Letters

Saving Drug Users 

SIR: I write to correct assertions made by Drug Free Australia’s Gary Christian in his article “Blinded by the Dominant Ideology” (November 2010) regarding Sydney’s Medically Supervised Injecting Centre (MSIC). While Christian extrapolates from a range of incorrect assumptions, all of which I have clarified since he first publicised these in 2003, I confine myself here to addressing the aspersions he casts on my professional integrity in my former role as the MSIC’s medical director. 

First, Christian states that six weeks after the MSIC opened I was quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald “as claiming that the room had already saved four lives”. Mr Christian omits the important qualifying word “potentially” from this quote, which necessarily implied that equally, this may not have been the case. He also omits my prefacing statement that these four individuals had attended the MSIC alone, so presumably would have otherwise injected elsewhere alone, which is a known risk factor for overdose death. While media outlets and other commentators have not always appreciated that not all overdoses are fatal, it’s also wrong to suggest that the MSIC’s evaluation team and I did not seek to correct this misunderstanding; for example, a letter from the lead evaluator on our behalves was published in the Sun-Herald in June 2003 expressly stating that the MSIC had not “saved hundreds of lives” as speculated in an article published the week before. 

Second, Christian questions the independence of the first evaluation on the basis that three of the evaluators were members of the same medical faculty that I am affiliated with. Probably unbeknownst to most, when doctors are employed as salaried medical specialists by the NSW public hospital system (as I have been for the past twenty-one years) they are routinely offered an academic affiliation with the medical faculty of the university associated with the Area Health Service of their place of work. So regardless of who was appointed to the role of medical director of the MSIC, he or she could only ever have been affiliated with the University of NSW since this is the university allocated to that particular Area. Furthermore, unlike the evaluators referred to who were employed by the university, my academic affiliation is honorary and conjoint, meaning that I am not actually employed or paid by UNSW. What’s more, I was only ever seconded to the MSIC on a temporary part-time basis from my full-time permanent employment with the AHS held for these past twenty-one years, so to this extent the success or otherwise of the MSIC had no bearing on my future livelihood.

Christian’s overarching tenet that Australia’s “drug policy luminaries”, academics, evaluators, bureaucrats and clinical workforce involved in the addiction medicine field (and presumably also the AMA and Royal Australasian Colleges of Physicians, General Practitioners, Emergency Medicine Physicians and others that explicitly support the MSIC) have become “so bedazzled by their own efforts [that they would] bend all objective observations … at a cost of tens of thousands of drug users’ lives” is surely a classic case of projection. 

It is in fact Christian’s Drug Free Australia, which holds the ideologically driven fundamentalist zero tolerance position towards illicit drug-related matters, quite regardless of the overwhelming scientific evidence base demonstrating that the practical application of this doctrinaire ideology has serious shortcomings. 

Ingrid van Beek,

Sydney, NSW.

Voices of Disbelief

SIR: When I reviewed 50 Voices of Disbelief (September 2010), I looked forward to responses which would engage with the central challenges to theism advanced by contributors to that anthology—challenges like the problem of evil, the absence of any reason for belief in a deity, the irrationality of religious belief, or how to separate “faith” from blind credulity. Instead, letters on the topic so far have focused mainly on side-issues. Worse, it appears that some respondents have not read the book! Lance Eccles (October 2010), for one, hasn’t, and doesn’t intend to; this has not discouraged him from writing a letter about it. 

Eccles tries to turn Adèle Mercier’s point about second-order beliefs on its head, suggesting that many atheists are in fact theists who (mistakenly) believe themselves to be atheists. Why does Eccles think this? The only example he offers is atheist Richard Dawkins, whose anger, it seemed to Eccles, must have been directed at one individual (God) rather than a group. It’s unclear why he concluded this, but in any event a mere intuition about a single case is scarcely persuasive evidence. More fundamentally, Eccles overlooks an asymmetry between theists and atheists. Mercier proposed a solution to a puzzle, namely how can the professed theism of many erudite and intelligent people be squared with their rationality? Her answer was that they are not theists; they just (mistakenly) believe that they are. There is no analogous puzzle to be solved in the case of erudite and intelligent atheists: their atheism is entirely consonant with their intelligence, erudition and rationality.

