Complaint to the Guardian reader's editor

Andrew Brown (the editor of the CiF Belief website at the Guardian) has been in the habit of taking ad hominem potshots at prominent atheists. His latest diatribe (that really is the only word for it) is on the subject of the complaint made by Terry Sanderson of the National Secular Society concerning what appears to be Cherie Booth's decision to take a person's religion into account in giving a more lenient sentence to a man who had committed an assault, breaking the jaw of a member of the public.

Andrew Brown seems to have parlayed this into a belief that the NSS is calling for offenders who are religious to have increased sentences!

In Sanderson's world, judges should say things like "Although you have no previous convictions, you are none the less a follower of Pope Benedict XVI and so unable to tell right from wrong. I therefore find myself compelled to impose a custodial sentence"

At the time of writing, the article has collected 630 comments. The number is rising fast, and they are almost uniformly highly negative. Andrew has commented below the line as well, and in the process has been digging himself even deeper into his hole.

It is one thing to write an inflammatory article. It is quite another to be quite so cavalier with the facts. I've therefore written a complaint to the Readers' Editor of the Guardian, as follows.

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Andrew Brown's piece on this subject (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2010/feb/04/religion-cherieblair) spends less time on Cherie Booth's actual remarks than on entirely imaginary remarks supposedly by Terry Sanderson of the NSS.

In doing so, Andrew Brown grossly misprepresents the public views both of the NSS and of Terry Sanderson. Examples are

The real disagreement is whether being a devout Muslim (or Christian) is in itself a sign of good character. Cherie Booth seems to be arguing that it is, though less important than his previously spotless record. For Sanderson and those who think like him, being a devout believer is quite the opposite. It's evidence of bad character.

In Sanderson's world, judges should say things like "Although you have no previous convictions, you are none the less a follower of Pope Benedict XVI and so unable to tell right from wrong. I therefore find myself compelled to impose a custodial sentence"

Later, in comments below the article, he says (describing Sanderson)

Yes, but I was talking about the one who works full time for a pressure group trying to drive religion out of public life.

And later

The NSS is trying right now, FFS, to stop the Pope's visit to this country because he's the Pope.

And later

The people claiming that he and the NSS are indifferent to religion, and perfectly happy for the Pope to come here, providing he pays his own way, I find hard to take seriously.

Except that this is precisely the position of the NSS and the subject of a petition to that effect.

On being hammered about that in comments, he appeared to retract to some extent, when he said:

OK. On reflection, the NSS is not campaigning to stop the Pope coming here. If their campaign were to succeed, and he were to be treated as someone who was not a head of state, he might not come; but that would rather spoil the theatre of the whole thing.

But then he rather spoiled the effect by saying in a later comment

"On reflection" meaning that the Pope's visit will mean lots of publicity for the NSS. So of course they want it to go ahead.

He also misrepresented a comment by "helen01" who said that she was a JP and who commented on Charie Booth's comments. She decidedly did not appreciate the distortion of her words, replying

I didn't say anything about being insulted as an atheist - I said, as you yourself quoted:

Cherie Blair was quite clear that the defendant's religion affected her decision to suspend the sentence.

I was talking about justice being seen and heard to be done!

You are good at this distortion thing aren't you????

My complaint concerns the following matters

1. The article and subsequent comments are not restricting themselves to commentary, but are making up facts, which is against the spirit of CP Scott's essay which supposedly underpins the ethos of the site.

2. The article and his subsequent comments breach item 1 of your community guidelines "We welcome debate and dissent, but personal attacks (on authors, other users or any individual), persistent trolling and mindless abuse will not be tolerated."

It is perfectly clear that this is a personal attack on Terry Sanderson.

3. The article and his subsequent comments breach the spirit of item 2 of your community guidelines "We acknowledge criticism of the articles we publish, but will not allow persistent misrepresentation of the Guardian and our journalists to be published on our website. For the sake of robust debate, we will distinguish between constructive, focused argument and smear tactics."

It seems that you will not allow persistent misrepresentation of the Guardian and its journalists, but you do permit persistent misrepresentation by them. Andrew Brown is very much in the habit of deliberately distorting and misrepresenting the views of prominent atheists. This is but the latest in a long series of articles in which he has engaged in similar tactics. Three common targets are Sanderson himself, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. If you require it, I can provide a list of relevant articles.

