Miscellaneous

Several things have come through my blog reader that I want to comment on, but none require a post of their own. So here you are:

Celebrating Darwin. Still? Again? It doesn't really matter. Here's a well-produced video giving the history of life in brief, narrated by David Attenborough. Delightful to watch.





(Thanks to Mike, the Not Quite So Friendly Humanist, for sharing this video.)

Solar System on one page. Also along the lines of enjoying the natural world. Or, in this case, worlds: a webpage where you can see all the planets (plus Pluto). They are to scale for size, but also for mean distance from the Sun. Try it out.

If you're having difficulty finding the planets in all the black, here's a little trick: after the "/" at the end of the URL, add "#mars", or "#neptune", and it'll zoom to that planet. But that does kind of defeat the purpose: you're supposed to become aware of the vast, vast spaces between the planets.

(Thanks to Phil, the Bad Astronomer, for the link.)

Abolish the Canadian monarch? Here's Canadian humanist and activist Justin Trottier with his take on the fact that the nominal Canadian head of state is not Canadian, and is also the head of one particular religious sect. I tend to agree with him - there is no good reason to retain the monarchy, though perhaps not yet sufficient reason against it to go to the trouble of writing them out of our laws.

Beautiful impermanence. I close this grab-bag with a delightful "sermon" from Daylight Atheism, in which we are encouraged to reflect upon impermanence as autumn surrounds us*. He contrasts the humanist acceptance of our impermanence with the inborn yearning we all have - reflected so frequently in religious beliefs - to deny our own deaths. While I'm not generally interested in contrasting humanism with religious beliefs, I think the contrast here is poignant. Particularly as the humanist position, in following the evidence of the world around us, draws us away from our primitive desires for immortality. It encourages us, in a real sense, to grow up.

Okay, this one could have used its own post. For now, I refer you to this pair of posts (in that order) by Dale McGowan, about discussing mortality with his kids. And this more recent one, about the problem of awesome people being mortal too.

[Edit to add link to the Daylight Atheism post, which I unaccountably forgot to do at first.]

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* Excluding Canada and other northern regions, where winter has already firmly displaced fall, and the whole southern hemisphere, being on the other side of the seasonal see-saw.

Positively unjust?

The latest issue of Humanitie magazine just arrived in the mail. In this issue, Mike and I discuss our (somewhat different) thoughts on positive discrimination. Make sure to read his thoughts here.

I was all ready to deliver a column arguing against “positive discrimination”.

I was going to argue that the solution to discrimination is not counter-discrimination. Two wrongs don’t make a right. I would point out that even the people supposedly helped by it are, really, just being patronised: “You can’t get this job on merit, so we’ll give you a hand up because of your sex/race/etc.”

I’d have pointed out that the statistics you run across in the media about pay gaps and hiring biases are probably rife with holes. For example, the workers at my daughter’s nursery are almost all women. Does this imply discrimination against male nursery workers? More likely, it’s simply a consequence of free choice: more women than men choose to be nursery workers (for whatever reason). Trying to “equalize” this with quotas would devalue the choices those women and men are freely making.

I was even ready to loftily concede that there are situations of extreme, institutional discrimination where positive discrimination as a temporary counterbalance – as part of a wider program promoting education and social change – might be justifiable as a lesser evil.

And of course, I would have generously acknowledged my potential conflict of interest on this issue: I am a white man. I hate the idea of being passed over for a job in favour of a less-qualified candidate because of my sex or race (what “positive discrimination” means to many people).

But then, at Deena’s suggestion, I started looking into what programs actually exist here, and my righteous indignation vanished.

Because, you see, so-called “positive discrimination” is illegal in Britain. Existing human rights legislation, and the proposed new Equality Bill, specifically prohibit the hiring or promoting of one job candidate over another on the basis of sex or race – or any other protected category, such as sexual orientation, religion, and age.

What is promoted is “positive action”. An employer can encourage under-represented categories of people to apply for a job or promotion; an agency can target disadvantaged groups in promoting training courses. This means things like advertising in media that target these segments of the population, or using language in job adverts that encourages them to apply. (“Women and minorities welcome!”, for example.)

While people might argue about the effectiveness of such measures, it seems clear that positive action hardly constitutes inappropriate discrimination against “dispreferred groups” (such as white male columnists). In fact, it seems to be just the level at which opponents of “positive discrimination” (like me) suggest we should be channelling our efforts.

I think we probably do still have low-level discrimination (both conscious and unconscious) in our society, and it needs combating. Even accounting for self-selection and shortcomings of popular statistics, some unfairness does exist. I have plenty of loved ones in “disadvantaged” groups – women, older people, people with mental health problems, etc. So, in addition to my above-mentioned interest, I have a strong personal interest in trying to make our employment landscape fair.

So I say, keep positive discrimination illegal, and keep positive action around.