In his reaction to the “fifty wise men”—thirteen of whom are women—David Elder (October 2010) has me quoting Kitcher “to the effect that religious faith in general is morally equivalent to Mein Kampf”. This is a serious distortion of Kitcher’s point, which was simply that, if “faith” alone is sufficient to justify a belief, then all beliefs are equally justifiable, including such abhorrent ones as those expressed in Mein Kampf, or indeed such infantile ones as embodied in The House at Pooh Corner. Presumably proponents of religious faith don’t want to be committed to that conclusion; so it is up to them to show how “faith”, unconstrained by any canons of rationality, can nonetheless warrant some (desirable) beliefs yet at the same time exclude other (undesirable) ones. None of the respondents has shown any sensitivity to this crucial issue—especially not John Gerard Nestor (November 2010), whose contributions include the substitution of “Belief” for “Disbelief” in the book’s title (a Freudian slip?).

After claiming that deterministic materialism is incompatible with free will (thereby ignoring a significant group of philosophers who argue that determinism and free will are compatible), Elder offers the throwaway line that “Marxism has probably killed more people than any ideology we know.” No evidence is offered for this claim, which is certainly debatable. Plausible rivals in the mass-killing stakes could be readily proposed. What about the ideology of nationalism, which underlay the First World War, one of the greatest mass slaughterhouses in human history? Or Nazism, for that matter? If one is going to make sweeping claims like this, one needs to provide some grounds for them. It’s not good enough to present them as self-evident, with the implication that anyone who disagrees must be an ignoramus.

Elder complains of a lack of kindness and tolerance on the part of certain contributors to 50 Voices of Disbelief, then promptly launches an unkind ad hominem attack on Singer and Hauser, because he finds distasteful some of their (alleged) actions and moral values. He makes no attempt to offer any rational criticisms of their evidence and arguments for their position, which is all that could be relevant here. The scorn for philosophers expressed in his concluding lines (“a third of the contributors [to 50 Voices] are philosophers … It sounds like it. Give me the Salvos any day”) is understandable: philosophers deal with evidence and arguments—notions clearly foreign to Elder.

Singer and Hauser are also taken to task by Frank Pulsford (November 2010), who claims that they misunderstand Socrates’s point about the relation between God (or the gods) and goodness (piety or holiness). He notes that they refer to God’s “command”, whereas the passage in question from the Euthyphro speaks only of what is “loved” by the gods. But the philosophical question—the relation between God and goodness—remains untouched by this: if something is loved by the gods (or God) because it is good, then moral standards are independent of the gods; if something is good because it is loved by the gods, then all manner of deeds, including those which many people find reprehensible, could be rendered good simply by virtue of being loved by the gods. Introduction of the term “command” by Singer and Hauser, while a departure from the wording in the Euthyphro, does not alter in any way the force and point of this argument. Nor did I expose “a fundamental misunderstanding” on the part of Singer and Hauser, as Pulsford claims: I didn’t consider that there was any misunderstanding to expose. 

Indifference to evidence and rational argument emerges as a leitmotif of these letters, nowhere more clearly than in the offering from Hal Colebatch (November 2010), who takes it as “a plain and obvious fact” that atheists and agnostics do behave less morally than religious believers, apparently because he is convinced that proponents of such atheistic systems as Nazism and communism behave less morally than religious believers. Ignoring the non sequitur, I’d remark that this conviction of Colebatch’s is precisely what is at issue, and what Hauser and Singer call into question. Of course they don’t deny the monstrous evils of Nazism and communism, and of other atheistic ideologies for that matter. What they would challenge is Colebatch’s implication that no comparable evils can be attributed to religious ideologies. 

