22 Responses to “Mary’s Notes, May 17, 2007”

1. Nick Says:
   May 17th, 2007 at 2:37 pm

   Mary says: “Christopher Hitchens is booked for Monday.”
   Uh-oh.
   There goes my weekend. And Powell’s hasn’t delvered my copy of Hitchens’s new book yet — because they sold out while I was ordering. Now I’ll have to scramble…

   Still, please set up a thread. I’ve got an interview with Hitchens I can quote and critique, at least.
   Thanks for taking this on, ROS.

2. Potter Says:
   May 17th, 2007 at 3:01 pm

   Thanks for Hitchens. I think this is a small but considered and perhaps potent backlash ( or assault ) to what seems to be an increase religious fundamentalism, and it’s influence on seats of power, it’s politicization both here and elsewhere in the world (especially in the Middle East). I hope you find someone that can engage in a dialogue, not spout in separate universes ( if that is possible). I am thinking of that interview between Dawkins and the Bishop of Oxford here:

   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QS2TFVe9LDc

   I should credit one of our posters for directing me to it a while ago- I think enhabit. Forgive me if I am mistaken.

3. David Says:
   May 17th, 2007 at 5:01 pm

   Ahem! There WAS a winner in the accent bet. The question was who could get closer to the accent, not who could hit it on the nose. The bet was for the usual amount and, Milwaukee being just a short Lake Michigan swim from Chicago, I am a dollar richer.

4. silvio.rabioso Says:
   May 17th, 2007 at 6:49 pm

   Hitchens is a tough case, since he seems to prefer bloodsport to discussion. But I would love to hear him in conversation with Freeman Dyson. Dyson wrote a wonderful review of Dennet’s new book in the NYRB. He is a scientist and a man of faith; I found his argument compelling (“We can all agree that religion is a
   natural phenomenon, but nature may include many more things than we
   can grasp with the methods of science”). I hope Hitchens, who is well-read but decidedly not a scientist nor a philosopher, will take Dyson’s critique seriously.

5. Nick Says:
   May 17th, 2007 at 7:33 pm

   Since your Hitchens billboard isn’t up yet, I can’t gauge whether Natalie Angier, a New York Times Pulitzer Prize winning science writer, would be an appropriate guest for Monday’s show. She’s on a book tour currently, was in the KUOW studio on this past Monday (or Tuesday), and was stimulating, wry, and spoke of the need to distinguish probabilities from ‘beliefs’.

   You can gauge yourself her appropriateness for your purposes by reading this essay: My God Problem .
   I would suggest this: she’s much less belligerent than Hitchens, has much more science background, and she’s a she. Which, if ROS’s usual guest/gender ratio is representative, makes her part of a small minority – a minority on the order of, say, 10-to-15% of the planet’s population.
   (Yes, I still notice the prevalence of male guest voices on this program.)

6. tbrucia Says:
   May 18th, 2007 at 8:27 am

   Hmmm… Am I the only one to note that ‘Mary’s Notes’ — which are assemblages of topics — seems to have replaced in large part ‘single topic’ headers? The show is not mine (or even ours), and ROS certainly has the right to change the format of the website. (This should go without saying, but I said it anyway…). The change of format does, however, IMHO make it much more difficult to maintain focused discussions of specific topics… It would be nice if someone from ROS would let us know if Mary’s Notes is to be the new basis of format, in which some may decide to move on to new pastures of discussion… I’m NOT trying to be a horse’s backend, but — since no one else has mentioned the elephant in the living room — to see if I’m a ‘Lone Ranger’ or part of a larger (silent) group.

7. hurley Says:
   May 18th, 2007 at 9:30 am

   I can’t say I have high hopes for this show. A decent conversation requires a modicum of give and take, and thats never been Hitchens’ forte. He’s a great performance artist, born to the role of rostbif contrarian, but a discussion with him usually ends where it began. I say this as someone who, before the Sydney Blumenthal affair and Hitchens’ advocacy of the Iraq war, was a great admirere of his, and had read just about everything he wrote, going back to his pamphlet on Zimbabwe. I happen to share his low opinion of religion — where it concerns me — but try to avoid the contempt he seems to feel for anyone whe fails to see the world as he does. Chris, as a self-described born again Christian (that was a shock to hear), should go into the interview knowing that, on a fundamental level, he is an object of contempt. Be prepared for the worst, to quote the title of Hitchens’ thrilling first collection of essays. David recently rejected someone’s show suggestion on the grounds that ROS avoided engaging subjects where the relative positions were too entrenched. Do you think the hour will end with Chris renouncing his faith, Christopher seeing the light? It would make great radio, but I doubt it.
   By the way, Gary Wills would be the perfect guest: a devout Catholic, fierce critic of the Church, author, among many other things, of God In America. A man of great knowledge, restraint, and compassion. I repeat, the perfect guest. If you disagree, please take a minute and tell me why.

