The Long View

Keeping Up Appearances

Theology can be weaponized, according to David Goldman. Not that it should be, of course, but he suggests it can be:

It appears that pinpricks can produce chain reactions in the Islamic world. The threat may be termed asymmetrical because Islam is more vulnerable to theological war than Christianity (or for that matter Judaism).

As the youngest of the major religions (apart from Sikhism), Islam must defend its historical narrative more fiercely than the older religions. Islam never withstood the withering criticism of Enlightenment scholars from Spinoza to the Jesus Project determined to discredit sacred texts…. L'Affaire Jones demonstrated that a madman carrying a match and a copy of the Koran can do more damage to the Muslim world than a busload of suicide bombers. Leftists liked to brag during the Vietnam war that a US$10 hand grenade could destroy a $10 million plane. What's the dollar value of the damage from a used paperback edition of the Koran, available online for a couple of dollars?

This is not an original idea. Readers will recall Poul Anderson's story, "Word to the Stars," published in 1960. The premise is that radio contact is made with an extraterrestrial civilization, but that the civilization is a theocracy, who want only to proselytize. An exasperated Jesuit biologist devises a scheme to break up the aliens' consensus by sending them ostensibly innocent questions of scriptural interpretation. A reformation breaks out, and by and by the aliens start transmitting about science.

More interesting than Anderson's naïve Whiggery was the 1952 film, Red Planet Mars. (The whole thing is available on Google Videos, by the way.) The story is that an American scientist makes contact with Mars using radio technology invented by a Nazi war criminal, who is eavesdropping on the interplanetary exchanges for the Soviets; the Nazi's long imprisonment prevented him from developing the technology as far as the American and making contact himself.

First the Martians send messages about their longevity and industrial prowess. The economy of the West comes near collapse at the prospect that every major technology will soon become obsolete. Then the Martians start to send messages on religious themes; it seems that they are not just monotheists, but Christians of a sort. The Soviet Union then does collapse.

The penultinate scene raises the possibility that some of the messages might have been faked by the Nazi scientist, who accuses the American scientist of having faked the rest. The ambiguity is resolved in favor of the authenticity of the religious messages, at least, but the point has been raised that theological disinformation might be very potent.

I cannot off-hand think of a fictional expression of the idea that contact with a sane and humane theistic extraterrestrial civilization might undermine a dogmatically materialist-atheist society on Earth. Doubtless it's in TOR's slush pile right now.

As for the notion of designing heresies like genetically engineered pathogens to undermine unsatisfactory theocracies, however, I would not put much stock in the idea. Heresies pop in and out of existence all the time, like virtual particles. When there is enough social energy around, a heresy or some other disruptive idea will become the nucleus for change. If the energy is not there, there will be no commotion. You can start a reformation only if it is going to start anyway.

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Speaking of Koran burning, Supreme Court Justice Breyer made some remarks to George Stephanopoulos in that regard which illustrate why Supreme Court justices should not give interviews to the press:

But Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer told me on "GMA" that he's not prepared to conclude that -- in the internet age -- the First Amendment condones Koran burning.

"Holmes said it doesn't mean you can shout 'fire' in a crowded theater," Breyer told me. "Well, what is it?  Why?  Because people will be trampled to death.  And what is the crowded theater today?  What is the being trampled to death?"

The justice goes on to explain that the right to burn Korans or otherwise cause religious outrage is not a foregone conclusion, because these questions must be discussed in legal briefs and then deliberated by judges. Actually, I suspect that the justice here was just manifesting a tick that many lawyers have: presented with any categorical statement about the law, they will automatically formulate an argument against it. They need not find their counter-argument persuasive. Like the habit of making wisecracks, once you develop the knack, it's had to stop doing it.

We should note, by the way, that Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes's "clear and present danger" test for the suppression of free speech is really an evidentiary test that has been largely superseded. In any case, the basic notion remains that speech may be prohibited only in extreme situations, where it would cause immediate, grave harm. The classic example is yelling "fire!" in a crowded theater when there is no fire. Since Holmes used the phrase in 1919, people have suggested that times have changed in such a way that this or that opinion would now be considered so abhorrent as to be like falsely shouting "fire!"

Justice Breyer raised the possibility that times may have changed because of the advent of new communications technologies. Surely, though, this factor cuts the other way. Public speakers used routinely to be detained because what they were saying seemed to be starting a riot. If they cursed the policemen who took them away, they might also be charged with assault, a crime that can cover a great deal more than the threat of physical harm. However, as I recall, what the cases involving public disorder have in common is that the speech in question was provocative, and the provocation was unmediated. The evil averted by stopping the speech was as proximate as breaking up a fight. In a wired world, in contrast, nothing is really local anymore. Somebody, somewhere, may be moved to violence by provocative speech, or suffer the psychological harm that might be characterized as assault or intentional infliction of emotional distress. If the clear and present danger standard were amplified through the Internet, it would essentially repeal the First Amendment.

Another, minor point: in a world in which Koran burning could be prohibited because it might lead to violence somewhere, could the Cordoba Center also be prohibited on similar grounds? Or need the Center's opponents prove themselves more vicious first?

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Meanwhile, back at First Things, Joe Carter asks under which God the America of public ceremonial is under:

"Something that is beyond man is happening," said Glenn Beck at a rally two weeks ago. "America today begins to turn back to God."

The thousands of supporters nodded in agreement, as did millions more who heard the address on television. I too wanted to agree, but I was hindered by a technical consideration: Which God are we referring to? . . . . Because his audience was comprised of many Americans who are not Christians, Beck was forced to refer to a deity we could all claim to believe in: the generic god of civil religion…. There is a vast and unbridgeable chasm between America's civil religion and Christianity. If we claim that "under God" refers to the Christian conception of God, we are either being unduly intolerant or, more likely, simply kidding ourselves. Do we truly think that the Hindu, Wiccan, Muslim, or Buddhist American is claiming to be under the same deity as we are?.... That is not to say that we can't say the Pledge and think of the one true God. But we should keep in mind that this fight isn't our fight and the "god" of America's civil religion is not the God who died on the Cross.

Let me suggest that the God of Civil Religion is the one that Jesus told Pilate was the source of Pilate's authority, and that Saint Paul said was the source of all government.

Do not go looking for the cause of trouble.

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Do you find that robots getting scarier and scarier as time goes on? Don't worry: if we can believe Wikipedia (and indeed we must), the Uncanny Valley can someday be crossed:

[A]s a robot is made more humanlike in its appearance and motion, the emotional response from a human being to the robot will become increasingly positive and empathic, until a point is reached beyond which the response quickly becomes that of strong revulsion. However, as the appearance and motion continue to become less distinguishable from a human being, the emotional response becomes positive once more and approaches human-to-human empathy levels.

The problem seems to be that things that look almost human are judged by human standards and are found wanting.

It's not unusual for public persons to slide from the human condition back into the Valley, if they allow their appearance to be governed wholly by the advice of publicists. Second-string politicians often have this problem; Republicans more often than Democrats, for some reason. It's the hair.

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Word for the Day: Noosphage, n. (Gk: Noos mind + phagein eat. (Adj. noosphagus.) Any active entity, process or device that focuses individual attention on its own operation and away from the physical environment. "Each passenger on the subway car was in rapport with a noosphage."