all the apologists run to defend their Christian forgiveness as really just what I have articulated above, let me sound a warning. Making the Gospel into whatever you want it to be is intellectually dishonest. You should and will be called on that. You can't simply take "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast the stone at her." as some kind of absolution as described above - it is an admonition not to be judgemental, but does not negate the implication of sin on the woman's part.

Let us first address the absolutism inherent in Christian forgiveness. In the first instance, God, of doubtful existence and moral integrity, extends forgiveness to all humans. As Christians often use the tactic of evasion to argue their case, let's cover all bases.
If your God is an ultimate cause, separate from the universe, then the notion of forgiveness is entirely absurd, since God is ultimately culpable for all actions universally. He/it forgives his own illogicality in allowing humans to act contrary to his universe-creating and sustaining commands.

If your God is an unknowable being, with a logic entirely of his own that needs no human explanation nor absolution, creating humans in his own image to likewise exercise their own will, then for him to forgive his 'creation' for being similarly willful is the ultimate act of hypocrisy.

If your God is the God of Abraham, a knowable entity creating a perfect world and laying down the law about how we must live in it and punishing any violation of this law, then there is a no case for granting any kind of absolution, for his wickedness is breath-taking beyond human comprehension;  literally - we cannot come to grips with the massacre in Norway, which he allows to occur, and the mass slaughter of people in Aceh in a Tsunami, which he enacts.

If your God is the meek and mild Jesus, then there is precisely nothing in his teachings that can masquerade as forgiveness in the sense I have described above. Jesus was a Jew, in world dominated by Jewish law overlaid by Roman law. His antidote to legalistic thinking was to live on the basis of loving your neighbour, regardless of the their breaches of the law.

Nothing about Christ's life and teachings supported or negated the notion of "fallen" humans, a concept first articulated in the 5th century. It is the most fundamental and malicious of Christian teachings. The idea that immoral deeds are a cancer that affects everybody, is genetically programmed into us and that it has universal negative characteristics and outcomes is mischievous and malicious on all counts.

First, the 'all pervasive sin' theory sets all human behaviour as fundamentally wrong or evil - without context or consideration of motive or outcome. Just as cancer consumes its host until death, sin takes hold of humans and drives them to evil deeds to the point of moral death.

Apart from the breathtaking lack of scientific rigour, such a theory ignores most evidence. People act differently in different contexts. A 'nice bloke' and 'good mate' may turn out to be a wife-beater. It is simply impossible to say that one natural inclination drives all misdeeds.
Next, to ascribe culpability to an innocent child that has no developed will, no history of misdeeds and who will learn behaviour from its family context is gross injustice. On these grounds, I must be able to convict you of just about any crime you would like to name, since your involvement and proximity to the crime count for nil in counting you guilty - simply, you have a propensity (you have human DNA) and that is enough said.

A sinful nature logically demands a negative outcome - otherwise it is either not sinful or not nature. The outcome must be a part of determining the morality of an action - otherwise the actions of accidentally bumping you and mass murder of are morally equivalent. A balance of greed, which some count as sin, may keep competition of two vendors favourable to a consumer. We should ask, in all moral situations, what the outcome is for all concerned. This is radically different from "all have fallen short". In the Christian moral framework, bumping you and mass murder are equivalent in that both are indicators of a natural inclination that must be, at worst eternally punished (hell), and at best, whitewashed (washed in the blood of Jesus).

Our secular legal system holds that all persons are responsible for their actions. No legal mechanism is available for transferring this responsibility (it is diminished or dismissed in cases of juveniles or clinically insane - moves to transfer responsibility of crimes to parents have been unsuccessful). Most Christians I know not only live within this framework, but prefer it and actively campaign for it. The forgiveness as espoused in the Gospel - the transfer of guilt to Jesus - directly contradicts this framework, no matter what angle you put on it.

All of us sense the injustice of laying blame on an innocent party and let the guilty go free. Thus, the Christian concept of forgiveness is not only universally ignored by Christians - it is universally morally reprehensible.

More nauseating, however, and so apparent in Lennox and his ilk, is the over-bearing self-righteous mindset of Christian forgiveness. They have been the lucky ones, entrusted with the franchise on forgiveness. Atheists could not possibly have the quality of absolution necessary, since they have not embraced the franchise, but have opened up in direct competition, challenging the very premise of Christian forgiveness.

It is the smug assertion that only those who turn to God have a chance of salvation that grates - not because I would not seek salvation if I felt it necessary and would not buy at their "forgiveness shop", but because it supposedly their enlightenment and wise choice that should be a model to me.

I know by now that there will be Christians who will claim that their Jesus forgave in a perfectly human way - not in any way associated with the neagtive characterisations above. How can we make a case that Jesus was acting, as I articulated in the introduction, only in a human way to prove that acting human was natural (and, of course, forgivable) and should not really be considered anything that should attract anything but absolution? Not only is this contradicted by the notion that Jesus was apparently meant to fulfill the commandments of the Old Testament and steadfastly did so without fail, but it provides precisely nothing in terms of moral guidance on how forgiveness should be applied.

There are things I would not forgive. Rape requires unambiguous guilt, followed by extended incarceration until society is convinced the offender will not re-offend. No forgiveness entered into nor implied. Crimes that are beyond proof or evidence and therefore prosecution under law, such as the systematic killing of dissenters under apartheid, cannot be resolved by forgiveness - only Truth and Reconciliation remain as a less than optimal process.

