Andrew S. Curran on Diderot

Andrew S. Curran, author of the acclaimed Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely (Other Press, 2019), was the guest speaker in a virtual meeting of the Greater Boston Humanists on 22 November 2020 titled 'Enlightenment, Atheism, and Race'. 

From today's perspective Diderot can be seen as more progressive than Voltaire and Rousseau. The concept of the 'Radical Enlightenment' was discussed, as well as the origins and causes of modern racism. This was an excellent presentation with exceptionally intelligent audience participation.

Curran is also the author of The Anatomy of Blackness: Science and Slavery in an Era of Enlightenment (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013).

Madalyn Murray O'Hair: The Most Hated Woman in America

I recently watched The Most Hated Woman in America, about Madalyn Murray O'Hair, on Netflix. I read a comprehensive biography of her some years ago, but my memory is a bit hazy:

LeBeau, Bryan F. The Atheist: Madalyn Murray O’Hair. New York: New York University Press, 2003.

See my previous posts on O'Hair for my notes on this biography.

The film begins with her and son and (grand?)daughter kidnapped with hoods over their heads. I would think the dialogue is completely contrived, because unless the murderer-to-be told the story, how would be know? Seems tasteless to me. The police have no interest in following up on their disappearance, and the born-again son doesn't want to be bothered.

The motive for the kidnapping is blackmail, for funds the kidnappers know O'Hair secreted overseas, unbeknownst to the IRS.

Then flashback to 1955 in Baltimore. Madalyn and her young son are living with their parents, particularly the nasty Christian judgmental father. Madalyn is pregnant again as an unwed mother, which makes her a pariah in 1955. They're watching TV, Negroes are protesting not being able to be served somewhere, and Madalyn does not approve of this treatment. She and her son become the only white people to join the protest. She is an acid-tongued rebel, contemptuous of Christian hypocrisy. Her son knows the word "nonconformist".

Then it's 1960 .... she is a social worker. I don't remember any of this, but I'm pretty sure Madalyn got her MSW at Howard University.

Jumps to 1961: violent harassment. Jumps to 1963 Supreme Court decision against compulsory school prayer: rednecks go nuts. Jumps to 1964.

Madalyn founds American Atheists. Fired from social work job in Baltimore. Famous speech. Challenges Baltimore school system again. Makes cover of LOOK magazine: the most hated woman in America.

Flash forward to hostage situation--weird. News media not interested in the Murrays' disappearance, except for this one reporter. The man who reported missing persons is black and gay, rejected by parents, taken in by O'Hair--I didn't know this.

Flashback decades past: more controversy, radio programs, attack. Madalyn is married now. Later, older son is married with child, doesn't want to remain in the maelstrom. Jump ahead in time again: Madalyn on Carson; son's wife files for divorce.

Jump to 1979: O'Hair now in Austin, with protests against her.

Son Bill is a drunk, Madalyn and Bill now hate one another. Momma's boy Bill abandons her. Madalyn on Donahu debating Rev. Bob Harrington. They go on the road, making tons of money. I know there were debates, but this chumminess--for real? Son Bill in AA, a wreck now praying.

Son Bill denounces Madalyn on TV, now a public Christian. Madalyn hires future kidnapper. 1993: Found out he was a killer; this didn't bother her.

1994: Big fight between Madalyn and future kidnapper at solstice party. Several flash backs and forwards. In the future, son Bill gets involved, files missing persons report, suggests kidnapping is an inside job.

1995: news report on O'Hair. Skip ahead to 1998: reporter still investigating. Flashback to the murders. There were 3 kidnappers: starts with the killing of Robin, then Garth, then Madalyn. They are sawed in pieces, buried in a field. One of the kidnappers murdered. David Waters confesses.

I don't recall enough of the actual biography to know where inaccuracies in this biopic are to be found. It is quite sad. In real life Madalyn was quite a pill. The film does capture at various moments something you will find more of in the biography: while an outspoken rebel, Madalyn wanted to be thought of at times as a normal person, emphasizing family. At some point in the kidnapping in the film, she says, maybe in a flashback or voiceover--I don't remember now--that she most wants to be remembered as a mother. Then we see the brutal murders of her atheist son and granddaughter and finally of her. We need to remember that she was already a pariah as an unwed mother in a repressive society. I'm guessing it was the hypocrisy of white Christian America that drove her to single out atheism as her central cause among all the injustices she saw. But her environment also induced a single-minded narrowness that the more genteel "humanists" of the '60s could afford not to have--their narrowness was of a different sort--that drove her to act like the Stalin of atheism.

W. E. B. Du Bois on Religion (7): "Divine Discontent"

Kahn, Jonathon S.  Divine discontent: The Religious Imagination of W.E.B. Du Bois. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Contents:

Introduction : Divine discontent as religious faith -- What is pragmatic religious naturalism, and what does it have to do with Du Bois? -- Pragmatic religious naturalism and the binding of The souls of Black folk -- "Love for these people" : racial piety as religious devotion -- Rewriting the American jeremiad : on pluralism, Black nationalism, and a new America -- "Behold the sign of salvation-a noosed rope" : the promise and perils of Du Bois's economies of sacrifice -- Conclusion : Beyond Du Bois : toward a tradition of African American pragmatic religious naturalism.

Description:

W. E. B. Du Bois is an improbable candidate for a project in religion. His skepticism of and, even, hostility toward religion is readily established and canonically accepted. Indeed, he spent his career rejecting normative religious commitments to institutions and supernatural beliefs. In this book, Jonathon Kahn offers a fresh and controversial reading of Du Bois that seeks to overturn this view. Kahn contends that the standard treatment of Du Bois turns a deaf ear to his writings. For if we're open to their religious timbre, those writings-from his epoch-making The Souls of Black Folk to his unstudied series of parables that depict the lynching of an African American Christ-reveal a virtual obsession with religion. Du Bois's moral, literary, and political imagination is inhabited by religious rhetoric, concepts and stories. Divine Discontent recovers and introduces readers to the remarkably complex and varied religious world in Du Bois's writings. It's a world of sermons, of religious virtues such as sacrifice and piety, of jeremiads that fight for a black American nation within the larger nation. Unlike other African American religious voices at the time, however, Du Bois's religious orientation is distinctly heterodox-it exists outside the bounds of institutional Christianity. Kahn shows how Du Bois self-consciously marshals religious rhetoric, concepts, typologies, narratives, virtues, and moods in order to challenge traditional Christian worldview in which events function to confirm a divine order. Du Bois's antimetaphysical religious voice, he argues, places him firmly in the American tradition of pragmatic religious naturalism typified by William James. This innovative reading of Du Bois should appeal to scholars of American religion, intellectual history, African American Studies, and philosophy of religion. 

 This is shameless intellectual charlatanism of the worst sort, part of the reactionary turn to religion to which intellectuals have caved or opportunistically joined. In our decaying "postmodern" age, anything goes.

