The reasonableness of atheism

The Jamaican national broadsheet The Gleaner published during the last two weeks columns by one of its columnists, Ian Boyne, attacking atheists. You can find them here and here. Today the paper published my response to Boyne. I replicate that response below.

Over the last two weeks, Ian Boyne decided to call a spade a spade as far as us annoying atheists are concerned. They were two overly long columns, saturated with names of people he likes and scorns. Their authority typically is celebrated by means of affiliation or Oxford University generally.

Boyne even manages to ascribe competencies to Christian writers he agrees with that they demonstrably do not have. Alistair McGrath, a Christian theologian trained in history whose qualifications even include a doctorate in molecular biology, is declared without further ado a philosopher by Mr Boyne.

While he says he is braced for ad hominem attacks by 'trite atheists', it strikes me that such generalised statements about a very diverse group of people are, well, ad hominem themselves, aren't they? Reading his columns, I tried to understand what his message to the reading public is other than walking away with the bragging rights of having read more books than those 'trite atheists'.

Well, I have only one column in which to respond to Mr Boyne. I am actually a trained philosopher, in fact a professor of philosophy, and I happen to be an atheist. I can truthfully say that I've read the works of most people he mentions in his columns. Some of these authors I happen to know well personally. Alas, that has not persuaded me of the reasonableness of theism, and that, surely, is what Mr Boyne is after.

I will not spend the next few paragraphs dropping names on you, or at least there will be very few. I will focus on arguments, not prestige, affiliation and whatnot. What I will do is to address - hidden under all those names and Oxford University Press volumes - what I take to be Mr Boyne's main bones of contention with philosophical atheists.

They seem to be these: As human beings, our capacity to understand things in the world is limited by our biological limitations. There could be realities that are beyond our scientific abilities to discover.

Among others, one of Mr Boyne's favourite Christian apologists, Alvin Plantinga, has developed this kind of argument. He claims that we would have no reason to assume that our cognitive faculties are reliable if they were just the product of evolutionary processes. So, he ends up proposing a form of evolution - many of Mr Boyne's fellow Christians will shudder in disbelief - that includes an element of divine guidance, as only that would give us reason to trust our faculties. After all, God wouldn't fool around with us, or would He/She/It? Well, most philosophical atheists happen to be philosophical naturalists. Guilty as charged, Mr Boyne.

We acknowledge our scientific limitations. To us, the fact that our intellectual capacities are limited by the state of our evolution is not evidence that there is something else to be discovered that is outside our senses and that we just cannot grasp.

BOYNE DESPERATE

Incidentally, talking in this context vaguely about 'non-scientific ways of knowing', as Mr Boyne does, sounds a tad bit desperate to me. Unless he, or his fellow Christian apologists, give us a bit more meat to play with, let me just say that I do think this theological emperor is pretty naked. It appears to me that naturalistic processes provide us with the necessary reliability in selecting true beliefs about the world around us.

How can we test that claim? One way would be to point to our never-ending and ever-accelerating scientific progress. We know more about the world and the universe than we ever did. Insisting that there could be something else around us that we just cannot grasp by means of scientific inquiry is, for all practical intent and purposes, just hand-waving by the religious.

Is it possible that there is something else in the universe that we cannot grasp because of how we have evolved? Sure, it's possible. Just as it is possible that our planet rests on a metaphysical teapot that our scientific methods have so far been unable to discover and that requires Boynian 'non-scientific ways of knowing' to understand it.

What I am trying to get at is that raising this exceedingly unlikely possibility is clutching at straws. It's a desperate attempt by theists to avoid drowning in an ever-increasing sea of scientific knowledge.

So, even if Professor Schellenberg has a philosophical point, nothing follows with regard to the reasonableness of theism. Perhaps that is the reason why he is an atheist. At the end of the day, you have to assign probabilities to these sorts of theoretical possibilities. And the probabilities are vanishingly low for the God proposition.

