In Civilization and Its Discontents, Sigmund Freud recognized the many benefits of civilization, including beauty, cleanliness, order and the regulation of social relationships.  For Freud, however, nothing better characterized civilization than “its esteem and encouragement of man’s higher mental activities-his intellectual, scientific and artistic achievements-and the leading role that assigns to ideas and human life.”  (Page 47)

[All citations are to Civilization and Its Discontents, by Sigmund Freud, translated and edited by James Strachey (Norton) 1961].

Freud believed that human society was possible only when the power of individuals was somewhat replaced by the power of the community. This process of being civilized is a process that blocks the satisfaction of many human instincts and “leads them into other paths.” It re-channels our basic instincts into artistic and intellectual work. In other words, the process of civilization is a process of sublimation.

A satisfaction of this kind, such as an artist’s joy in creating and giving his phantasies body, or a scientist’s in solving problems or discovering truths, has a special quality which we shall certainly one day be able to characterize in meta-psychological terms.  At present, we can only say figuratively that such satisfactions seem “finer and higher.”  But their intensity is mild as compared with that derived from the sating of crude and primary instinctual impulses; it does not convulse our physical being. 

(p. 29) 

Freud thus concluded that the sublimating power of civilization:

is what makes it possible for higher psychical activities, scientific, artistic or ideological, to play such an important part in civilized life . . . it is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built up upon a renunciation of instant, how much it presupposes precisely the non-satisfaction (by suppression, repression or some other means?) of powerful instincts.  This “cultural frustration” is the cause of the hostility against which all civilizations have to struggle. 

(Page 51) Where is the evidence in support?  Freud would suggest that in societies where basic urges are restricted or blocked by stringent moral systems, those urges emerge in more sophisticated and convoluted ways:  they sprout up as libraries, universities or hospitals.  In those societies where moral systems are consistently enforced, mate selection is not accomplished through displays of brutish strength and aggression; rather, those urges are refunnelled into “finer” displays such as music performances, organized athletic displays and a wide variety of intellectual accomplishments.

Why do I find this interesting?  Many social conservatives greatly fear the consequences of cutting each other too much slack. They fear that doing so would lead to the collapse of civilization—we’d all start running around breaking windows and indiscriminately having sex.  This is why Conservatives think we must heavily legislate morality, including prohibiting victimless crimes.  That is why they argue that we need to censor freethinking and why we sometimes need to smack around non-violent people.

It’s ironic that, in concluding that we must meddle in each others lives to maintain the benefits of civilization, conservatives share common ground with one of the world’s most notorious freethinkers, Sigmund Freud.  Social conservatives go way off track, however, when they conclude that their system of morality is the only system that is strong and coherent.  Conservatives offer only one type of such a moral system and it comes with a lot of dysfunctional and unnecessary baggage. 

Social control is a delicate thermostat and that there are many ways to do it badly. There is no need to throw out the baby with the bath water.  We can have the type of order that allows civilization to survive without all the stifling oppression.  The conservative version of morality is not the only effective kind.  We don’t need people professing belief in virgin birth in order to maintain great orchestras.  The occasional public exposure of a nipple is not incompatible with fourth grade math proficiency.   In fact, a government that only allows “a single kind of sexual life for everyone disregards the dissimilarities . . . in the sexual constitution of human beings; it cuts off a fair number of them from sexual enjoyment and so becomes the source of serious injustice.” (p. 60)  In Freud’s view, maintaining order can clearly go too far.

Thriving communities of nonbelievers have often operated, free of onerous restrictions, in accordance with alternative versions of strong and coherent moral codes.  Did someone say “Europe”?

Freud was wrong about many things, but his writings, even his mistakes, are full of wonderful insights.  Civilization and Its Discontents is one of Freud’s gems.

While attending a book fair at the age of 17, I bought a Catechism published in 1850 1850 catechism excerpts.pdf Back then, I found it sycophantic, scientifically backward and full of veiled threats. Fast forward 33 years . . . I now find it sycophantic, scientifically backward and full of veiled threats (p. 47, 60).

I’m sharing scanned images of this Catechism here because it still makes an interesting read. It shows that the tricks used by today’s fundamentalists are not new. And even 150 years ago (well prior to the civil war) religious leaders knew (instinctively if not consciously) the value of terror. How do we know that God is such a great guy? Well (see p. 66), he could have executed Adam and Eve, but he didn’t. [Hey, wait! I could have killed dozens of people today, but I didn't. Am I a great guy too?]

Notice that God didn’t kill Adam and Eve. He spared them (and us), but “put enmities between” all men and women. God, the anti-marriage counselor.

Reading this Catechism illustrates that anywhere the light of disciplined science shines, fundamentalist religion doesn’t have enough sense to scurry. Check out the Intelligent Design arguments on page 43. Michael Behe and his pals offer us nothing new except packaging.

Other tidbits: Blue is the most pleasing color (p. 47). God could crush us by playing with air pressure (p. 47). Air has the function of pumping water out of the ocean (p. 48). The sun and moon were not created until the “fourth day” (how did God know it was the fourth day without the sun?) to prevent idolatry (p. 51). If the stars were further from us, they would be “useless” (p. 52). Ants teach us “the tenderness that parents should have for their children and the care they should take of their education” (p. 57).

Enjoy.

As reported in Think Progress, Fox News analyst Jonathan Hoenig reported this weekend that global warming was “bogus,” and “dreamed up” by environmentalists to stop economic development.  http://thinkprogress.org/2006/05/29/global-warming-bogus/

There’s no scientific proof that global warming even exists. To be honest, it’s a bogus consensus dreamed up by Greens because they hate industry. They hate advancement. They hate technology…Greens will lead us back to the stone ages.

As Think Progress also points out, the National Academy of Sciences recently surveyed refereed 928 articles from scientific journals (published from 1993 to 2003) that concerned climate change.  The “consensus statement” considered by the survey was the following:  “Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth’s atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise.”

The results?  Zero out of 928 refereed scientific journals published between 1993 and 2003 disagreed with the consensus position.

What’s more disturbing?  The intelligence vaccuum in which FOX operates or the vicious derision aimed toward disciplined science that follows evidence where it leads?  It’s difficult enough to communicate these ideas, even by evidence-based news providers (by the way, check out this post (”Framing climate change”)on more effective frames for communicating climate issues).  But now, back to FOX’s Jonathan Hoenig . . .

“They hate advancement.  They hate technology.  Greens will lead us back to the stone ages”?

Gee . . .I guess he’s right.  Maybe it’s time to put away my abacus and it’s time to feed peanuts to the hamsters that power my computer.   Or, perhaps, my concern is that I don’t want to see my children, friends, neighbors and fellow citizens left jobless and then poisoned by those whose short-sighted minds have been narrowed to the point of vanishing by their zealous pursuit of wealth.