8. Paul Massari Says:
   May 18th, 2007 at 12:29 pm

   Couple comments.

   On Josh Lerner and HBS: I thought Chris’s remark about “without the H it’s just BS” was extraneous and, frankly, beneath him. It’s too bad, because Josh has a lot to say, particularly about how the patent system in the US is broken, with chilling impact on our ability to innovate.

   There are plenty of other HBSers who’d make for interesting shows. Michael Porter, the guru of competitiveness, is calling for universal health insurance and the consolidation of the healthcare industry. Tarun Khanna is looking at the models of government and economic development in India and China and asking which will be most successful in the long term. Bruce Scott is exploring the marriage of capitalism and democracy in US history, saying that it took WWII to push us out of the corruption of the gilded age, and that we are in a sort of second gilded age that is corroding our democratic institutions again. Lots more interesting stuff too.

   On Hitchens, I have to agree with Hurley: he’s a brilliant man, but extremely nasty, which makes it hard to appreciate his ideas. It’s hard to hold a discussion with Hitchens that doesn’t turn into a sort of intellectual version of pro-wrestling.

   In terms of someone to balance him out, I’d vote for James Carroll, the former Catholic priest and op-ed columnist for the Boston Globe. Incredibly thoughtful, humanitarian, and articulate.

9. orlox Says:
   May 18th, 2007 at 12:54 pm

   I wonder if Romney wouldn’t make time to confront Hitchens. He has seemed fairly eager to engage so far.

   Bill Moyers would probably argue that Hitchens prescriptions would tear America apart. Pats Buchanan and Robertson, of course. I doubt Jon Meacham would do it but it may be worth a try. Same with Elaine Pagels.

   Sir John Houghton would give Hitchens a hard time with duelling British accents:
   http://www.pbs.org/moyers/faithandreason/portraits_houghton.html

   I have to admit, the first thing that popped into my mind was Hitchens as a squeeky third wheel with Chris and Camille Paglia.

10. Potter Says:
    May 18th, 2007 at 12:54 pm

    I just read Daniel Lazare’s “Among the Disbelievers” a review of recent books by Hitchens, Dawkins, Onfray & Eagleton for “The Nation” magazine. Would he make a good counterpoint to Hitchens? he is currently writing a book on Christianity,Judaism and Islam. It’s a good article.

11. orlox Says:
    May 18th, 2007 at 12:59 pm

    Where do we post suggestions for the new website design?

12. Nick Says:
    May 18th, 2007 at 1:11 pm

    hurley, I share your concern (9:30 AM, May 18th) for the on-air portion of Monday’s ROS conversation. It needn’t necessarily be dreadful, however. Potter thoughtfully supplied me (off-site) a preview by sending me this link to a stream of a recent On Point: http://www.onpointradio.org/shows/2007/05/20070511_b_main.asp (Thanks P, I’ve downloaded the podcast and listened multiple times.)

    Hitchens wasn’t a complete *sshole. One wonders, however, if he hadn’t yet imbibed his usual quantity of liquor. (Thanks, jazzman.) One then wonders in turn whether ROS’s later airing time might mean a drunker Christopher. Let’s hope not. (Coincidentally, my Word-of-the-Day email today is: “bombast \BOM-bast\, noun: Pompous or pretentious speech or writing.” – but I don’t expect a divine hand guided that coincidence! And besides, Hitchens’s writing often skirts the border of bombast, but doesn’t usually transit that border. He’s too deliberate and prideful a writer for that.)

    Still, your words here struck home: “…the contempt he seems to feel for anyone who fails to see the world as he does…” This is the worrisome issue. It’s part of why I suggested Natalie Angier above: not as a foil for Hitchens but to provide a guest with a similar but less contemptuous worldview. I recall with real displeasure the Dan Dennett hour: one atheist philosopher juxtaposed with a priest, a theologian, a couple of other believers and a born-again Christian host (whose knowledge of Dennett’s book was questionable, I hate to reiterate). I very much hope the ROS staff doesn’t stack the deck like that again on Monday. Perhaps if Hitchens doesn’t feel outnumbered and cornered, he’ll be less likely to bark and bite. Perhaps Angier, or someone like her, can temper the conversation.

