Year: 2008

Yesterday, I had a day out. I travelled to Utrecht to attend a conference, which was held to inaugurate the opening of the Center For Inquiry Low Countries. The CFI is a sort of secular humanist think-tank. Its mission statement is to "promote and defend reason, science, and freedom of inquiry in all areas of human endeavor". To that end, it sponsors research in three main areas:

• Paranormal and Fringe Science claims
• Religion, Ethics and Society
• Medicine and Health

Frankly, I’d not heard of this organisation before. The only reason I had heard about the conference was via the philosopher Stephen Law’s blog, from which I learned that he was going to speak at the conference. Since I find Law a terrific writer on philosophy (his book, The Philosophy Gym is very good), I thought I would attend the event.

Chaired by Rob Tielman, emeritus professor of sociology at Utrecht University, the conference kicked off with a presentation by Paul Kurtz on "Planetary Ethics". Kurtz is both professor emeritus of philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo and the chair of the Center for Inquiry. I’m sure that the content of his talk was probably familiar to many of those in the room, but for me, it was the first time I had come across the word eupraxsophy. It summarises the secular humanist approach to life, one with which I find myself aligned with.

A side note: I was struck by the fact that of the 100 or so people in the room, a good proportion of them were my age or older. True, there were some young people, but they were in the minority. The old folks also seemed to be those who had been active in organised humanism for a long time. Me, I’m with Groucho Marx; I don’t want to belong to any club that would accept people like me as a member. Organised humanism smacks to me of ersatz religion, something that I approach with extreme caution. But, back to the conference…

Following Kurtz was Azar Majedi, with a passionate speech about the need to combat both the "War on Terror" and what she terms "Political Islam". She sees that the War on Terror and Political Islam are both feeding each other, increasing the power and influence of both, and calls for a "third way" to cut the Gordian knot. At a personal level, that third way can take the form of speaking out against both TWOT and PI; e.g. refusing to demonise Muslims (something which I note is depressingly on the rise here in the Netherlands) and supporting women’s rights.

Historian David Nash gave an overview of the history of the concept of Christian Blasphemy from the Middle Ages onwards. He made the interesting point that Blasphemy started out as almost a "public nuisance" crime, a way for the community to police anti-social behaviour; but then by the 18th century it evolved into a way for the state to pursue political dissidents. Nowadays, the state is extremely reluctant to pursue prosecutions for blasphemy, but it remains an avenue for the individual. He also made the point that, as a result of the Gay News trial in 1977/8, the law actually reverted to a form that existed before reforms in 1884. Thank you, Mary Whitehouse, you interfering old trout. As Nash said, maintaining the law on blasphemy will continue to wage war on artistic expression, wit and irony.

Following on from this point, the conference also marked an opportunity to have the formal opening of the Virtual Museum for Offensive Art. Joep Schrijvers was involved in the setting up of the Museum, and he introduced us to it. He also made the point that, in the chain of artistic production, (from the idea of the artist, through production of the work, publication/exhibition, and finally review/reaction to the work), he is seeing evidence that censorship is moving up the chain. We’ve had examples in the Netherlands of censorship at the point of exhibition (the Gemeente Museum in The Hague refusing to display work by the Iranian artist Sooreh Hera, for fear it would "offend certain groups"), but Schrijvers also mentioned censorship at the point of production.

Stephen Law opened the afternoon sessions with a couple of points drawn from his book: The War For Children’s Minds. First, he distinguished between the Liberal and Authoritarian approaches to moral authority. Secondly, he highlighted the myth, so prevalent in Authoritarian pronouncements that Liberals are moral relativists. He, by the way, would classify himself as a Liberal, who dismisses the "politically correct baloney" of moral relativism.

Herman Philipse, Research Professor in Philosophy, Utrecht University, chose as his topic the question of whether there was a war between science and Christian theology. The elegantly-suited professor gave a clear discourse on the topic in a patrician manner (and I do mean this in a complementary way). His conclusion? The "warfare" view is correct at the epistemological level. That is, "gods" are spiritual powers, incarnated or not, which cannot be discovered by biological research. The (alleged) sources of religious knowledge therefore have to rely on methods of communication such as receiving revelations, dreams or prayer-tests (1 Kings 18). Science and scholarship have thus far revealed these sources to be illusory.

Floris van den Berg outlined a proposal for a moral secularism in the form of a thought experiment. It seemed to me to be simply illustrations of "putting yourself in another person’s shoes" and applying the Golden Rule to the result, but perhaps I was missing something. Clearly, I would not like to wake up one day and find myself as a gay man in Saudi Arabia, ditto for waking up as a woman. And as for a lesbian, with a physical or mental disability in that or a similar country, well, yes, it would not be good. But then, many years ago, I read Charles Beaumont’s The Crooked Man, so this thought experiment did not perhaps have the power for me that it would for others…

Austin Dacey, author of The Secular Conscience, gave a thought-provoking talk on how the common secular viewpoint that "religion should be a private and personal matter" is not only unsustainable, but wrong. He argues that "divisiveness" is not unique to religion, and therefore not sufficient to ban religion from the public square. Neither, in his view, are the subjective experiences of religion a sufficient reason for a ban. Surely, he argued, the principle of "freedom of religion" must allow believers to speak their conscience. It’s a good point; but as he pointed out, religion should not also get a "free pass" to the public square – blasphemy laws and similar special protections must also be done away with. I see that Steven Poole has compared Dacey to a cross between John Stuart Mill and Melanie Phillips. Likening someone to Mad Mel is not an enviable comparison… Personally, I found him to be a cross between Evan Davis and Pim Fortuyn (in looks, not in views, I should stress; although perhaps Steven Poole hints otherwise). And I did find his talk to be excellent.

Norm Allen spoke of his work with secularist groups in Africa. It was interesting, and there are obviously huge cultural issues involved, but I’m afraid that I kept on having flashes of how similar his talk was to one that would be told by a missionary retelling his stories of the folks that he had met on his mission to bring the word of God to the poor people in Africa. Except in this case, of course, it was told through the prism of the Enlightenment. The basis may have been different, but the cadences and the styles were eerily similar…

Then came an extra speaker, not included on the original programme. This turned out to be none other than Ibn Warraq. He used his time to look at the reactions to recent events at the United Nations, where the whole concept of Freedom of Expression has just been turned on its head. He read out Roy Brown’s comment on the amendment to a UN resolution of Freedom of Expression, and the reaction of other groups (including Islamic NGOs also expressing their dismay).  As I noted at the time, the UN has just signed the death warrant to Human Rights. Ibn Warraq, it would seem, agrees.

Alas, I had to leave before the final panel session, in order to catch my train back to the depths of the Achterhoek. However, I really enjoyed the day. There were some good speakers, and interesting topics to think about.