William Sanders Scarborough, reason, & the anti-racist struggle

There is an incredible history of Black American intellectuals, stretching back to the era of slavery, and of outstanding intellectual achievement against overwhelming odds. Intertwined with this history is a history of Black American scholars of the Greek and Roman classics, who pursued and transmitted their expertise, took on administrative functions in higher education, and as writers and activists pursued the goal of racial equality. It is a noble and inspiring history.

One such pioneer was William Sanders Scarborough (1852-1926). I will have more to say about him and the larger tradition later on. (For now, see another post: William Sanders Scarborough & Volapük in the Black Press.) Here is an excerpt from Scarborough's essay opposing the prevailing superstition of  "Race Integrity" (i.e. racial purity and superiority).

This age is regarded as one of great enlightenment. Yet With all its knowledge, there is a vast deal of ignorance or wilful blindness manifested along some lines. This state is born of many things, but when based upon traditional ideas, deep rooted, not only in error, but in prejudice and malice, there we find the most insensate manifestations.

Cherished beliefs, no matter upon what founded, have always resulted in rearing idols to be worshiped. Before such icons the world has bowed again and again. Religion has had its share of them, but the religious world also raised idol-breakers—the Iconoclasts who set to work in the eighth and ninth centuries to shatter them as did the Protestants in the Netherlands in the sixteenth century Dogmas have crept into every phase of human life and endeavor, and no doubt will continue to do so, while mankind exists with its passions, its prejudices and its weaknesses, its preconceived notions and its obstinacy; so the labors of the Iconoclast have been and will be demanded for the sake of progress.

Among the multitude of cherished superstitions to which world-masses cling at one time or another, there are none more erroneous, more mischievous than that included under the unctuous expression, “Race Integrity.” Here is heroic, legitimate work for the Iconoclast. Here his labors are an absolute necessity. But we are aware that to lay hands upon this idol, to tear it from its place, will covenant profaning the holy altar itself; that there are those who, viewing such an act, will fear that punishment to follow that overtook Uzziah when he sought simply to steady the ark on the memorable journey from Kirjathjearim. There is no doubt whether that if the ranting Dixons and Tilmans and Vardamans and men of that ilk could become avenging fates, any one who dared attempt to shatter this idol would suffer instant annihilation.

But in the progress of civilization those who would overthrow cherished superstitions have had to suffer. Galileo’s idea of the world systems ran counter to set theories, and under awful penalties he had to recant, though he whispered under his breath “E pur si muove.” “It moves for all that.” Luther, Cranmer, Latimer and countless other martyrs have suffered when seeking to pull the bandage from eyes so long blinded, and let in the light of truth. Today no one disputes Galileo’s claim; and theological freedom of thought and expression agrees with Luther and others of his school.

These men had to suffer I say; but they did good service and accepted the stake, or dungeon, or ban, bravely for the sake of truth. They shattered falsity; and the Iconoclast of today will render equally good service in dissipating the errors of the present, none of which, I repeat, is worse than the hydra-headed dogma that masquerades under the alluring title of Race Integrity—the one of all of Errors’ vile brood, most fitly designed to perpetuate race discrimination, race hatred and race conflict.

To the task of an Iconoclast I propose to devote this article, with the postulate that there is no such thing as “Race Integrity.”

SOURCE: Scarborough, William Sanders. “Race Integrity,” in The Works of William Sanders Scarborough: Black Classicist and Race Leader, edited by Michele Valerie Ronnick (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 473-481. Above excerpt from beginning of article, pp. 473-474. Original publication: Voice of the Negro 4, no. 4 (1907): 197-202.

Hubert Harrison's 130th birthday

I can't believe that, with the exception of a passing mention, I haven't blogged about the great autodidact, freethinker, radical, polymath Hubert Harrison (April 27, 1883 - December 17, 1927), the 'father of Harlem radicalism'.

Many years ago, in 1993 I believe, I was introduced to the Harrison scholar Jeff Perry by my late friend and colleague Jim Murray. I had long been interested in Harrison as a neglected figure but important to me because of his atheism and autodidacticism. As librarian/archivist of the C.L.R. James Institute, I created a web presence for Harrison and Jeff's work:

The Hubert Harrison Center

We hosted Jeff and Harrison's granddaughter for a book talk when A Hubert Harrison Reader appeared:

The C.L.R. James Institute Presents: Researching Hubert Harrison: An Evening with Jeff Perry

Since then, Jeff has developed his own web site: Jeffrey B. Perry. The first volume of his Harrison autobiography has been published:

Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918

Recently, Jeff gave a talk in Washington, DC on Harrison and Theodore W. Allen's On "The Invention of the 'White' Race". It was a masterful presentation and not dumbed down as the general culture has become. It is important to know that Allen was a serious autodidactic scholar whose research into the origins of racial slavery is different from the silly stuff that goes under the rubric of "Whiteness Studies" today, and the notion of "white skin privilege" as a means of ruling class social control could not be more different from today's self-serving cant about "white male privilege."

But today let us toast to the 130th birthday of Hubert Harrison. Here's to the resurrection of historical memory!

See also, on my web site:

Black / African-American / African Atheism

African American / Black autodidacticism, intellectual life, education: bibliography

Gender & race wars in the secular movement (1)

As a peripheral observer of the atheist/ humanist/ skeptics/ secularist movement, who only intermittently keeps up with goings-on in the movement and hardly ever reads the relevant blogs, I find my sense of reality challenged by the controversies raging within it, mostly over women's issues but also over racial issues, and of course the two combined. I have always found this movement (in the USA at least) so shallow that I cannot take seriously the terms of these debates, as the very people dissenting from the prevailing order of this movement are interested in claiming an identity in it, and this identity is something I don't believe in in the first place.

To claim oneself as a feminist skeptic or a black skeptic, for instance, to me means in the first place that however one redefines the issues, one has already accepted not only the labels but the tacit conceptual basis for these labels. While I do take seriously the issue of harassment and character defamation of women in the secular movement, I do not take so seriously the framing of the ideological issues within it. Its fundamental premises are bourgeois. This may not be so obvious because the dissenters represent or claim to represent progressive causes. However, the ideological basis of these causes and their relation to the context in which they operate changes over time.

It is difficult to see this because Americans have to confront two historical breaks which have instituted our historical amnesia: McCarthyism and Reaganism.  I gave the briefest outline of how this affects the tacit ideological underpinnings of the explicit ideological assertions of the humanist movement, in my previous post, John Shook & the banality of humanism's dead liberalism. I will quote just one paragraph, in which I distinguish the left liberals/soft socialists of the 1933 Humanist Manifesto from today's "liberals":

 All of these people were products of a different era from the generations that produced the social and cultural revolutions of the 1960s and '70s. In addition to class-based agitation, this period foregrounded the new social movements--black civil rights & black power (along with other mushrooming ethnic movements), feminism, gay rights, environmentalism, etc.  What survives of all this, however, is predicated on the destruction of the old social liberalism that was undergirded by the labor movement.  Hence what passes for liberalism now is not class-based social equality, but the equal right of members of marginalized groups to participate at all levels of class exploitation. Our black president is the logical outcome of this historical trend.