Turing apology

A few days ago, I pointed out a petition calling for a posthumous apology to Alan Turing for his disgraceful treatment by the British government when it became known that he was gay.

Well, Gordon Brown has delivered. He has issued what seems to me to be a very frank apology, acknowledging not only Turing's significant contributions to computing and to the outcome of the Second World War, but also the injustice of his treatment at the hands of the country he had served so well.

As of this moment, there are 31070 signatures on the online petition. (I assume the petition is closed, now that its aim is achieved, but cannot find a clear statement to that effect.)

Here is the full text of the Prime Minister's statement:

2009 has been a year of deep reflection – a chance for Britain, as a nation, to commemorate the profound debts we owe to those who came before. A unique combination of anniversaries and events have stirred in us that sense of pride and gratitude which characterise the British experience. Earlier this year I stood with Presidents Sarkozy and Obama to honour the service and the sacrifice of the heroes who stormed the beaches of Normandy 65 years ago. And just last week, we marked the 70 years which have passed since the British government declared its willingness to take up arms against Fascism and declared the outbreak of World War Two. So I am both pleased and proud that, thanks to a coalition of computer scientists, historians and LGBT activists, we have this year a chance to mark and celebrate another contribution to Britain’s fight against the darkness of dictatorship; that of code-breaker Alan Turing.

Turing was a quite brilliant mathematician, most famous for his work on breaking the German Enigma codes. It is no exaggeration to say that, without his outstanding contribution, the history of World War Two could well have been very different. He truly was one of those individuals we can point to whose unique contribution helped to turn the tide of war. The debt of gratitude he is owed makes it all the more horrifying, therefore, that he was treated so inhumanely. In 1952, he was convicted of ‘gross indecency’ – in effect, tried for being gay. His sentence – and he was faced with the miserable choice of this or prison - was chemical castration by a series of injections of female hormones. He took his own life just two years later.

Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing and recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can't put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him. Alan and the many thousands of other gay men who were convicted as he was convicted under homophobic laws were treated terribly. Over the years millions more lived in fear of conviction.

I am proud that those days are gone and that in the last 12 years this government has done so much to make life fairer and more equal for our LGBT community. This recognition of Alan’s status as one of Britain’s most famous victims of homophobia is another step towards equality and long overdue.

But even more than that, Alan deserves recognition for his contribution to humankind. For those of us born after 1945, into a Europe which is united, democratic and at peace, it is hard to imagine that our continent was once the theatre of mankind’s darkest hour. It is difficult to believe that in living memory, people could become so consumed by hate – by anti-Semitism, by homophobia, by xenophobia and other murderous prejudices – that the gas chambers and crematoria became a piece of the European landscape as surely as the galleries and universities and concert halls which had marked out the European civilisation for hundreds of years. It is thanks to men and women who were totally committed to fighting fascism, people like Alan Turing, that the horrors of the Holocaust and of total war are part of Europe’s history and not Europe’s present.

So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan’s work I am very proud to say: we’re sorry, you deserved so much better.

Gordon Brown

Well done, Mr Brown.

Call for apology to Turing

This is a story of a national hero who was censured by his country and died alone on account of love.

Alan Turing was a key figure in the early years of computer development, before the Second World War. During the war, he was a key figure in the British team that decrypted the German Enigma cipher. Their contributions gave the Allies a pivotal advantage over their adversaries.

He was prosecuted for "gross indecency" because he'd had consensual sex with another man in the privacy of his own home. His work with the British intelligence service was over, and he was given the choice between chemical castration or prison. He chose the hormone treatment. Two years later, he committed suicide. He was 41 years old.

The last word the British government had to say about him was that his private actions, harming nobody, merited ruining his life.

Turing was a very prominent individual; I am sure that many other lives, both prominent and not, were needlessly ruined by this shameful law (happily repealed across Britain by the late 1970s).

There is now a call for the British government to apologise for its treatment of Turing. Given that an apology would be very easy to issue, would cost little and harm nobody, I think it is worth doing.

If you are a British resident and think this is worth two minutes of your time, please go sign the petition.

Also, let me know what you think of this sort of apology. Is it worthwhile? Is it a waste of time? Is is otherwise inappropriate? What consequences do you think such an apology would have, in terms of people's actions and their attitudes?

Photo credit:

Alan Turing photo, author unknown. Photo was found at Ally Action, among a list of prominent individuals and events in the history of gay rights.

Liberty and blasphemy

Over at Daylight Atheism, Ebonmuse has a piece on freedom of speech as it relates to blasphemy, a topic of some current import. Here are a couple of key excerpts:

It happened at the U.N., where a bloc of Islamic nations successfully pushed through a resolution demanding "respect" for shariah law, with the shocking result that things like child marriage or the stoning of women can no longer be discussed by the U.N. Human Rights Council.