To wind up this post . . .who should we trust more on climate change, Hoenig (who is managing member at Capitalistpig Hedge Fund LLC, a markets columnist for Smartmoney.com and a guest on FNC’s business program Cashin’ In ) or 928 scientists? 

In the United States, we often hear that the U.S. is the world’s greatest place to live.  There is still much good to be said about the United States, but there is also increasing dysfunction.

In his 2004 article, “The European Dream,”  Jeremy Rifkin dared to compare the U.S. way of life to that of the European Union.  He wrote “[I]t saddens me to say that America is no longer a great country. Yes, it’s still the most powerful economy in the world, with a military presence unmatched in all of history. But to be a great country, it is necessary to be a good country.”

Many other people have expressed concerns with the direction of the U.S., of course. Rifkin’s article goes further by letting the objective facts do most of the talking:

[The European Union's] $10.5 trillion gross domestic product now eclipses the U.S. GDP, making it the world’s largest economy. The European Union is already the world’s leading exporter and largest internal trading market. Sixty-one of the 140 biggest companies on the Global Fortune 500 rankings are European, while only 50 are U.S. companies.

[I]n the European Union, there are approximately 322 physicians per 100,000 people, whereas in the United States there are only 279. The United States ranks 26th among the industrial nations in infant mortality, well below the EU average. The average life span in the 15 most developed EU countries is now 78.01 years, compared to 76.9 years in the United States.

Children in 12 European nations now rank higher in mathematics literacy than their American peers, and in 8 European countries children outscore Americans in scientific literacy. When it comes to wealth distribution — a crucial measure of a country’s ability to deliver on the promise of prosperity — the United States ranks 24th among the industrial nations. All 18 of the most developed European countries have less income inequality between rich and poor. (more…)

When I was a kid, I was always curious about why there were so many different kinds of Christian churches in America: Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist, Unitarian, Congregational, Baptist, Episcopal, Presbyterian, Church of Christ, United Church of Christ, Reformed Church of Christ, Mormon, Quaker, Shaker, Greek Othodox, Russian Orthodox, Christian Science…the list seemed endless. It seemed like there were more different versions of Christianity in America than there were non-Christian religions around the rest of the world (Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Bahai, Shinto, Confucianism, etc.). Later, I learned that those other religions also had many different versions (Orthodox Judiasm, Ultra-orthodox Judiasm, Hasidic Judiasm, Reformed Judiasm, Sunni Muslim, Shia Muslim, etc.), so Christianity is not unique in that respect.

Meanwhile, Christians were fond of telling me that the Bible was written by God and, thus, was both perfect and complete. Naturally, this made no sense to me given the cornucopia of churches. If the Bible was perfect and complete, then why didn’t all Christians understand it the same way? Didn’t God know how to write clearly? More importantly, why were there so many different kinds of churches and what were their actual differences? To my immense frustration, churches of different denominations didn’t have signs out front explaining how they differed from the other churches down the street.

Only recently have I learned some answers to these questions. First, it turns out that the number of different versions of Christianity and other religions that I can name are only the tip of an enormous iceberg. According to the “Ontario Consultants for Religious Tolerance” website (http://www.religioustolerance.org/reltrue.htm), there are more than 10,000 distinct religions on our planet, each one claiming to be “the one true religion.”

(more…)

Unless you really and truly need one, that is. 

The lack of respect given to the push reel mower is a good example of how mindset affects consumer behavior.  I’m referring to the type of mower with a rotating cylinder of blades that is powered by your muscles.  This post is not really about saving energy.  Small residential lawn mowers use very little gasoline compared to our transportation and heating uses of oil.  Rather, I find choice of lawn mowers revealing about the nature of consumer choices, specifically about the American love affair with engines, noise and power (NASCAR, anyone?).

In the past week, we’ve spent some time discussing things people might be willing to do to conserve energy.  Here’s a no-brainer for those with small-to-medium sized yards.  Push mowers are far superior to gasoline powered mowers.  Most people simply don’t consider this choice, however. Thanks to sales hype regarding the much more expensive gasoline-burning models, buying a non-gasoline powered mower never ever occurs to most people. Major hardware stores relegate such mowers to the back shelf.  Consumer Reports gives little attention to these wonderful machines, year after year.

I speak from experience. I’ve used a push-reel non-engine lawn mowers for 12 years. They are as easy to operate as those powerful roaring gas-powered mowers. Here are seven solid reasons to chose a no-gasoline model next time you buy a mower:

1. Push-reel mowers cost only $100 brand new. The mower I bought was manufactured by American Lawn Mower Company, based in Indiana. 
2. Push reel mowers have no engine, so they create no noise pollution.      (more…)

Grumpypilgrim and I are both big advocates of bicycle use, including bicycle commuting.

In my own case, I started using bicycle to commute to work in 1999 (I live in St. Louis). I’ve accrued more than 10,000 miles bicycle commuting since that time. I’m about five miles from my place of work and it takes me about 22 minutes to make the trip, which is only 5 minutes longer than it takes to drive a car.

Using a bicycle is an excellent way to relieve stress, save gas and build exercise into your routine. Before I started commuting by bike, I couldn’t imagine I would have become so committed. Before I started commuting, I thought of a bicycle as most Americans do: as a recreational toy. Bicycles certainly are wonderful “toys.” But they are much more, too. Now I see my bicycle (I ride a Trek 4900 that cost about $500) as a finely designed machine that gets an important job done in an earth-friendly way.

In case any readers want to catch the fever, here are some bicycling-related websites to get you started. If anyone wants to add to this list, by all means, share your information by adding a comment. Thanks!

General bicycle info:

Sheldon Brown http://www.sheldonbrown.com (lots of tips and bike repair info)

Bicycle commuting and safety:

• Adventure Cycling Association - www.adventurecycling.org
• America Bikes – www.americabikes.org
• Association of Bicycle and Pedestrian Professionals - www.apbp.org
• Bicycle Helmet Safety Institute - www.bhsi.org
• Bicycle Safe – www.bicyclesafe.com
• Bicycling Street Smarts - www.bikexprt.com/streetsmarts/usa
• Bikes Belong – www.bikesbelong.org
• International Mountain Bike Association – www.imba.com
• League of American Bicyclists - www.bikeleague.org
• National Center for Bicycling and Walking - www.bikewalk.org
• Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center – www.bicyclinginfo.org
• Trailnet - http://www.trailnet.org/

Bicycle touring

• Bikelist http://www.bikelist.org/ (excellent user lists for bike touring and
  other bike-related topics; searchable database)
• Bicycle Touring 101 http://www.biketouring101.com (great place to start for information about bike touring; lots of basic info)
• Adventure Cycling Association. http://www.adventurecycling.org (lots of bike touring info; fabulous touring-specific maps)
• Ken Kifer. http://www.kenkifer.com/bikepages/index.htm (homemade touring gear, stealth camping, more)

Bike touring on-line journals:

• Crazyguyonabike http://www.crazyguyonabike.com (more bike touring journals than anyone could read in a lifetime)
• China Bicycle Touring Travelogues http://www.bikechina.com/spoke.html (tips for bike touring in developing countries)
• Down the Road. http://www.downtheroad.org/ (around the world on a bike)

Winter biking:

• Ice Bike http://www.icebike.com (this one is grumpypilgrim’s recommendation. You can tell that he doesn’t live in a warm state! You can do it, by the way! You too can ride when it’s ten below!)

