Islamophobia or not?

 This is the companion piece to my blog to convince people (and in particular Sam Harris) that Islamophobia exists and why it's a problem.  Originally it was part of the same blog, but I decided it was too long and so split it up.  I will discuss specific quotes from Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris which I find troublesome. I hope to be constructive, in the sense that I want to persuade you that it is still possible to criticise beliefs we don't like without making statements that are Islamophobic sounding or can feed Islamophobia. I'll start with Dawkins because I think my issues with what he has said are a bit simpler.

Words from Dawkins

Here Dawkins says:

Given that Islam is such an unmitigated evil, and looking at the map supplied by this Christian site, should we be supporting Christian missions in Africa? My answer is still no, but I thought it was worth raising the question. Given that atheism hasn't any chance in Africa for the foreseeable future, could our enemy's enemy be our friend?

  I am not sure how he can seriously describe Islam as an unmitigated evil.  That is a really strong claim thrown up with no evidence, labeling the whole religion and apparently claiming there are no redeeming good features.  Statements like this are ill thought out and entirely unnecessary.  Not to mention the very vague 'supporting' which might well be interpreted in ways you don't like.    Now geopolitics and religion in Africa are complicated topics.  And the interventions of Christian missionaries may well be too.  If there are religious people you disagree who nonetheless are challenging views you find more unpleasant then I am sure there is a lot to consider and it could be discussed carefully.  You could  point out the specific beliefs and practices in, say, some Islamic part of Africa, and compare them to the practices in some Christian part of Africa and possibly discuss a specific form of support you might give one to decrease the practise you don't like. 
Dawkins has also tweeted

Haven't read Koran so couldn't quote chapter & verse like I can for Bible. But often say Islam greatest force for evil today

 and later, in connection to critcism of this.

Of course you can have an opinion about Islam without having read Qur'an. You don't have to read Mein Kampf to have an opinion about nazism.

Now I am cringing a little here at commenting on tweets.  The format makes it very difficult to include caveats and make a point carefully in a single tweet and the way tweets can go viral seems like it is perfectly set up to create shit storms over accidental phrasing and language.  This is probably why the media love it so much (it does spread information in interesting ways though).

However these tweets are great examples of how language can be use poorly and so provide good examples I can constructively criticise.  

Dawkins explains the last tweet with:

Simile compares X & Y in one respect, not all. "He runs like a greyhound" doesn't mean you think he's a dog. Is that so hard to understand?

Well clearly not but what feature of Islam is he comparing to Nazism here.  It is not merely that they are both beliefs that have been derived from a particular text.  He could have chosen to say "Of course you can have an opinion about Islam without having read Qur'an. "You don't have to read Keynes to have an opinion about Keynesianism." except that this doesn't make sense.

 As far as i can tell what Dawkins is saying is that the ugly vile behaviour in Islam is so obvious and transparently grotesque, just as that of the nazis was, that there is no need to read the Koran to know it as such.   I don't see how making comparisons of someones religion to Nazis helps persuade them that specific practices or beliefs they adopted as part of that are bad and should be stopped.

Instead I think what it feeds hatred of muslims.      It is not difficult to point out that he doesn't need to read the Quran to know that some muslims support apostasy of subjugation of women and that they have cited Islam as the reason, without a nazi comparison or an over generalisation.  If you wish to discuss really bad violence done in the name of Islam and compare it to violence that is universally condemned you may do so if you are precise.  You can even say that murdering someone for the "crime" of apostasy is just as vile as murdering someone because of their race.    It is just not necessary to label Islam as a whole (and therefore all believers) and compare the entire religion to Nazism in order to criticise specific ugly things supported by some in it's name.

Another issue are comments like this:

 I would also love it if decent, 'moderate' Muslims would stand up and condemn the barbarisms that are carried out, or threatened, in their name.

OK the context is for this a very sad story about a woman in Iran being sentenced to death by stoning/hanging for adultery.  Dawkins is rightly upset.  I am not sure if he means moderate muslims in Iran (who lack the political freedom to do much)  or outside.  But if he means the former there is a brave campaign by feminists in Iran a to end stoning and for the latter he should probably speak to muslims who work for Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.  Anyway I mostly quoted this because it is the collective responsibility attack, which is rather common sadly and is an an inherently bigoted notion.  Why are moderte muslims, who do not support violence or subjugation of women, many of whom just happen to have been born into Islam and maintained that faith, take responsibility for awful things done by other muslims?  Why must they carry this burden of responsibility when, for example, I do not? 



   Then there is his (qualified) support of Geert Wilders.

Geert Wilders, if it should turn out that you are a racist or a gratuitous stirrer and provocateur I withdraw my respect, but on the strength of Fitna alone I salute you as a man of courage, who has the balls to stand up to a monstrous enemy.

The thing is he's talking about this video. [Warning: it's vile] That video begins and ends with a picture of Mohammed with a bomb on his head and a fuse burning down.  It shows a whole bunch of horrible acts perpetrated by muslims and terrible statements made by muslims.  Then it shows how muslim numbers in Netherlands and europe have grown since 1900 (oh noes we're swamped I tell you)  and at ~11.40 it has a paranoid ' the future of the netherlands?' set of scenes where islamists have taken over (presumably the pictures are from real atrocities by muslims elsewhere).  Then it sums up the message at around 14.20 with 
 

"Islam wants to rule, submit and seeks to destroy our western civilization.
In 1945, Nazism was defeated in Europe.
In 1989, Communism was defeated in Europe.
Now, the islamic ideology has to be defeated.
Stop Islamisation.
Defend our freedom"

and then back to the Muhammed timebomb.

The obvious message is that islam is a ticking timebomb in europe and if we don't do something to stop it (muslim immigration I believe) then we will be taken over and run have to live under islam with female subjugation and murder of gay men, stoning for adultery etc.  I really find it appalling that dawkins would support scaremongering like that, by an anti-immigration nut case.

I'm struggling to be constructive about this one.  Geert Wilders is pushing a specifically Islamophobic message here and trying to manipulate emotions against muslims.   Pointing to things like this does not help further reasoned criticism of bad practices and beliefs.   I assume Dawkins misunderstood the video and I would simply ask him to watch it again and also read more about Geert Wilders.  

  Overall I cannot believe that Dawkins has bad intentions here.  I think he is so used to getting unreasonable flak from some religious people who simply can't take criticism that sometimes he loses perspective and judgement on stuff like Fitna.  I do not think he wants to see muslims discriminated against or harmed or stop immigration.  With Harris I am a lot less clear and that is why I think his points are more difficult to comment on.

Words from Sam Harris

  I worry about how much he talks about violence and the general tone of certain passages in the End of Faith and some articles he has written  and I am also disturbed by his denial of Islamophobia.  In general I would like it if he would explicitly acknowledge that hate groups which target people specifically because of their religious beliefs (rather than race) exist and the problem they cause for ordinary muslims.  I would like him to criticise these groups and explain clearly to sympathisers how his views are different from those of groups like the EDL. In the US there is the Stop Islamisation of America group (who I haven't discussed because I don't know much more about them than what is on wiki) who seem Islamophobic, though their activities don't seem as physical as those of the EDL.  I am sure there are others.

Harris has been strongly criticised for writing this in 2006

Increasingly, Americans will come to believe that the only people hard-headed enough to fight the religious lunatics of the Muslim world are the religious lunatics of the West. Indeed, it is telling that the people who speak with the greatest moral clarity about the current wars in the Middle East are members of the Christian right, whose infatuation with biblical prophecy is nearly as troubling as the ideology of our enemies. Religious dogmatism is now playing both sides of the board in a very dangerous game.