You can read the rest yourself. What I need to add is that the movements of the 1960's and '70s cannot simply be isolated as black, women's, gay, etc. movements. There existed an entire spectrum of political positions associated with each of these movements. And social class was alive as an issue in a different way than it is today, as the old social liberalism (welfare state capitalism cum industrial trade unionism) is dead as a political force. Hence the notion of what it means to be progressive today hinges on fighting the right-wing assault based on their "cultural issues": defending women's rights, black voting rights, the status of Latinos, etc. Of course there is also a battle on defending public service unions and the social safety net. Nevertheless, the framing of the battles on behalf of marginalized and discriminated-against groups is shaped by the overall political context of today.

What remains of the consideration of class is encompassed in the left bourgeois notion of intersectionality and the childish deployment of the concept of privilege. Study of the intersections of race and class and gender and class goes back a long way, but the framing of these issues is a result of the combination of progress and regress since the end of the 1970s: increased consciousness of the issues raised by the new social movements combined with the eclipse of class politics. As for privilege, this notion grew out of the radical '60s in the context of left-wing organizing confronting the labor movement. The concept is now reduced to privileged middle class professionals baiting ostensibly more privileged middle class professionals.

As for the actual marginalization of various groups within secularist etc organizations, others will have to testify. However, the situation is complicated not only by the gatekeeping practices of organizations, conference organizers, etc., and by explicit positions taken by public figures, but by the atmosphere of the blogosphere, social networking, and cyberspace generally. As for the debaters who are recognized public figures, to what extent are the debates artifacts of competing self-promoters as superficial in their pronouncements as their opponents? How much of the alleged "war on women" actually concerns the recognizable organized secularist etc. movement and how much the free-for-all of commenters on blogs and social networks and YouTube wars? The fact that harassment and character assassination should exist at all and must be endured or fought is itself depressing.  Why not just attack someone's half-baked ideas when the occasion arises, if that is what is really at stake, and leave it at that?

The freethought community, on matters of social/political thinking, is as shallow as the rest of American society. Social issues should certainly not be silenced or discouraged, but that doesn't mean everyone who brings them up is a genius. We live in a media-saturated environment in which everyone reacts to everything. but unfortunately superficiality dominates all discussions. It is typical of argument in America: he said-she said. Who wants to participate in such discussions ad nauseam?

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.: "Breakfast of Champions" (1)

"I have no culture, no humane harmony in my brains. I can't live without a culture anymore."

"Bad chemicals and bad ideas were the Yin and Yang of madness."

As I mentioned in my 2007 review Revisiting Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, I devoured Vonnegut as a teenager, but I ceased reading his novels after Breakfast of Champions (1973). I wasn't even aware of any subsequent novels for a couple decades afterwards. I am not certain why this is, but I think by the mid-'70s I absorbed everything I thought I had to learn from Vonnegut and moved on to other priorities.

But sometime in the '90s I began to rediscover music and literature of my youth I had assumed to have outgrown, and gained a new appreciation. I don't know when Vonnegut re-entered my consciousness, possibly with my renewed interest in the atheist/humanist movement, but I re-read Cat's Cradle in the month following Vonnegut's death. Then in June 2007 I read his novel Timequake (1997) and the 1999 nonfiction work Like Shaking Hands with God: A Conversation about Writing with Lee Stringer. I'm pretty sure I since read A Man Without a Country (2005), and I may have even given a brief scrute to Armageddon in Retrospect and Other New and Unpublished Writings on War and Peace (2008).  Vonnegut continues to pop up in unexpected places: Vonnegut in Hungary: postmodernism, hi-low genre hopping, & self-parody.

I decided some time ago that I wanted to re-read Breakfast of Champions. I remembered little of it: the childlike illustrations, recapitulating one's past, unvarnished bitterness, and something about the biochemistry of emotion, . . . and a piece of narrative on solipsism of vital interest to me today.

Because my local branch library rid itself of books upon installing more computers than books, I could not find Vonnegut on the shelves but had to download this novel as an e-book so I could re-read it after 39 years.

Re-reading the novel now, I am amazed to find that I had forgotten its most conspicuous themes. Does it say something about me that I remember only something about solipsism? (I'm still waiting to find what I think I'm looking for.) There is sharp criticism of the emptiness of American life, of ecological problems, of consumerism, of war. But the most persistent indictment of American society is of its racism and class inequality! I am struck by how heavy is the emphasis on race.

I note also the outrageousness of Vonnegut's science-fictional imagination. His anti-hero Kilgore Trout's garish si fi scenarios are all contained within the covers of pornographic books, per the publisher to which he sent his manuscripts. I love the combination of outlandish pulp sci fi ideas and philosophical-social content.  Vonnegut didn't need to write out Trout's novels, he had only to describe the scenarios and ideas within them. I wish I could learn to use this technique.

William R. Jones, Jr., author of 'Is God a White Racist?', dies

Here is an obituary:

Rest in Peace – Rev. Bill R. Jones, Rev Josh Pawelek, July 20, 2012

Jones died on Friday, July 13, 2012, close to his 79th birthday.

I have posted about him several times. One of my posts is referenced in this obituary:

Ralph Dumain has a helpful review of Is God a White Racist? here. 

W. E. B. Du Bois on Religion (6): Race & Biblical Metaphor?

Terrance Macmullan, University of Oregon
Treasure Hidden in the Field: The Significance of Biblical Metaphor within W.E.B. Du Bois's Conception of Race 
(March 8, 2002, session on "Du Bois and Dewey")
Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, 29th Annual Meeting, University of Southern Maine, Portland, ME, March 7-9, 2002.

This is a rather pathetic, self-contradictory, and ultimately ambiguous attempt to highlight the alleged religious dimension of Du Bois. If it were simply a matter of highlighting Du Bois' use of Biblical metaphor as rhetorical strategy, and even to suggest the symbolic reference of Du Bois' rhetoric has been overlooked, there would be nothing controversial here. But Macmullan is apparently after more. In the first paragraph Macmullan claims that Du Bois' religious rhetoric is both prophetic and pragmatic, which of course brings to mind the philosophical empty suit of Cornel West's prophetic pragmatism, or preaching with footnotes. While there may be some use to interpreting properly the notion that "that each race bears a gift", it is a mystical notion left over from the 19th century that is best left to the past.

For emphasizing Du Bois' secularism and downplaying the spiritual dimension, Macmullan criticizes Shamoon Zamir, Adolph Reed Jr., Anthony K. Appiah, Lucius Outlaw, and even Cornel West. All this while admitting time and time again that Du Bois was a freethinker. Had Macmullan stuck to statements like the following, there would be no need to object:

His use of religious language stemmed from a recognition of the fact that the idea of race in America emerged largely from a religious discourse, and that this same discourse must be instrumental in its reform.

However, Macmullan implies more with formulations such as the following:

Where Christians at the time succored Africans in America with the image of the Lamb (the chosen child of God that humbly bears suffering for the sake of universal salvation), Du Bois calls on his fellow African Americans to read their plight as the trial of a prophetic people who must boldly speak out against their oppression that others might learn the consequences of cruelty and the need for love.  