For centuries, established religions have asserted that science should be viewed through the lens of religion.  Over the past few years, scientifically-oriented writers have turned that view on its head.  They have asserted that it is more appropriate to view religious practices through the lens of science.

The recent flurry of books includes the following:

• Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought, by Pascal Boyer (2002)
• The Human Story, by Robin Dunbar (2004)
• Breaking the Spell, by Daniel Dennett (2006)
• Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society, By David Sloan Wilson (2003)
• How We Believe, by Michael Shermer (1999)
• Why God’s Persist, by Robert Hinde (1999)
• The End of Faith, by Sam Harris (2004)
• Attachment, Evolution and the Psychology of Religion, by Lee Kirkpatrick (2005)
• In Gods We Trust, by Scott Atran (2002)

Though I own each of these books, I have completely read only half of them; I’m partly through the others.  They are a priority on my reading list given the high stakes of failing to understand religious practices (religious tensions and wars everywhere one cares to look). 

For anyone just getting started in this area, I recommend Dennett’s 2006 work, Breaking the Spell.  This book is classic Dennett: eloquent, heartfelt and clear.  He works extra hard so that he is not only preaching to the choir. He spends the first one-hundred pages working to convince Believers to give him a chance.  It’s quite an extraordinary opening gambit.

Most of the above books concern similar questions regarding religion, though they approach these issues in a variety of ways.  Those questions include the following:

1.  Why do religious people say the puzzling things they say?
For instance, some Believers say that a virgin gave birth.  Others insist that the Bible is absolutely consistent even though the Bible identifies two separate men as the father of Joseph (in an ethereal-sperm sort of way, I’m referring to the “biological” grandfather of Jesus); one Gospel insists that his name is “Jacob” (Matthew 1:16) while another gospel insists it is “Heli” (Luke 3:23).  There are many many more contradictions where this came from.  See the Skeptic’s Annotated Bible.

2. Do believers really believe the alleged truths of their religions?  Literalist believers claim that they truly believe Bible truths, but this is difficult to grasp for outsiders like me.  For instance Deuteronomy 5:14 couldn’t be any clearer that God’s people shouldn’t work at all one day out of seven.  Yet there they are working those Wal-Mart stores seven days out of seven.

3. Why do believers engage in rituals?  You know . . . I’m referring to those things that many non-believers see to be pointless and time-wasting.  Interestingly, Believers often disparage the rituals of every one else’s religion. 

Each of these questions is actually four separate “why” questions, as established by the Nobel Prize winning ethologist Niko Tinbergen.   These four “why” questions concern the behavior’s:

1. Phylogeny or history (when did the behavior developed over geological time as part of the evolution of the species?).
2. Ontogeny (the behavior’s development over the life of the individual animal),
3. Function (how the behaviour impacts the animal’s chances of survival and reproduction; the purpose the behavior serves in the animal’s life) and
4. Proximate cause or mechanisms (what bodily machinery, including motivational systems, produces that behavior).

A full explanation of religious practice must carefully deal with each of these levels of explanation.  In The Human Story, Robin Dunbar points out that when analyzing any trait or behavior, it is important that we not confuse these levels of analysis, the most common confusion being between function and ontogeny.  As Daniel Dennett writes in Breaking the Spell, science is just getting started analyzing religion with vigor (hence the title to his book).

Based on these recent books, science is finally gearing up to vigorously put religion under the microscope of science.  Religion is not going to comply willingly, however.  If (long) history is any indication, religions (especially literalist traditions) will continue to insist that religion is primary and that any scientific finding threatening religious authority will be prima facie overruled.  (more…)

This, from http://www.freepress.net/ : 

A bipartisan majority on the House Judiciary Committee yesterday passed the “Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act” — a good bill that would use antitrust law to protect Network Neutrality. Special thanks to those of you who called the key members who cast the deciding votes.

The question before us is simple: Will the Internet remain in the hands of users and innovators? Or will a handful of telephone and cable companies determine which Web sites you see and which you don’t? Yesterday’s vote — a milestone for our movement — would have been unthinkable just three weeks ago. But we’ve shown once again that organized people can defeat powerful corporations.

For more, see http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/

You might think that social conservatives, especially those in the so-called “pro-life” crowd, would welcome the use of a new vaccine that is virtually 100% effective against two deadly strains of cervical cancer that account for 70% of such cancer deaths and that kill over 3,700 women each year.  Unfortunately, you’d be wrong.

“Because the vaccine protects against a sexually transmitted virus, many conservatives oppose making it mandatory…,” so says this article:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/10/31/MNG2LFGJFT1.DTL

Because of the vaccine’s very high efficacy, health professionals want to make the vaccine mandatory for all girls, but social conservatives, whose knee-jerk reaction is apparently to oppose anything that makes sex safer for women, worry that the vaccine might encourage pre-marital sex; so, they favor “pro-choice” — i.e., letting parents chose to not give the vaccine to their daughters.  In a move that can only be described as screaming with hypocrisy (given their support for government interference in healthcare decisions about birth control and abortion), they object to the government overruling the parents’ decisions about giving children this potentially life-saving vaccine.

In other words, according to conservatives, it’s OK for the government to overrule a parents’ decision when the parents want to protect their daughter’s life with effective birth control or an abortion, but it’s not OK for the government to overrule a parents’ decision when the parents want to jeopardize their daughter’s life by denying an important anti-cancer vaccine.  How twisted do the “family values” need to be to arrive at that dichotomy?

So, here’s my question:  even if the conservative argument is valid — i.e., that denying your own daughter a proven, life-saving, anti-cancer vaccine actually would discourage her from having pre-marital sex –  why would anyone with an ounce of moral conscience consider this an acceptable way to deter pre-marital sex?  On what sick moral scale does a risk of premarital sex outweigh a risk of death?

And what is wrong with conservatives that they believe their own failure as parents (namely, their inability to convey to their children their moral values against pre-marital sex) should be compounded by allowing them to endanger their childrens’ lives by denying this vaccine?  Indeed, doesn’t the fact that they want to deny their daughters access to this vaccine automatically discredit them as competent parents?  And what about future vaccines?  If an AIDS vaccine is ever found, will social conservatives oppose that, too, just as they have opposed sex education and the distribution of condoms in public schools? 