While liberals should be the ones pointing the way beyond this Iron Age madness, they are rendering themselves increasingly irrelevant. Being generally reasonable and tolerant of diversity, liberals should be especially sensitive to the dangers of religious literalism. But they aren’t. The same failure of liberalism is evident in Western Europe, where the dogma of multiculturalism has left a secular Europe very slow to address the looming problem of religious extremism among its immigrants. The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists.
To say that this does not bode well for liberalism is an understatement: It does not bode well for the future of civilization.

    He has written about this in his response to criticism

The whole purpose of that essay (written in 2006) was to express my concern that the political correctness of the Left has made it taboo to even notice the menace of political Islam, leaving only right-wing fanatics to do the job. Such fanatics are, as I thought I made clear, the wrong people to do this, being nearly as bad as jihadists themselves. I was not praising fascists: I was arguing that liberal confusion and cowardice was empowering them.
Perhaps the point is still not clear (can one ever be sure?). So, imagine: A copy of the Koran gets burned tomorrow—or is merely rumored to have been burned. What will happen if this act of desecration is widely publicized? Well, we can be sure that Muslims by the thousands, or even the tens of thousands, will riot—perhaps in a dozen countries. Scores of people may die as a result. Who can be counted upon to defend free speech in the face of this pious madness? Will the editorial page of The New York Times remind the world that free people should be free to burn the Koran, or any other book, without fear of being murdered? Probably not. But the secular Left will surely denounce the bigot who burned the book for his “religious insensitivity” and hold him largely (if not entirely) responsible for the resulting mayhem and loss of life. It will be left to crackpot pastors, white supremacists, and other jingoists on the far Right—and, of course, “Islamophobes” like me—to remind us that the First Amendment exists, that books don’t feel pain, and that the sensitivities of every other faith are regularly traduced without similar uprisings.

He is objecting to liberals being so soft on the "threat of Islam" that he thinks fascist are the ones who speak more sensibly than them (or, if we take the 'most' literally, anyone). I got that from the first article though saying 'most' makes it particularly difficult to defend.    There are a wide range of views on Islam amongst liberals and I'm sure some liberals are far too lax on Islam and slip into some apologist bracket but many are not and when Sam Harris paints liberals as weak and fascists as making the most sense on "the threat of Islam" (despite hating their racism generally), he is handing free gift to the fascist, one they do not deserve. There are plenty of liberals who do not agree with Harris or fascists but are still critics of the subjugation of women and anti-gay attitudes which are quite prevalent in Islam.

In his Koran burning and riot speculation above, I think he describes a skewed vision of what would happen.  If this happens our tv news and front covers of our papers will be flooded with images of angry muslims rioting. The airwaves will be filled with commentators condemning them, in both reasonable and unreasonable terms.  Right wing shock jocks will have a field day, but it will not be only them and Fox news.  It will be condemned on CNN, ABC NBC and yes the New York Times and the Washington Post.   In the weeks after there will be many follow up stories about the dangers of Islam and the origin of extremism.

What might happen in addition to all this is that, if the riot doesn't occur immediately after the incident, there might be an editorial or two pointing out that the burning of the Koran is an attempt to stir up violence and a bit of a dickish thing to do.  Given that it will result in a riot this may be a rather sensible point.

  I am sure there will be plenty of editorials from more right wing (but not fascist) publications warning that it will happen and blaming Islam.  There may even be some publications that want to stir the pot further by posting pictures of the Mohammed or encouraging people to burn a Quran in solidarity.  To believe the rioting muslims won't be criticised by anyone but "crackpot pastors, white supremacists, and other jingoists on the far Right" and people like Harris who get called Islamophobes, shows a massively distorted perspective. 

Sam Harris may think liberals are apologists for Islam but he should consider the possibility that it is his views that have wandered into paranoia concerning the threat of Islam, making absurd right wing nonsense seem reasonable to him.
The kind of paranoia from the extreme right  in the wake of 9/11 was staggering and include suggestions that muslims living in America were turning into an Islamic state, that Islam will take take over Europe and America or indeed "the end of the world as we in the West" know it."  I am really not sure how soft liberals would have to be to make this kind of view more sensible than theirs.  

Perhaps I shouldn't believe he's serious about the comparison  at all and is just criticising liberals.  But the problem is exaggerated rhetoric, intended or not feeds people who believe we are in the middle of the Islamisation of Europe and America.

Sam Harris also gets criticsed for talking about preemptive nuclear strikes. 

It should be of particular concern to us that the beliefs of Muslims pose a special problem for nuclear deterrence. There is little possibility of our having a cold war with an Islamist regime armed with long-range nuclear weapons. A cold war requires that the parties be mutually deterred by the threat of death. Notions of martyrdom and jihad run roughshod over the logic that allowed the United States and the Soviet Union to pass half a century perched, more or less stably, on the brink of Armageddon. What will we do if an Islamist regime, which grows dewy-eyed at the mere mention of paradise, ever acquires long-range nuclear weaponry? If history is any guide, we will not be sure about where the offending warheads are or what their state of readiness is, and so we will be unable to rely on targeted, conventional weapons to destroy them. In such a situation, the only thing likely to ensure our survival may be a nuclear first strike of our own. Needless to say, this would be an unthinkable crime—as it would kill tens of millions of innocent civilians in a single day—but it may be the only course of action available to us, given what Islamists believe. How would such an unconscionable act of self-defense be perceived by the rest of the Muslim world? It would likely be seen as the first incursion of a genocidal crusade. The horrible irony here is that seeing could make it so: this very perception could plunge us into a state of hot war with any Muslim state that had the capacity to pose a nuclear threat of its own. All of this is perfectly insane, of course: I have just described a plausible scenario in which much of the world’s population could be annihilated on account of religious ideas that belong on the same shelf with Batman, the philosopher’s stone, and unicorns. That it would be a horrible absurdity for so many of us to die for the sake of myth does not mean, however, that it could not happen. Indeed, given the immunity to all reasonable intrusions that faith enjoys in our discourse, a catastrophe of this sort seems increasingly likely. We must come to terms with the possibility that men who are every bit as zealous to die as the nineteen hijackers may one day get their hands on long-range nuclear weaponry. The Muslim world in particular must anticipate this possibility and find some way to prevent it. Given the steady proliferation of technology, it is safe to say that time is not on our side.

Sam Harris puts this in context because it has been misconstrued as advocating preemptive strikes generally.  He isn't, I can see that, he is talking about a special hypothetical situation  where an " Islamist regime, which grows dewy-eyed at the mere mention of paradise, ever acquires long-range nuclear weaponry ".  His notions are still disturbing.

   An Islamist regime getting nuclear weapons is not sufficient to merit a preemptive nuclear strike.   To put this in context the regime in North Korea is deeply disturbing and erratic but it would be insane to propose preemptive strikes on them just now , despite the recent threat to the US (even with better capabilities so they could actually hit her).   Iran may acquire them but it would be insane to consider a preemptive nuclear strike.  Were the Taliban (or even Al Quaida) to get control of Pakistan it would still be murderously insane, based on that alone, to consider a preemptive nuclear strike.  Just because they favour using terrorist attacks to affect change (and they do have specific aims they are not just out to murder westeners) does not mean they will simply fire off nuclear weapons when they get them.

Secondly there is his notion that this would then trigger a series of responses that "much of the world’s population could be annihilated".  This is a crazy end of the world fantasy that reeks of the paranoia we hear from extremist nutcases, but current geopolitics would have to change dramatically for there to be the kind of annihilating response from other muslim nations.  Currently terrorism from various unpleasant groups like Al Quaida have tragically killed many innocent lives and in Islamic countries many muslim people are massively socially oppressed due to religious conservatism but Islamic are no where near powerful to actually pose a serious threat to western and have little chance of them being effective offensively in a war against rich western countries.   The truth is western interventions in Afganistan and Iraq have killed far far more people than terrorism has or is likely to. 