To support his views, Mr Boyne cites an atheistic philosopher, Thomas Nagel, at great length. The thing about Nagel is that his book on the subject matter (as well as an earlier article in a leading philosophy journal) was ripped to pieces by evolutionary biologists and philosophers specialising in the study of biology. Nagel does not appear to have a sound grasp of

evolutionary theory. Hence his tacit support for 'intelligent design' is not based on a sound understanding of the scientific matters at stake.

MISPLACED EXCITEMENT

Mr Boyne also gets excited about another poster boy of current-day Christian apologetics, William Lane Craig. Boyne claims that he has seen many an atheist debate Lane Craig, but he has not seen a single one floor him. Funnily enough, I have seen many of these debates, too, and it seems to me that Lane-Craig looks bad in pretty all of them, but so it goes, I guess. You'll always give more credence to those batting on your team.

Lane Craig's claim to fame has been his attempt to recycle medieval Christian and Islamic theologians' attempts at proving the existence of God by means of a cosmological argument.

Basically what's done in this argument is to use remarkable features of our natural world, particularly its origin in the Big Bang about 14 billion years ago, and posit God as the best explanation. Of course, 'God' is really a place-holder indicating what we do not know today. If history is anything to go by, we are likely able to find out tomorrow.

However, even if we never found out, 'God' would still not constitute an explanation for things we do not understand in the world around us. And if we do find out, there would probably be some further mystery for which 'God' will be offered as an 'explanation'.

At the heart of this all, seemingly, is the need of religious believers to attain something approaching certainty about their various godly saviours. If they had simply decided to stick to believing that their God exists, everything would be hunky-dory. But no, they started fantasising about ways of 'knowing' about their invisible friend in the sky. They tried hard to develop logical proofs for the existence of their gods, and what not else. All that failed.

Even if one granted them everything they're saying about the limitations of scientific inquiry, nothing follows at all with regard to the existence of 'God'. Scientists would have no problems at all adapting their methods if they turned out to deliver new insights. Meanwhile, vague reference to 'non-scientific ways of knowing' won't do.

To give credit where credit is due, Mr Boyne seems to search seriously for answers to obvious doubts that he must have about his beliefs. Why else would he spend this much time engaging in debates with 'trite' atheists in the pages of this paper? After all, he could squander words beating up on homosexuals, as his fellow columnist Mr Espeut is wont to do.

It's a good thing that Mr Boyne, even if he cannot let go of his beliefs, is looking sincerely at the arguments. There is some empirical evidence to suggest many people might never be able to let go of their deeply held religious beliefs. It could well be biological and irreversible. No, I am not kidding here. In case you care about religiosity as a biological phenomenon, you might want to check out Andrew Newberg and Eugene D Aquili's book Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief.

Udo Schuklenk is a professor of philosophy at Queen's University in Kingston, Canada, and with Russell Blackford co-author of '50 Great Myths About Atheism'. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com. Schuklenk tweets @Schuklenk

'Gays Made, Not Born' - On the Confused State of the Religious Mind

Call it an easy target, blame me for going after the intellectually weak, but what is it about the Catholic pre-occupation with other people's sex lives and identities. And why are they consistently so confused both about the meaning of facts when it comes to sexual orientation as well as about the normative issues?

Jamaican Catholic Deacon Peter Espeut is as good an example as any to show what I am concerned about. Jamaica being a militantly anti-gay country where anti-gay discrimination was recently even enshrined in the country's constitution, courtesy to a large extent of campaigners like Catholic-Deacon-sociologist-turned-sex-expert Peter Espeut. Espeut writes in today's edition of the Jamaica Gleaner that gays are made, and that we are not born that way. Do read his contribution to public debate on that island to make sense of what follows below.

He takes the current absence of conclusive evidence of a genetic causation of homosexuality as evidence of a non-genetic causation of homosexuality. To give you just one example to illustrate how absurd this view of the nature of scientific inquiry is: According to Espeut's logic, HIV could not have been the cause of AIDS when it hadn't been discovered. Now, I am not suggesting that there is a genetic cause of sexual orientation, but to claim, as Espeut does, that it cannot have one because there isn't conclusive evidence at a certain point in time (ie today), is remarkably stupid. Perhaps that level of critical thinking skills is what predestines one to become a columnist for one of Jamaica's daily papers. Let's just note that this view on the causation issue constitutes a basic logic error and move on.