    But the potential for a stacked deck I allude to above worries me for another reason. This comes from Chris’s Camille Paglia billboard:

    …we’ll begin with Professor Paglia’s observation of the collision between the almost-theocracy of the Bush years and hard-sell neo-atheism from the likes of Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins.

    “Hard-sell neo-atheism”? What in the world does that imply? “Hard-sell” is uncomfortably close to “hard-core”. What else do the words ‘hard-core’ frequently precede and, as adjective, characterize? Pornography? Drug addicts?

    And what’s “neo-” supposed to imply? It’s in this thread’s billboard too:

    …the latest neo-atheist entry in the religion wars in the mainstream publishing world, following books by best-selling author Sam Harris, Tufts University philosopher Daniel Dennett and British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins.

    Mary, I’m sorry, but I don’t get it. Were, Harris, Dawkins, Dennett, and Hitchens all formerly believers who, like the neo-conservatives who disavowed their youthful Marxism, ‘converted’ from an acceptably humanistic (i.e., leftist, like mine) belief system to beliefs less kindly and more morally reprehensible? Atheists! Good Lord!
    This application of ‘neo-’, especially considering that prefix’s common usage in ‘neo-con’, worries me. ROS is entitled to an editorial bias, but I’m likewise entitled to worry over it. I can’t help but recall these consecutive sentences from Richard Dawkins:

    The lawyer Wendy Kaminer was exaggerating only slightly when she remarked that making fun of religion is as risky as burning a flag in an American Legion hall. The status of atheists in America today is on a par with that of homosexuals fifty years ago.

    The God Delusion, p.4
    I agree. Although, of course, it depends on where in America – it’s probably vastly worse in Tuscaloosa or Tampa than in Boston or Seattle, yes?

    What’s so ‘new’ about the nontheism of the writers, listed above, who ‘hard-sell’ their ‘neo-atheism’ to American readers? Anything? Nothing? Are they “Atheists! (Good Lord!)”, or just atheists? (As Dan Dennett would say.)

    Please, ROS, please give us an un-stacked deck on Monday.

    I must also point out (sorry, Silvio) that offering us ‘for balance’ a scientist like Freeman Dyson who is also a religious believer would in fact be deceptive: surveys show that, contrary to common myth, a heavy preponderance of scientists are nontheists. Worse yet, religious believers like to cite Einstein’s common use of the culturally inescapable word “God” to imply that he too was a at least a deist if not a theist – but they overlook this from him: “The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and even seems naïve.”

    Offering us a believer-scientist would be a deception akin to booking an Islamist to speak for all Muslims. If you were to book a Dyson for this show, you’d need to book at least three—and maybe more like five—nontheist scientists to make the panel authentically representative. (But, considering your radio-constraints, I’ll settle for Natalie Angier.)

    Please, ROS, please give us an un-stacked deck on Monday.
    After all, the proposition that ‘God exists’ has no more empirical foundation than that of the ruse called Intelligent Design. Would you offer a proponent of the latter an equal radio berth with an evolutionary biologist? Do those two ideas – a repeatedly substantiated scientific theory and a faintly ridiculous religious hope – deserve to be presented as ‘equally probable’?

    Please give us an un-stacked deck on Monday.

13. Samgr Says:
    May 18th, 2007 at 1:14 pm

    tbrucia: Mary’s Notes are meant to be an addition to the site, not to replace anything! As always, we are working on trying to get our show posts up a bit earlier, but that’s a separate issue. Meanwhile, if an issue comes up like yesterday’s, where Mary mentions an idea but there’s no post up yet, I would just go ahead and comment under Mary’s note until we get in gear and get a show post up. We’ll read ‘em, and hopefully others will, too.

14. Potter Says:
    May 18th, 2007 at 1:30 pm

    Nick read Daniel Lazare ( linked above). What do you think? My original request anent Hitchens was not to do what “On Point” did ( you linked it) which did make for an astonishing hour but no dialogue. Each guest was on another planet. I request dialogue. This is not a simple choice because you have to get the right voice/s and they have to be available.

    The reason I mentioned the YouTube of Dawkins/Bishop of Oxford exchange is because it was an exchange or dialogue and there was respect on both parts. The Bishop seemed evolved, open yet still a believer. it was not so much his “bishopness”. I don’t think Hitchens (or Dawkins, or Dennett or Harris or for that matter E.O.Wilson) pairs successfully with an essentially closed mind. That makes a sideshow/spectacle.