Think about the impact of this. He has suggested a horrific scenario created by muslims, discussed an unreasonable response and then drawn frightening hyperbolic conclusion that a significant chunk of us are killed as a result (and if you believe that's likely,  go back and reconsider whats sufficient for a the preemptive strike).  And all of this in the context of a time when we are involved in several interventionist wars in muslim countries, interventionist wars he discusses in the same book.  Not to mention that this was written not long after a terrorist attack that killed thousands which has already made people frightened enough.

Such discussions (intended or otherwise) feed into paranoia about radical islam and beliefs that we need excessively violent response, if you've just considered dropping a nuclear weapon on them and thought about a large chunk of the western population wiped out, dropping a few bombs on some children in bagdad doesn't seems so horrifying does it?

In 2004 he wrote:

Unless the world’s Muslims can find some way of expunging the metaphysics that is fast turning their religion into a cult of death, we will ultimately face the same perversely destructive behavior throughout much of the world. 

Wherever these events occur, we will find Muslims tending to side with other Muslims, no matter how sociopathic their behavior. 

It is time we admitted that we are not at war with “terrorism.” We are at war with Islam. This is not to say that we are at war with all Muslims, but we are absolutely at war with the vision of life that is prescribed to all Muslims in the Koran. The only reason Muslim fundamentalism is a threat to us is because the fundamentals of Islam are a threat to us. Every American should read the Koran and discover the relentlessness with which non-Muslims are vilified in its pages. The idea that Islam is a “peaceful religion hijacked by extremists” is a dangerous fantasy — and it is now a particularly dangerous fantasy for Muslims to indulge.

 I am glad he immediately clarifies that he doesn't mean we are at war with all muslims after saying "We are at war with Islam."  But this is still ugly stuff.
 When you describe yourself as being at war with an idea (and I see no suggestion he does not mean an actual physical war) you are setting up a losing proposition.  Clearly Harris means they are at war with us rather than suggesting we start one (though note he is discussing this in the context of a war the UK and US had started in Iraq).  But it is the terrorists who want to frame this as a war on Islam so that all muslims feel threatened and are pulled into it. 

In addition the world is a complicated place and you do public understand no good when you simply all issues with terrorism to a "war on Islam".

I also disagree with his view

In their analyses of U.S. and Israeli foreign policy, liberals can be relied on to overlook the most basic moral distinctions. For instance, they ignore the fact that Muslims intentionally murder noncombatants, while we and the Israelis (as a rule) seek to avoid doing so. Muslims routinely use human shields, and this accounts for much of the collateral damage we and the Israelis cause; the political discourse throughout much of the Muslim world, especially with respect to Jews, is explicitly and unabashedly genocidal.
Given these distinctions, there is no question that the Israelis now hold the moral high ground in their conflict with Hamas and Hezbollah. And yet liberals in the United States and Europe often speak as though the truth were otherwise.

 I'm sorry but the only people who hold the moral high ground (if such a thing exists) in that depressing situation are those calling for peace and negotiation.  That would incidentally be some Israelis and some Palestinians.  I also cannot agree with his call for profiling at airports or his interpretation of what message a mosque near the World Trade Center site sends

The erection of a mosque upon the ashes of this atrocity will also be viewed by many millions of Muslims as a victory—and as a sign that the liberal values of the West are synonymous with decadence and cowardice.

I'm failing in my attempt to be constructive here and it's all got a bit finger pointy again, sorry.  On these positions I just disagree fundamentally with what he is trying to say and find it abhorrent. 

So while I know people who generally seem reasoned and balanced who like Sam Harris I am finding it hard to see why.  I think he paints a violent picture of a world seriously close to the brink of collapse.  A picture that is not remotely borne out by reality and a correct understanding of geopolitcs.  And he paints this pending doom as being almost entirely a result of Islam.

Sam Harris: I am sorry if my reading of you is wrong but this is not the result of seeing a few phrases here and there.  I have made a genuine attempt to read your articles and listen to things you say and this is the impression I have formed.  I have tried to explain why with these references and quotes, but there is a lot more that I have seen that I don't like.

 If I am wrong perhaps you could consider that this might have been helped by the language you use.  If you want to change my mind you could start by acknowledging that anti-muslim hate groups exist , who target people because of their belief. You could explain clearly that you are aware that people get discriminated against and attacked purely because they are muslims and that this is wrong.  You could acknowledge that there are people on the right who say absurd and ridiculous things about muslims and the threat they pose and that the things they say are bigoted and awful.

Sorry Sam Harris, but Islamophobia is real and dangrous.

So there have been a lot of accusations of Islamophobia against prominant rationalists  and a defence by Sam Haris that appears to deny that Islamophobia exists.   I disgree with this and dislike some of the particular ways Sam Harris and others have criticised Islam, feeling they at least feed into Islomophobia if they are not in fact reflective of it.  However I don't want this just to be another finger pointing piece on this, I want to be constructive. I want to explain what Islamophobioa is, why it's a problem and how I think you can criticise Islam without unnecessarily feeding this problem.

Before I discuss that let me clarify my opinions on Islam so that I am not misrepresented. I am an atheist and I find belief in god a bit silly.  I have previously complained about criticisms of religion which suggest that it is somehow inconsistent with or ruled out by science.  But that doesn't mean I think belief in any particular religion is sensible a priori, I find them odd and I'm happy to say that to friends who are religious. 

It is fine to criticise beliefs, I do it a lot. It's also perfectly OK to point out things you don't like in religious scripture, or that are promoted or carried out in the name of a particular religion and discuss how certain beliefs may have influenced people to do violent things.   There is nothing wrong with discussing the relative merits or problems between religions, you don't have to regard them all equally.  It is great to challenge people spouting homophobic bile or promoting the subjugation of women.

I have done all of these things. You should not spread fear, paranoia and hate about a whole group of people (however you group them) or use language that can be understood as smearing an entire group for the actions or the beliefs of a smaller group.  Different criticisms have different ranges of validity.  "They believe in a god without evidence" I think applies to any religion with a god, since that is a universal belief in those religions and there is no evidence to support that belief.   "They blow people up" is a criticism of a tiny minority of people in  a religion and if you want to link the behaviour to the religion you really should present some supporting evidence.  It is not per se bigoted to think religion plays a role, but if it is not supported by evidence then it may look that way. and if you make careless blanket generalisations about a religion and violence you risk smearing everyone who identifies with that religion.

Islamophobia exists

Here I want to explain what Islamophobia is and show that it exists.  Islamophobia is an irrational fear or hatred of muslims, which can manifest itself in anti-muslim biogotry and discrimination based on being muslim.

The British National Party (BNP), the main racist party in Britain,  have focused a lot on muslims lately exploiting a new space in public sentiment created by 9/11 and the discussion of Islamic terrorism.  At the last election they made specific calls to end "muslim immigration"  to Britain.    They have made claims about paedophilia within Islam using horrible slogans like "our children are not halal meat" [Warning: thats a link to the BNP's own site] and their leader has called Islam a cancer in Europe.

Unlike the BNP the the English Defense League are explicitly against Islam rather than various racial groups.  Their mission statement [Warning: thats a link to the EDL's own site] makes it clear that their concern is Islam and phrases it in terms of human rights.  It almost sounds reasonable.  However just glance around on their website and you will find videos propagating myths about muslims on benefits and associating them all with jihadist terrorists and unpleasant rants by Pat Condell (more on him later).  They have involved themselves in violent clashes.   Their supporters have cried chants of "we hate muslims"  and "you dirty fucking muslims" at rallies.


