Intellectual freedom: The Pope may recognize it, but secularists, not much

In "Secularists should recognize that the pope's fight is their fight" Wall Street Journal (December 30, 2010),Daniel Henninger writes,

It has been odd in recent years to see prominent atheists make so much effort to diminish Judeo-Christian belief. In the modern world, and certainly in the U.S. from the Pilgrims onward to the Bill of Rights, religious practice has been bound up in the idea—now the principle—of individual freedom. I don't think secularist arguments alone for individual freedoms have sufficient strength and fiber to stand against their current opposition. Benedict's fight for freedom and that of recent Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo are the same. Wojtyla and Walesa proved that once already.

The trouble is, if the recent history of the use of new laws against “offending” anyone is consulted, it’s abundantly clear that vast numbers of Western secularists are perfectly happy with state thought control, as long as their pet peeves, itches, and scratches get a reprieve.

Canadian-born columnist Mark Steyn summed it up beautifully for the Ontario legislature recently:

Truth is no defense. No one was disputing the truth of what I wrote. Nobody was arguing that it was libellous or seditious or false, for all of which there would be appropriate legal remedy. In essence, the plaintiffs were arguing that they had been offended.

Well, offensiveness is in the eye of the offended. I have no way of commenting on that one way or another. It's not possible, in the legal sense, to mount a defense to the accusation that you've offended somebody - which is why the human right "not to be offended" should not exist in a free society. That's the first and most basic thing that this system failed.

I was rather alarmed by the number of Canadian journalists who were quite happy to serve, in effect, as eunuchs of the politically correct state.

(Steyn had been charged in three jurisdictions in Canada for saying things that happen to be true (or at worst, easily defensible)about Islamists, so he was asked to appear at the legislature and and explain.

To restore anything like intellectual freedom we would need to begin by reducing secularist influence, in favor of traditional assumptions about the dignity of the person, embodied in the Bill of Rights.

Curiosity and the dead cat

In Does curiosity kill more than the cat?, prof Stanley Fish wonders

Last Thursday, the new Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities James A. Leach gave an address at the University of Virginia with the catchy title, “Is There an Inalienable Right to Curiosity?”

Taking his cue from Thomas Jefferson’s “trinity of inalienable rights: ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,’” Leach reasoned that even though Jefferson never wrote about curiosity, “a right to be curious would have been a natural reflection of his own personality.”

Interesting, considering that academic freedom is under huge assault these days.

I have said in private correspondence as follows:

It is good to be curious about the exact cause of Alzheimer syndrome or whether that fellow hanging around in the parking lot has lawful business around here.

It is not good to be curious about whether my neighbour is a closet racist or having an affair with the letter carrier.

I’d say curiosity is an inescapable and necessary human quality that must be steered in an appropriate direction.

Hat tip: Stephanie West Allen at Brains on Purpose

PS: Re cats: I know a bit. Curiosity does kill cats sometimes. But kidney disease is their biggest problem. Cats are obligate carnivores. So they generally last as long as their kidneys - or so a vet once told me - and in my experience it is certainly true.

Fearful universities: Why be afraid of the thinking mind?

Tristan Abbey reveals in the Stanford Review that Pope Benedict XVI and Ayaan Hirsi Ali were nixed as guests at Stanford.

A three-month investigation by the Stanford Review has discovered that university organizations declined to invite two high-profile intellectuals—Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, before his inauguration as Pope Benedict XVI—after consultation with faculty and students who objected to their views

Huh? This is becoming a real problem. Isn't a key strength of a university its confidence in inviting people with diverse views?

If I were running a kindergarten, I wouldn't invite people with diverse views. The kids need an adult to help them to brush their teeth, not a debate about the merits of clean teeth. But ... a university? Why don't the faculty and students solve the problem of angst over diverse views by just growing up?

I have read Hirsi Ali's Infidel and, while we are obviously far apart in our views (she is an ex-Muslim atheist), I am indebted to her for finally helping me understand what on earth Christopher Hitchens could possibly mean by claiming that "religion poisons everything". Religion didn't have that effect in my life or the lives of most people I have ever known, and it is the bedrock of philanthopy in Canada. But Hirsi Ali had an entirely different experience, as her book explains, and for her religion seems to have been a mostly negative experience.

Not so, of course, for Benedict XVI. And Hirsi Ali may come round in time too. The key to religion is spirituality.

Intellectual freedom: Do we have to fight that battle all over again?

We wrestle with significant questions regarding the mind and the brain: Is the mind an illusion? Is it merely the buzz created by neurons? Is it an immaterial reality? One thing we will certainly need to sort all this out is academic freedom: Pundit David Horowitz brings us up to date on his academic freedom campaign:

In September 2003, I began a national campaign to persuade universities to adopt an academic bill of rights, aimed at extending traditional academic-freedom protections to students and restoring objectivity and fairness to classrooms. Mounting such an effort is not easy. Getting the issue of campaign finance reform on the national radar, for example, reportedly required some $120-million and the work of several major public-interest organizations. My campaign consisted of two staff members and myself, and a budget to match.

Yet three years later, the issues that I raised — the lack of intellectual diversity on campuses and the intrusion of political agendas into the curriculum — have become topics of discussion at colleges throughout the country. This July, moreover, Temple University became the first institution to adopt a student bill of rights as a response to my challenge.

How did this happen? Oddly enough, no small part of my success can be attributed to my opponents' tactics.

From my reading of this and other accounts of the conflict, Horowitz's opponents make their agenda perfectly clear: Their own stale, tired materialist views cannot long sustain the assault of fresh minds, intellectually free. Hence the need to eliminate intellectual freedom wherever possible. Such systems tend to crumble from their own brittleness.

My other blog is the Post-Darwinist, which keeps tabs on the intelligent design controversy.