And:

If free speech is circumscribed by the "right" of religious groups to be protected from offense, then it is an empty and meaningless freedom. Any religious sect can stifle any speech, just by taking offense at what is said. We as a species can never make moral progress if those laws shelter evil superstitions from the light of scrutiny and let them fester in the shadows.

I agree. Restricting freedom of speech because it offends someone - for whatever reason - is unjustifiable.*

To demonstrate this in the most obvious way possible, let me list some of the things that offend my ethical sensibilities as a humanist**:

1. Suggesting that eternal torture is a fair return for the honest expression of empirically-justified doubt.
2. Denying the best answers that unbiased scientific inquiry can give us about our place in the universe, in order to promote the unevidenced guesses of misogynistic iron-age patriarchs.
3. Suggesting that non-belief in supernatural (un-natural) entities is correlated with unethical behaviour.
4. Implying (through discriminatory laws) that it is more important for my marriage that my spouse and I have certain bits between our legs than that we commit to each other in love.
5. And of course, I am deeply offended by the suggestion that it is better to stifle free speech than to let religions be confronted with dissenting ideas.

So, by the logic of the people pushing the anti-blasphemy laws, if blasphemy against the religion of another is illegal, it should also be illegal to (1) promote the common religious idea of eternal damnation for nonbelievers, (2) promote ID as a valid scientific competitor to evolution as an explanation for the development of life, (3) cite scriptures (there are many) denouncing nonbelievers as corrupt, (4) exclude same-sex couples from marriage, and (5) promote, pass, or enforce anti-blasphemy laws.

Now, of course, I don't claim the right to not be offended. So if anyone out there thinks there is any validity to having laws specifically prohibiting blasphemous speech, you can come right on over here and ...

... engage in a reasoned and open discussion of the issue, trying to persuade one another of the validity of our positions in a mutual desire to find the best solution. That is how civilized people respond when they are offended.


* Before anyone calls me out for being inconsistent, let me say that my support for Caroline Petrie's suspension was not based on my being offended, but on her misuse of a position of power.

** And let me be clear: in this context, humanist sensibilities must be given equal weight to religious sensibilities, or we are left with intolerable religious discrimination.

Sacked for being Christian?

Nurse Caroline Petrie has been suspended from her job as a part-time community nurse in a primary care trust in Somerset for offering to pray for an elderly patient, according to the Telegraph. This has been picked up by religious commenters, including Cath (whose blog first alerted me to the news item) and Cranmer.

Naturally, they (and many of their commenters) are appalled at this apparent overreaction by the trust. They are inclined to blame anti-Christian sentiment, or excessive political-correctness.

But they should be careful not to overstate the oppression that the actual incident implies. We are all prone to falling into a persecution mentality. For some further, highly relevant context, consider the following details. (I'm getting these from the Telegraph article, with corroboration from the Daily Mail.)

This was not an isolated incident. Mrs. Petrie regularly offers unsolicited prayers (formerly including handing out prayer cards). She has been reprimanded for this before, and has been told "you must not use your professional status to promote causes that are not related to health." That is a fair and relevant guideline. (It seems she stopped handing out the cards after that.)

She remembers, "I was told not to force my faith on anyone but I could respond if patients themselves brought up the subject [of religion]." So she is not to proactively offer prayer, but may offer prayer if asked by the patient. Again, a fair guideline that balances her professional responsibilities with her religious freedom.

Mrs. Petrie says "I only offered to pray for her because I was concerned about her welfare and wanted her to get better."

Well, prayer has been tested and has failed the scientific tests that we require of all medical interventions. She has every right to her religious beliefs, but she has an obligation to respect the boundary between the standard of evidence required by her profession and that she needs for her faith. If I were her patient, I'd be nettled at an offer of prayer for this reason. I want my health care professionals to be focusing on proven and effective techniques, not disproven supernatural techniques.

(Deena points out to me that Mrs. Petrie could easily just pray for patients anyway, and not mention it to them. Surely that satisfies both her beliefs and her professional guidelines.)

She says "[husband] Stuart and I have decided to put God first in our lives." That's their choice. But extends it into a choice to disregard reasonable guidelines of professional conduct. It is hardly persecution to be suspended for failing to follow those guidelines, after fair warning.

So she was given reasonable guidelines about the appropriate way to include her personal, non-medical beliefs in her professional, medical life. She was warned by her employer. And she decided to disregard the guidelines and the warnings. The trust's reaction is appropriate; Mrs. Petrie is not being discriminated against.

It looks like the Christians in this case are upset, not because their beliefs are being marginalized, but because they are not being given preferential treatment. (This is particularly apparent in some of Cranmer's statements.)

I have to remind them that this country still has an established church that holds seats in parliament (among other appalling privileges). How would you feel to live in a country where, say, Hindus had such a legislative advantage, if they began complaining because they were not being given special dispensation to promote their religion as they went about their publicly-funded roles?