4. The article and his subsequent comments breach the spirit of item 5 of your community guidelines. "We will not tolerate racism, sexism, homophobia or other forms of hate-speech, or contributions that could be interpreted as such. We recognise the difference between criticising a particular government, organisation, community or belief and attacking people on the basis of their race, religion, gender or sexual orientation."

Strictly speaking secularism or atheism is not a religion, but since it is a philosophical stance concerning religion, it ought to be protected in the same way. Andrew Brown appears to be in the habit of attacking atheists and secularists because of their views, rather than making any attempt to engage with the views themselves.

5. The article and his subsequent comments breach the spirit of item 5 of your community guidelines. "The platform is ours, but the conversation belongs to everybody. We want this to be a welcoming space for intelligent discussion, and we expect participants to help us achieve this by notifying us of potential problems and helping each other to keep conversations inviting and appropriate. If you spot something problematic in community interaction areas, please report it. When we all take responsibility for maintaining an appropriate and constructive environment, the debate itself is improved and everyone benefits."

It can hardly be said that the article is engaging in intelligent discussion.

6. You may also recall that some months ago, there was an article Your views on Cif etiquette which described a number of supplementary guidelines that had been suggested by readers.

Matt Seaton, in a comment on that thread, said

we'll be recommending to ATL contributors that they abide by the spirit of them

Andrew Brown's article has broken the spirit of points 1, 2, 5, 6 (arguably), and 7 (grossly). I shan't rehearse the details, I'm sure you already get the idea.

The overall issue is one of hypocrisy. You quite reasonably expect good behaviour on the part of below-the-line commenters. I am all in favour of that. You engage in debate with readers concerning what those guidelines should be. I'm all in favour of that as well. But it seems that the same standards are not applied to above-the-line comment pieces written by the paper's own editors, even when you claim that your policy is otherwise.

It is hypocrisy specifically on the part of Andrew Brown for acting in this way, as in the past he has appealed for a more civilised discourse, for instance in his article David Hume's comment policy. It seems that this applies only to others, and not to himself. It is also wider hypocrisy on the part of the editorial team as a whole, since it is hardly the first time that Andrew Brown's activities of this kind have come to notice.

I have commented on this topic in the "What do you want to talk about? threads, and received a response from Jessica Reed to the effect that the appropriate route for a complaint is to write to the Readers' Editor.

Regards
Jonathan West

Andrew Brown trolling on his own blog

For somebody who claims to be bored by ya-boo discussions between believers and atheists, Andrew Brown is remarkably keen on stirring them up. His latest effort Sam Harris and Francis Collins is a bash at Sam Harris' NYT article expressing reservations about Collins' nomination as head of the NIH.

Most of what AB says is unworthy of the dignity of any reply, so I'm not going to even bother making any attempt at it. Most of the article is based on quote mining and taking out of context, and as an experienced journalist AB ought to have higher professional standards than that.

But there is one point he makes in the comments which I think is worth highlighting. In response to ChrisWhite3's comment that "surely a scientist who refuses to change his stance in light of fresh evidence is a fairly poor scientist?", AB responds as follows.

Your point would have force if belief in God were a scientific hypothesis. But it isn't. So there's no reason for scientific evidence to affect it.

Let me see if I understand this. Francis Collins is talking as a scientist, explaining how his scientific knowledge has increased his belief in the existence of God, moreover of the existence of a God who intervenes in the universe in miraculous ways, for instance by giving humans souls once their brains had evolved to the point of being able to receive them, or by fine-tuning the universal constants in order to design a universe capable of supporting life. And this not not a matter for scientific enquiry?

Pull the other one! Of course science can investigate such questions using scientific methods.

Now, you can say if you choose "I don't care what the evidence is, I believe that God exists and that Jesus rose from the dead to save me." If Francis Collins had said words to this effect, then I don't think anybody would have thought twice about it - people (even scientists) believe all sorts of irrational things, and by clearly saying he wasn't basing his belief on evidence, it would be equally clear that he wasn't speaking in his professional capacity as a scientist. We're all allowed a private life.

But Collins isn't doing that - he's trying to offer a scientific justification for belief in God. In other words Collins himself is making God a scientific hypothesis. I think that in fact he is correct to do so. Whether God exists, what evidence there is for it, and what sorts of miracles he does if he does exist is a perfectly justifiable line of scientific enquiry.