He further explicates the Biblical references, and continues:

If we take Du Bois’ biblical orientation to heart, we see that the race-specific ideals of life are prophetic gifts that are of unsurpassable value to those outside the race, yet are also potentially dangerous for the gift-bearing race. 

 The phrase "Du Bois’ biblical orientation" is misleading. Macmullan commences his conclusion:

When we attend to his use of religious language, we better see how and why the racial gift is a bridge across the racial divide made possible by the divide itself. 

 . . . and concludes:

Du Bois developed a perspective on race that is still a vital tool in ongoing efforts to heal the invidious racism of the last four centuries. However, in order to fully understand his idea of race, and in order to fully reach into the lived experiences of most people, we need to not only study the religious language at the heart of his concept but also engage the religious discourses that perpetuate outdated ideas of race.

This position is ideologically bankrupt.  There is no vital tool here, but an obsolete metaphorical framework that may have been justified for its time, but can serve no constructive purpose now. The only proper way to engage religious discourses now is to obliterate them. Furthermore, the spiritualistic concept of race is not an advance over the later and more invidious biological concept, but is rather a retreat to German Romanticism, an absolutely reactionary move in light of two essential considerations: (1) it is essentially anti-scientific; (2) it could not be more at variance with the contemporary reality of American society, in which the meaning of culture, let alone of race, is so radically mediated and altered from the past, that the very idea of a mission or a coherent social entity that could be the bearer of a mission, is utter nonsense.

How rotten is this marriage of multiculturalism and the academic retooling of classic American pragmatism? How high the moon?

Joel Augustus Rogers & the Universal Races Congress of 1911

Joel Augustus Rogers (September 6, 1880 — March 26, 1966) carried on a tireless war of ideas against the pervasive white supremacist ideology of his time. Here's another sample from his landmark 1917 book From “Superman” to Man, to which I've given a title . . .

Race, Equality of Intellect, & the History of Civilization by J. A. Rogers

Here you find a distillation of the style and content of Rogers' argumentation, which also serves as a window into the time in which he lived. There are several facets of this extract that could be annotated at length. Aside from the marshaling of facts and figures available to Rogers, note the refined and even-tempered tone of the protagonist Dixon contrasted to the frothing hysteria of his white racist antagonist. Note Rogers' insistence on a scientific perspective, to the point of pushing religion aside, for example in Dixon's argument:

“Finot, whose findings ought to be regarded as more valuable than the expressions of chose who base their arguments on sentiment or on Hebrew mythology, says,— ‘All peoples may attain this distant frontier which the brains of the whites have reached.’”

Also of historical interest is Rogers' citation here (and elsewhere in the book) of the First Universal Races Congress of 1911. The centennial of this landmark ideological intervention has so far gone virtually unnoticed, a situation which I am now endeavoring to rectify:

First Universal Races Congress, London, July 26-29, 1911: Selected Bibliography

Ideology of/in the Natural Sciences (1)

Steven; Rose, Hilary; eds. 1980. Ideology of/in the Natural Sciences, with an introductory essay by Ruth Hubbard. Cambridge, MA: Shenkman Publishing Co., 1980. xxix, 363 pp.

This book appeared under other imprints with different titles. I have digitized the table of contents. Note the links on this web page. Joseph Needham's oft-reprinted article can be found here:

"History and Human Values: A Chinese Perspective for World Science and Technology"

Commentary on Needham and related issues can be found elsewhere on this blog. I have more to say about Needham's philosophical blundering. My post on "The Politics of Neurobiology: Biologism in the Service of the State" by Rose & Rose reproduces the first paragraph of the article, along with my snide remarks about historical amnesia and the secular humanist / "new atheist" movement.

It seems that the radical science movement has been all but forgotten. It was a mixed bag, and I have my doubts even about its more rational elements, but this history seems to have been swept under the rug altogether with the radicalism of the 1970s. The first article fairly summarizes the views of Marx and Engels, with some pertinent criticism of Engels' dialectics of nature (p. 14). "The Incorporation of Science" is about the incorporation of science--and science studies--within the capitalist system. Andre Gorz attempts to locate scientists within the class structure. Mike Cooley, who analyzes the labor process in production, is a name familiar to me from elsewhere: I think it is a book called Worker or Bee?. These first four essays survey the general problem of science within the capitalist system.

"The Politics of Neurobiology" antedates the current rage of cognitive science, and the attempts of neurobiologists to read off politics and society from the structure of the brain, a thoroughly ideologically blind and reactionary endeavor.

Many may remember the scientific racism and IQ controversy of the 1970s. I was studying the history of scientific racism while the skeptics movement was preoccupied with astrology and spoon-bending.

Hans Magnus Enzenberger questions the ideology and politics of the then-burgeoning ecology movement (which we now call environmentalism), for example, the then-current "limits of growth" concern.

There are several articles on women's issues and women's place in the sciences.

Sam Anderson's article on "Science, Technology and Black Liberation" reflects the revolutionary ambitions and bombast of the time. Anderson chafes against the "special nigger" status he claims is imposed on black scientists, and bursts with the ideological energy of anti-imperialism and self-reliance (even quoting Kim Il Sung). Such rebellion against bourgeois professionalism was a hallmark of the time, but such impulses ultimately could go nowhere, esp. the impulse not to remain alienated from the black masses at large.

This type of politicization was characteristic of the time and reflected in several of the essays, predating our age of lowered expectations. Of course one must also comb this literature for elements of naivete. Perhaps the most grating element in general is the sympathy for Maoism. I have my reservations about scorching broad-based indictments of "reductionism", but clearly there are real problems addressed by this label.

Three articles are of particular philosophical interest.

Lewontin and Levins articulate and claim a more sophisticated analysis of the phenomenon of Lysenkoism than what is found in other literature. They see it as more than simple bureaucratic despotism, and they also reject Maoist attempts to rehabilitate Lysenkoism. I am not sufficiently acquainted with Lewontin's philosophical proclamations to know how they hold up. I am cautious in making big political and philosophical claims for what later became known as dialectical biology, but I'm sure E.O. Wilson is falsifying history:

"Science and ideology" by Edward O. Wilson, Vol. 8, Academic Questions, 06-01-1995.

I mentioned Needham's article, which I want to return to elsewhere, as the combination of historical materialist analysis and utter philosophical/ideological confusion is noteworthy.

Finally, there is "Ideology of/in Contemporary Physics" by Jean‑Marc Levy‑Leblond which is interesting in a number of respects. I will return to this later. For now I will note that the author addresses the institutionalization and division of labor within physics, and the epistemological problems within it, including education and popularization, and the chronic inadequacy of philosophy of science to adequately address what goes on within physics, most notably quantum mechanics.