Now while the EDL are a clear archetypal model of an Islamophobic hate group, worryingly these attitudes seem to be more mainstream rather than just confined to thuggish bigots.  Matthew Goodwin has spoken elloquently about the problem of the EDL  and Islamophobia:

"The reason why the EDL's adoption of Islamophobia is particularly significant is that unlike the 1970s, when the National Front was embracing antisemitism, there are now sections of the media and the British establishment that are relatively sympathetic towards Islamophobia," says Goodwin. "It is not difficult to look through the media and find quite hostile views towards Islam and Muslims. That is fundamentally different to the 1970s, when very few newspapers or politicians were endorsing the NF's antisemitic message.

"The point for your average voter is that if they see the EDL marching through their streets shouting about how the neighbourhood is about to be swamped by Muslims or how the UK is going to be Islamified by 2040, they are also receiving these cues from other sections of British society … the message of the EDL may well be legitimised if that continues."

Indeed the daily mail regularly paints a picture of muslims as violent extremists and has ridiculous headlines like "Will britain one day be muslim?" and stories about muslim converts suggesting accompanied with reports of unatributed  hysterical "claims that the country is undergoing a process of ‘Islamification’."

But while many know the daily mail as a hate peddling rag that swims in the filth  of bigotry all on many different issues (the only time they want to support gay rights is when it involves attacking Islam) they are not alone in this. There is a continuous spectrum between outright islamophobic bigotry and respectable, sober criticism of Islamic beliefs and practices.  Those who make some genuine and fair criticisms of Islam can, if they stray into bigotry and misrepresentations, give bigotry the veneer of respectability.

For example Pat Condell is a comedian and critic of religion who has a low brow but powerful, punctuated style of rhetoric that he delivers via youtube sermons.  It is clear he doesn't like religion much in general and describes it in quite unpleasant and unflattering terms.  He is over the top generally but  distinctly harsher on Islam, and has gone as far as to misrepresent rape statistics in Oslo so that he can paint Islam as creating some kind of rape crisis that needs to be stopped.  He has also done this with Sweden, by simply pointing to a correlation between muslim immigration and a large increase in rape and completely ignoring changes in the definition of rape in the statistics and a wealth of confounding factors amongst other problems.  

 He describes an area of London, Borough of Tower Hamlets with an unusually high population of muslims (about 35%) as having been "taken over by muslims".  Another bad habit he has is making many fatuous claims about certain views or behaviour (women covering their faces) as demonstrating mental illness, which I have a problem with more from a mental health awareness point of view than anything to do with Islamophobia.

  In my opinion his bigoted hate of Islam and muslims blinds him to any true evaluation of evidence and he simply leaps on any information that paints muslims in as unpleasant a light as possible then regurgitates this on his videos. Unfortunately he has fairly mainstream appeal and I am ashamed to say I have friends who have posted videos by him on facebook.   I have no reason to believe that Pat Condell likes or supports the BNP or EDL. Indeed he explicitly states he does not support the BNP, (though he is a UKIP voter who are also fairly unpleasant and xenophobic).  Nonetheless he is very popular with the EDL and they are certainly fans of his rhetoric as my clicking on the videos section on their site showed.  This is why when criticising beliefs or practices within Islam or by muslims you should not use Islamophobic sounding language which could be misconstrued as applying to all muslims nor paint an exaggerated paranoid picture of the threat of Islam as you can feed hate groups their propaganda.

Islamophobia accusations and denial

Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens are substantially more considered and intelligent than Pat Condell.  Nonetheless they have been criticised recently in several articles with varying quality.  There is this, focussed mostly on Sam Harris.   It makes some absurd comparison to scientific racism, by which he means stuff like phrenology (a pseudoscience), used to argue for racial differences.  This is daft and there's no connection whatsoever.  However the quotes he uses to criticise Harris though are interesting and I will discuss some I think are problematic later, though the way they are used has varying degrees of validity, please see this defense for an alternative perspective. 
Greenwald made a better job of criticising Sam Harris though I do still find things I disagree with.  There is also a salon article which focuses more on Dawkins. This also has a lot of journalistic fluff and rhetoric, but again the article links to some stuff which is concerning.  Before Greenwald's piece was written he exchanged emails with Sam Harris, who documents them here.  My title comes from this since Sam Harris suggests that Islamophobia doesn't even exists:

"Needless to say, there are people who hate Arabs, Somalis, and other immigrants from predominantly Muslim societies for racist reasons. But if you can’t distinguish that sort of blind bigotry from a hatred and concern for dangerous, divisive, and irrational ideas—like a belief in martyrdom, or a notion of male “honor” that entails the virtual enslavement of women and girls—you are doing real harm to our public conversation. Everything I have ever said about Islam refers to the content and consequences of its doctrine. And, again, I have always emphasized that its primary victims are innocent Muslims—especially women and girls.

There is no such thing as “Islamophobia.” This is a term of propaganda designed to protect Islam from the forces of secularism by conflating all criticism of it with racism and xenophobia. And it is doing its job, because people like you have been taken in by it. "

 Following Greenwald's article Harris has also written another piece responding to the criticisms.  His argument is long and hard to condense, and in addition since there are many accusations of quote mining and misrepresentation (with varying degrees of justification), I'll quote it at length.

As I wrote in my personal exchange with Greenwald, “Islamophobia” is a term of propaganda. Here is how he responded to me on the Guardian website:

Perhaps the most repellent claim Harris made to me was that Islamophobia is fictitious and non-existent, “a term of propaganda designed to protect Islam from the forces of secularism by conflating all criticism of it with racism and xenophobia”. How anyone can observe post-9/11 political discourse in the west and believe this is truly mystifying. The meaning of “Islamophobia” is every bit as clear as “anti-semitism” or “racism” or “sexism” and all sorts of familiar, related concepts. It signifies (1) irrational condemnations of all members of a group or the group itself based on the bad acts of specific individuals in that group; (2) a disproportionate fixation on that group for sins committed at least to an equal extent by many other groups, especially one’s own; and/or (3) sweeping claims about the members of that group unjustified by their actual individual acts and beliefs.

 This is extremely useful, being both clearly stated and clearly wrong. The meaning of “Islamophobia” is not at all like the meanings of those other terms. It is simply not easy to differentiate prejudice against Muslims from ordinary racism and xenophobia directed at Arabs, Pakistanis, Somalis, and other people who happen to be Muslim. Of course, there is no question that such bigotry exists, and it is as odious as Greenwald believes. But inventing a new term does not give us license to say that there is a new form of hatred in the world. How does the term “anti-Semitism” differ? Well, we have a 2000-year-old tradition of religiously inspired hatred against Jews, conceived as a distinct race of people, both by those who hate them and by Jews themselves. Anti-Semitism is, therefore, a specific form of racism that, as everyone knows, has taken many terrible turns over the years (and is now especially prevalent among Muslims, for reasons that can be explicitly traced not merely to recent conflicts over land in the Middle East, but to the doctrine of Islam). “Sexism,” generally speaking, is a bias against women, not because of any doctrines they might espouse, but because they were born without a Y chromosome. The meanings of these terms are clear, and each names a form of hatred and exclusion directed at people, as people, not because of their behavior or beliefs, but because of the mere circumstances of their birth.

Islamophobia is something else entirely. It is, Greenwald tells us in his three points, an “irrational” and “disproportionate” and “unjustified” focus on Muslims. But the only way that Muslims can reasonably be said to exist as a group is in terms of their adherence to the doctrine of Islam. There is no race of Muslims. They are not united by any physical traits or a diaspora. Unlike Judaism, Islam is a vast, missionary faith. The only thing that defines the class of All Muslims—and the only thing that could make this group the possible target of anyone’s “irrational” fear, “disproportionate” focus, or “unjustified” criticism—is their adherence to a set of beliefs and the behaviors that these beliefs inspire.