And if their decision to deny this vaccine to their child ever leads to the death of their daughter (or of other families’ daughters), exactly how do they square their decision with their so-called “moral values?”  Indeed, how do they even live with themselves?

Let’s do a thought experiment.  Start with a cage containing five monkeys.  Inside the cage, hang some bananas by a string from the ceiling and place a ladder underneath it.  Before long, one of the monkeys will go to the ladder and try to climb towards the bananas.  As soon as it touches the ladder, spray all of the monkeys with cold water. 

After a while, another monkey makes an attempt with the same result: all of the monkeys are sprayed with cold water.  Pretty soon, when any monkey tries to touch the ladder, the other monkeys will try to prevent it.

Now, put away the cold water.  Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one.

The new monkey sees the bananas and wants to climb the ladder.  To his surprise and horror, all of the other monkeys attack him.  After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the ladder, he will be assaulted.

Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one.  The newcomer goes to the ladder and is attacked.  The previous newcomer takes part in the attack with enthusiasm — he wants to be part of the group!

Likewise, replace a third original monkey with a new one, then a fourth, and then the fifth.  Every time the newest monkey goes to the ladder, he is attacked.  Most of the monkeys that are beating him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the ladder or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.

After replacing all of the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys has ever been sprayed with cold water.  Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the ladder to try for the bananas.  Why not?  Because as far as they know that’s the way it has always been done around here.

And that, my friends, is how social norms are created. 

When I first heard this amusing, apocryphal story, it was being used to explain how company policies get created.  However, the story obviously has much wider application.  For example, I think about this story whenever I hear about the so-called “Puritan work ethic” in America:  Americans working so hard that they don’t have the time or energy to enjoy the fruits of their labors.  I also think about it when I hear Americans talking about our “high standard of living,” even though we get (for example) far less vacation time and far fewer benefits than do our European colleagues.  Case in point:  I once worked for an American company in which its US-based senior executives received less annual vacation time than the *entry level* factory workers and secretaries in the company’s European plants.  And, most curiously, neither group seemed to question the practice.

Likewise, Americans seem to take for granted all sorts of beliefs and behaviors, often without question.  Why, for example, don’t Americans turn off their car engines at long traffic lights to save gas, as drivers do in Europe?  Why are American cities designed for cars, while European cities are designed for pedestrians and mass transit?  Why do American department stores put women’s lingerie in a back corner or on an upper floor, while European department stores put it prominently inside the front entrance?  Why do nearly all stores organize clothing with the smallest sizes on the top-most shelves (where short people cannot reach) and the largest sizes on the bottom-most shelves (where tall people must stoop)?  Why do Americans consider bicycles to be children’s toys, while Europeans see them as practical transportation vehicles?  Why does the American military ban homosexuals, but not convicted felons, from serving their country?  Why has America failed to adopt the metric system when even Great Britain (which created America’s inches, pints and pounds) has already done so?  Why do Americans calmly accept virtually unlimited gratuitous violence on television, but react with outrage and disgust at the smallest hint of nudity?  Why do Americans warehouse prison inmates on a military (rather than an educational) model, when all available evidence shows that it does not produce rehabilitation?  (Indeed, why do Americans cut government funding for student financial aid, but then spend even more money on prisons for people who lack educational opportunities?)  Why do Americans believe nationwide healthcare coverage (so-called “socialized medicine”) is a horrible idea, while Europeans would never think of giving it up?  The list goes on and on.

 Surely, some of these behaviors are caused by practical considerations — the lower price of gasoline in America compared to Europe or the vast lobbying power of the American Medical Association — but to a very great extent the social norms we see today (in every culture around the globe) are merely the result of choices made by people who died hundreds (even thousands) of years ago.  Obviously, some choices are insignificant (e.g., Americans drive on the right, Brits drive on the left), but some could have far-reaching consequences (e.g., crashing an expensive space probe because navigation calculations were wrongly assumed to use metric units). 

The point of this essay is not (necessarily) to campaign for longer vacations, greater use of bicycles, or more nudity on television in America; it is to alert you to the fact that we are all (to some extent) monkeys in a cage.  Thus, each of us has a choice:  we can automatically attack our fellow cage-mates because of some archaic belief or social norm that we’ve never questioned; or, instead, we can be willing to challenge the status quo so that we, and our fellow monkeys, can all enjoy a nice bunch of bananas.  Whichever you choose, just remember:  your choice will help determine what tomorrow’s monkeys do in their cage.

Behold the incredibly evil Grinch!

“I know all about him,” you might think.  “He’s the guy who almost dumped Christmas over the cliff.  Thank goodness that he saw the light in the nick of time.”

In the classic Dr. Suess story, the Grinch’s heart grew three times right there by the edge of the cliff.  But it was at that same precise location that the true evil of the Grinch manifested itself.  How so?  Let me tell you!

It was at the edge of the cliff that the Grinch realized that Who villagers had just about learned a huge lesson that night.  They had almost learned that they did not need all those Christmas baubles.  They learned that forging a meaningful community didn’t require decorations, sugary treats or glittery whatnots. They realized that maintaining a strongly-knit community could be accomplished without the things money buys. 

As already mentioned, the residents of Who-ville held hands and sang together, their angelic voices drifted up to the precipice where the evil Grinch (small “e”) was disrupted in his evil (small “e”) quest to dump the Christmas kitsch where it actually belonged: into some far-away God-forsaken place. If the Grinch’s heart grew three sizes that day, though, his capacity for evil simultaneously grew tenfold. 

[This was predicted by Hannah Arendt's concept of the “banality of evil.”  Arendt wrote that it was thoughtlessness, not intentional or premeditated acts, that predisposed people to engage in the greatest evils.]

The Grinch’s (capital “E”) evil impulses then took control of his demonstrably weak mind and convinced him to glide back down to Who-ville in his new role as the ultimate corrupter.  It didn’t take much to sell the residents on the materialistic version of Christmas because the Who-people are much like us. 

Upon the sight of the Grinch peddling his brand of blatant materialism, all of that conspicuous consumption piled high, the residents of Who-ville ran to his sleigh as heroin addicts might run to their pushers.  Loaded to bear with sparkly things, the Grinch did an incredibly deft bit of curbside mental chiropractic on the Whos.  In a couple of heartbeats, he convinced the almost converted Whos that their community actually needed trinkets to celebrate the birth of the Who version of Jesus.  (more…)

Once in a while I get tired of the environmental/ecological harangue.  People should do such-and-such; people should not do so-n-so; we need to etc etc etc.