Judaeo-Christian tradition, American civil religion, Anti-Semitism, Jeremiah Wright

Note: The following commentary was written on 18 June 2008, in the heat of the presidential campaign and all its controversies. Since I wrote this, I have been more vehement in my opposition to the notion of a Judaeo-Christian tradition, which is not only a cover for the worst crimes generally, but is specifically a cover-up of the anti-Semitic heritage of the United States and western civilization as a whole. Among other things, it is important to look at the American civil religion, not only as it revved up during the Cold War, but how it was used, dishonestly, in my view, in the anti-Nazi propaganda of World War II. Posters of that period are quite revealing: a picture of the dagger of Nazism piercing the Holy Bible, a testimonial from Joe Lewis saying we will win because God is on our side, etc. All of this was a cover-up of the real nature of the fascist threat and the complicity of Allied powers including the USA in racism, anti-Semitism, and fascism, including direct ideological, commercial, and technological ties between American big business and the Nazis, not to mention the vile history of the "Christian" nations in fostering all three of these scourges against humanity.

The most widely recognized refutation of the myth appears to be:

Cohen, Arthur A. The Myth of the Judeo-Christian Tradition. Harper & Row, New York, 1970.

---

The Spring 2008 issue of the AAH Examiner [newsletter of African Americans for Humanism] is exceptionally topical, or so it seems due to the two articles on the Obama/Wright issue. I can't argue with Gerry Dantone's "Almost Everyone Should Leave Church." Mel Reeves' "Sacred Cows, Black Jesus, and Civil Religion", however, struck me as an argument with a number of gaps in it. I haven't studied the concept of civil religion in detail, but my impressionistic take on it, which is based on the conditions under which I grew up, was somewhat jarred by Reeves' argument.

My notion of American civil religion is extremely minimalistic, hence while I see the concept justifying a general national mythology, I don't immediately see it as justifying any particular action or state of affairs in American history.

This is because, while the public schools I attended in Buffalo taught us American exceptionalism, and they indeed taught us about Manifest Destiny, they fostered a certain doublethink whereby America could be glorified without justifying its arguably criminal actions of the past. Popular culture was also quite minimalistic, judging by my memories of television. American civil religion, even among the most liberal sectors of the population, was affected by McCarthyism and the Cold War, i.e. America's war against "godless communism". But this, too, was promoted in my neck of the woods in the most minimalist of ways. Eisenhower (before my conscious life began) talked about the Judaeo-Christian tradition, a notion that gained some currency as a result of World War II. Eisenhower, after all, had liberated the Nazi death camps, and it would have been most tasteless to refer to America as a Christian nation; so, playing it safe, he invoked this newly-forged concoction of a Judaeo-Christian tradition. I didn't know much about Eisenhower, as my earliest memory of politics is the Kennedy-Nixon race (but not of the controversy surrounding JFK's Catholicism, which I could not have understood at that age). But my experience of television was consistent with a minimalist conception. A telling example is an episode of the very liberal TV series The Twilight Zone, in which Burgess Meredith is condemned to death by a totalitarian state declaring the state has decreed that God does not exist, and Meredith's character defiantly declares that there is a God, and tranquilly awaits execution while reading the Bible. This is the type of civic religion I was exposed to.

Also, both education and popular culture encouraged a doublethink about American history. On the one hand, American exceptionalism, and on the other, occasional admissions of America's past crimes. There were a couple of TV docudramas even in the early '60s, one about Harriet Tubman, and cowboys-and-Indians lore notwithstanding, the injustices against the Indians were no secret. All of this was in accord with the dominant liberalism of the time.

So the American civil religion, as I understood it, was:

(1) America is exceptional;
(2) America is underwritten by the Judaeo-Christian tradition;
(3) America is great because we can confess and correct our mistakes; hence at the end of the day, the system works.

Somewhere along the line, disillusioned by all the ruckus of the late '60s, I concluded that all this was a load of crap. I don't recall a specific turning point, but by 1973 I opted out of the American mythos.

Given my indoctrination in a minimalist version of the American mythos, it would not be immediately apparent to me that Jeremiah Wright opposes the American civic religion. A more obvious candidate would be Malcolm X, who even predates this black liberation theology bullshit of the late '60s. But somehow I never thought to think of Malcolm X in this way. So evidently I did not thoroughly research just what the concept of civic religion entails. Or perhaps I just assumed that a religious person is not the one to oppose a civil religion.

One thing I have been questioning though, is this notion of a "Judaeo-Christian tradition". Its history has been outlined in this article, which I've planned to review:

Silk, Mark. "Notes on the Judaeo-Christian Tradition in America," American Quarterly, 36 (1984): 65-85.

The notion has been advocated and refuted by Jews and Christians of various political and theological persuasions. Some, but not even a majority, of objections came from militant secularists, such as Sidney Hook in the 1940s. There are several bases for objections to this notion, some based on theology and religion, some on sociopolitical considerations. The objection that interests me most is that the token inclusion of Judaism in the tradition is actually a mask for Christian anti-Semitism. I don't recall a specific allegation that Jewish adherence to this notion is a form of Uncle-Tomism, but that would be the logical corollary. And I concur with both propositions. The political resuscitation of redneck America under the banner of Reagan awakened a visceral hostility against Christian America that had not been a conscious issue for me.

But put that aside for now, while I return to the concept of American civil religion. It seems that the concept involves these factors:

(1) the mythos of America undergirded by religious principles;
(2) the mythos of America as a social-political entity—its exceptionalism, essential goodness, soundness, etc.;
(3) the relation between (1) and (2);
(4) the justification of American actions and policies, past and present, on the basis of this mythos.

It must be the inclusion of (4) in Reeves' argument that threw me for a loop, and I guess when I think of civil religion I mostly think of (1); i.e. obligatory religiosity in America.

Now the argument that a liberation theology in general challenges the American civil religion depends on what the latter implies politically. In Reeves' schema, Christian abolitionists opposing slavery would also oppose the American civil religion. I never thought of it this way, and while I'm not in principle opposed to this line of thinking, I don't find it compelling. I see Frederick Douglass challenging all the components of the civil religion characterized by Reeves. But I also see this tradition of dissent as very American.

There are after all, radical versions of Americanism. I'm most familiar with the secular ones, I haven't thought much about religious variants. Earl Robinson's "Ballad for Americans" is what we would today call multicultural. Ralph Ellison's Americanism was non-religious. Whatever religious or mystical beliefs held by black cultural figures I can think of, mostly jazz musicians, their expressions of Americanism don't appear to be predicated on any non-secular basis.

Anyway, I can see there are some holes in my knowledge of the meaning of the concept of civil religion. I gave a quick scrute to some Wikipedia and other articles as a first step in ameliorating the situation:

Wikipedia articles:
Civil religion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_religion
American civil religion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_civil_religion
Judeo-Christian
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judeo-Christian

and:
Marty, Martin E. "A Judeo-Christian Looks at the Judeo-Christian Tradition", The Christian Century, October 5, 1986, pp. 858-860.
http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=188

In the end, Reeves appears to justify Wright, which I find unacceptable. Replacing one mythology with another works for bourgeois nationalists, but in the end does not serve human emancipation. Reeves was derelict in this regard. I was not shocked by Wright, as I've heard all this before, and I don't think he's totally crazy, but he is an obscurantist and crackpot in his own right, like any other black nationalist jackleg preacher jackass I've encountered over the decades. So I see no reason to defend Wright, but only to oppose the double standard.