He then makes another logic error, and compounds it with plenty of excited exclamation marks. The exclamation marks have to do with not-blameworthy human characteristics such as the colour of our skin. As Espeut notes, 'we are born that way.' Implied is that we didn't choose to be that way, and that we are what we are in an immutable sense. Well, the thing is, there's plenty of things we have not chosen, yet they are immutable. Think about our language. Did we consciously choose it? Can we consciously dump it? Not quite. So, immutability is quite unrelated to the 'born that way' proposition. I do apologise for not using exclamation marks here, but do feel free to add them for emphasis in your mind.

Not surprisingly, Espeut being a sociologist, he then moves on to the next mistake, namely seeing the cause of sexual orientation in some parental behaviour. After all, having unjustifiably excluded genetic factors (and presumably, even though he doesn't say it, any number of possible non-social environmental factors), Espeut moves right on to his favourite possible causes of sexual orientation. Being a good sociologist he offers a lot of possible - but entirely speculative! - stuff, just in case.

He writes, 'But what causes gender-conforming and gender-non-conforming behaviour? Hormone imbalances may be one explanation. Others suggest that domineering mothers and ineffectual fathers may interfere with socialisation; and still others suggest that homosexuality may be triggered by having sexual encounters with members of one's own sex at an early age that prove to be very satisfying.'

As I noted before, Catholic Church staff and lay people have a perverse fascination with other people's sex lives. For the fun of it, let me note that 'hormone imbalances' invariably would invariably have causative genetic components. But hey, sociologists... - It is also worth noting that the language that is deployed here isn't exactly descriptive sociology, rather it is Catholic theology dressed up in pseudo-academic language. 'Domineering mothers', 'ineffectual fathers', plus (we are in Jamaica after all, so this still flies in public discourse) the invariable bullshit about pedophile homosexual grooming. Who, among serious sociologists or psychologists suggests the latter? Nobody that I'm am aware of. What is remarkable about Espeut's pet causes of homosexuality is that there is no more evidence for any of them then there is for his much-hated genetic causes. But that's what he believes in, so with all the weight that a degree in sociology and deaconessing in the Catholic Church provides, much credence is given to these baseless claims about the causes of homosexuality.

Espeut concludes thus, 'Let us not fall into line with 'gay-rights' propaganda by speaking as if LGBT behaviour is normal and natural. Unless you want to say that improper socialisation and dysfunctionality are normal and acceptable.' I have alerted you already to the Deacon's favourite rhetorical tool of using pejorative language ('improper', 'dysfunctional' etc) where argument would be required. Let me address the issue of homosexuality being abnormal and unnatural issue by copying here content from a Hastings Center Report article I published back in 1997. It's still true and shows us how little progress has been made on this subject matter. The fundamentalist religious in the world will turn around and continue their little flat-earth tirades as if nothing had happened at all. And mass media still give them outlets to vent their rage instead of asking them to seek professional help.