The question that needs to be addressed–and the one which, consciously or not, drives the resistence of this or any other administration’s apparent lack of response to conservation arguments, drives in fact the endless search for energy and resource, drives the often confusing and conflicting debate in congress is–

What Are People Willing To Give Up To Save The Planet?

In my youth, the Ecology movement was young and one saw many odd and contradictory sights.  One that stuck with me to this day was the mock burial of a gas guzzler.  Well, it was actually buried–a Buick, if I recall–but the “mock” part was that this represented our conspicuous consumption, Detroit, Big Oil, etc.  Many young folk were in attendance.  Ceremony was conducted.  It was a solemn event.

And everyone got in their cars after and went home.  Most of those cars were 8-cylinder Somethings.  Few VWs (which would have been the Car Of Opposition To Detroit then).  Stereos blasting, air conditioners blowing…

Sure, a lot of those kids no doubt recognized the irony, but that’s the mode of transportation they were stuck with.

Still, it raises the question.  Do we consume because we like  the act of Consumption?  Or is it really a matter of having a better life?  Or a life we simply prefer?

Let’s reduce our dependence on oil.  First, we start riding bicycles.  Certainly that would be healthy for us, we have an obesity problem.  But there would be a significant fraction of the population that would die if they had to pedal a bike instead of drive of car.  Overweight, poor health to begin with, susceptible to heat related illness, or just too old.  And what about those missing a limbs?  Well, something would have to be done about them to accommodate their problems.  So not everyone bikes.  Oh, and what about people with toddlers?  Soccer moms would be hard put to pedal their progeny to games.  Maybe something could be set aside for them.

Mass transit?  Not undoable, but if you dumped the population currently commuting by car onto a mass transit system, you would in some cases have to quintuple the size of the trains or the fleet of buses.  And of course people would have to learn to get along with people they’ve never cared to be that close to before.

Stop using plastics. 

Ah, but the sterility factor of plastics in hospitals, to name one example, is peerless.  Not to mention that suddenly we’d be back to using “natural” products to make all these things currently made of plastic.  Wood, certainly, but that’s a significant drain on forests, far more than farming or papermaking or even the housing industry currently uses.  Iron, aluminum, copper all require mining.  And the energy to machine all those things might edge out the energy used to injection mold them.  And they would wear out faster, but that’s not really much of an issue in a throw-away society.  And wood might be easier in some instances to recycle–or would it?  If you pulp it, you can make paper or plywood.  Hmm.  Iron, aluminum, and so forth, certainly, but again the energy required…

Okay, let’s talk about the raw energy we use to live.  Let me see your hands.  How many people would be willing to give up central air, central heating, hot water (clean water), stereos, television, telephony, siding on houses, inexpensive clothing (got to consider the amount of arable land that would have to be devoted to cotton or hemp growth is we get rid of the synthetics), clean cooking equipment (gas or electric stoves replaced by wood burners or coal burners?  Hmm, seems there are problems with that, too), and, frankly, the ability to go where we want when we want and–the biggy–associate with the circle of friends of our choosing no matter where they live? 

None of this is undoable, but I think it ought to be considered that when we talk about all the things we “ought” to do to help the environment, we don’t often have a grasp of what kind of personal sacrifice might be involved.

The solution we’re looking for–and why it’s taking so damn long to come up with–is that we need to find a replacement for fossil fuels that will not significantly diminish the life we now have.  I’m sorry, but people just aren’t going to give up having the life they currently like willingly.

Now, rather than come across as purely a naysayer, let me point out that there are lots of ways to reduce consumption without impairing the way we live.  Just to name one, we need to revisit this absurd fetish we have with Packaging.  Why should everything we buy have to come in its own specially made blister pack or paper box?  It’s ridiculous.  Some things, sure, but most things?  How much landfill is made up of just BOXES and BAGS?

But the major issue is–people need to understand both what we might have to give up and what they’re asking other people to give up in this issue.  Take my freedom of movement away, visa vis my car, and I’m stuck associating with people I’ve never cared to associate with before.  We talk about the decline of the neighborhood, that people don’t know their neighbors anymore.  Well, frankly, if it had been that great, we would still be doing it.  My friends do not live within four blocks of me.  And there are reasons I don’t care to be buddies with the guy down the block.  My mobility allows me to live peacefully with the people around me because we never have to get into each other’s hair to the extent of finding out we don’t like each other.

As facetious as that sounds, it is something we might have to give up.  And it’s not a small thing.

None of it is. 

So it’s going to take a while to find the answers.  In the meantime, I’m not going to ask anyone to give up anything.  Because they could turn around and ask me to give up something.

That’s no way to correct any problem, by starting off creating resentment.

Just ranting and rambling here…

President Bush recently expressed doubt that he will be viewing Al Gore’s documentary on global warming, “An Inconvenient Truth.” In the course of this same interview (reported by the Associated Press), Mr. Bush also made two extraordinary statements:

1) “New technologies will change how we live and how we drive our cars which all will have the beneficial effect of improving the environment.”

In other words, Mr. Bush is claiming that the federal government doesn’t need to take an active role to protect the environment. Instead, the “Free Market” has again been praised as the Beneficent Intelligent Protector that it truly isn’t.

2) “And in my judgment we need to set aside whether or not greenhouse gases have been caused by mankind or because of natural effects and focus on the technologies that will enable us to live better lives and at the same time protect the enviroment.”

This second comment is puzzling, indeed. What IF global warming is being caused by “mankind’s” burning of fossil fuels? If this proved to be the case, we could minimize the devastating consequences of global warming by minimizing “mankind’s” burning of fossil fuels. Right? If we learned that fossil fuels were contibuting substantially to global warming, wouldn’t this be a good reason to make “technologies . . . that will protect the environment” a HUGE priority?

But coming to these conclusions just wouldn’t do, of course. Thinking such thoughts might encourage government leaders to restrict our wasteful conspicuous consumption of energy. We might have to drive reasonable-sized cars. We might have to consider energy consumption whenever we pass laws regarding urban planning, commerce or taxation. In this political climate, it would just be so horribly un-American to worry about energy!

By making this second statement, Mr. Bush has given us yet another clue regarding his faith-based world-view. He sees the issue of global warming solely as one of finger-pointing. It is beyond Mr. Bush’s understanding that anyone’s concern with global warming should be taken at face value. That’s why he sees no need to go see Al Gore’s movie.

Instead of recognizing global warming as a serious evidence-based issue, Mr. Bush has seized on the issue of global warming as another us-versus-them battle. Us versus them? That’s a movie I think I’ve seen before . . .

I previously posted the results of my personal investigation into the fake medical clinics that call themselves “Pregnancy Resource Centers.”

My earlier investigation revealed that Pregnancy Resource Centers are unwilling to plainly admit their real agenda: to keep people ignorant about birth control, to deny women access to effective birth control methods (including birth control pills) and to pour guilt on people struggling with deep and personal decisions regarding pregnancy.

