FUSsa-talk Mailing List: Fwd: Does Hitchens have a double standard?

[Robert Tapp (tappx001]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Robert Tapp <tappx001 [at] umn.edu>
> Date: July 20, 2010 7:02:18 PM CDT
> To: Humanist Institute Discussion Group Discussion Group <hidisc [at] 
> humanistinstitute.org>
> 
> 
> I have posted some previous articles by Be Scofield. Here he takes on 
> Christopher Hitchens, claiming that it is only when religious people do bad 
> things that CH claims religion to be the cause -- but not when people do good 
> things.
> 
> I'm posting the article since many humanists are charged with a similar 
> logical inconsistency.
> 
>       
> http://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2010/07/19/does-religion-cause-bad-behavior-hitchens-cant-decide/?utm_source=Tikkun+Daily+Daily+Digest&utm_campaign=5d5820ed7e-DAILY_DIGEST_EMAIL&utm_medium=email
> 
> It seems to me that the way out is an empirical one, a simple use of social 
> science data. For instance, suppose we say opposition to contraception is bad 
> for a variety of reasons (women's control of their own bodies; men's similar 
> control; over-population; unequal burdens on poor populations; etc.). Asking 
> individuals how they feel about this and then generalizing based on their 
> individual religious identifications is simply anecdotal. If, however, we 
> discover via good sampling and polling, that high percentages of Roman 
> Catholics do oppose contraception and large percentages of Methodists favor 
> it, we have learned precisely nothing about any universal effects of 
> <religion> but we have learned much about different varieties of religious 
> identity.
> 
> We could still come closer to Hitchens' claims by contrasting some value that 
> was related to frequency of church/mosque/synagogue attendance. Support for 
> the Iraq war, perhaps, or limitations of free speech.
> 
> Humanists use such empirical techniques on a world scale by testing 
> religiosities against such yardsticks as the Universal Declaration of Human 
> Rights or the UN Millennium Project. (Here again, consult the Culture Matters 
> Project, or the Culture Change Institute).
> 
> Clearly different religions have different causal impacts on such values. And 
> our typical humanist strategy has been to keep the public arena a secular 
> arena. Any restrictions on, say, the availability of contraceptive 
> information and materials must be deliberated in terms of commonly-shared 
> ethical and democratic reasoning. Religious groups can urge abstinences on 
> their own members but never by public means.
> 
> Hitchens might say that this is localizing the poisoning, but that is one of 
> the risks of democratic freedom. If and when a society decides that some 
> religious practice violates human rights (wife-beating, for instance), then 
> that practice ought be made illegal even within religious communities.
> 
> Bob