'Why is there a dispute as to whether homosexuality is natural or normal? We suggest it is because many people seem to think that nature has a prescriptive normative force such that what is deemed natural or normal is necessarily good and therefore ought to be. Everything that falls outside these terms is constructed as unnatural and abnormal, and it has been argued that this constitutes sufficient reason to consider homosexuality worth avoiding.[16] Arguments that appeal to 'normality' to provide us with moral guidelines also risk committing the naturalistic fallacy. The naturalistic fallacy is committed when one mistakenly deduces from the way things are to the way they ought to be. For instance, Dean Hamer and colleagues commit this error in their Science article when they state that "it would be fundamentally unethical to use such information to try to assess or alter a person's current or future sexual orientation, either heterosexual or homosexual, or other normal attributes of human behavior."[17] Hamer and colleagues believe that there is a major genetic factor contributing to sexual orientation. From this they think it follows that homosexuality is normal, and thus worthy of preservation. Thus they believe that genetics can tell us what is normal, and that the content of what is normal tells us what ought to be. This is a typical example of a naturalistic fallacy. Normality can be defined in a number of ways, but none of them direct us in the making of moral judgments. First, normality can be reasonably defined in a descriptive sense as a statistical average. Appeals to what is usual, regular, and/or conforming to existing standards ultimately collapse into statistical statements. For an ethical evaluation of homosexuality, it is irrelevant whether homosexuality is normal or abnormal in this sense. All sorts of human traits and behaviors are abnormal in a statistical sense, but this is not a sufficient justification for a negative ethical judgment about them. Second, 'normality' might be defined in a functional sense, where what is normal is something that has served an adaptive function from an evolutionary perspective. This definition of normality can be found in sociobiology, which seeks biological explanations for social behavior. There are a number of serious problems with the sociobiological project.[18] For the purposes of this argument, however, suffice it to say that even if sociobiology could establish that certain behavioral traits were the direct result of biological evolution, no moral assessment of these traits would follow. To illustrate our point, suppose any trait that can be reasonably believed to have served an adaptive function at some evolutionary stage is normal. Some questions arise that exemplify the problems with deriving normative conclusions from descriptive science. Are traits that are perpetuated simply through linkage to selectively advantageous loci less 'normal' than those for which selection was direct? Given that social contexts now exert 'selective pressure' in a way that nature once did, how are we to decide which traits are to be intentionally fostered? Positions holding the view that homosexuality is unnatural, and therefore wrong also inevitably develop incoherencies. They often fail to explicate the basis upon which the line between natural and unnatural is drawn. More importantly, they fail to explain why we should consider all human-made or artificial things as immoral or wrong. These views are usually firmly based in a non-empirical, prescriptive interpretation of nature rather than a scientific descriptive approach. They define arbitrarily what is natural and have to import other normative assumptions and premises to build a basis for their conclusions. For instance, they often claim that an entity called "God" has declared homosexuality to be unnatural and sinful.[19] Unfortunately, these analyses have real-world consequences. In Singapore, unnatural acts are considered a criminal offence, and "natural intercourse" is arbitrarily defined as "the coitus of the male and female organs." A recent High Court decision there declared oral sex "unnatural," and therefore a criminal offence, unless it leads to subsequent reproductive intercourse.

In the United States, several scholars and lesbian and gay activists have argued that establishing a genetic basis for sexual orientation will help make the case for lesbian and gay rights. The idea is that scientific research will show that people do not choose their sexual orientations and therefore they should not be punished or discriminated against in virtue of them. This general argument is flawed in several ways.[23] First, we do not need to show that a trait is genetically determined to argue that it is not amenable to change at will. This is clearly shown by the failure rates of conversion therapies.[24] These failures establish that sexual orientation is resistant to change, but they do not say anything about its ontogeny or etiology. Sexual orientation can be unchangeable without being genetically determined. There is strong observational evidence to support the claim that sexual orientation is difficult to change, but this evidence is perfectly compatible with non-genetic accounts of the origins of sexual orientations. More importantly, we should not embrace arguments that seek to legitimate homosexuality by denying that there is any choice in sexual preference because the implicit premise of such arguments is that if there was a choice, then homosexuals would be blameworthy.

Jamaican papers are at it again – homophobia in 'reporting' action

Having just redeemed themselves in the eyes of regular readers with pretty sharp reporting about the Dudus' affair, Jamaica's journalism is back to its usual quality-wise lows.

Two of Jamaica's papers, the Observer and the Gleaner have a long and distinguished history of anti-gay agitprop. The Gleaner frequently does it under the guise of pseudo-openness perpetuated by one of its columnists. He's a quite eloquent chap who likes to gives his musings an air of scientific soundness when really he picks and chooses biased academic content usually from low-ranking academic journals likely gleaned from the Family Research Council's (or some other Christian fundamentalist organisation like it) treasure chest of anti-gay 'research'. You know, the kind of research 'demonstrating' that gays are more likely to rape little kids, murder your grannie and have a hotline to the devil. A long running Jamaican agitprop feature on that front has been this: Antigay violence in Jamaica ain't the real problem (empirical research undertaken by international human rights organisations be damned) but violent gay men beating each other up are the real problem.

