{"id":902,"date":"2008-02-06T15:13:00","date_gmt":"2008-02-06T15:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/2008\/02\/06\/the-emperors-new-clothes\/"},"modified":"2008-02-06T15:13:00","modified_gmt":"2008-02-06T15:13:00","slug":"the-emperors-new-clothes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/2008\/02\/06\/the-emperors-new-clothes\/","title":{"rendered":"The Emperor&#8217;s New Clothes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_M3KcDDpUUfo\/R6nRCI75anI\/AAAAAAAAAFI\/FT-uaq50KJg\/s1600-h\/emperor_21702_lg.gif\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px;float: right;cursor: pointer\" src=\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_M3KcDDpUUfo\/R6nRCI75anI\/AAAAAAAAAFI\/FT-uaq50KJg\/s400\/emperor_21702_lg.gif\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a>This is a brief response to the several comments Ibrahim Lawson has made <a href=\"http:\/\/stephenlaw.blogspot.com\/2008\/01\/latest-response-to-ibrahim-lawson.html\">here<\/a> and  <a href=\"http:\/\/stephenlaw.blogspot.com\/2008\/01\/butler-society-talk-oxford.html\">here<\/a>. Ibrahim has been defending Islam by suggesting that Islam is mystical, beyond the reach of reason, etc.<\/p>\n<p>Hello Ibrahim<\/p>\n<p>The appeal to mystery and the mystical has of course been a bog-standard technique of cultists and other purveyors of snake oil down through the centuries whenever they are accused of talking cobblers.<\/p>\n<p>Pointing out that their belief makes no sense provokes such responses as &#8211;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But you are arrogantly applying Western-techno-rationality, yet failing to acknowledge its own limits.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It does all make sense &#8211; only in some profound way inaccessible to us mere humans.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>and so on&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>In this way, the cultists make a <span style=\"font-style: italic\">virtue<\/span> of the fact their belief system doesn&#8217;t make any sense (indeed a logical contradiction in what they believe is considered a plus!)<\/p>\n<p>The failure is not theirs for believing a load of patent nonsense, but ours for failing to be humble enough to recognise our own limitations, or sophisticated enough to recognise the sublimely mysterious depths of their world-view!<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Emperor%27s_New_Clothes\">Emperor&#8217;s New Clothes<\/a>, in other words.<\/p>\n<p>Is there some reason why we should find these moves any more convincing in this case?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is a brief response to the several comments Ibrahim Lawson has made here and here. Ibrahim has been defending Islam by suggesting that Islam is mystical, beyond the reach of reason, etc. Hello Ibrahim The appeal to mystery and the mystical has of course been a bog-standard technique of cultists and other purveyors of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ibrahim-lawson","category-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}