Hence, we forgive 'human-ness', do not forgive 'inhuman-ness' and simply agree to disagree about those crimes that are beyond investigation.

Simple empathy can be applied to some circumstances of crime. A wife beaten for decades might find herself excused in the minds of most, but her crime is not forgiven - we would still hold that she is guilty but that her crime was inevitable. Perhaps we can see ourselves in her shoes. This makes empathy, not forgiveness, the real moral driver. Labelling this 'forgiveness' is simply an attempt to make it appear synonymous with God's supposed forgiveness or diminishes our ability to resolve the psychological issues involved in the behaviour (rather like saying that the mind, or worse, the soul, rather than the brain, does things).

The lasting legacy of "forgiveness" is surely that eternal burden of guilt that people feel, exacerbating their sense of worthlessness that characterises some sorts of depression. One must consider oneself to be guilty on multiple fronts, mostly determined against the most arbitrary of standards. If I feel sexual pleasure, I should feel guilty. If I speak out of turn, I should feel guilty. If I call someone a dickhead, I should feel guilty.

Finally, forgiveness gives no sense of recompense. Recompense is perhaps the most powerful of human drivers in creating social cohesion. If I call you a dickhead and you are not a dickhead, demonstrably so, then forgiveness may makes you feel holy, vindicated in your indignaion at being called a dickhead, but it does not set the world right. Only recompense - saying I'm sorry - can change the situation to allow us, once again, to work with each other on a mission. Forgiveness is utterly impotent in this regard.

Lennox can keep his forgiveness and his Gospel. Both are as useless as the other.

To be or not to be - that is the meme

A short version of my reply to Ted's Daniel Dennett Breaks the Spell, (over at http://paintingfakes.blogspot.com/), could be as follows:

No explanation, memetic or otherwise, is about to threaten religious thought. The common element of all religious thought is that certain concepts or premises do not admit scrutiny - you just accept them. You either allow yourself to think that some concepts are inscrutable or you don't and this determines whether you are religious.

Thus, explaining how these inscrutable thoughts arise, or having cold evidence to prove they are the product of a brain and a meme, does not threaten the thoughts themselves. It simply enlightens the thinker as to how the thoughts come into existence. This enlightenment may threaten the thinkers presumptions about the origin of their religious thoughts - not divine, but human - and lead to the thinker to reject religion, but only if they are ready to reject faith as a mode of explanation.

A fuller repost to Ted's blog is below. It is long.

There was a nice cosmic coincidence between the prediction of the exact day of the Rapture, the event where a vengeful God is supposed to swoop upon the earth, gather up the faithful and then punish the unfaithful with a catalogue of atrocities, and Ted's 'atheist-slapping' piece over at his blog at http://paintingfakes.blogspot.com/. Ted reminds us that generalisations are dangerous devices, often effective in boggling the minds of the masses, but not fair in a reasoned sense and therefore largely inadmissible in reasoned debate.

Loonies like Harold Camping remind me that Christians (and most religious people) cannot be simply lumped together. Amongst the Rapturists there are two broad categories of belief - those who believe the date can be predicted and those who believe it cannot. There is also two schools of thought amongst Rapturists along a different dimension - those who believe God will actively avenge the believers for the persecution they have suffered and those who believe that unbelievers are largely left to their own 'sinful' devices, punishment enough.

Of course, there is also a large proportion of Christians who are not Rapturists at all. As Ted so eloquently explained in Jesus Preaches In Nazareth, (http://paintingfakes.blogspot.com/2011/05/jesus-preaches-in-nazareth.html), an exposition on a part of the Gospel of Luke, those Christians who have an expectation of a vengeful God bear a close resemblance to those Jews who supposedly rejected Jesus at Nazareth because he didn't fill the die of avenger, conveniently slaughtering the enemies that oppressed them. Many Christians would see the central message of Christianity being the forgiving of enemies and the salvation of all. Rapture stories get short shrift from these Christians. I'm guessing Ted is amongst them.

It is always difficult to criticise a group, such as Christians, in a way that does not bring an illogical device, such as a generalisation, to bear upon the topic. It is patently clear that, in recent history, the Catholic Church has harboured and protected paedophiles and the current Pope is implicated in cover-ups. However, this does not make Catholics, many of whom I consider good friends, advocates of paedophilia. In criticising the Church, we risk criticising those who reject utterly many of its teachings and practices.

This, I think, is a central premise to understanding religion and its history. One must seriously question whether Constantine becomes a Christian through a mystical spiritual conversion or a canny, somewhat cynical, pragmatic political action.

Generalisations must be used with multiple caveats and qualifications. There is no excuse for lack of qualification because our language is so well adapted to it (in a way that many other languages are not). As a simple example, (somewhat tangential and forgive the convolution if you can), consider the sentence:

"The police found the body in a ditch."

This is an accurate sentence but barely qualified. It contains generalisations (noun - police, verb - found) and a specific reference (body). Both could easily be qualified without exhausting the reader and to provide much more information for the reader to generate a reasonable impression of the event. For example, the sentence could qualify the noun 'police' by acknowledging the extent of the search required to find the body.

"The police from several stations in the Oakey area found the body in a ditch."