Here's an example taken from the Observer. In last Sunday's edition, under the byline of 'DONNA HUSSEY-WHYTE Sunday Observer staff reporter', the campaign continues. Hussey-Whyte notes in her introductory line that 'Many may argue that the gay community is falsely accused of excessive violence against its own members, but the horrible wounds on Keron Brown's body tell a different story.” Her story is about a gay man who she reports has been abused pretty badly by his partner and that partner's mates. Assuming that the case is true – I have no way to verify it, but it's perfectly possible, of course, that a gay man was abused by his partner – nothing follows with regard to how the average gay person treats his or her partner(s).

No doubt Donna Hussey-Whyte doesn't know what inductive reasoning is, and even less why we know that such modes of analysis don't work as a scientific method. So, to her benefit: You can't really use anecdotal cases to make a general point. Say, assume I see someone jumping out of a 10^th floor window and ending up on the ground floor without injury. I shouldn't make that the story line of an article suggesting that generally speaking it's sensible to assume that jumping out of 10^th floor windows isn't a risky activity. I'm sure you get the drift. So, before Donna Hussey-Whyte's agitprop piece even goes into full swing, anyone who took Scientific Method 101 knows already that not only is her first sentence wrong, but more importantly, that anyone can know with certainty that her story can't prove her point about the gay community being pretty violent against its own members. It's not even clear what she means with gay community to be honest. Is her proposition that the average gay person is more likely, or a membership club called 'gay community' or is something else tickling her incisive reporting mind?

Even if there was a whole bunch of such cases, nothing would follow regarding the question of how the majority of gay people in Jamaica treat each other. Short of a representative survey, this bunch of cases would be just that, a bunch of anecdotes. The question is: Could such research even be undertaken in a society where gay people are hunted out of their houses, beaten up randomly in the streets, and where homosexual conduct and relationships are still illegal. The truth is, if we bothered investigating what amounts to an odd-indeed hypothesis to begin with, we would really have no means to undertake such a study in current-day Jamaica.

Anyhow, back to Donna Hussey-Whyte's agitprop piece: Just think of a counter example of similar disingenuity, think of the number of crimes committed by heterosexual people in Jamaica. Most of those crimes are committed against other heterosexual people. Would this tell us anything at all about a purported link between heterosexuality and violent behaviour? Not at all – that is unless you're Donna Hussey-Whyte. Oddly, she never filed this particular investigative report. Makes you wonder why...

Having said that, from societies more peaceful than the Jamaican we do know that gay people are – if anything – less prone to be violent than their straight counter parts. Is it possible that anti-gay violence and general societal homophobia cause possibly surplus violence among gay people that otherwise would not exist? This truly is an interesting question, if we accept the local media's as yet unsubstantiated premise that gay people in Jamaica are really more prone to abuse each other than they are in other countries. Do we know whether they are more prone to this sorts of behaviour than they are in other countries, or do we know whether they're more prone to violence than are heterosexual people in Jamaica? We know none of this, unless we believe that Donna's inductive 'reasoning' is a good substitute for actual evidence.

As ever, beware of Jamaica's newsmedia when it comes to the issue of homosexuality. Their reporting is by and large in the service of anti-gay prejudice. It's mostly propaganda, no more, no less.

Civilisation: 1 - Jamaica: 0 - Beenie Man concerts cancelled

Latest result in the ongoing match between Jamaica and civilisation. We won, Jamaica lost. Here from a circular Peter Tatchell just posted:

Beenie Man concerts axed in Australia & NZ

Big Day Out organisers faced storm of protest

Tour cancellation sends warning to all murder music singers

Beenie Man incited the murder of lesbians and gays

London, UK - 16 November 2009

All of Beenie Man's Australian and New Zealand concert dates have been cancelled. This follows protests by gay rights groups, including the Australian Coalition for Equality. It also follows representations to the tour organisers by Peter Tatchell of OutRage!, acting on behalf of the international Stop Murder Music campaign.