It doesn't even take much of a civic religion to keep white Americans as clueless as they are. Obama notwithstanding, if you look at political discourse among average American citizens including journalists, even if they are liberal (whatever that means nowadays), they all talk as if white people are the only real people inhabiting this nation. Other groups are occasionally recognized as other groups, but not as if they enter into the personal reality of white people discussing politics.

Darwin vs. slavery

February 12 was the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin. I attended two major celebrations of the occasion. Naturally, the press is full of news of this bicentennial. One particular aspect of Darwin stood out for me. Let's begin with this article.

"Charles Darwin's research to prove evolution was motivated by his desire to end slavery,"
by Richard Gray, Science Correspondent, 24 Jan 2009, The Daily Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/sciencenews...

"Charles Darwin, the scientist whose theories have become a corner stone of modern biology, was motivated to carry out his famous research by a desire to rid the world of slavery, according to a new book."

The new book:

Desmond, Adrian J.; Moore, James. Darwin’s Sacred Cause: How a Hatred of Slavery Shaped Darwin’s Views on Human Evolution. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009.

See also this review:

"Darwin's Sacred Cause - Ending Racism And Slavery"
February 5th 2009
http://www.scientificblogging.com/news_releases/darwins_sacred_caus...

Here is an article hot off the press, not online:

"Darwin's Views on Race Matter" by R.G. Price
Free Inquiry, Volume 29 Number 2, February / March 2009, pp. 40-44.

Price rebuts the lies being touted by the religious right blaming Darwin for slavery, racism, and Hitler, showing that Darwin was progressive for his day and it was actually Christianity that justified African slavery, an inconvenient truth for the Right to cover up.

The slander campaign against Darwin is intense. See also this intensive exposition by Price:

"The Mis-portrayal of Darwin as a Racist"
By R.G. Price - June 24, 2006
http://www.rationalrevolution.net/articles/darwin_nazism.htm

Even more disturbing than the predictable onslaught of the religious right is the black contribution to the slander campaign. For example:

In 2001 African American State Representative Sharon Broome of Louisiana sponsored a resolution to condemn "Darwinist ideology" as racist and liken it to Nazism.

The text of the resolution follows in full.

Is there any nation in the Western world more saturated with ignorance than the USA?

White Jesus, Black Bondage

Norm R. Allen Jr., "A Divinely Sanctioned Mess, Free Inquiry, Volume 29 Number 2, February / March 2009, pp. 60-1.

Review of: Bondage and the Bible: DVD Written and Directed by D. Eric Harmon, 2008, $19.95.

D. Eric Harmon, an African-American freethinker, has produced this DVD, which is available at www.bondageandthebible.com. Harmon interviews a wide swath of people to ascertain whether biblical teachings have had a deleterious effect on black Americans. A prime example would be the Bible's sanctioning of slavery. Many respondents acknowledge this problem; some rationalize it by claiming the Bible should be read with the "spiritual mind". The portrayal of a white Jesus in black churches was asserted across the board to contribute to black low self-esteem.

Other issues are discussed in this video; for example, the promotion of greed among prominent black televangelists, homophobia, and sexual exploitation of women. Non-Christians are given credit for playing key roles in the black liberation struggle.

Michael Shermer, racism & social "science"

I can't believe I forgot to blog on this priceless specimen of pseudoscientific obscurantism. The following, constructed from old e-mails, is fragmentary. I don't think I ever wrote out my entire analysis of why this article by Shermer is utterly bankrupt. Perhaps you will be able to see it for yourselves.

08 Jan 2007
We're all racists, unconsciously: Kramer just blurted out what unfortunately comes naturally to all of us.
By Michael Shermer, L.A. Times, November 24, 2006
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-oe-shermer24nov24,1,5226012.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

. . . Stumbling on this old article, I find myself amazed that Shermer has the cheek to pronounce himself a scientific expert on matters such as these. He makes some remarkable extrapolations from these little experiments and declares, based on his expert knowledge of evolutionary theory, that the biases he lists are simply natural in-group out-group programming instilled in us by evolution. And that's his explanation in toto. This, from an alleged skeptic. With friends like Shermer, Harris, and Dawkins to explain sociopolitical realities to the world in the name of science as childishly as they do, who needs enemies?

16 Jan 2007

While a couple other people [on the now-defunct Freethought Forum] expressed skepticism viz. the psychological experiments in question, nobody saw the essential problems with Shermer's

BS. The secular humanist community is simply not prepared to move beyond its shallow scientism to a wider methodological basis for explaining social phenomena. And these postmodernist shits have only made the job more difficult.

I find I can't get through a single day of intellectual work without addressing the fundamental dichotomy at the highest level.

I am operating with this duality of scientism and irrationalism at a very high level, because in fact even those few who recognize the duality have not refined their analysis sufficiently or applied it to contemporary situations. I've been addressing it in the secular humanist/atheist community, and these people are not prepared to deal with it. I've been questioning their heroes Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, Shermer, Wilson, etc. and they can't deal with it. The one person I found [in this particular forum] who admits of my fundamental criticism is a dingbat who's into postmodernism and queer theory. This is the ideological landscape we're living on.

Kwame Nkrumah's ideology: sources & contradictions

McClendon, John. "On Assessing the Ideological Impact of Garveyism on Nkrumaism: Political Symbolism Contra Theoretical Substance," APA Newsletter on Philosophy and the Black Experience, vol. 2., no. 2, Spring 2003, pp. 61-72.

A positive spin on Nkrumah's cited influence from Marcus Garvey is often cited, but Nkrumah's final rejection of Garveyism is almost always conveniently omitted. McClendon searches for the root of Nkrumah's world view. He goes back to Nkrumah's early engagement with Christianity, evolving from Catholicism to Protestantism, and an inherent tension with African traditionalism even when the two coalesce. McClendon claims that Christianity is ineluctably tied to European imperialism, but find that what it shares in common with African traditionalism is philosophical idealism.

Doctrinaire Christianity, as the cultural expression of Western imperialism, insists on not only conferring the religious judgment that African traditionalism is a form of animistic paganism but also levies the imperialist (cultural) judgment that African traditionalism is primitive. The cultural imperatives inscribed in the Christian missionary movement works hand in glove with the political economic aims of Western imperialism. The common aim continues, for both the Christian missionary and the colonial mercenary, in terms of absolute rule over Africa. Thus colonial domination includes spiritual, cultural and above all political economic control. In light of these contradictions, Nkrumah, as a formally educated (or Western trained) African, attempts to find suitable philosophical resolution wherein the affirmation of African identity is on African rather than Western terms.

And:

The import of Nkrumah’s sustaining of African traditionalism resides in its function as the basis of African humanity. The very nature of being human is mediated through the particularity of African traditional culture. Universality, on these terms, cannot be abstracted from particularity. The particular is always an instance of the universal for Nkrumah. [. . . . ] Though Nkrumah explains this humanist aspect of African traditionalism later in Consciencism; as we shall see, it is an integral part of his worldview from his start as a student in Ghana.