Alternatively, the extent of the search could be qualified in a clause that refers to and qualifies the verb:

"After an exhaustive search of the waterways around Oakey, the police found the body in a ditch."

Likewise, 'the body' can be qualified.

"The police found the badly decomposed body of a white man in his early sixties in a ditch."

The point of this diversion is to show how easily generalisations can be qualified without significant burden to the reader. Writers who do not bother to qualify generalisations are just lazy.

Thence to generalisations about Christians. If we criticise Christians with heavy qualification we do not risk the deductive error that generalisation so readily admits. So, I may confidently state the all Christians believe in God, but I must admit that or qualify that Christians have a myriad of beliefs in that area of faith alone. So, where can any generalised criticism be admitted without falling into a logical hole?

By making statement which actually are true about all Christians. Christians who are simultaneously atheists are a quirky anomaly which don't disprove the generalisation, only show that some people are very confused. In that we can identify a belief in God as central to Christianity, a criticism of that belief is aimed squarely at all Christians, of all denominations, and is aimed fairly.

Generalisations about Rapturism in Christianity are not fair to apply to all Christians, since not all Christians are Rapturists. Thus, the measure of a generalisation is fairness and truth.
Thence to Dennet et al. Are the 'new atheists' fair in their depiction of Christianity? In the minds of many, myself and Ted included, they are not.

However, I come to this from a completely different angle than Ted. Ted refers to what is now a growing (logical) fallacy amongst Christians - that criticism of something should be precluded, rejected or disregarded if (a) the critic has not studied the subject to an extent acceptable to the reader and (b) from the inside. But, the ill-informed critic is not wrong; they just have a higher likelihood of being shown to be wrong.

I can judge a schizophrenic person, on casual acquaintance, to be dangerous, based on observed behaviour I consider to be dangerous. I may be right - un-medicated and in certain contexts, the person with mental illness may be dangerous, but I am probably going to be shown to be wrong by further investigation. Certainly, I don't have to be a schizophrenic to either be able to have an opinion on the illness or to make a true observation of it. I just might have a more complete insight from inside.

We should only reject Dennet's arguments about Christianity or religion if they can be shown to be wrong on further investigation or they do not follow logic, not on the premise of the extent of Dennet's knowledge or study of religion or his insider's insight. To exclude Dennet's arguments on this premise is a classic fallacy of argumentation.

Interestingly and somewhat ironically, the opinions of Dawkins and the so-called (and poorly labelled) 'new atheists' are premised heavily on the statements, stories and insights of believers and ex-believers. I guess the moral of the story is 'don't listen to Christians when they tell you what Christianity is all about".

Which leads me to my criticism of Dennet, Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris - they all appear to assume that Christians (and other religious folk) actually know what they believe and, further, actually follow their beliefs into action. They also see a coherence in religious thought which is patently wrong - witness the plethora of mini-denominations in any culture. Sometimes religion can be more accurately characterised as weak amalgam of individual revelations than a coherent system of thought.

Unlike Ted, I think it is a dangerous assumption to think that Jesus, the Bible or Christendom actually shapes the thoughts and actions of' loopies' like Camping. Given that humans have an uncanny knack of acting completely contrary to their professed beliefs, whatever the character of the belief (often not religious), there is no substantial reason to think religion is any different.

It is just as likely that religion is a product of a particular shaped brain given to self-delusion (or more accurately, a brain given to hiding its function and thoughts from its host) as it is an independent virus parasitically working on the brain to modify its behaviour. Or just as likely that a 'belief' meme interacts with a brain already primed for self-unaware-ness, producing behaviour that favours the replication of the meme (such as evangelising) over the host. We must, to be fair, entertain at least 4 hypotheses:

1. Brains are completely self-aware and memes just don't exist
2. Brains are not self-aware and permit thoughts that do not come to awareness but do express in behaviour
3. Brains are not self-aware and permit thoughts (that do not come to awareness) to govern behaviour, contrary to conscious intention.
4. Brains are not self-aware and permit thoughts (that do not come to awareness) to govern behaviour opportunistically, until the host becomes aware and changes their behaviour consciously.

Ted skates perilously close to another fallacy of argumentation - disagreement on the premise of incredulity (that isn't true because I can't believe it would be true). Our discomfort with the idea that we may be being manipulated in our mind by independent agents does not disprove the notion.

Only if we can conclusively prove the opposite - that we and we alone, in our mind, control our thoughts and actions, completely aware, are we in a position to argue against this proposition. Unfortunately, an awful lot of research seems to point to humans not being the masters of their own thinking and even crude party tricks convince us of how easily we are duped. While I may be introspectively aware of what I am thinking, this does not preclude in-mind agents acting unawares.

Which leads me to pondering such agents, the possibility of their existence and their mode of operation.

In our post-rapture world, where all the gullible Christians are now fleeced of their money and feeling pretty silly, we can reflect on how the world works. No-one can quite deny that the loony evangelists were effective. They took to vehicles proclaiming the exact date of the Rapture and sold it to the American public. The notion went viral. Most of my students asked me earnestly what I was going to do before the end of the world.

Such a phenomena begs not only attention and derision - it must actually have an objective premise. But what? Is Camping simply a crackpot and that's enough said? But how do we account then for the ease at which his absurd idea was accepted and spread? Christians dived in on multiple forums to correct his prediction or to remind him that "we don't know when it will occur".