Actually the difference between criticising a race of people and criticising beliefs is really not as clear as Harris suggests.  Many people are born into religions and few people change the religion, so how much of a free choice is it really?
At the same time religions are generally broad churches with many different interpretations, so when you criticise a religion as a whole for beliefs or practices which are not universal you are in effect smearing those who do not share the beliefs you base your criticism on.  And bigotry is bigotry regardless of whether you base it on a person's race, job, taste in music or belief.   It doesn't matter if the criticism is based on something they choose and can change, if you decide treat them differently in situations where this is not a factor you are a bigot.  Refusing to hire someone as a bus driver because they listen to classical music in their spare time or refusing someone admission to the theatre because they work as a car mechanic is still discrimination.

And, unlike a person’s racial characteristics or gender, beliefs can be argued for, tested, criticized, and changed. In fact, wherever the norms of rational conversation are allowed to do their work, beliefs must earn respect. More important, beliefs are claims about reality and about how human beings should live within it—so they necessarily lead to behavior, and to values, laws, and public institutions that affect the lives of all people, whether they share these beliefs or not. Beliefs end marriages and start wars.

Yes  indeed they can and you can criticise the specific people who hold those beliefs when relevant.  But this is not a justification to make any blanket statements you want about a religion, discriminate against them and certainly not to chant abuse about such a group.  That is still bigotry.  The EDL are still a bunch of Islamophobic twats.

So “Islamophobia” must be—it really can only be—an irrational, disproportionate, and unjustified fear of certain people, regardless of their ethnicity or any other accidental trait, because of what they believe and to the degree to which they believe it. Thus the relevant question to ask is whether a special concern about people who are deeply committed to the actual doctrines of Islam, in the aftermath of September 11th, 2001, is irrational, disproportionate, and unjustified.

Actually no that is not the question.  The question was does Islamophobia exist, not are there legitimate concerns which can be discussed without being Islamophobic.  And more generally although I disagreed with a lot of things in the critical articles linked earlier, I don't believe any claimed that Islam could not be criticised.

Contrary to Greenwald’s assertion, my condemnation of Islam does not apply to “all members of a group or the group itself based on the bad acts of specific individuals in that group.”

Sam Harris may consider this to be the case for his criticisms, but it is not true of all criticsims.  The EDL and the BNP want people to strir up hate against all muslims.  Islamophobia does exists.

My condemnation applies to the doctrines of Islam and to the ways in which they reliably produce these “bad acts.” Unfortunately, in the case of Islam, the bad acts of the worst individuals—the jihadists, the murderers of apostates, and the men who treat their wives and daughters like chattel—are the best examples of the doctrine in practice.

Regardless of what your reading and interpretation of the Quran and hadith is, Islam is practised in different ways.  The religion is not necessarily understood by the definition of the texts (or indeed your interpretation of them).  Since many people call themselves muslims, followers of Islam, without mimicking or supporting the behaviour of these worst individuals, if you describe Islam only in terms of the worst indivuals, without clarification, you are smearing those people.

Those who adhere most strictly to the actual teachings of Islam, those who expound its timeless dogma most honestly, are precisely the people whom Greenwald and other obscurantists want us to believe least represent the faith.

 

Well, this is a very easy difference of opinion to resolve: One need only study the doctrine of Islam—not merely as it existed in the 7th century, but as it exists today—and ask some very basic questions. What, for instance, is the penalty for apostasy? Interestingly, it isn’t spelled out in the Koran—there, apostates are merely promised their just deserts in hell—but it is made painfully clear in the hadith, and in the opinions of Muslim jurists and Muslim mobs everywhere. The year is 2013, and the penalty for apostasy, everywhere under Islam, is death. I have yet to meet an apologist for the religion, however evasive, who could lie about this fact with a straight face. (Perhaps Greenwald would like to be the first.) Needless to say, I receive emails from former Muslims who are all too aware of what it means to be a former Muslim. Depending on where they live, these people run a real risk of being murdered, perhaps even by members of their own families, for having lost their faith. 

I am not an Islamic scholar, I have not read the Quran (though I did just find a few copies and will try at some point) or the hadiths therefore I cannot argue to what extent Islam teaches the subjugation of women, death for apostasy or  violence against non-believers (though forgive me if I don't immediately accept Harris's reading but also listen to muslims on this).   Religion is rarely practised in precisely the way doctrinal texts dictate and there are many muslims whose lifestyle and views do not reflect this.  Even if the description by Harris is  accurate some may use the text for reflection and guidance rather than using it explicitly as an instruction manual.

 However let us be clear anyone who believes in the subjugation of women, death for apostasy or  violence against non-believers is an arsehole and if that is the message of their religion, their religion is a nasty shit. On apostasy I did have a look at wiki, which claims (based on a single source I can't check) death penalty is the consensus view of what punishment is prescribed under sharia law.  That is horrifying if true.  Thankfully there is opposition to this view and I hope that this opposition becomes the dominant strand of thought.  Muslims who do support death for apostasy deserve condemnation, this belief is grotesque and they horrify me by holding it.   I also note the wiki lists the punishment in various countries which is very disturbing (and sad). 

As appalling as all this is, it does not justify hate groups chanting "dirty fucking muslims"; it does not justify discrimination against people because they are muslim; it does not justify refusing asylum to people because they are muslim and it does not justify violence directed against muslims.  Islamophobia still exists and it is still a big problem.  Also note punishments for apostasy is a specific example of discrimination against someone for their beliefs rather than race etc, though it doesn't have a narrow target of a single group so we reference it by the perpertartors rather than victims.  But it is similar in nature to the murderous intent of someone like Anders Breivik towards muslims because of their beliefs, which is an example of Islamophobia.  Tragically Anders Islamophobia led to him murdering many people, though they actually happened to be non-muslims, which only shows that tackling Islamophobia is important for the safety of everyone.

Sam Harris then discusses whether he needs to crticise Islam equally to other religions.  I won't quote this part because I simply agree, and don't think anyone suggested  otherwise.   I suspect Harris thinks that is what is suggested when they spoke of undue focus.  I think they mean focus which is not merited.

As far as I can tell Sam Harris has not withdrawn, but rather tried to justify his horrible Islamopobia denial.  Why does this matter?  Well if we are to criticise unpleasant parts of beliefs that exist within Islam, and I think this is a good thing to do, then we also don't want to stir up Islamophobia at the same time.   We do not want to unnecessarily encourage the EDL in the way Pat Condell clearly does, with his daft rape claims.  Also to actually be a good thing it has to be effective at changing those views, if you argue the good cause in such a away that you actually make opinions go in the opposite direction you do harm.  Given that the most unpleasant things done in the name of Islam occur in countries in Asia and Africa, where the religion is more powreful and there is less freedom and democracy it is not straightforward that criticising it from outside always actually helps.   Care should be taken there too.

 I wanted to discuss what Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris have said here next, but now I have moved it to a companion piece. The aim (though not necessarily fully achieved) is to be constructive.  I want to persuade you that it is still possible to criticise beliefs we don't like without making statements that are Islamophobic sounding or can feed Islamophobia.  I don't discuss Christopher Hitchens because I know his writing less.

Conclusions

Although not from a muslim background myself I went to a school with a large muslim intake (something like 20-30% I think). I have friends who are muslims and have watched people struggle with both sides of this issue.  I have friends who had conservative and oppressive social values pushed on them and I have friends who have been attacked by Islamophic twats.  I am concerned that there are people with generally decent liberal values who are in effect providing a veneer of respectability for hate groups and politicians with an exclusionary Islamophobic agenda.