In fact, communism and Nazism share the main features—especially persecution of non-believers and insistence on the infallibility of key doctrines—of organised religions, which they naturally view as rivals. The hideous evils, such as torture, mass murder and genocide, that sprang from communism and Nazism, like the evils of the Inquisitions and Crusades in the past, and of terrorist cultures in the present, are typical of such unchecked authoritarian, hierarchical systems. These evils have no essential connection with the supernatural beliefs or disbeliefs of their perpetrators. In the words of Hauser and Singer, “neither religion nor atheism has a monopoly on the use of criminal violence” (50 Voices, p. 290). Unlike Colebatch, Hauser and Singer actually offer grounds for their claim—both historical grounds, and data from contemporary empirical research on ordinary people in societies around the world. This research provides no evidence that atheists and agnostics behave less morally than theists—contrary to Colebatch’s “plain and obvious fact”. 

I confess to some amazement at the superficiality of Colebatch’s letter. Has he bothered to read Hauser and Singer’s paper at all, or for that matter anything else in the book under review? His stance typifies a dismissive, dogmatic attitude to the challenges in 50 Voices of Disbelief. The book—and Quadrant—deserve better than that.

Robert McLaughlin,

Ryde, NSW.

Hitler’s Place in God Wars

SIR: In the recent wars over religion, in which I am on the side of theism, there appears to be considerable confusion over Hitler’s religious beliefs. Dawkins has tried to link him to Catholicism in order to discredit it. This is a flimsy strategy. Hitler was born and baptised in Catholic Austria but rejected all this to adopt the Nazi creed.

But others on the believing side have linked Hitler and fascism in general to Marxism, and then linked all of these to atheism in order to embarrass atheists. Certainly Marxism was atheistic. But was this true of Nazism? I do not believe so. Nazism showed some affinities with social Darwinism, suggesting something secular in tone. But it included strong elements of neo-paganism, the old nature deities. The Nazis also drew on Haeckel and nature-philosophy, an anti-Enlightenment Romantic development. So Hitler was not an atheist like the Marxists. See such authors as Gasman, Pois, Bramwell and Biehl.

Can Hitler be used to legitimately embarrass anyone? Yes. The main fellow-travellers of Nazism are the dark Greens, the type who are attracted to the notion of plagues, nuclear wars or mass eugenic abortion to cull human numbers for the good of the planet. An example is the famous Green Lynn White Jr: see his piece in Ecumenical Review vol. 30 (1978) p. 99. The piece is called “The Future of Compassion”. As Churchill might have said: some compassion—some future.

David Elder,

Grange, SA.

The Missing Elders

SIR: In response to Lewis Larking’s letter (November 2010) I would like to point out that Jesus’s prophecy concerning the destruction of Jerusalem, Luke 21:5–7, cannot mean the sack of that city by Titus in 70 AD because the prophecy says that “not one stone will be left on another; every one of them will be thrown down”. The Wailing Wall which was part of the Temple still stands one stone upon another so Christ’s prophecy must mean some future destruction of Jerusalem yet still to occur. Otherwise if He is prophesying about the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD then His prophecy is therefore wrong, and if it is wrong then Jesus cannot be God because God is never wrong. Ipso facto.

Also Jesus says in Matthew 16:27–28 that some of those standing with him there will not taste death until they see the Son of Man returning to the Earth on clouds of glory (the Second Coming). Yet since the Second Coming has not occurred, where are these people who are over 1970 years old? Why don’t they come out of hiding? Why has no Christian sect or church ever brought them forward? Is it because all those people who were standing with Jesus that day have died? If they were brought forward now, medical science has advanced far enough to ascertain if they are living humans who are over 1970 years old. If this were proved to be physically true it would just about prove Christianity to be true but if those people have all died then it is a false prophecy. It is time to bring those people forward and prove it physically once and for all, either that or to at least acknowledge that some of Christ’s prophecies may not after all be true.

Peter Bennet 

(via email).

The Value of Natural Things

SIR: Peter Ryan’s essays always provide enjoyable reading, but I take exception to some of his recent comments (“On the Whale’s Back”, November 2010).

First, he has used the delightful story of the boy and the whale in Albany to attack the “Nanny State”. The coastal areas of Australia are thick with yobbos all too ready to climb into their speedboats and harass these wonderful creatures. In fact thirty metres is not a wide enough buffer, especially when one considers the size of some tourist boats and the recklessness of speedboat enthusiasts.