So, this is not something that can just be dismissed as the lunatic fringe. Something in the human psyche accepts doomsday predictions and awards those who create and propagate them with great attention and/or pleasure. Furthermore, somehow these ideas propagate without recognisable conscious human agency.

Authorship is one of those badly understood concepts. The self-organising nature of development serves genes well. Genes are not directed; they provide a propensity. There are no gene authors. There is no reason to believe memes are otherwise. Songs only have authorship in the sense of having what might be called an original ancestors.

We are not born composing. We learn it by exposure to music, some of which resonates. The resonating music can reform itself into what appears to be an 'original'. But how many songs using the eastern pentatonic scale suddenly arise in New Orleans? Our authorship is constrained by those meme to which we have access. Even our preference for music is influenced in this same way.

Its largely irrelevant, in one sense, if you call this a 'cultural phenomena' or a 'meme' - in either case, a physical medium is required and not just any old medium. No loony Rapture prediction ever got propagated by elephants whispering, or the wind blowing over the Sahara. This is distinctly human. And distinctly viral. It is an idea reproduced largely for its own persistence. The fleeced Christians do not benefit.

It is, however, somewhat lame to simply label something as a 'cultural phenomena', as if that were enough to explain how it works. Likewise, to be content to simply state that the 'mind is mysterious' is likewise impotent. On what grounds should we simply be content to accept that the subjective outcomes of the workings of the mind are impenetrable? Robinson (http://paintingfakes.blogspot.com/2011/05/absence-of-mind.html) would have us abandon the quest to know because we might fall into a trap of reductionism. I smell a rat. She doesn't want culture 'reduced' because it might threaten a religious thought she accepts as inscrutable.

There is another, well understood, idea replicant. Its called a gene. Genes are pure information. They 'persuade' their context to create an environment where they are reproduced. Genetic replication is well understood at, well, a genetic level. Cultural and psychological behaviours determined by genes are less well understood. Developmental genetics (how genes influence development) is a work in progress. The quantum machinery of replication seems to be problematic (New Scientist).

Now, because something is less well understood does not mean it is actually less credible. If this were the case, Darwin would have abandoned evolution on the basis that he didn't understand the DNA mechanism for it. An awful lot of science is understood first at a more superficial level, still very useful, before the underlying mechanism is known. Without such science, electricity, atomic physic and medicine, to mention a few, would not have developed.

So, rejecting memetics because it is in its infancy is a little foolish. We know little about the depths of our oceans, but we do not reject a little knowledge and understanding because there is more to be found. Is Steven Hawkings delusional because he guesses at the atmosphere of Europa (ice covering water) because exploration has not yet given a conclusive answer about its atmosphere when compared to understanding of the Earth's atmosphere? Memetics can't be lined up with genetics and 'marked down' and 'failed' because it is the less developed theory. That's neither logical or fair.

Not that the possible underlying mechanisms for memetics are not understood to some extent. Psychological study can map what the brain is doing; behavioural psychology has a fairly good understanding of how our minds develop and respond to stimuli. Linguistics does a good job of mapping historical development and evolution of languages. Unfortunately, the research to pull everything together hasn't quite happened.

Memetics has already been studied extensively, in one sense, in linguistics, but the gene model has not been applied because linguistics has been fixated with semantic, syntactic, graphophonic or vocal systems and really haven't worked very hard at understanding the replicating 'hardware' and its relationship to language. Or rather, that relationship is proving to be a 'thorny' study.

The replication of words (signifying ideas) has always been assumed to be a 'cultural phenomena' (as if this really meant anything). The 'culturalists' like Robinson are not unhappy for the mechanism to be vague because they keeps it out of the hands of grubby scientists - scientists who seem hell-bent on reducing the affective impact of a Shakespearean sonnet by giving you understanding of how its words react with your brain. Its the standard objection to science - reduction (miraculously) disengages my affective domain and turns me into a machine. Yes, I get that. Understanding that "to be" is a verb destroys my enjoyment of "to be or not to be". To coin a cliche - what bullshit!

When we actually discover the replicative mechanism for ideas - we have a Watson and Crick DNA moment - we will have something powerful indeed. Meanwhile, we need to describe how the replication works without such revelation, profoundly provisional as that might be. Next year, a Watson and Crick team will contradict us for sure.

Before I explicate further my view on memes and therefore Dennet's hypothesis, another aside into logic.

'Analogy', strictly speaking, means a comparison between two things - a source and a target. Neils Bohr used an analogy, in describing electron orbits, of the solar system. Analogies often position the target is an inadequate, incomplete or essentially flawed description or explanation of the source. The structure of the solar system is easily understood. Hence, the comparison helps to understand electron orbits but not, fully, the behaviour of electrons.

Analogies are often used to teach a concept. To say that something is an analogy often becomes synonymous with saying that the target is not true or that it is not real. It can be used to disparage an idea because the target is considered only a sort of 'ghost' of the real thing.
An analogy breaks down as the comparison weakens. However, two things may be analogous without one thing being considered 'superior' to another. For example, wings of insects and birds have an analogous function, but are evolved completely differently and have different structures. The significant feature in the comparison is the analogous, not insignificant, details. Neither concept, because they are the same, are less true or credible or complete than the other. Analogy can be used simply to describe how two systems or objects have a feature in common that is critical to the system or object.