Nkrumah considers African traditionalism to be intrinsically humanist and socialist as opposed to Christianity, and effectively anti-imperialist.

McClendon also seeks to know why Nkrumah would resort to Ethiopianism. The answer can be found in its opposition to anti-African redemptionism which imposes itself on African culture, a stance inherited from 19th century black nationalism. Garvey's adherence to redemptionism proves a sticking point for Nkrumah.

Garveyism serves as buttress for Nkrumah’s assault on cultural imperialism and, in turn, Marxism-Leninism provides a theory of anti-imperialism. Together they expand his nationalism beyond African traditionalism because they engender an appropriately suited nationalism i.e. a modern nationalism capable of confronting and combating national oppression and colonialism. Therefore, the content of Nkrumah’s socio-political philosophy is fashioned by a dialectical relationship between his African nationalism (at substance African traditionalism) with the critical infusion of Garveyism and Marxism-Leninism.

Crucial to Nkrumah's development was his decision to study in the USA instead of Britain. It was an expression of his anticolonialism, yet Nkrumah found himself neck-deep in American apartheid. Furthermore, Nkrumah was irritated with the pervasive bias of Western education. At Lincoln University, Nkrumah was able to imbibe the highest achievements of Western thought and to pursue African history at the same time in association with Black American scholars.

Nkrumah also held Western education amenable to amalgamation with traditional African culture.

These are the roots of Nkrumah's future Consciencism.

My thesis that Nkrumah’s nationalism is in substance African traditionalism is not to claim that his nationalism is reducible to traditionalism. Nkrumah in dialectically incorporating Western culture into African traditionalism recognizes therein the omnipresence of cultural crisis. Nonetheless, the task of forging a modern nationalism can only come by virtue of this crisis, the necessary birth pains for a new African civilization.

Others, such as John H. Clarke, never understood or appreciated Nkrumah's attempted synthesis.

In the USA, Nkrumah was directly connected to the Garvey movement. But the Garveyite movement appears to have inspired Nkrumah only on an emotional and symbolic level, while Nkrumah was intellectually influenced by Marxism. It is also noteworthy that the long time domination of pan-Africanism by Americans, redolent of redemptionism, eventually shifted to a greater dominance of an African leadership. And Nkrumah could not accept Garveyite redemptionism, nor his compromises with imperialism, not to mention Garvey's pro-capitalist and fascist ideology.

McClendon addresses Appiah's notion of intrinsic racism, associated with nationalism, and questions whether this is applicable to Nkrumah's conception of Pan-Africanism, as Appiah charges. But "Appiah fails to recognize the import of Nkrumah’s distinction regarding Black and African nationalism."

COMMENT: McClendon's contextualization of Nkrumah's developing ideology is eye-opening. It's been decades since I read Consciencism, but it never occurred to me to pursue it in this fashion. My memory has dimmed, but as I recall, the book opened with a concise, exceptionally articulate argument for materialism, followed by a lame attempt to make modern socialism congruent with traditional African society. I also think that one edition of the book includes an appendix giving a vacuous and pretentious argument for African liberation using the symbolism of set theory. And the very notion of coining a new philosophy just to call it African struck me as even pettier than the crypto-nationalism of big-time communist dictators like Stalin and Mao. Consciencism is not a real philosophy but an ideology with a philosophical component in it, i.e. the materialist component. But McClendon's essay explains how such an ideology came to be.

Sam Harris, Islam, neurophysiology & historical illiteracy

So far on this blog I concentrated my criticism of Sam Harris on his op-ed piece "Head-in-the-Sand Liberals". While he is eloquent on the need to oppose "faith", he is a very ignorant man on most other things. Here is a sample, his most recent piece on the threat of Islam:

Losing Our Spines to Save Our Necks, The Huffington Post, posted May 5, 2008

Harris complains about the cowardice in the West of publicizing attacks on Islam, the Koran, Muhammed, etc., due to the fear of violent retaliation. He insists that the religion of Islam is intrinsically related to Islamic political violence and wonders where the Muslim moderates are in speaking up against it. He insists on the right of free speech, which he counterposes to the barbarism of Muslims ready to do away with anyone who dares to exercise it in the criticism of Islam. There are, however, some gaps in Harris' argument. He has no real notion of social causality. Doctrines produce behavior, but what produces and sustains doctrines, the interpretation of doctrines, and the translation of doctrines into action? What are the institutions that reinforce dispositions, convey information, and instigate actions? And what about the context in which information is conveyed? The problem begins in the very first sentence:

Geert Wilders, conservative Dutch politician and provocateur, has become the latest projectile in the world's most important culture war: the zero-sum conflict between civil society and traditional Islam.

Wilders is under a death threat for a documentary film denouncing Islam. If Wilders has a right to free speech, and Islam is bad, then surely Wilders should be defended. But note at the outset Wilders is described as "conservative Dutch politician and provocateur". Wouldn't this set off some alarm bell to anyone not in a coma? One might want to know something about what Wilders' politics is all about, how it relates to the Netherlands's Muslim population, and to what extent this population refuses to conform to West European secular democratic norms, and to what extent they are under siege by European right-wing hate groups. What is Wilders' goal in defaming Islam; is it part of an illegitimate assault on the immigrant population? I don't know the answers to any of these questions, but I think they are essential to an assessment of the situation.

Or perhaps Wilders' motive and political agenda are irrelevant to the content of his film: if the content is sound, then what does the political context in which it is generated matter? And regardless of the morality of the situation, doesn't Wilders have any absolute right to free speech in any case? Would anything be different were a person of Muslim origin to circulate anti-Islamic materials, as many, including most famously, Ayaan Hirsi Alihas done?

I have no problem with the denigration of Islam as a general principle, but there is no action that doesn't have a context, and we are deprived of the real social context in which Wilders' film is circulating. We don't know, for example, what percentage of the local Muslim population supported or approved of the assassination of Theo van Gogh, or how the information about the provocative cartoons or this film is communicated to the rest of the Muslim world to stimulate retaliation.

What about Harris' characterization of the global geopolitical situation? Can the very concept of "culture war" explain the world situation? Is it true that the the struggle over Islam is the world's most important culture war? And that the "zero-sum conflict" between Islam and civil society makes sense as an explanatory framework for understanding the world system?

The fact is, Harris is an ignoramus. He lacks the elementary tools to analyze society, and he knows nothing of history. He deduces society from fragmentary facts and abstract principles, as if belief systems are suspended in air and just generate social realities . . . or, are just rooted in the physiology of the brain.

Which brings to mind his only area of expertise. On his web site he presents four surveys, one or more of which he requests his readers to fill out, as part of a research project on the neurophysiology of religion:

Research Volunteers Needed

We are preparing to run another fMRI study of belief and disbelief, and we need volunteers to help us refine our experimental stimuli. This promises to be the first study of religious faith at the level of the brain.