I have no doubt that there are people who accuse Dawkins, Hitchins and Harris of Islamophobia purely to deflect criticism of their religion. But Islamophobia is real and some things they say feed it, while it is possible to criticize Islam in more careful ways that don't. What's the harm in saying "there are very unpleasant things in my reading of the Qu'ran and I see these carried out and worse things still in the name of Islam" while acknowledging that many Muslims are peaceful and that Muslims still only hold a tiny minority of power in western countries. Instead of providing slogans like "Islam is an unmitigated evil"?.


With this post I am trying to show the imposition of oppressive social values and worse can be challenged without feeding the Islamophobes.  This is not a call for an end to criticism it is a call for greater consideration, clarity and care.

Melanie Phillips and Richard Dawkins

Melanie Phillips is a disgusting, puss filled, barely human wretch that every now and then crawls up from the underworld to spew faeces onto the pages of tabloid newspapers, magazines and sometimes our tv screens. Recently she wrote a vitriolic anti-science pile of poo here.

Normally I can't be bothered writing about such feeble minded drivel. I think mistakes like this are only worth discussing if there is a possibility I could be challenging an otherwise intelligent person's thinking. However what got my attention here me here is that she is using Dawkins' anti-religious rants to paint all scientists as irrational.

``For example, Professor Richard Dawkins' told me he was ‘not necessarily averse’ to the idea that life on earth had been created by a governing intelligence — provided that such an intelligence had arrived from another planet. How can it be that our pre-eminent apostle of reason appears to find little green men more plausible as an explanation for the origin of life than God?

The answer is that in certain areas science has overreached itself by trying to play God, and as a result has turned into an ideology.''

When I wrote my blog criticising Dawkins some people defended his inaccuracies saying they they wouldn't do any harm and they didn't understand why I was so annoyed. Well here is one reason why. It isn't the best example and I am sure there are plenty of others but i don't exactly read trash news very often and rarely get a chance to write about it, so I thought I'd take the opportunity here, along with a chance to try out a Hunter S. Thompson impression in the first paragraph.

Richard Dawkins is an Enemy of Reason.

Today it is Easter and I am about to use the exploitation by commercial companies of a particular group of odd religious people as an excuse to eat overly expensive chocolate. In celebration of this let me also post my critique of Richard Dawkins book the God Delusion, where he gives the false impression that these odd religious beliefs are inconsistent with science.

Since the release of The God Delusion there has been much criticism of Richard Dawkins, most coming from members of religious communities offended by his comments. I read it recently and as an atheist and a scientist I think I can offer a different perspective . I don't really care about criticism or mockery of religion. While he should not make fallacious arguments or misrepresent what people believe, as a non-believer, I am not in a position to judge if this is the case and would take no special offense at the misrepresentation of religion. However I think I can judge when he misrepresents what science can tell us and that tends to set me off on rants.

In his crusade against quackery from frauds and genuine believers who ignore established science and make claims which are ruled out by evidence, Richard Dawkins (or perhaps his producers) coined the phrase Enemies of Reason. I appreciated his attempt to draw attention to this problem and explain why science can show such claims to be bogus, just as I like reading the bad science blog / guardian column where Ben Goldacre exposes and mocks false claims and misrepresentations of science in the media. Science is something which I think is both fascinating and incredibly important for society and our well being, so I get really annoyed when people misrepresent it and confuse the public.

Unfortunately despite his good work communicating problems with the false claims made by proponents of faith healing, dowsing and homeopathy, Richard Dawkins himself is guilty of misrepresenting science. He has repeatedly argued that the 'God hypothesis' is a scientific one and that his conclusion is that god is false. He makes this claim explicitly in his book, The God Delusion, in public lectures he has given and in interviews. This is an absurd misrepresentation of science.

So why does he make this claim? Well lets follow the argument which is set out in The God Delusion, as well as the public lectures. First of all he clarifies that he is not actually saying science has proved god does not exist. He says instead that it is simply very unlikely. I wouldn't have understood the original statement any differently, science never provides mathematical proofs, we simply accumulate large bodies of empirical evidence which in some cases leave vanishingly small probabilities for our conclusions to be wrong.

Dawkins explicitly states that he thinks there is a very low probability of god existing:

"I count myself in category 6 [very low probability], but leaning towards 7 [Knowing for sure god does not exist] - I am agnostic only to the extent that I am agnostic about fairies at the bottom of the garden. "

So he must have a very strong body of empirical data which conflicts with all hypotheses of god then? Lets be clear here. For this claim to be true it is not enough to show that some or many god hypotheses are improbable because they poorly fit the data, one has to show that all such hypotheses are unlikely. If a single god hypothesis is not that unlikely then you cannot state that the existence of god is improbable based on a purely objective evaluation of the evidence.

Before we can really analyse such a statement we need to know what Dawkins means by god. I think any real ambiguity is removed when he also differentiates between theists, deists and pantheists,

"A theist believes in a supernatural intelligence who, in addition to his main work of creating the universe in the first place, is still around to oversee and influence the subsequent fate of his initial creation. In many theistic belief systems, the deity is intimately involved in human affairs. He answers prayers; forgives or punishes sins; intervenes in the world by performing miracles; frets about good and bad deeds, and knows when we do them (or even think of doing them). A deist, too, believes in a supernatural intelligence, but one whose activities were confined to setting up the laws that govern the universe in the first place. The deist God never intervenes thereafter, and certainly has no specific interest in human affairs. Pantheists don't believe in a supernatural God at all, but use the word God as a nonsupernatural synonym for Nature, or for the Universe, or for the lawfulness that governs its workings. Deists differ from theists in that their God does not answer prayers, is not
interested in sins or confessions, does not read our thoughts and does not intervene with capricious miracles. Deists differ from pantheists in that the deist God is some kind of cosmic intelligence, rather than the pantheist's metaphoric or poetic synonym for the laws of the universe."

Dawkins is very clear that he is arguing that both Deist and theist gods are improbable,

"The deist God is certainly an improvement over the monster of the Bible. Unfortunately it is scarcely more likely that he exists, or ever did. In any of its forms the God Hypothesis is unnecessary. The God Hypothesis is also very close to being ruled out by the laws of probability."

Exactly what his probabilistic threshold for actually ruling out such a god remains unclear. In science we set specific probabilities beyond which it will be accepted that a test has ruled out or verified some prediction, but such thresholds are a convention and can vary between disciplines. That is not a conflict or discrepancy between subjects, it is simply the case that we define verified and ruled out with varying degrees of stringency and scientists within a particular subject should know what is meant when those words appear. I interpreted Dawkins statement to mean almost entirely ruled out, i.e. vanishingly small probability, but even if he is being considerably more modest, this is still not a scientifically correct statement.

Dawkins criticizes agnostics who argue that there is not adequate empirical evidence to decide either way. He first argues that the existence of god is in principle scientifically testable,

"I shall suggest that the existence of God is a scientific hypothesis like any other. Even if hard to test in practice, it belongs in the same TAP or temporary agnosticism box as the controversies over the Permian and Cretaceous extinctions. God's existence or non-existence is a scientific fact about the universe, discoverable in principle if not in practice. "

Actually if we are speaking about a deist god it may be in principle impossible to test such a hypothesis. It is not clear currently if we could ever have testable predictions from events 'preceding' the big bang, but equally I cannot be sure we will not. It may also be possible to come up with other ideas where the testability is in principle impossible. Regardless I view this as splitting hairs somewhat and I am happy to accept this statement is broadly correct and that Dawkins is working on the assumption that one day we might extend sciences reach beyond the big bang. However he must also be aware that currently we certainly have not done so. He continues,

"If he existed and chose to reveal it, God himself could clinch the argument, noisily and unequivocally, in his favor. And even if God's existence is never proved or disproved with certainty one way or the other, available evidence and reasoning may yield an estimate of probability far from 50 per cent."