I fear that Ted may be using analogy in its disparaging form - this isn't true because its 'just an analogy'. Dennet's analogy lacks substance because it sort of 'copies' something well understood but has no substance of its own (my take on Ted's words, but do read them again to see if this is a fair take).

Memes are analogous to genes not just because genes are a way of understanding memes. A meme describes a concept that self-replicates independently (details of how unknown). But the comparison is made not just for better understanding of one concept but because there is a similarity between observed phenomena of genes and memes.

We observe radio waves passing from transmitter to receiver without a medium and waves in an ocean passing from transmitter to receiver through the movement of a medium. An ocean wave is not 'untrue' or feeble conceptually because it is an analogy of a radio wave or vice versa - they have common features which we label 'wave'.

Memes and genes have common features in 'self-replication serving their own persistence'. A gene encodes information in protein chains; a meme encodes information in language, art, dance - in culture.

Rejecting memes as an explanation of culture is akin to standing in the 19th century and closing the door on genetics because it does not yet have enough evidence or conceptual scaffolding to support it. We must keep our minds more open, especially as we have history to remind us of such folly. We have the wisdom of retrospection and we should use it.

But I digress.

The relationship between language and the 'platform' on which it is generated is not crudely mechanistic. There is a complexity that is chaotic - elements interact with feedback loops to cause the final outcome to appear to be somewhat unrelated to the underlying mechanism.

None-the-less, language requires a mechanism and it can be understood. There is a limit to the length of words and sentences, governed by the power of the brain to both discriminate and remember. The mouth can only produce a certain set of sounds, especially in combination.
To recognise the complexity of language and the difficulty in 'unpacking' it does not preclude the notion that it has a mechanism that drives it. Describing the mechanism is going to be, necessarily, a simplification that is inadequate.

Criticising 'memes' as a mechanism is not particularly sensible, since the meme model must necessarily dispense with some of the complexity it describes in order to be accessible to our understanding.

There is no particular reason to believe that religion is less susceptible to cultural transmission, riding on a similar platform as language, than language or any other cultural expression.
I do wonder whether, if Dennet were describing the insidious rise of Fascism as an ideology in the 20th century via memetic means, Ted and other Christians might not find his thesis more palatable. Its easier to accept criticism of an ideology that you oppose. Studies of Hitlerian propaganda shown deliberate use of iconic elements of German thought of the era - appeal to fear of 'alien' elements amongst us, appropriation of the 'wholesome German woman' as an central figure, stark imagery of a 'strong' Germany.

Understanding these as simply the product of 'addled minds' does little to explain the universal acceptance and championing of the Nazis - memetics goes some way to identifying both the possibility of all humans being susceptible to these ideas and the clustering of these ideas within a nation (proximity of 'hosts' geographically and culturally) - both of which are now well recognised.

If memetics opens the possibility of understanding how our culture is sustained, we should not reject it because it literally threatens our 'sacred cow'. Even if Dennet doesn't execute an exposition of the history of religion particularly well, the central notion of religion as an independent agent in the minds of humans cannot be rejected.

Mind how you break eggs

Over at Painting Fakes, my fellow blogger, Ted, has reviewed the works of Marilynne Robinson in a series of lectures about the mind, science and religion. Both Ted's review and Robinson's thesis invite a response.

One might talk about Ms Robinson's tendency to use words and phrases which seem somewhat contrived - I am sure that quite a lot of what she says could be put more clearly, and possibly more simply. But this is not really important in many respects.

One could even respond directly, point for point, to her ideas. But this might also lead only to frustration and confusion. Instead, I will confine myself to her attack on the role of the so called 'scientific atheists'.

It is comfortable to think of science in two ways, neither of which does justice to science and both of which form a large part of popular perceptions (or misconceptions) of scientific endeavor or commentary.

First, science is perceived as a body of knowledge, updated by scientists. Thus, to strike a metaphor, science is like a pile of dirt which gets larger as we add more dirt.

Second, science is perceived as a discrete discipline, most pure when it is natural science and least relevant or 'sciency' when it is social science (applied to culture, society and psychology). 'Real' science, it is thought, is experimental, with labs and test tubes; the other stuff is intelligent guesswork.

The problem with both of these notions is that they simply ignore history, ignore the majority of scientific endeavor and a large part of what science achieves in our lives.

Understanding microbes is not something that just makes for a good read on a Sunday afternoon - its often about life and death. There is something at stake. The fact that we have 'moved on' from understanding the spread of diseases by ether to microbes does not mean that we should be triumphal about overcoming darkness and ignorance nor sentimental about the 'good old days' of the ether. Health professionals who advise hand washing and speak out against lack of hygiene are not blowing a trumpet to celebrate the demise of the ignorance of previous generations of health professionals. They genuinely want more people to stay alive.

It appears that Robinson does not like the celebration of new knowledge over old, especially if its by a atheist or a humanist. Could this simply reflect a religious bias showing through? If I demonise atheists as those who sit rubbing their hands over the failure of past scientists, then my audience will not just think badly of them, but feel that what they say is discredited. This is the oldest debating trick in the book.