15. mr.dana Says:
    May 18th, 2007 at 2:10 pm

    I have heard Mr. Hitchens on some programs promoting his new book and yet I have not heard his thoughts on Spinoza. From what I have gathered, much of the foundation of his thought in this work is basically Spinozism. If this is the case, why not openly market the book as a reinterpretation of Spinozism for the current political reality. Forgive me if the book actually states those goals as I live in Israel where the book has yet to be published. Considering that Radio Open Source is one of the few American Media outlets that has recently talked about Spinoza in a meaningful way, I am hope that we could hear Mr. Hitchens thoughts on Spinoza especially regarding miracles, superstition, political philosophy and Bush.

16. Nick Says:
    May 18th, 2007 at 2:12 pm

    Potter, Lazare’s piece deserves a full night’s digestion – although I could easily cause some indigestion by instantly reacting to some of what I perceive as its problems – but I won’t. I’ll reply tomorrow, perhaps.

    You wrote: “Each guest was on another planet. I request dialogue. This is not a simple choice because you have to get the right voice/s and they have to be available.”

    My response must begin with this, from this thread’s billboard: “…to fill out a discussion about why this religious conversation — pro and con — is so fervent at the moment.”
    Natalie Angier’s My God Problem answers that question. Nontheism is a defense of reason against irrationality. Angier’s essay details this beautifully; “neo-atheists” (!!!) Harris, Dawkins, Dennett, and Hitchens (and many more than these, who I’ll list later) detail it even more exhaustively. This is why Angier – already on a book tour for The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science — would offer an ideal secondary voice for the show. In fact, the more I consider it, the more perfect she’d be. She smoothly answers the question in the billboard. And without resort to contempt.

17. silvio.rabioso Says:
    May 18th, 2007 at 5:42 pm

    Nick: I don’t believe I mentioned ‘balance’. Read Dyson’s piece. I had no intention of nominating Dyson to represent all scientists, or all believers. I was looking for someone who might be a good pair with Hitch (as you acknowledge is necessary).

    I recently returned to the foundational texts of modern Western reason, and I was quite surprised with what I found. Kant, in his First Critique, brackets off the ‘god’ problem so that science (i.e. reason) does not have to deal with it. Scientists (like Dawkins), philosophers (like Dennett) and literary critics (like Hitchens) ignore the fundamental philosophical move that Kant makes when they say that Western science can give a definitive answer to questions of metaphysics. Kant GAVE Western science its philosophical/disciplinary foundation when he said that reason cannot answer questions of immortality, god etc.; scientists could then go about their work AS IF the god question didn’t matter. As all three of the contemporary writers I mentioned argue from within Western rationality, it seems a bit unfair that they ignore one of Kant’s key philosophical projects.

    Dyson seems to understand that “nature may include many more things than we can grasp with the methods of [Western] science”. That alone seems a worthwhile point to make. As Hitchens shows little respect for any argument made from outside a Western modern/colonial mentality, I thought Freeman Dyson would be the next best thing.

    I’ll read Angier over the weekend. And Lazare.

18. silvio.rabioso Says:
    May 18th, 2007 at 5:56 pm

    On Angier: The author makes the fatal mistake of reducing ‘metaphysical questions about existence’ to ‘religion’, and then further reducing ‘religion’ to the VERY narrow subset of Abrahamic religion.

    As for the answer to her question “what keeps scientists quiet about religion?”, [what she really means is 'what keeps scientists quiet about the improbable elements of the Christ myth'] I would again have to direct any interested parties to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Theodore Adorno’s recently published lecture smooth the difficult task of absorbing that mammoth philosophical work.

    Now, I am not saying that Kant is without his flaws. What I do think is important, however, it that if we are to continue this public debate about the intersection of religion and science within Western rationality, we should at least know the HISTORICAL origin of the split.

19. Nick Says:
    May 18th, 2007 at 6:37 pm

    Silvio, I’ll tackle the Dyson piece this evening (while you tackle Angier and Lazare). And you’re right about ‘balance’ – that was my own pre-coffee presumption at work. My bad.
    As for Kant, his long-respected separation of science from religion has (as perhaps you already know) evolved into the more recent concept called Non-Overlapping Magisteria (aka NOMA). enhabit kindly gave us some relevant Gould in the last few post of the Morality thread:

    To say it for all my colleagues and for the umpteenth millionth time (from college bull sessions to learned treatises): science simply cannot (by its legitimate methods) adjudicate the issue of God’s possible superintendence of nature. We neither affirm nor deny it; we simply can’t comment on it as scientists. If some of our crowd have made untoward statements claiming that Darwinism disproves God, then I will find Mrs. McInerney and have their knuckles rapped for it (as long as she can equally treat those members of our crowd who have argued that Darwinism must be God’s method of action). Science can work only with naturalistic explanations; it can neither affirm nor deny other types of actors (like God) in other spheres (the moral realm, for example).
    —Stephen Jay Gould – http://www.fortunecity.com/emachines/e11/86/darwin.html

    Which prompted this response from me:

    I’m a big appreciator of Stephen Gould the paleontologist, who has written some of the best books on evolution I’ve yet read. Conversely, I’m not a big fan of Richard Dawkins the reductionist ‘life is a machine operated by selfish genes’ zoologist, who feuded frequently and famously with Gould. However, the same zoologist Dawkins I’m so un-enamored with has some starkly salient points to offer my old fave Gould, specifically regarding the Non-Overlapping-Magesteria would-be peace-treaty between science and religion Gould tried to foster.
    What follows is Dawkins’s response to the Gould quote offered above:

    Despite the confident, almost bullying, tone of Gould’s assertion, what, actually, is the justification for it? Why shouldn’t we comment on God, as scientists? Any why isn’t Russell’s teapot, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster equally immune from scientific skepticism? (A) universe with a creative superintendent would be a very different kind of universe from one without. Why is that not a scientific matter?

    Dawkins, The God Delusion, p.55

    Pretending that age-old concepts that can’t be found anywhere outside of human imaginations should be given a special exemption from scientific inquiry doesn’t seem to me to very objective at all. I admire Gould’s compassion for believers – but I can’t admire his timid conclusion. I score that round for Dawkins.

    Science investigates the universe. If ‘God’ is in anyway involved in our universe, it’s a scientific issue. Many scientifically educated Christians understand this too – which is exactly how and why Intelligent Design pseudoscience originated: from Christians determined to find “God’s fingerprints” at the cellular level. Their attempts – heavily funded by multi-millionaire believers – have not succeeded.

    I’m hoping to contribute a more detailed post on NOMA on the forthcoming Hitchens thread. Because, conventional wisdom or not, a “supernatural” origin of the universe is a scientific matter. As would be the putative ongoing existence of the self after death (were it discernable in any manner or venue beyond of the wondrous human capacity for imagination).

    Anyway, your other point about Hitchens’s lack of respect is certainly worrisome. Yet I’m hoping it won’t be as bad as that. The excerpts of his book that Mary links us to at the end of this thread’s billboard are more well-reasoned than nastily incendiary, and his 45-minute stint on “On Point” was sharp but not rude – well, mostly. [He sees claims of faith-healing as charlatanism (and I tend to agree), but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the claimants are consciously defrauding their parishioners. I’ve no compelling reason to think that they don’t believe the that their deity answered their prayers (although I think they’re operating under a logical fallacy – but I’ll save that for later).]

    Enough out of me for now. I look forward to your thoughts on Angier.

20. Potter Says:
    May 18th, 2007 at 7:04 pm

    Nick- Will read Angier. Also she was on On Point the other day and I will listen…. thanks…….. This Hitchens show is immiment ( we will see a mushroom cloud on Monday)- that has no thread yet with a lot of listener prep it seems. I am still back at Spinoza with Mr. Dana.

21. silvio.rabioso Says:
    May 18th, 2007 at 8:10 pm

    Thanks to Nick for the response, and to others for adding their comments. Until a thread opens up, it is worth mentioning that SJG’s NOMA does not share the rigorousness of Kant’s First Critique. Kant proved (to the best of his ability) that reason falls into paralogism, i.e. reason can convincingly argue both sides of these metaphysical issues. Again, to respond Dawkin’s question “Why shouldn’t we as scientists comment on God?” I would answer ‘because that was the agreement you entered into with the Enlightenment’. That agreement has allowed Western science flourish in the 19th and 20th centuries.

    Now, I am all for violating that agreement, but it must be done in an intellectually honest fashion. That means acknowledging that Western science has operated at the exclusion of metaphysical concerns; it means reopening the great Western tradition of metaphysical critique to non-Western knowledges; it means acknowledging the dark side of colonialism and imperialism that accompanied the rapid rise of Western rationality. It does not mean using faith healers from corporate-structured mega-Churches as straw men.

22. BerkeleyGuy Says:
    May 20th, 2007 at 6:19 am

    FYI, Christopher Hitchens along with Ralph Reed participate in a debate on the legacy of the Reverend Jerry Falwell. This was recorded from the Hannity and Colmes show of 16-May-2007.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doKkOSMaTk4

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