This is very exciting. Dawkins has just stated that available evidence might yield a probabilistic discrimination between the hypothesis that god exists and the hypothesis that there is no god. Remember he is still including deistic gods here, so this is a truly sensational prospect. What is this evidence?

Dawkins runs through various supernatural predictions of Christianity:

"Did Jesus have a human father, or was his mother a virgin at the time of his birth? Whether or not there is enough surviving evidence to decide it, this is still a strictly scientific question with a definite answer in principle: yes or no. Did Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead? Did he himself come alive again, three days after being crucified? There is an answer to every such question, whether or not we can discover it in practice, and it is a strictly scientific answer. The methods we should use to settle the matter, in the unlikely event that relevant evidence ever became available, would
be purely and entirely scientific methods."

Regardless of the status of evidence on these claims, they are not general predictions of a god hypothesis. Falsification of these statements would not affect in the slightest any god hypotheses other than the tiny subset which specifically predict these things. I am not sure how central to Christianity these claims are, and whether or not most Christians believe these are factual events or stories in the bible to be interpreted in a different way, but I will leave that question to Christians. Please also note, the room for interpretation rendering any `predictions' malleable is why religious based creationism can never be considered a scientific theory, but equally this is why we cannot scientifically demonstrate a religion to be false when they reinterpret it's teachings based on scientific evidence.

However Dawkins claims it is not just a Christian god which is improbable.

``Nevertheless, let us follow Gould and pare our religion down to some sort of non-interventionist minimum: no miracles, no personal communication between God and us in either direction, no monkeying with the laws of physics, no trespassing on the scientific grass. At most, a little deistic input to the initial conditions of the universe so that, in the fullness of time, stars, elements, chemistry and planets develop, and life evolves....I suggest ... though less violent and clumsy than an Abrahamic God, is still, when you look at him fair and square, a scientific hypothesis. I return to the point: a universe in which we are alone except for other slowly evolved intelligences is a very different universe from one with an original guiding agent whose intelligent design is responsible for its very existence. I accept that it may not be so easy in practice to distinguish one kind of universe from the other. Nevertheless, there is something utterly special about the hypothesis of ultimate design, and equally special about the only known alternative: gradual evolution in the broad sense. They are close to being irreconcilably different.''

No matter how well you argue that all god hypotheses are in principle testable, until those tests are actually performed, science cannot make probabilistic statements about the existence of god. Two hypotheses which both fit current data equally well cannot be scientifically discriminated between. God hypotheses which make no currently testable predictions cannot be experimentally resolved from a hypotheses with no god.

This may be an unfamiliar concept since in science we tend to present only one theory as the best explanation of the data. However there is always infinite set of modifications which can be made to that theory which do not affect any known empirical measurements. If the two models cannot in principle yield different empirical predictions then the distinction between them is not a scientific one, but a philosophical one. If instead it might be possible to perform tests or make observations which can distinguish between them then this can be provide motivation for further research.

To select between scientifically equivalent theories we use Occam's razor, which states that the simplest theory that matches data is the best. However all are valid descriptions of nature, we just choose the simplest because it makes the description easier. It is true that in Beyesian probabilities occam's razor automatically appears, but such an effect comes through the subjective prior, which represents your prior belief in something before looking at the evidence, and therefore cannot be relied upon for purely objective statements. So while one might be tempted to suggest Occam's razor is a reason to disfavor god (a theory with no god is simpler than one with god) this does not give an objective reason to disbelieve . You cannot give an objective probabilistic distinction between two theories which make the same the testable predictions. If we could make objective statements like this then it would invalidate a lot of current research.

For example in particle physics the simplest model which fits all data is the 'Standard Model', which I introduced in my previous post. However we only have data over certain energy ranges (or distance scales) and currently we are trying to probe higher energies (shorter distances) than ever before with the Large Hadron Collider to see if there is physics beyond the standard model. There are very interesting and well motivated ideas like extra dimensions or supersymmetry which are less 'simple' than the standard model but many physicists expect will be discovered. There are also less well motivated ideas which nonetheless fit the current data. We cannot currently scientifically distinguish between them and the Standard Model because they all fit the data. Real science is curious about what nature is like beyond the range of tests we have done so far.

`` Like nothing else, evolution really does provide an explanation for the existence of entities whose improbability would otherwise, for practical purposes, rule them out. And the conclusion to the argument, as I shall show in Chapter 4, is close to being terminally fatal to the God Hypothesis''

Actually without a theory of evolution we cannot rule out the existence of complex entities, for fairly obvious reasons. Yet even if humans were not around as as a demonstration of the fallaciousness of such a statement, the absence of an understood mechanism to form complex entities does not prove no such mechanism exists and certainly does not demonstrate the non-existence of the complex entities themselves.

Nor is there a case, as the church perhaps once had it, that an absence of an understood mechanism suggests the existence of god. As Hume pointed out trying to use god to explain the existence of humans leads to infinite regress. Prior to Darwin there was simply a puzzle to which no-one had provided a satisfactory solution. Now thanks to Darwin we understand how it is possible for complex organisms to come into existence through the natural process of evolution, which is a remarkable achievement. Nonetheless this does not demonstrate that the only path to existence is evolution.

This already foreshadows the direction Dawkins will take. He will (without acknowledgment) switch from an evidence based discussion to an argument which is independent of scientific evidence, based purely on his inability to imagine how a god could exist. While I might agree that our inability to imagine how a god could possibly exist makes me doubt that there is one, it does not lead me to claim I can provide an objective probabilistic argument of there being no god.

``The view that I shall defend is very different: agnosticism about the existence of God belongs firmly in the temporary or TAP category. Either he exists or he doesn't. It is a scientific question; one day we may know the answer, and meanwhile we can say something pretty strong about the probability.

My definition of the God Hypothesis included the words 'superhuman' and 'supernatural'. To clarify the difference imagine that a SETI radio telescope actually did pick up a signal from outer space which showed, unequivocally, that we are not alone ... In what sense, then, would the most advanced SETI aliens not be gods? In what sense would they be superhuman but not supernatural? In a very important sense, which goes to the heart of this book. The crucial difference between gods and god-like extraterrestrials lies not in their properties but in their provenance. Entities that are complex enough to be intelligent are products of an evolutionary process. No matter how god-like they may seem when we encounter them, they didn't start that way. ''

So Dawkins is ruling out highly evolved alien life from his definition of god. He continues:

``The laws of probability forbid all notions of their spontaneously appearing without simpler antecedents. They probably owe their existence to a (perhaps unfamiliar) version of Darwinian evolution: some sort of cumulatively ratcheting 'crane' as opposed to 'skyhook', to use Daniel Dennett's terminology. Skyhooks - including all gods - are magic spells. They do no bona fide explanatory work and demand more explanation than they provide. Cranes are explanatory devices that actually do explain. ''

So he generalises and also does not admit beings originating from some 'version' of evolution he hasn't conceived of. He requires that to be a god there is no simpler antecedents. Such a god he states is highly improbable.

Essentially he is ruling out (as a 'god') any being he can imagine coming into existence. Well OK that's his definition and to be fair I doubt many religious people would be comfortable with the idea that their god had simple antecedents, but why is he so sure that what remains within his definition of god is improbable?

For this he gives us his ``Boeing 747'' argument.

``The name comes from Fred Hoyle's amusing image of the Boeing 747 and the scrapyard. I am not sure whether Hoyle ever wrote it down himself, but it was attributed to him by his close colleague Chandra Wickramasinghe and is presumably authentic. Hoyle said that the probability of life originating on Earth is no greater
than the chance that a hurricane, sweeping through a scrapyard, would have the luck to assemble a Boeing 747.''