Second, he is wrong in equating the death of a whale by harpooning with that of a cow or lamb in an abattoir. Harpooning involves a relatively slow death, accompanied by extreme stress and pain; this cannot be denied. On the other hand cattle and sheep, slaughtered for food, are pre-stunned, thus eliminating the greater part of their suffering. There is the exception though, of halal and kosher ritual slaughter in our abattoirs, which is done without pre-stunning, and the continuation of this practice is a blot on our society.

Last, although I agree that the Green movement is host to some undesirable left-wing social policies, at least its members do value and love our natural environment, something not expressed with any frequency or fervour by members of the Coalition or Labor parties. I believe natural things, animals and flora, have intrinsic value in their own right, irrespective of their usefulness to humans, and if we don’t treasure and nurture them carefully we will eventually degrade the quality of our own lives.

Peter Gerard, 

Guyra, NSW.

Preserving Popper

SIR: Rafe Champion’s review in the November issue of the Continuum Press volume on Karl Popper deserves interest far beyond the philosophy fraternity. Popper’s big books that dealt with the great political issues—The Open Society and Its Enemies in 1945 and The Poverty of Historicism in 1957— both helped to define the political landscape for postwar scholars. But The Open Society was always very expensive. It was acquiring Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom one remembers. Dymocks published an Australian edition in 1944 in a wartime restricted nothing-colour binding which as a young serviceman I bought for nine shillings. It helped offset the enormous output of the Gollancz Press which was part of the collectivist tide of those days. 

The Gollancz yellow-jacketed volumes were always in abundance in wartime Australian Army Education Service libraries: a standard set of 300 odd volumes of social, economic and political comment which was supposed to help educate the more serious-minded troops. They were in recreational huts, casualty clearing stations and field hospitals. Why were the yellow jackets in such profusion? Who made the decision to order them? Some were from second-rate British authors never heard of again. It would be a good study for some student’s dissertation if they could find answers in seventy-year-old Department of Army files. 

At university level The Open Society was very influential. Political philosophy wasn’t really his special area of interest in philosophy, which was logic, physics and the philosophy of science, as Champion points out. Like Hayek, his friend and supporter when he was in far-off New Zealand, Popper felt forced by the times to write a political book challenging the greatest of predecessors in Marx, Hegel and even, in a magnificently written volume devoted to it, Plato himself.

Rafe Champion has helped keep alive Popper’s work. He writes of Phil Parvin’s book under review that its price is a deterrent. Indeed if he hadn’t said this one might have taken £65 for 184 pages as a misprint. Surely there is a case for the Centre for Independent Studies, which has already done so much, coming to some arrangement which makes Parvin’s book available more reasonably.

Darrel Killen,

Garran, ACT.

A Brown Future? 

SIR: Some people I know had a discussion last night about carbon footprints; how to tax companies that put out too much carbon dioxide and cause global warming. Listening to this and to other such conversations, certain things have become clear to me. 

The end result of the global warming panic will be a police state, and the good middle-class people who believe in it all rather enjoy the thought. Any savage crackdown on human rights, on the common man, is welcomed by these people if it serves their creed. 

I suggested, in our discussion, that the problem of global warming was not that urgent. I was met by indignation and rage. I had blasphemed. In fact, the list of scientific facts and economic procedures was like a rich and sophomoric liturgy. We were not discussing. We were celebrating. 

Yet the problem is people, not carbon dioxide or governments or economics. A group of people on the planet, mainly middle-class and in the industrialised North, is addicted to consuming. They normally blame the irresponsible fecundity of the South for part of the over-use of the world’s resources, but this is not the case. The South is rapidly acquiring all our technologies, yet produces relatively little carbon dioxide. It uses mopeds instead of cars, gets most of its food within a dozen miles of home and lives in small, fuel-saving communities. And since the over-consuming North is aborting and contracepting itself out of existence, then might I suggest that the future will be brown, Catholic, will live in extended families and will not be ridden by puritan apocalyptic creeds like global warming?

Peter Gilet,

Belmont, WA.