"These concert cancellations will hit Beenie Man hard in the pocket. He has lost tens of thousands of dollars. The success of this campaign sends a warning message to all murder music artists: inciting homophobic violence will cost you money. You will lose out big time," said Mr Tatchell.

Beenie Man had been scheduled to perform in January 2010 at Big Day Out concerts in the Australian cities of Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth and in the New Zealand city of Auckland.

The organisers have now confirmed that he will not be in the concert line-up:
http://www.bigdayout.com/news/pressreleases.php?PressReleaseId=52

For more information about the concert cancellations in Australia, contact Big Day Out organiser, Susan Forrester, in Melbourne: 00 613 9820 4677 and susan@bigdayout.com

Ms Forrester contacted Peter Tatchell of the gay rights group OutRage! seeking his advice on whether to go ahead with the Beenie Man booking.

Mr Tatchell replied to her, urging Big Day Out to cancel Beenie Man's concerts. He wrote to Ms Forrester as follows:

"Beenie Man is clearly unrepentant. He has never apologised for urging the killing of gay people. In fact, he put out a statement and hit song called 'I no apologise'. You would not consider hosting Beenie Man if he was a white racist singer who had called for the murder of black people. You would dump him. There should be no double standards when it comes to singers who incite homophobic violence," wrote Mr Tatchell.

"Beenie Man is one of Jamaica's leading reggae stars. He has had hit tunes which incite the murder of lesbians and gay men. It is a tragedy that he has not used his undoubted musical talent to promote the true reggae message of justice, harmony, peace and love.

"Although Beenie Man made an agreement to cease his murder music, he has since reneged and denounced the agreement. He went on to release a song: 'I no apologise,'" confirmed Mr Tatchell.

In his hit tune Damn, Beenie Man sings: "I'm dreaming of a new Jamaica, come to execute all the queers."

Another of his popular recordings, Bad Man Chi Chi Man (Bad Man Queer Man), instructs listeners to kill gay DJs and boasts that people would gladly go to jail for killing a queer:

"If yuh nuh chi chi (queer) man wave yuh right hand and (NO!!!) / If yuh nuh lesbian wave yuh right hand and (NO!!!) / Some bwoy will go a jail fi kill man tun bad man chi chi man!!! / Tell mi, sumfest it should a be a showdown / Yuh seem to run off a stage like a clown (Kill Dem DJ!!!)".

Chi Chi Man is a very offensive Jamaican patois homophobic slang insult, equivalent to the insulting words queer, poof and faggot.

Bizarre commentary by Jamaican literature prof on violent lyrics

I'm sure many of you have heard about how homophobic Jamaica is, all the way up to the murder of gays and lesbians. Part of the responsibility for this, it has been suggested by some, are antigay violent lyrics by local artists calling in their songs for the murder of gays and lesbians. Here's the take of a local academic arguing that gays and lesbians who call for such artists' concerts to be canceled and boycotted are 'pathological'. Check out her take on the issue first, and then read my commentary below. Turns out to be the case that she attended the latest CD launch of the artist who called in past lyrics for the murder of gay people. I sent the below reply to the newspaper that published her OpEd; realistically you won't see my riposte there, though. Jamaican public debate is sufficiently incestuous to prevent that from happening. -

To whom it may concern:

Professor Cooper's editorial, well-intentioned and unusually considerate (by Jamaican standards) doesn't add up. She complains essentially that a Jamaican singer whose repertoire included a song calling for the killing of gay people is still subjected to boycott campaigns by gays and lesbians in other countries. She calls such campaigns 'perverse'. Cooper considers the offending song's lyrics 'infamous', however anyone not wanting the singer to perform in their neighbourhood is acting under a 'particularly perverse pathology'. Really, is my attempt at keeping such artists out of my country sick, Professor Cooper? So, our Jamaican artist sings infamous songs, while those who would be at the receiving end of his murderous art are sick (aka pathological). Nice touch professor, truly a well-balanced statement. You should be safe in homophobic Jamaica (whatever that means these days).

What reasons has Professor Cooper on offer for her take on the issue?

