PZ Myers should have skipped the debate
Patrick Ross — who blogs at Nexus of Assholery — wrote this in a comment last night, after the debate between Kirk Durston and PZ Myers at the University of Alberta (in my old haunt, ETLC, no less!). Initially, I was going to publish it to the relevant post, but after due consideration (and picking up the laundry) I decided to bump it to the front page.
Because it’s just that delicious.
I attended the debate tonight, and I have to honestly say that PZ lost… badly.
He basically decided to dismiss the agreed topic of debate and then proceeded to lecture on Hox genes. If the topic of debate was really evolution vs Intelligent Design he certainly would have won on the issue of genetics, but still would have lost on the issue of overall rationale.
In the end, his conclusion was that he couldn’t argue the agreed-upon question because it wasn’t his area of expertise and they should have gotten someone else.
So then why did he bother to come? Why did he agree to the debate topic?
Indeed!
The debate topic — Does God Exist? — was agreed upon beforehand, and well-publicized. Even if Myers didn’t feel it was his “area of expertise,” he should have had at least some advance knowledge of the topic, and thus should have opted out of participating if in fact he is the honest man he kind of attempts to claim he is in his own brief comments on the debate. It’s good to admit when you feel you aren’t qualified to discuss the matter at hand…but not on the day of the event, in the lecture hall, after the start of the event itself.
Let’s be clear: if you are invited to debate on topic X, and you lecture on topic F instead, not only have you lost the debate in the first place (given that you’ve defaulted on the topic), but you’ve also grossly misled those who had been rooting for your participation in the debate in the first place.
As I noted previously, Kirk Durston shouldn’t have been any kind of intellectual threat to Myers, and certainly shouldn’t have been worth the derisive concession of defeat that is Myers’ own analysis of his Edmonton debate (he was also recently at an event in Calgary). ID, of the “irreducible complexity” variety, is easy enough to argue against, given that it basically reduces to a classic “God of the Gaps” model. And Durston’s arguments for the existence of God, rather than being ontological and/or otherwise grounded in argument from reason, tend to be based on looking for gaps where his own gene analysis computer models break down, and then inserting God into the mix at about that point.
So what went wrong?
Well, as Mr. Ross notes above, Myers abandoned the topic and instead gave a lecture about something else entierly. But it also appears that he would up being thrown, more or less, by a digression into the discussion of just which side — Religion or atheism — has more blood on its hands, historically speaking. Predictably, Durston’s arguments were based on misrepresentations of extant data, while Myers’ own responses were based on a) a “no true atheist” fallacy, and b) an attempt to dismiss the admittedly very large body counts of e.g. Stalin and Mao as being the result of modernity, with all of its advanced weapons. Which might work, except that for both Stalin and Mao, hunger was the most potent weapon in their arsenal.
Oh, and Myers also attempted to deflect the example of Hitler — which Durston evidently, and erroneously, introduced as another example of atheism’s bloody-handedness — by claiming that Hitler was a Catholic. It is true that Hitler grew up in a Catholic family…but it’s equally true that by the time he rose to power, he wasn’t a Catholic anymore. And no, I’m not attempting to construct a “no true Catholic” fallacy here — I’m simply noting that based on the Code of Canon Law, Adolf Hitler basically removed himself from the Church by his refusal, upon leaving home, to participate in the Mass or in any of the Sacraments
In fact, Hitler’s exact religious standpoint is hard to pin down. At his own blog, Patrick Ross notes that Hitler dabbled in various forms of occultism, which is fairly accurate. There’s also the matter of Positive Christianity, although Hitler distanced himself from some of that philosophy’s more radical elements and adherents. Be that as it may: Hitler was Catholic by birth only, and I very much doubt that the dictator would have described him views in any way that implied a philosophical connection to Rome.
Both Myers and Ross, incidentally, still seem caught up on the myth of “Hitler’s Pope.” It’s true that the Church was often very cautious in how it criticized the Nazi regime and its murderous excesses, but the reciprocal question to that charge is, simply: what more should the Church have done, given the situation? Would it have been better that every Catholic in Axis-controlled territory be martyred as well? What then would have been achieved?
Because in truth, quite a bit was achieved by the cautious Church; thousands of Jews, especially children, were evacuated fromGerman -controlled territories and hidden in churches, chapels, monasteries, and even The Vatican!
Granted, there is a picture of Hitler and the man unjustly called “Hitler’s Pope” — Pope Pius XII — meeting, because they did in fact meet. They may, in fact, have met more than once — one time being when Pius XII was still a cardinal.
But of course, being photographed together doesn’t mean they agreed on anything, even lunch.