Alternet now reports that these fake medical clinics are proliferating while clinics offering actual medical care lag behind. S.  How are these “Pregnancy Resource Centers” funding this campaign of guilt and disinformation?  With tax dollars.  In Texas, for example, $25 million was cut from the state budget for family planning services and $5 million of that money was given to fund so-called crisis pregnancy centers. Other states, including Missouri, have considered financing Pregnancy Resource Centers with tax dollars.  According to Planned Parenthood, Pregnancy Resource Centers (also known as “crisis pregnancy centers”) across the nation “have received $60 million of government grants.”   

Planned Parenthood also notes the deceptive ways in which Pregnancy Resource Centers advertise and operate:

CPCs pose as objective health facilities using neutral-sounding names and deceptive advertising practices that lead women facing unintended pregnancies to believe that they will be offered unbiased counseling and a full range of reproductive health services. Unsuspecting women are lured into CPCs with the offer of free pregnancy testing or HIV tests.

When women are making a health decision, they should never be subject to deceit and trickery,” said Maloney, at a press conference on March 30 to announce the bill. “Some of these crisis pregnancy centers should be called ‘counterfeit pregnancy centers.’ They have the right to exist, but they shouldn’t have the right to deceive in order to advance their particular beliefs.

According to Planned Parenthood, “Deception and lies don’t help women make informed choices.”Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) recently introduced the Stop Deceptive Advertising for Women’s Services (SDAWS) Act, which would require the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to enforce truth-in-advertising standards for fake “clinics” known as anti-choice crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs).  Take action here.

Pregnancy Resource Centers are also setting themselves up “as the ‘go-to’ people for sex education in the public schools and are quickly becoming the primary providers of sex education to our children.”  As I discovered by my investigation, the Pregnancy Resource Centers are exerting their political muscle in trying to deny women access to birth control pills and other standard methods of family planning.

These are golden days, indeed, if you believe that the decision of whether to bear children should be haphazard, accidental, inspired by ignorance and fraught with medieval-era guilt.

I have long been confounded that otherwise intelligent people can claim, straight-faced, that the earth is only 6,000 years old or that a virgin got pregnant.  Such people are utterly sincere, of course.  Many of them excel at highly technical jobs and they generally embrace the results of science (they choose doctors who use high-tech medicine and they dare to fly on airplanes) and they are capable of great skepticism (they scoff at the dogma of everyone else’s religion and if one of their own unmarried daughters gets pregnant, they don’t believe her story that she didn’t have sex). 

I’ve spent much of my life trying to understand this unevenness of skepticism. Though fundamentalists are generally intelligent, inquisitive, and skeptical, they are science-adverse only with regard to a limited range of topics. While in their “Believer” mode, they seem to be totally transformed people. What is grabbing their brains and making them say such things, I’ve often wondered.

The deepest, most treasured, assumptions of many religious Believers are somehow cordoned off.  Once hooked on religion, they seem incapable of truly considering whether God exists.  They seem psychologically and intellectually incapable of considering that the writings and history of the Bible seem flawed, self-contradictory and all-too-human. 

Before you start thinking that I’m picking on religious fundamentalists . . . well, I am.  But I’m also picking on anyone else who’s ever shuddered and become glassy-eyed at simple questions aimed at their most basic assumptions.  I’m talking about all of us, much of the time. We often “rope off” our own access to our own thoughts much as a traumatized person might deny his or her own access to traumatic events.

Perhaps your first reaction to this broader claim is to think “Not me!  No, I always look Life straight in the eye. I am a ferocious skeptic.”  Really?

Very few people let intense skepticism run off the leash. For reasons of sanity, most of us don’t attack our own most basic beliefs.  We all make leaps of faith that are one or two good questions away from being exposed.  Here are some examples:  (more…)

In a recent post (http://dangerousintersection.org/?p=166), I discussed God’s attractive nuisance in His garden of Eden:  the Tree of Knowledge.  Let’s take that discussion one step farther.  Not only did God plant his deadly tree smack in the middle of His garden (bad garden design), not only did He fail to put a barrier fence around his deadly tree (bad barrier design), but why did He then give the Tree its appealing name, “Tree of Knowledge” (bad label design)?  According to the Bible, Eve ate the apple because she wanted to gain wisdom, so God’s name for the Tree obviously played a key role in her decision.  Why didn’t God simply call His tree something less appealing?  Indeed, why didn’t God call His tree what it was:  the Tree of Death?  Even with the Tree planted in the middle of His garden, even with no fence around it, God might have dissuaded Adam and Eve from eating its fruit with a simple name change.  Unfortunately, God botched that, too.  God was like a parent who stores poisons in the house, fails to keep the poisons locked in a cabinet, fails to put “Mr. Yuk” stickers on the poisons, fails to prevent His children from playing near the poisons, fails to adequately supervise His children when they do so, then refuses to take the blame (indeed, blames His children) when His children die of poisoning.

This raises the question:  if God could not even PLANT A TREE without violating every rule of good human factors design (not to mention obvious elements of criminal negligence), then why should anyone believe that living creatures are the result of God’s “intelligent design?”

We define terror narrowly, and one of the components seems to be that it is aimed at A People, rather than individuals.  Given the overwhelming cost of dealing with it, perhaps such definitional parameters are necessary.  Certain things ought to be “merely” police problems, while “terrorism” is a larger, necessarily global issue demanding larger tools.

The arguments raging with Bush over his policies in Iraq (and potential future policies with the rest of the Middle East and, further, Islam) ought to include, on both sides, recognition of the realities on the ground.  Since 9/11 we have been engaged in a debate over cultural stereotyping.  It is wrong to paint an entire people with a single (ugly) brush.  On the other hand, it’s an error to simply say that we got it all wrong and none of them deserve opprobrium, simply because it’s a culture different from ours and that ought to be respected.

Women are in hiding in Iraq.  Indeed, in Bahgdad.  Women who have fled abusive relationships, but find it impossible to divorce or get legal protection from courts that support–implicity and tacitly–a husband’s “right” to beat even kill his wife under certain instances.  This is part and parcel of so-called Honor Killing, in which men who feel they have been humiliated by their wife’s faithlessness or lack of respect or failure to obey kill the woman do “defend the honor of the family.”

This is culturally instantiated.  Moderate muslims argue that this is not condoned by mainstream Islam.  Yet it has become part of a certain–large–stream of social practice and accepted along with all the other restrictions on females that any reasonably educated western woman would find absolutely intolerable.  This is of a fabric with clitoral circumcision (the reasoning of which is to prevent women from ever discovering orgasm and thus–because they’ll never know any better–remaining faithful to their husbands because they’ll not be tempted to find a better lover [really, now, they claim we're sexually obsessed, but look at the attention to the most ridiculous elements of human sexuality paid by devotees of this kind of thinking]), the acceptance of polygamy (for the man, not for the woman), and a denial of education for women. 