Well, for starters, she points out that our artist hero hasn't sung the song in question for awhile and launched recently a CD hoping it would be bought by amongst others gays, lesbians, and - guess what - even slim people. Let me just say that to the best of my knowledge, he has not yet apologized and retracted the song in question. That a more market savvy performer tries to increase market share is understandable, but surely shouldn't be seen as evidence for a changed mind set.

Comes the professor's next reason: the US based ACLU is defending the artist's 'right' to perform. The ACLU, of course, also defends the KKK's right to propagate its racist views in public. It's the result of a particularly silly bit of US Constitution that puts virtually no limits on speech acts, unlike any other country in the world. You could not make such statements anywhere in Europe (neither the Jamaican artist's 'lyrics' nor the KKKs racist rabble-rousing). The result is that such societies are more cohesive and peaceful than the USA.

And another lost-case type argument from our literary professor. She claims, citing an unsubstantiated statement from an ACLU activist, that there is no causal evidence that hate speech calling for violence against minority groups leads to such violence. There is an obvious reason for this: actions usually have multiple causes, some conscious, others unconscious. We do know that propaganda works; why it shouldn't work in a pathologically homophobic place such as Jamaica remains a mystery to me. Gay people have experienced time and again spikes in anti-gay violence following high-profile homophobic statements by artists or politicians and the like. Equally, many minority ethnic people in Britain were deeply incensed when the BBC permitted recently the BNP leader Nick Griffin to speak on a program. They pointed out that the mainstreaming of racism will undoubtedly lead to an increase in racist violence. I wonder whether Professor Cooper fully appreciates the implications of her feeble attempt at denying the link between homophobic statements calling for violence against gays and lesbians and the occurrence of such violence.

Her last unsubstantiated claim is that fans potentially engaging in homophobic violence would not do so after dancing to artists' tunes encouraging them to kills gays and lesbians. Is she seriously suggesting that there might be people out there who were considering killing gays and lesbians and then these folks get prevented from doing this because they attend a concert with an artists calling on them to go through with their tentative plans? What can I say, this surely is a breathtaking empirical claim without any basis in fact.

So, there you go, now you know why us folks outside your island go out of our way to have your violence and art kept where it belongs, namely on your island - as your problem, not ours. Let Buju apologize for this song and we will welcome him with open arms.

Gays 'hated to death': Jamaica Gleaner on the anti-gay campaign trail

Jamaica has earned itself notoriety in recent years for anti-gay hate crimes that seem to be condoned to some extent by the country's law enforcement agencies. The US based human rights organisation Human Richts Watch has ensured for some time now that the world gets to know about the Jamaican state's failure to protect the civil rights of its gay citizens. You might want to read the full report of Human Rights Watch, particularly in light of what follows below.

True to form, Christian church leaders have been quick to respond to the charges made by Human Rights Watch. As usual their near-pathological homophobia is carefully cloaked under the guise of 'ethics' and 'morals', which is somewhat amusing, considering the criminal history of the Christian churches the world all over.

One would expect journalists to take one of the basic tenets of journalism ethics seriously, namely to report in an unbiased manner about the issues at stake. A Jamaican paper, the Jamaica Gleaner has instead taken it upon itself to propagate the religious ideologies that are at the heart of anti-gay hate crimes.

This post documents how that works: the paper published on February 18, 2008 a piece which quotes uncritically Christian leaders in the country making mostly unintelligible, and arguably offensive remarks about homosexuality. In fact, this was the 'lead' story of the day, if one assumes that the article's URL is anything to go by. The article was carefully 'balanced' by deploying subheadings such as 'Immoral in every way'.

Fair enough, you might say, may be they published a biased article. After all, the Caribbean is known to have somewhat Neandertalish views on the matter at hand. Surely, however, the paper would have published a couple of letters to the editor that were critical of the stance taken by the church leaders and probably even of the journalist who permitted himself or herself to be used as a tool to propagate sectarian views as 'news'.