But Collins seems to be wanting to have his cake & eat it - he is claiming a scientific justification for belief in God, but avoids stating the alternative naturalistic explanations (and they most certainly do exist) for the phenomena he claims to persuade him of the existence of God. In doing so, he is committing the scientific sin of cherry-picking evidence.

That is a serious cause for concern in somebody who is being proposed for a senior scientific management post in charge of billions of dollars of scientific funding. It isn't that he believes in God, but rather that in doing so he is prepared to act unscientifically while talking as a scientist. Big no-no.

Persona non grata at CiF Belief

It appears that I have committed an unforgivable sin.

As a result of recommending that commenters should boycott Andrew Brown's blog for a week to express displeasure at his unwillingness to adhere in his own above-the-line behaviour to the standards that he expected of the rest of us below the line, I have been told that no more articles from me will be commissioned or accepted, and the article on personal experiences of God (which I know some of you have been awaiting for some time) will not be published on CiF Belief even though it was commissioned and accepted.

The thread was O come all ye faithless, in which (in the opinion of several) Andrew made rather a prat of himself trying to ban WoollyMindedLiberal from attending the CiF Believers get-together in London on August 8th. The offending comment was as follows:

I've met Andrew, he bought me dinner last November prior to my first ATL article, and he is perfectly amicable face-to-face. I'm just a bit disappointed that his recent online behaviour hasn't come up to the standards he has been saying he expects of others. We can get banned for it - but we can't ban that behaviour in him. Or can we?

There is a very simple and effective way in which you can show your displeasure. For the next week, decline to make any comment on any of AB's blog articles (apart from this one) and decline even to view the page (this will affect page hits and therefore ad revenue). Click Recommend on this comment if you're prepared to do that.

If this comment happens to get deleted by the mods, I've kept a copy and will put it up on my blog instead.

But this was just the latest in a series of actions from Andrew that displayed a sense of double-standards between what is acceptable above-the-line and below-the-line, and for that matter what is acceptable amongst theist as opposed to atheist authors. At the time, Andrew seemed to view the matter somewhat lightheartedly. An hour or so later he posted saying

I would just like to say that I have clicked recommend on JW's most recent post.

But it seems that this was just for show, and in fact he regarded the matter very seriously. He has my email address and phone number. It's a pity he couldn't have contacted me to get it sorted at the time.

Andrew is of course perfectly entitled to decide who he will commission articles from, and perfectly entitled to decide not to take any more from me. I'm rather surprised and disappointed though that he chose to leave it three weeks before making any mention of this to me, and initially to lie about the reasons the personal experiences article would not be published, saying it hadn't been commissioned. He only offered this new reason in an email after I sent him the correspondence in which the commission was clearly stated and raised the issue with Matt Seaton (overall CiF editor).

So that's where things stand. To an extent, I have no reason to complain. I stated in a later comment that the purpose of the boycott was to show "that actions have consequences", so I can hardly whinge when my own actions have consequences other than those I would prefer. I would have been happy to contribute to the success of CiF Belief by politely stating an atheist viewpoint on issues both above and below the line. But it seems that is not going to happen.

I don't feel inclined to continue contributing to CiF in the present circumstances. I hope to write plenty more and put it up here instead. I hope that those of you who have enjoyed my articles on CiF Belief will continue to read me here and comment.

Belliefs without evidence

Andrew Brown, in the comments to his article Resurrection shuffles, has said

... the claim for god is that he is not a thing amongst other things, as Santa would be, supposing he existed. In that sense the orthodox Christian belief is that god does not exist; certainly not in the sense that anything else might be said to. So there couldn't be evidence that such a god exists in the way that there could be evidence for or against a martian teapot. There might be reasons for believing/trusting/worshipping etc. But they are not evidence.

That last bit is very curious. Reasons for believing without evidence! When I asked him about it, essentially he told me to piss off. But it still remains a curious thing to say.

Now, maintaining an outwards how of believing something without evidence - yes, we've probably all done that at one time or another, but that isn't actually the same as believing itself.

You can mistakenly believe on the basis of what you think is evidence, but that isn't quite the same thing - you are basing your belief on evidence even though it is of much poorer quality than you are aware of.

What Andrew Brown seems to be claiming is that one can make a conscious decision to believe something, knowing that the belief is unjustified, i.e. lacking in supporting evidence.

Can anybody shed light on this mystery?