We need to remember that while we’re trying to be tolerant of a culture different from ours, there are elements of that culture that deserve condemnation.  If we’re actually going to “democratize” the Middle East, we must be firm that these ideas apply to EVERYONE and not just the men, and be prepared–even in casual discourse–to condemn what is inhuman and, in a very real sense, terrorism.

How often do you hear someone say that the brain is a computer?  This statement is not literally true. The brain is certainly not like a desktop computer. Brains don’t look like computers; there’s no CPU in the head.  Neurons aren’t all wired together to an executive control center.  Human brains have a massively parallel architecture. Cognitive scientists who have carefully thought through this issue arrive at this same conclusion:  the brain does not really resemble a computer, certainly not any sort of computer in general use today.

The brain as computer is a seductive metaphor. According to Edwin Hutchins, “The last 30 years of cognitive science can be seen as attempts to remake the person in the image of the computer.” See Cognition in the Wild (1996).

Metaphors are models, however, and models are imperfect versions of the reality they portray.  Metaphors accentuate certain parts of reality while downplaying other parts. 

Unfortunately, many people “reify” the brain-as-computer metaphor: they accept this metaphor as literal truth, leading to various misunderstandings about human cognition.

Here’s another big difference between brains and computers: human cognition is fault-tolerant and robust.  In other words, our minds continue to function even when the information is incomplete (e.g., while we’re driving in the rain) or when our purposes or options are unclear (e.g., navigating a cocktail party).  Computers, on the other hand, are always one line of code away from freezing up. 

In Bright Air, Brilliant Fire:  On the Matter of the Mind (1992) Gerald M. Edelman writes that “The world is not a piece of [computer] tape . . . and the brain is not a computer.”  Brain as computer invites rampant functionalism: that any old hardware will do.  I could implement my own cognition on any other piece of hardware. 

Just because brains and desktop computers often arrive at similar results, though, doesn’t mean that the brain works like a computer. Edelman also points out people often believe that there are computer-like rules that govern thoughts, that the brain thinks by manipulating context-free symbols according to some sort of “rules” that have yet to be specified.  To have any sort of “rules,” though, there must first be uncontested “facts.”  But there is no such thing as context-free facts.  Perhaps there could be if people used identical methods of categorizing the world. Contrary to what many people believe, however, human categorization does not occur by use of necessary and sufficient conditions.  See Cognitive Psychology:  An Overview for Cognitive Scientists, by Larry Barsalou (1992) and Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things, by Lakoff, George (1987).  The world is unlabeled. Without pre-labeled “things,” computers flounder.  Human brains are different.  They thrive primarily on pattern matching, something with which computers struggle.  See What Computers Still Can’t Do, by Hubert L. Dreyfus (1992).

Scott Kelso points out that the brain is not a computer that manipulates symbols. “The nervous system may act as if it were performing Boolean functions . . . People can be calculating, but the brain does not calculate.”  (more…)

And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!

The above is an excerpt from “The Blind Men and the Elephant,” a poem on which John Godfrey re-told an ancient Indian fable that serves as an allegory. The lesson is this: the lens through which we view reality accentuates some features while downplaying others.  It must be this way, because we are creatures of limited attentional capacities. 

Metaphors are the lenses through which we view our world.  In abstract fields like religion and politics, the use of metaphors isn’t just fanciful (although it can be fanciful); the use of metaphors is absolutely necessary to understand abstract concepts.  Further, research has shown that the use of conceptual metaphors is systematic, not ad hoc. 

Just as physics students understand the flow of electricity by reference to the flow of water, the rest of us use metaphors to understand our own abstract concepts (e.g., in the fields of religion and politics).  More important, without metaphors, we would have no meaningful understanding of most abstract concepts.  Therefore, whenever we discuss any abstract concept, we are compelled to relentlessly engage in the use of metaphors–there is no other way to talk or write about such things. 

Not convinced? What does this matter? Read on and consider the examples.  This was literally and truly a life-changing idea for me.

In Metaphors We Live By (1980), Mark Johnson and George Lakoff stated that “the essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another.”  Johnson and Lakoff have found that metaphors are actually pervasive in thought and action, not just language.  “Conceptual” metaphors are the foundation for the way we think and function.  They structure our actions and thoughts.  “They are ‘alive’ in the most fundamental sense:  they are metaphors we live by.” (Lakoff/Johnson 1980 p.55). 

In sum, Johnson/Lakoff claim that we understand (and talk about) things like:

Love, Time, Justice, Ideas, Understanding, Causation, Arguments, Labor, Happiness, Health, Control, Status, Justice and Morality

In terms of things like:

Physical Orientations (such as going in or leaving an enclosed space), Physical Movement, Geographic Spaces, Objects, Substances, Seeing, Journeys, War, Possessions, Forces, Barriers, Part-Whole relations, Grasping,
Madness, Food, Buildings, Encountering Physical Obstacles and even Giving Birth

For you skeptics out there, consider the following three factual assertions:

Harry is in the kitchen.
Harry is in the Army.
Harry is in love.

These sentences refer to three domains of experience: spatial, social and emotional.  The first sentence is not metaphorical.  The second sentence is a metaphorical sentence based on our (intuitive) understanding that SOCIAL GROUPS ARE CONTAINERS.  We can “get a handle on” what it means to be part of a social group by spatializing it.   The third sentence is also a metaphor, because the emotional experience of “love” can also be conceptualized as a PLACE WITH BOUNDARIES.  Hence, Harry is in love.

What is an “argument?”  Lakoff and Johnson found that we think of arguments very much the same way we think of wars:

• Your claims are indefensible.
• He attacked every weak point in my argument.
• His criticisms were right on target.
• I demolished this argument.
• I’ve never won an argument with him.
• You disagree?  OK, shoot!
• If you use that strategy, he’ll wipe you out.
• He shot down all my arguments.

We use metaphors to understand and experience one kind of thing in terms of another kind of thing.  As shown above, our concept of argument is metaphorically structured in terms of war.  This use metaphorical language is not poetic, fanciful or rhetorical.  It is literal use of language.  (more…)

Does one need faith to believe in God?  Or God in order to have faith?  Are the two necessarily tied together, inextricably?

Faith is a process.  (What I refer to here is not the kind of FAITH that has a set of requirements in order to claim, visa vis the Moral Majority, etc., but the function of believing in an efficacy of being and action that preceeds proof.)  One must simply accept a whole slew of things on faith in order to function.  You have to have faith that your heart will keep beating, that the words you use will be understood by other people, that you have a reason to interact with humanity, that there is a purpose in the things you do, that the claims made by others are not inimical to your existence, well-being, etc etc.  It is absurd to demand proof of all these prior to discovering them to be true. 