Well, this is how the story continues. I decided to write a brief letter to the editor outlining logic errors in the church leaders' stance. This is what I had to say:

Editor,

Your article ‘Gay lobby rebuked - Church says won't accept homosexual lifestyle in Jamaica’ in today’s Jamaica Gleaner was brought to my attention by one of my students. As someone who thinks about ethics professionally, I am surprised about many of the assertions made by your country’s religious leaders. For instance, they claim that homosexuality is abnormal and that that is one good reason to disapprove of it. There might be good reasons to disapprove of homosexuality, but its abnormality is not one of them. Lots of things are abnormal in the same sense that homosexuality is abnormal. Normality defines a statistical average, no more, no less. No doubt then, homosexuality is abnormal – in the same sense that driving a Rolls Royce is abnormal (ie a minority of people do it). Statistical claims are insufficient to base moral judgment on. It would be a logical fallacy to do so.

Equally, they claim that homosexuality is morally wrong from a ‘physical’ stand point. This statement is unintelligible. Things that are morally wrong are wrong for moral reasons, not ever for physical reasons. It’s like saying that blue is bad because it’s hot. It’s an error in category.

They also suggest that homosexuality is morally wrong for social reasons. There may be good social reasons to condemn homosexuality, yet they have not been provided by the church leaders you mention in your article. The impartial observer must wonder what these good social reasons might be? The evidence in support of the claim is certainly missing.

There are more such oddities in the church leaders’ line of reasoning: they also say that the majority of Jamaicans deem homosexuality ‘wrong’. Assuming this is correct, what is the moral value of knowing this? Assume, for the sake of the argument, that the majority of Jamaicans thought that Chinese or German people were racially inferior. That tells us nothing about the fact of the matter, because the majority of Jamaicans could be mistaken. The same is true for any value judgments the majority of Jamaicans make on homosexuality or any number of issues. Ethics is distinctly not a matter of majority vote but of sound reasoning. Sadly this seems lacking in the statements put forward by Jamaica’s church leaders.

Udo Schuklenk
Professor of Philosophy
Ontario Research Chair in Bioethics
Queen’s University, ON, Canada

Well, you gathered from me having to reproduce my Letter here, that the paper chose not to publish this Letter to the Editor as it didn't fit the propaganda the paper decided to support in its 'news' section. Another breach of journalism ethics.

The paper instead chose to publish a Letter to the Editor in support of its campaign, which more or less reiterated the church leaders' remarks, peppered with the usual bunch of quotes from the Bible. I give you a brief flavour of the letter in question so you are enabled to judge how serious the editorial failing of the Jamaica Gleaner has been in this regard.

'The Bible, therefore, clearly and unequivocally condemns homosexual acts (Gen 1:27-28; Gen 2:24; Matt 19: 4-6; Rom 1:24-27; 1 Cor 6:10; 1 Tim 1:10 etc.). There is also no scientific evidence to confirm homosexual activity as a normal behaviour. Homosexuality is neither an entirely innate condition nor is it unchangeable. The so-called 'gay gene' has never been found.'

My Letter clearly dealt with the claim from abnormality as well as some others, yet the paper chose not to give its readers a chance to make up their own mind by permitting the other side of the argument to be heard. In rhetoric the continuing repetition of arguments is called 'propaganda'. Note also that propaganda usually relies on the selective or misleading presentations of the facts of the matter. Something this letter writer also happens to be guilty of. As the grand master of propaganda, Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels pointed out himself, 'The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly - it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.' This precisely describes the strategy followed by the Jamaican church leaders, their local paper, and assorted letter writers over many years by now.

One would have expected a professionally edited newspaper to publish a critical Letter from an expert who has written on this issue in leading international bioethics and medical journals... The Jamaica Gleaner chose not to. A sad indictment indeed.

For what it's worth, here's a link to a paper I published (with colleagues in the US and Australia) some 10 years ago on the ethical issue of sexual orientation research as well as the ethics of homosexuality, it deals with most of the 'arguments' put forward in the campaign items published under various guises by the Jamaica Gleaner. It's been reprinted in a number of bioethics textbooks as well as gender and feminist studies text books. Mind you, there is even a Russian translation :-).