Just a reminder: Our sister group SHIFT at the University of Utah is hosting a huge event in SLC this weekend. Here is the event info, via SHIFT’s blog:
Austin Dacey, author of The Secular Conscience: Why Belief Belongs in Public Life, and former Center for Inquiry representative to the United Nations, is coming this Saturday!
His lecture, called “Blasphemy: Hate Speech or Human Right? Inside the struggle for freedom of expression at the United Nations” will be held in the University of Utah Fine Arts Auditorium (375 South 1530 East) on Saturday, February 27, beginning at 4:00pm ~ the doors will open at 3:00, and seating is first-come-first-served, so come early to grab your good seats!
Following Dr. Dacey’s lecture, he will be joined by local Salt Lake Community College Professor of Philosophy, Dr. Mark Hausam, for a debate entitled, “Is Morality Possible Without God?”
We owe SHIFT our support, so try to make it—it’s really your loss if you miss out. I’ve meet Dacey, and he’s a very compelling thinker.
SHAFT will be organizing a carpool to the event. Meet Saturday at 1:30 PM (sharp!) in the Aggie Ice Cream parking lot (750 North 1200 East). Please be considerate and chip in gas money. And if you’re able to provide a ride, it’d be greatly appreciated. The more SHAFT is represented there, the better.
This should be cool, I’m excited.
I was not able to attend. A brief summary and thoughts on the talk and debate?
I probably should have said something earlier. It was a very nice presentation and the debate, while kind of dead locked in a strange way (Jon told me afterward he thought both lost, I agree, they sort of talked past each other) was also great. It was very civil despite some grandstanding by an audience member and Austin playing a bit for the crowd.
Anyway, Austin’s presentation conclusion regarding Blasphemy reminded me a bit of reading an article Kleiner linked regarding the Catholic church’s position on ordaining women, which began by stating that heresy is sometimes healthy and has been for the church. Challenges present themselves on perhaps vague or forgotten laws and it forces (and has forced) the church to properly define the issue and understand it.
Blasphemy, as Dacey put it, is the same kind of thing, a gadfly toward better faith, a healthy skepticism provided it doesn’t impede upon the dignity of individuals (inciting violence or “dehumanizing”, a word that sort of bit him in regards to the grandstanding audience member.) Individual humans have rights, ideas do not, so while living persons should be respected albeit challenged, ideas are open to anything, whether religious or secular. It is essentially freedom of belief (and non belief) and freedom to criticize such, while respecting dignity of human beings. One example he brought up was an article in Europe that stated Muslims “breed like rats.” This for Dacey wrong not because it went against religion but because it dehumanized the subject.
I’m putting his talk in pretty simple format here, for brevity’s sake. Being the most blasphemous (by a wide margin) of the Shaft club, I found his talk interesting, namely that he conceded that respect should be given to all sides, because of the real power of words, and that ideas shouldn’t be protected because of a sort of darwinism (i’m putting words in his mouth here) of ideas, that they are held on their own strengths rather than protected or vilified outright. Black Metal musicians burning a Norwegian church down, and an “art piece” that was a crucifix in a bottle of urine, may be equally offensive, but those are not crimes. The former is clearly violent action, the latter just incredibly stupid. Arresting the church burner is a good idea. You can’t arrest the artist, just ignore him, which Americans tend to be very good at. Running out of time, so I’ll leave others to fill in the blanks.
For conversation sake, I thought it funny that only one mentioned objectivity as a point but both were implying it pretty heavily.