I suggest you take a look at one or more of these questionnaires. I filled them all out. Perhaps they are not as idiotic as they seem. I don't remember much about survey design and psychological testing, but I'm guessing that the questions are designed to elicit telltale responses while concealing their purpose from the test-taker, so that the testees reveal more about themselves than they consciously intend. Still, it's hard not to think that these questionnaires are utterly ridiculous and can't possibly measure what they purport to measure. And can you even imagine the ideological biases of the survey designer? And for all we know, people who concoct questionnaires like these themselves belong in a straight jacket and a rubber room.

But more generally, the question must be asked: what can it mean to ascertain religious faith based upon the study of brain physiology? Of course we can gain knowledge about how dysfunctional thinking operates on the basis of the physiological and psychological mechanisms at work. But separated from real behavior in social context, they are just abstractions, descriptions of abstractly delineated processes. Everyone concedes that environmental stimuli trigger these brain processes, but then don't we have to understand just what the "environment" is, and how its structure and history--i.e. the structure and history of society--create a structure and history of responses and dispositions in the brain? How can we actually know about the genesis of and mechanisms of social reinforcement of belief systems by studying brain physiology in abstracto?

It's too bad people like Harris cannot learn the lessons of the Soviet developmental psychologist Lev Vygotsky, for starters. The same ideological naivete gets repeated over and over. We get a regression to metaphysical abstractions of social behavior--in-/out-groups, prejudice, etc.--in combination with natural-scientifically conceived biological constants, in order to explain behavior, and real society and history drop out of the picture. Instead of institutional analysis combined with the essential concept of ideology, we get pseudo-scientific garbage like "memes" and pseudo-Darwinian explanations of economic systems and social history. But instead of going after the likes of Dawkins, Shermer, and Wilson, let me focus on the problems of self-enclosed biological explanations.

Yesterday I happened upon perhaps the worst "scholarly" book on bigotry I have ever seen:

Dozier, Rush W., Jr. Why We Hate: Understanding, Curbing, and Eliminating Hate in Ourselves and Our World. Chicago: Contemporary Books, 2002. Publisher description.

Perusing the book, and reviewing the bibliography, I am astounded how completely devoid it is of something you will find in all serious books on this subject--real information about society and history. There is no usable social knowledge or information in this crappy book: it's all about brain physiology combined with platitudinizing. I cannot conceive of anything with scientific pretensions more disgraceful.

This is the same clueless ignorant level on which Harris operates. And most other prominent public atheists on the American scene are no better. They are disgraceful representatives of atheism, not because they are too haughty and confrontational in their atheism, but because they are politically bankrupt. With what they contribute to popular enlightenment with one hand, they take back with the other. These people have contributed mightily to the provincialism and miseducation of their fans regarding the nature of their society. Their science-worship itself is a source of ideological mystification.

Is God a white racist?

Jones, William R. Is God a White Racist?: A Preamble to Black Theology. New York: Doubleday, 1973.

Whatever else you might say, anyone who could come up with a book title like Is God a White Racist? deserves a medal. Jones contains all the contradictions of a religious humanism: he dwells ideologically within the parameters of religious mythology while attempting to clean it up at the same time and make it answer to more enlightened needs. Except for the fact that it forces theologians to face up to certain questionable features of their superstitions, the reinterpretation of said superstition does not topple its cognitive authority, but perpetuates the imprisonment of intellectual energy within ideology.

The demythologization and higher criticism of religion has a history with a certain nobility in its earlier stages. Spinoza already did this to Judaism, taking considerable risk in an era before this was permissible. Left Hegelianism made a decisive historical contribution, following from the ambiguities of Hegel's position to David Strauss (also passing through Heinrich Heine), to the revolutionization of philosophy itself as well as religious criticism via the Young Hegelians from Bruno Bauer to Ludwig Feuerbach to Max Stirner and Karl Marx. However, not recognizing Marx's rupture of the closed circle of ideology, subsequent liberalizing or modernizing of religions tends to lapse into equivocating make-believe, the philosophy of "as if", and the exploitation of the malleability of symbolism. Religious liberalism and liberation theology have been pulling a sleight-of-hand for some time, but now religious fascism resurfaces to topple the liberal/radical facade.

In addition to the great title, Jones pushes the envelope on theodicy as the deciding issue in theology: whose side is God on? If you're interested in theology, you will find his pushing has made an impact and holds some interest. At the end of the day, if you have any sense you will find that secular humanism beats out the humanocentric theism Jones poses as the only other viable alternative. So maybe you can escape after all.

In his writings Jones has performed one other service: he coined a term that is absolutely hilarious— Whitianity!

To be thorough, he should have called its theological tradition Honkeology.

Jones was influenced most notably by existentialism and post-Holocaust Jewish theology. Albert Camus' The Rebel suggests that Golgotha can also be interpreted as divine misanthropy. Hence occasions of suffering—events in the world— lend themselves equally to opposing interpretations, referred to by Jones as multievidentiality. (8) Jones reviews skepticism about God's benevolence in black American literature. Especially notable is a passage in Nella Larsen's Passing. (38-9) Part I, then, sets up the issue of divine racism.

Part II is an internal critique of black theology, particularly of Joseph Washington, James Cone, Albert Cleage, Major Jones, J. Deotis Roberts. The non-religious reader will probably be least interested in this section.

Part III—Toward a Black Theodicy for Today—is the punchline, the most important section for those not sympathetic to the subject matter. In this section, Chapter XI—Toward a Prolegomenon to Black Theology (169-184)—is the chapter you most want to read. Jones argues that only two models for black liberation theology are viable—secular humanism and humanocentric theism. (172) Secular humanism is a viable option, but Jones prefers to explore the possibilities of humanocentric theism as the last hope for theism.

Jones was influenced by the parallel experience of Jewish suffering, the Holocaust being the last straw. He undertakes an analysis of the work of Richard Rubenstein, After Auschwitz, in the balance of this chapter. (175-184) Rubinstein rejects the standard conception of God and God's role in history. God is really the cannibal goddess Earth! The only Messiah is death. Jones takes up the challenge to show that this alternate theodicy is not the only alternative. Rubinstein rejects secular humanism. Jones refutes this rejection, citing Sartre's Anti-Semite and Jew. Jones cannot accept Rubinstein's pessimistic conclusions.

The final chapter—XII: Humanocentric Theism: A Theistic Framework for Ethnic Suffering— is Jones' alternative. The logic of his position is more interesting to me than the position itself. It removes the charge of white racism by stripping God of his sovereignty over human history. It also removes any excuses for the white oppressor. It also removes the option of quietism for the oppressed. (195)

Further references:

Professor Emeritus, Dr. William R. Jones

Toward an Interim Assessment of Black Theology by William R. Jones

Theism and Religious Humanism: The Chasm Narrows by William R. Jones, The Christian Century, May 21, 1975, pp. 520-525.

Is God a White Racist?: A Preamble to Black Theology by William R. Jones reviewed by William Muehl

“Is God a White Racist?”, sermon by Rev. Dan Harper