Robinson's language gives her away. "This motif of shocking newness that must startle us into painful recognition is very much a signature of the "the modern" and potent rhetorically, more so because we are conditioned to accept such claims as plausible." Now, if I were to write this dispassionately, I would have expressed it as. "Amongst modern scientific writers, a tendency to claim that new is superior to old is accepted by some readers."

Robinson's 'straw men' are the gloating science writer and the gullible reader (conditioned like a dog). Its easier for a reader to construct a conspiracy where the science 'media moguls' are attempting to brainwash the unwashed masses than to look beyond for the truth. Full marks to Robinson for "potent rhetoric".

The ironic fact is that science writers (or her 'para-science writers'), such as Richard Dawkins, who Robinson presumably numbers amongst those 'gloating atheists' (my metaphor, not hers), pays homage to many scientists of the past and has been at pains to defend the shortfalls in Darwin's work from modern scientists who claim modern genetics discredits Darwin. Dawkin's notion of the 'progress' in thought is encapsulated in 'zeitgeist', a word that Dawkins uses frequently. This hardly fits the characterisation of the triumphal 'objectivist'.

Science destroys as much as it builds. Knowing that diseases were spread as microbes inside rats, not by ether, put a large and rude hole in accepted scientific knowledge. The pile does not get bigger, it takes on a radically different shape. Scientific orthodoxy is always in danger of being 'shoveled away'.

Scientists rarely embark on active 'debunking' - the destruction of knowledge. It is an accident of scientific endeavor. Obsessive people work out that the world actually functions differently to what is generally thought, and often, in quite autistic ways, refuse to budge from their line of work or thinking. They rarely have a revolutionary mission in mind, even if that is the outcome. Cook, a gifted geographer, felt no great gratification in discovering that the Great South Land was hogwash - he was more interested that his careful cartography was vindicated and recognised.

Science always has been, and always will be, the breaking of eggs to make a cake. Controversy, argument, disputation and destruction are its normal modes. Far from being a sure sign of 'modern' thinking, these characteristics are, in many ways, the signature of human thought and discussion as it has always been. The revolutionary effect on Europe of mathematics coming from the Islamic world is barely modern. History abounds with clear thought that has overcome orthodoxy. Pythagorus preceded Darwin and the modern era.

I can well imagine 100 000 years ago at Pinnacle Point, South Africa, an observant upstart, noticing how shellfish were abundant when the tide went out and noticing the rhythm of tides, putting forward the radical proposal that the orthodoxy of hunting for a living (as found in many other locations in pre-historic Africa) was stupid and a new mode should be adopted.

Science is not simply people in white coats - the mythical scientist clothing. Forensic scientists must cast around, almost like drunken sailors, for possible explanations, rarely reaching conclusions and wasting a lot of time in false leads. Any conclusions are often presented as probabilities - certainty is a rare commodity in many sciences. The fact that evidence is meager, secure conclusions are rare or in a given situation science appears helpless does not deter forensic scientists.

The author of the 'continental drift' theory, Wegener, died without evidential vindication of what we now know as plate tectonics - no credible geologist argues with it now because evidence now abounds. Wegener did not simply 'back off' from the study because evidence was very thin on the ground. His bloody minded persistence paid off (Well, we can say that in retrospect. He may have been thoroughly discredited - this is the 'gamble' of science.) Neither did he act triumphantly. Neither was his science exact or experimental.

Excluding science from certain arenas of human activity is curious indeed. The mind seems inescapably complex, immune from scientific scrutiny. Why should this necessarily excuse it from attempts to explain its workings? Does the number of times people who have 'got it wrong' logically suggest that it is 'beyond science' or does it suggest that we have poor instruments or are blinded by our current perception, prejudice or orthodoxy?

Take the notion of self. Intuitively, we have assumed that we have only one mind (that's me - I know who I am). We're pretty sure we are not more than one person, one mind. The strange way that our single mind 'works', however, seems to defy explanation and we are often puzzled by how we 'tick'.

But what if that sense of self was a delusion? In "What Makes Us Tick", Hugh McKay suggests, (what I think sounds like) a case for every human being a crazy amalgam of persons, selfs. He identifies 10 'desires' - independent 'drives' that compete and conflict for control of our behaviour. Each of these 'desires' could have evolved independently in humans, roughly correlating to genes.

The desire for belonging, for example, has probably evolved within social animals as a way of cementing the pack together and to increase the chance of being part of a successful hunting group. The desire for control, at times completely contrary to this desire for belonging, would assist individuals to assert the right for their genes to be favoured.

According to Mackay, desires in imbalance leads at least to irrational behaviour, possibly depression, maybe to a dysfunctional individual and perhaps psychosis of some kind. All desires come together like the harmony an orchestra. The 'blend' of competing desires would express itself as the 'personality' - an illusion of a single entity.

Mackay's theories are not wishful thinking. He has 30 years of scientific research to back his ideas. This does not make it true. All scientific explanations are open to being overthrown by new evidence. Human behaviour, he thinks, IS explainable, not in a reductionist kind of way that is mechanistic, simplistic or turns behaviour into the result of cooking ingredients or a single principle or a jigsaw of parts, but as complex interactions. His scientific explanations give some sense to how things appear to be operating - it does not reduce its complexity.

Far from being a "passive conduit of other purposes" the mind may be a set of active competing agents. Self-awareness of the separate nature of these agents may be dangerous - a non-integrated mind may fail in evolutionary terms.