Dawkins moves this imagery from a comparison with the probability of natural life to the probability of a 'god' spontaneously forming. Dawkins whole argument is simply that something as presumably complex as a god is highly unlikely to form spontaneously. That a god capable of creating us or the universe must be highly complex and Dawkins cannot imagine a mechanism by which such a god would be likely to form without simpler antecedents. That really is it.

Dawkins cannot imagine any way such a being could form. I must admit I cannot either, indeed that's part of the reason I am an atheist. It does seem a very challenging task to explain how a being capable of creating the universe could exist. However my point is not that I think atheism is irrational, which would be a strange position for me to adopt. My point is that one cannot claim that science demonstrates that god is unlikely.

First note that there is no experimental input into Dawkins argument. It is not in any way a phenomenological scientific claim of evidence. Instead he is trying to discredit the god hypothesis by a theoretical argument. This is not a scientific statement based on empirical evidence. There is no such evidence.

Dawkins without actually quite specifying the mechanism by which this god forms insists that it is highly improbable that this could happen. This is not the usual kind of probabilistic statement dealt with in science. Normally experiments are performed testing prediction of the theory and then one can make objective probabilistic statements about the likelihood of getting that data if the theory is true. If the probability is sufficiently small the theory is considered to be ruled out.

However this is not say that scientists are blind to other kinds of argument. There is one area of science where very analogous arguments are used in support of scientific theories, that is my own field that of particle physics. Indeed I am a strong proponent of such arguments.

Previously I explained how in particle physics the workload is spit up between theorists and experimentalists, and that when constructing models to explain questions we try to do so without actually introducing new questions (\'a la the infinite regression of the god hypothesis). . I also tried to describe one very important mechanism exploited by theorists to construct models which match nature, the Higgs mechainism, which allows us to create models which correctly predict the interactions of matter and have fundamental particles with masses. This predicts the famous Higgs boson which experimentalists are searching for at the Large Hadron Collider.

The simplest model with this Higgs mechanism which can describe all current observations is the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics, providing a very good description of nature at low (currently tested) energies. However some theorists are not convinced that it is a complete theory because we feel it introduces further puzzles which are left unexplained. One of these puzzles is known as the hierarchy problem which I discussed in the same blog entry .

Please recall that one of the unique properties of the Higgs boson is that it's mass is quadratically sensitive to new physics from high energies. Since we know that at very high energies some new gravitational physics must be introduced we expect the Higgs mass to receive quadratic contributions from this very high energy scale (called the Planck scale). However the Higgs mass is some 17 orders of magnitude smaller than this energy scale. In order for this to be the case, within the SM we assume that these contributions are canceled by a free parameter in the theory. While this is mathematically consistent, the enormous coincidence seems improbable and that is the hierarchy problem. Much like Dawkins criticism of his god hypothesis, theoretical physicists feel that there is no imaginable explanation for this free parameter to cancel so precisely with the Planck scale.

I also mentioned that theorists have come up with a number of solutions including one I really like, called supersymmetry, where these large contributions from high energies are forced to cance by a new symmetry of nature. These ideas introduce more new physics, which if correct will be observed in the same machine, the Large Hadron Collider, which experimentalists built to look for the Higgs.

I am mentioning this again partly because I think it is fascinating and very exciting, but also because there is parallel to Richard Dawkins argument. We talk about this improbability of a cancellation between the parameter and contributions from high energies, but only because we can see no reason why they are related. So if the parameter just takes a random value then the cancellation is so improbable as to be effectively impossible. While I believe this argument to be an important and compelling one, it is not a proof that the SM is incomplete at low energies. Our inability to imagine or construct a model at high energies where the parameter is tuned so closely to the Planck scale does not conclusively prove it is not so. I can make no objective probabilistic statement about whether such a model I cannot imagine could in fact be realised.

All I can say is that because I see no way it could happen and random chance is very improbable, I believe there must be an explanation at lower energies. As scientists however we will only rule out the SM as the complete low energy description of nature if it is falsified in experiments at the Large Hadron Collider. In science it is the data which decides.

The theoretical arguments presented by Dawkins fall into a similar category. There is no way he can really state that just because he cannot imagine a god coming into existence without simpler antecedents that it is impossible. All we can say is that without knowing such a mechanism a god hypothesis does not provide a satisfactory explanation of human existence. Therefore Dawkins argument is simply a reformulation of Hume's criticism of god as an explanation for existence, as Dawkins almost seems aware in parts of his book.

``Design is not the only alternative to chance. Natural selection is a better alternative. Indeed, design is not a real alternative at all because it raises an even bigger problem than it solves: who designed the designer? Chance and design both fail as solutions to the problem of statistical improbability, because one of them is the problem, and the other one regresses to it. ''

There is nothing wrong with this, but it is simply neither new nor a clear objective reason. A scientifically minded and rational person may still believe that god exists. There is still no contradiction between science and a belief in god, despite Dawkins attempts to convince his readers otherwise.

Although I have no belief in god, and in fact actively disbelieve I neither come to this view from scientific evidence nor make objective probabilistic statements about it . My problem with The God Delusions is that Dawkins is giving people a false impression of what science can do, overextending it's remit, and this can be dangerous for public understanding.

A common misconception is that science keeps overthrowing its ideas and changing what it states, so that what we say is true today might be false tomorrow, but this is wrong. Science keeps progressing, but very well established knowledge is almost never overturned.

For example many people think Newtonian mechanics is wrong and Einstein's ideas overthrew it. This is wrong. Newtonian mechanics is a good and very well tested description of nature, for speeds much less than the speed of light and at macroscopic scales, which applies today. Einstein suggested it would break down when you move out of this regime and was subsequently proved correct. This does not falsify the vast body of evidence supporting Newtonian mechanics. So long as scientists are careful to state the regimes under which they have performed tests and not make statements with certainty about untested regimes, the methodology makes it unlikely that they will wrong.

Unfortunately this point is often missed. When Dawkins tries to extend science to the point of claiming that god is unlikely based on the theory of evolution, he feeds into this basic misunderstanding. We cannot extend scientific models beyond the empirical evidence base on which they are established and call it fact. Othertwise this can lead people to dismiss scientific evidence and ignore it's teachings. With this kind of rhetoric Dawkins pushes people towards the very pseudo scientific rubbish he rails against.

I do not understand why Dawkins has presented such an argument and falsely represented it as a scientific one, with clear probabilistic statements. I find it difficult to reconcile the intelligent scientist with this poorly thought out pretense of an argument. Perhaps his speculation about the arguments presented by theologians he has encountered, in fact reflects on him,

``I did not gain the impression that the theologians who mounted this evasive defense were being willfully dishonest. I think they were sincere. Nevertheless, I was irresistibly reminded of Peter Medawar's comment on Father Teilhard de Chardin's The Phenomenon of Man, in the course of what is possibly the greatest negative book review of all time: `its author can be excused of dishonesty only on the grounds that before deceiving others he has taken great pains to deceive himself'.''

Dawkins likes to represent his views as those of the rational scientists opposing superstition and clear logical fallacy of the creationist / intelligent design movement. Indeed he spends a lot of time in his book explaining why the clearly ridiculous arguments of creationists are false. Readers may be given the impression that to disagree with Dawkins is to side with those people. That is not the case.

In reality the division is between rational people, religious, agnostics and atheists, both scientist and lay persons, who understand the importance of making evidence based statements and understand that one cannot claim a factual basis of knowledge without this and those like Dawkins and creationists who cannot tell the difference between their prejudices and scientific fact. Regardless of his motives due to the rampant misrepresentation of science and poor logic contained in his book, the God Delusion, I call Richard Dawkins an enemy of reason.