And if you actually look at the historical record and the evidence it provides, it is impossible to overlook the extant writings of Pius XII — which he wrote both as Pope and, earlier, as a cardinal — all of which are harshly critical of the Nazi regime and of Hitler. There is also the testimony of Jewish survivors who were rescued through Catholic channels that bolsters the case in support of the Church. And looking at such things can only lead you to the conclusion, good reader, that Pius XII was anything but “Hitler’s Pope.”
Did the Church do everything it could to prevent the Holocaust? In a sense, that’s kind of a pointless question. The Church was not involved in the creation of the national environment or political policies that led to the Holocaust, and by that time had long made a point of not directly stepping in to the political affairs of a country. You could, in other words, just as soon blame the Church for the Holodomor, for not doing more to oppose Stalin. And the criticism would ring as hollow.
Could they have done “more?” Well, maybe, had they had an clearer picture earlier on of the scope of Hitler’s mad intent. But nobody had that insight. And yes, I suppose Pius could have taken a stance that would have ensured the martyrdom of every Catholic in Axis-controlled Europe…but what end would that have served? Alive, Catholics served as a pipeline for evacuating Jews from Axis-controlled territories. Dead, they would have served only as one more grim example of Hitler’s mad designs.
But then, Catholicism is not Myers’ only historical blind spot. There is still the matter of his attempt to construct a “no true atheist” fallacy in regard to Durston’s charge that atheists have more blood on their hands, in terms of the number of people massacred, than do religious people. That’s a bad argument on Durston’s part anyhow, but Myers’ attempt at dismissing it is even worse.
By some coincidence, Vox Day has a post up — featuring a new de-motivator (thumbnail to the left — click for the full-size image) discussing Sam Harris and the follies of both Durston and Myers.
While atheists are quite understandably reluctant to embrace “their” responsibility for the mass murders committed by their godless brethren, what they consistently fail to understand is that pinning the responsibility on the godless murderer is not about implying that the average atheist today is inclined to commit mass murder, but rather demonstrating the complete absurdity of the oft-made case that historical crimes committed by those of vaguely similar belief somehow justify advocating legal or social restrictions on individuals who have not committed any such crimes.
This was Durston’s mistake in the debate more than Myers’, but — given his response — it’s apparent that Myers did not adequately understand the exact nature of the error being made.
Responsibility must either be assigned individually or collectively. If the former, then no Christian today can be held responsible for the First Crusade, no atheist today can be held responsible for the Holodomor, and no Jew today can be held responsible for killing Jesus Christ or any of his followers. If the latter, then Christians, atheists, and Jews are all justified in engaging a war of all against all, in which case one would probably be wise to bet on the Muslims.
Just so.
Now, the argument can be made for looking at things one way or the other — there are good reasons to assign responsibility collectively, and there are good reasons to assign responsibility to individuals. The important point is not how we assign responsibility, as much as it is that we are consistent in doing so. If we are to judge the religious according to past massacres committed by religious people, then it is only logical, and only consistent, to judge the atheistic according to past massacres committed by atheists. And the fact that atheism’s body count, in such a survey, has mostly been racked up in the last 120 years is not something which argues against the conclusion, drawn from just such a comparison, that atheism’s hands are bloodier than religion’s.
…with regards to the mass slaughters of the previous century, there is simply no way to escape the established fact that individual atheists have been among mankind’s very worst killers. This doesn’t mean that the average atheist is any more likely to be homicidally inclined than anyone else, it does, however, cast serious doubt on the common atheist assertion that a godless society will be a peaceful one.
Vox Day’s book, The Irrational Atheist
Equally, though, the book’s figures are useful for those times when people insist on painting all religion with a very wide brush, and blaming the Church today for the evils of its adherents and allies in centuries past. It is true that the Spanish Inquisition killed between 3,000 and 4,000 people over its 300+ year existence…just as it is true that Spanish secularists, between 1936 and 1939, killed over 7,000 Catholic clergy (and then often by means that would have been deemed barbaric by the Inquisition). Does this prove anything? No, it doesn’t, save that people can always be found who are willing to kill in service to an ideology, even one that abhors murder. But it does force the issue of consistency, and thus is useful.
Anyhow, I have to admit that I didn’t think that the debate would have result it did. I figured Myers would mop the floor with Durston’s “God of the Gaps” arguments, but it seems that in the end the two men ended up sniping at each other when they weren’t talking past each other.
That said, it sounds like the victory goes to Durston, since Myers basically defaulted on the topic in the first place.
Update: Welcome, Vox Day readers!