Whether this is correct or simply a winsome idea relies exclusively on the evidence to support it. If Robinson begins with a premise that the mind must be defined ONLY as a single self-aware entity, then, of course, other models of the mind will be a challenge. The new ideas of the mind do not lead necessarily to an "essential modernist position that our minds are not our own and ... (we have ) ... a persisting illusion ... (that the mind is) ... serving a force or a process that is essentially unknown and indifferent to us."

It might be that we are both necessarily single minded (having a sense of single self), meaning our minds are highly integrated, and driven, below the level of self-awareness, by elements that could themselves be separated out and be shown to be driven and derived by other forces. These notions are not incompatible. The world does not have to be binary - one, or the other.

I detect, once again, a prejudice in Robinson's writing (speaking). If you want the God of the Universe to be the central driver beneath human behaviour - that force below the horizon of our awareness, then finding a scientific explanation for these sub-conscious drivers is uncomfortable. Could it be that Robinson is 'tugging' at our emotions to elicit a response of "Well, I don't know about you, but, good grief, I know my own mind!"? This is the debating tactic of appealing to the audience. "Surely you believe this!"

Mackay acknowledges that there is still a long way to go to fully understand the mind. We can disagree with his conclusions. His science may one day seem to be so much quackery. What we cannot say is that his quest to understand the mind was just stupid - human behaviour does not admit scientific investigation and scrutiny and cannot be scientifically explained; that it did not lend itself to scientific investigation.

We can only say that a particular theory has not been exhaustive in explaining (which after all, is what makes it science - always open to been proved to have fallen short by new evidence) or that it is plain wrong (sufficient evidence exists to debunk it). Being intuitively uncomfortable about scientific theories does not discredit them - it shows, once again, how unintuitive much of scientific knowledge turns out to be. Let me illustrate this.

Intuitively, we perceive our world as being real by what we see. Despite this, the eye is so easily deceived, as even an average magician can prove. This is because much of what we see is not seen, but constructed. It jerks our sense of reality when we realise that vision is deceitful. Vision dominates so completely. Wonderful experiments demonstrate that even when a different word is spoken, our visual sense can overcome what we hear by lip-reading.

Furthermore, as we investigate light and radio waves, we realise that the universe is a bizarre place - our eyesight is so limited that we can only see a tiny slither of the 'available' radio wave spectrum and this completely dominates our sense of reality. A bat's auditory world that 'sees around corners' cannot be intuitively comprehended - we must suspend our disbelief to accept it.

Even if we are uncomfortable with modern theories of how the mind works, we do not have the right to claim exclusivity for the mind. Likewise culture.

Mackay points out that religion 'ticks all the boxes' in terms of fulfilling desires. He 'explains' this as the premise for its amazing success and persistence. Explaining the success of religion does not shine any light on its central premise of the existence of a deity. In this case, scientific explanation and belief are exclusive 'magisteria'.

However, if the feeling of euphoria being amongst church-going people can be explained in scientific terms as a psychological desire for belonging, then attributing this to God's spirit is more difficult. The role of God's spirit appears to be pushed back to something more fundamental - the drive or physics behind the psychological desire for belonging.

In this way, belief and science are on a collision course. But, of course, the science is necessarily tentative and provisional and the belief is necessarily personal. What is conflicting here is personal conviction and explanations of evidence. This is somewhat different to Robinson's projection of a 'sinsiter conspiracy' to 'debase knowledge' (my characterisation of her line of thinking, not hers).

It is somewhat unfortunate that Robinson seizes what might be derogatorily described as that 'old nugget' in the opposition to evolutionary theory via the 'controversy' of altruism. It exposes, perhaps, her lack of understanding of both science and evolution.

The Darwinian phrase 'survival of the fittest' is rather unfortunate in a modern context of trying to unravel the understanding of evolution which has been somewhat muddied by certain religious 'interests'. It gives the impression of an individual, not the frequency in a population of a gene, as the focus of evolutionary change. Before I address this misunderstanding, however, Robinson must be called on her implication that Darwinism and evolution can be equated with or seen as justification for social Darwinism.

Robinson would know that Darwin wrote little, in the end, on either human evolution nor its social aspects. He was very reserved, perhaps even afraid, to challenge contemporary thinking on the 'creation' of humans. Others who came after him represented competition of species as tribalism. Robinson suggestion that Darwin's theory played into the colonial mindset is simply a mischievous misrepresentation of history. It also ignores the fact that Darwin was trapped within the context of the language of science of his time - he used words in a way that related to how people of the time considered reality.

Not only does tribalism misrepresent the trend that Darwin observed in natural selection, there is good evidence that rank tribalism (the obliteration of one's enemies) is corrosive to survival, perhaps as corrosive as a propensity to kill one's own children. Rank tribalism has been shown in history to be extremely short-lived. History demonstrates that the human facility for negotiation and diplomacy often trumps rank tribalism.

In any case, the propensity to tribalism can be expressed at many levels. Does the gene cause people to defend their family against other families, or community against another community, group against group, tribe against tribe or nation against nation? The answer is quite nuanced. We see a strain of an inclination for people to adopt, often tentatively, alliances with their 'own' in whatever form that takes (family, gang, nation, tribe, social group) and preparedness to defend this to the death.

This 'strain' is not a mindless imperative to kill all who compete so as to acquire their resources. If this were the case, brother would kill brother at the earliest opportunity to acquire a mother's attention to servicing their needs. Humans would have evolved like some birds that ruthlessly turf siblings from their nests. The strain is far more nuanced and complicated. It is just as often an imperative to join those who appear to be be more successful in acquiring resources - loyalty to the 'strong man', the leader.

The fact that colonial types co-opted Darwinism to justify their oppression or obliteration of other groups does not make this the essence of evolution. Biblical stories were used to justify slavery, but this does not imply the interpretation of the Biblical story is faithful or that Christian dogma supposedly derived from the Bible commands slavery.

What Robinson wants us to believe is that those who support evolution also support tribalism and, because we know tribalism fails, that this discredits evolution. Such deceitful tactics in making an argument do little to add credibility to her overall thesis.

To return to the notion of 'survival of the fittest'. First one should clarify that natural selection does not equate with 'survival of the fittest' but to understand how requires a certain amount of intellectual machinations.

No doubt, evolutionary pressure is applied to an individual, but change occurs over time and populations. The process is not 'clean'. The gene is not a blueprint for an anatomical structure - it gives survival propensity by influencing a developmental trajectory. Let me explain this.

Take a gene that is implicated in the size of a nose. Genes do not encode nose structure, like a house plan. They encode the extent of the development of a particular anatomical feature. Thus, the size of the nose may rely on a bone behind the nose. The size of this bone has 3 dimensions, each which can be genetically extended or contracted. So a gene may make the nose wider, for example.

The survival of an individual with this gene may be influenced by having a wider nose. This is, however, a kind of roulette. A wider nose may imply a need for a larger passage for air, which may increase the weight of the whole structure significantly. In an animal where smelling better because of a wider nose gives advantage, this gene gains an advantage. In a bird where a heavier structure reduces flying ability, this gene loses out.

I will deliberately avoid talking about adaptive significance in this, as it complicates understanding. Needless to say, when the gene for pushing a nose wider makes a wide enough nose to make a difference to smelling, the increased survival of individuals in the population with that trait eventually results in a higher frequency of that gene in the population.

Why is this important to an understanding of evolution? Genes influence the development of facilities; there is no direct connection between a gene and a trait. The more complex the organism, the more 'blurry' the connection is between gene and trait. For example, a gene may influence the development of a brain that is capable of retaining observed behaviour (learning). This can lead to all sorts of consequences, depending on how the environment turns out.

The gene provides the propensity. So, if an animal with the propensity to learn provides the wherewithal for young to learn what is good survival behaviour and what is bad, the gene will be more successful in statistical terms. But the gene does not carry the learning. It does not carry message that 'snakes are bad so avoid them'. It carries the message 'watch what your parent avoids and do likewise'. The sad history of extinctions of some animals provides good evidence that this propensity to learn, rather than be programmed, can be fatal. Sometimes, following mum's lead into the hands of a hunter is not as useful as a natural suspicion for everything that moves (which microbial organism often employ).

Where does that lead us? Well, to altruism. Altruism in evolution is badly understood. The propensity to sacrifice ones own comfort, satisfaction and well-being for another is an evolutionary trait that is very coarse. It works a treat for mother's raising young. It has less success in a family context. In general society it seems to reinforce cultural norms of 'do as you would be done by'. In rational terms it is grounded in ensuring your benefit by creating a trade in good deeds that the whole group must subscribe to.

But, it seems, this conflicts with the orthodox notion of selfishness. Yes it does. But humans are not only genetically selfish; they are also genetically altruistic. The gene itself can be characterised as selfish, even when it is expressing itself as human altruism. If the gene survives, it doesn't 'care' if its host uses altruism or selfishness to survive. In fact, in certain contexts, both altruism and selfishness can be stupid strategies that reduce survival and thus the persistence of a gene.

Does our objective account of this really cheapen or debase the selfish or altruistic act? Does knowing our evolutionary drives really make us 'less human'? Is the subjective narrative of loving ones enemy really eroded in value because we can account for the objective elements of it?

I am reminded of the great fear I felt when under the harsh light of a spotlight from an Israeli helicopter gunship, lying flat on my back in no man's land between Gaza and Israel. If, in processing the trauma that I suffered, a psychologist was able to point to say paranoia or imagination as the source of my concept of reality at that point, or an Israeli Army Captain was able to explain that this gunship was quite capable of identifying the difference between an inept tourist and a terrorist; would either of these change my subjective experience?

The notion that objectivity neutralises or trivialises subjectivity and that subjectivity is less valued, is a large thesis for Robinson to take on and prove; her allegation that 'para-science' plays a dominant role in that requires some measure of rigorous proof. I am not satisfied that her 'fancy academic talk' proves either.

Personally, I count subjectivity as the beginning of any hypothesising. From our experience we guess and imagine possibilities. We communicate these is terms that are both deeply personal and culturally relevant. This is not the kind of subjectivity that is just 'fuzzy thinking' or contextual-less art. It is the essence of interaction with the world.

The fact, that to make progress in a systematic way and thus provide benefit to the world, we must apply a torch of objectivity to subjectivity, does not devalue subjectivity; only give it its rightful place. We may break eggs to make a cake - we also enjoy the cake.