Once we discover them to be true, though, faith goes on autopilot and we rely on habit.

In religion, this arrangement is short-circuited by the total lack of evidence in what is being held as true.  And, furthermore, the epistemological argument is made that this is the only way it can be–that the faith being exercised would somehow be invalidated should evidence or proof ever be found or given.  (In a way, this is the same as claiming that if proof of God’s existence were made, then the faithful would have to assume that they’d been believing in the wrong God.  This also has elements of the absurd about it.)

People believe in all sorts of things that get them through the day.  They have faith in the basic goodness of their fellow humans (often with ample contrary evidence); they have faith that the air they breathe will not kill them (also, sometimes, despite evidence to the contrary); they have faith in their ability to navigate the maze of human interaction to enrich both themselves and their fellow beings’ lives.  All sorts of things.  They have faith that when the light turns green, the cross traffic has a red light and will stop. 

They have faith that life is worth living.

Obviously this is a generalization.  But you take my meaning.  What results is a basic set of assumptions that gets modified on a case by case basis.  Experience molds the perception, hones it, teaches us how best to deploy our faith.

I have faith in other processes.  But by and large, my faith is conditional. 

This is what separates the committed theist from the atheist.  The theist possesses unconditional faith, which, depending on how that faith is arranged with respect to the universe, can lead the theist into a direct conflict with reality.

The problem is one of inclusiveness.  The Faithful asserts–and insists–that everything is a consequence of God, God’s actions, God’s will.  When evidence is found to refute the requirement for a deity in a specific area (this is where scientific inquiry comes in) the reaction is first one of  presuming the conclusion drawn from evidence is, in fact, inconclusive, and then an attempt to fold that evidence into a suite of presumptions that this, too, is somehow the work of a deity.  When it becomes clear that the latter is not the case, attempts to undermine and refute the evidence itself proceed, leading, in the most extreme cases, to the assertion of counter evidence which does not hold up to scrutiny (i.e. Intelligent Design).  Along the way, other examples of evidence to support the theistic view are found and thrust into the debate as if they represent a legitimate counterargument valid on the same basis (i.e. the Shroud of Turin).  When these, too, are demonstrated to be insupportable, the final argument is based on morality, which, it is asserted, comes from faith in the deity.

Faith, obviously, is transferrable.  It does not, as history shows, flow from a deity to humans, but is clearly self-created and embraced.  It is not the break point between a view of the universe with a God and one without.  But the stakes placed on it by the theist are clearly high and we must ask why.

In an earlier post I pointed out that the debate between the fundamentalists and the evolutionists is central.  I refer back to that one for the details, but it boils down to a question of primacy of the species.  In all other regards, the theist (as a generalization) is looking for a basis on which to build a suite of behaviors that may be described as moral.  The assertion is made that there can be no morality without God.  But clearly the identity of that God is less important than the use of it as a symbol by which one may require communal obeissance, and that is where the crux of the issue rests.  This is a behavioral issue for many.

At the core of the fundamentalist argument is the belief (based on faith?) that without God we would automatically devolve into mindless brutes.  Yet this is an assumption based on a solid history of humans acting as mindless brutes whether they believe in a God or not–the insertion of Faith (capital F) doesn’t seem to make any difference other than to give certain individuals or groups a tool with which to beat up on people identified as “outside” the prefered group.  It all comes down to behavior modification from an authority presumably unassailable by ordinary human means–i.e. God.  (Can’t put God on the witness stand, can’t indict him, or issue a subpoena–can’t, in fact, put questions directly at all.)

One can ask questions of the universe, and one can get answers back.  It’s called science and over time we have, through experience, built up a convincing argument that the universe works This Way, not That Way.  True, we take it on faith largely, but it;s the kind of faith that we have always used–faith based on evidence, that, given X, then Y.  It’s the kind of faith that allows, furthermore, for the possibility of being wrong.  Such faith need never vanish, and it will not, properly applied, be an impediment.  Asserting that the Godless have no faith–or that, in fact, they have faith, which they deny is faith, as evidence that (because they have faith) there is a God of some kind instilling it–is a false syllogism, and a red herring.  It’s beside the point.

The argument is over whether those fairies opening the flowers are real.  We can all, Theist and Atheist, have faith that the flowers will open in the spring.

Something struck me: aren’t the atheists just as much condemned to relying on faith for the view as the God fearing people they often criticise?  Let me expand and explain.

1. The existence of God is unverifiable so you can never prove or know for sure whether He really exists (a typical atheist claim).

2. But similarly, you can not prove his non-existence either, for the same reason.

3. Therefore, in order for atheist to believe that God DOES NOT exist, he must rely on an article of faith, just as much as the theist requires an article of faith for his belief that God does exist!!

This is kind of interesting because the main ground on which the atheist attacks the theist is usually on the basis that faith is not a legitimate ground for believing in anything!!! Kind of hypocritical, don’t you think?

It seems that the only escape from being committed to faith is to be an agnostic: the claim that the question of God’s existence can not be/should not be answered….. In other words, they just pass over the question without any kind of commitment either way. Almost like they are running away from the question because they have no way of answering it…. not the most exciting position, don’t you think?
But one does not get off so lightly. To hold the atheist or agnostic positions comes with more of an intellectual cost than one might think!! Here are 3 possible problems:

1. The prime mover argument. Theoretical physicists are used to dealing in cause and effect. If we consider the start of the universe, there will always be a point at which we may ask “but what caused that event to occur?” Eventually, science just gets stuck because while the universe quite obviously exists, it seems illogical that something could at one point have come from nothing….. If we posit a temporally infinite God, this is a big thing to ask someone to believe. But at least it solves the prime mover problem.

2. Without a God, there is a problem with our ethical views and values generally. Why should anything really ULTIMATELY mater if there is no God who cares whether what we do, and no God who will reward or punish us for our deeds in the afterlife? In fact, life could arguably seem devoid of any ultimate meaning generally…. (It is for this reason that I think many people become theists in the first place).  It seems that the only alternative is to languish in the kind of nihilism that Nietzsche spoke of…. or maybe the pursuit of a pure hedonistic life without really caring about anything or anyone…. both seem unsatisfactory.

3. Third, an argument to suggest that belief in God is actually rational, known as Pascal’s Wager.  If God does not exist and we spend our lives believing in Him (and going to church etc.), then we surely lose very little - perhaps just our Sunday mornings….. But, if God does exist and we choose not to believe in Him, then we risk going to roasting away for an eternity in the depths of hell!!!! So surely, it is worth our while to believe than not believe based upon what will be lost if he doesn’t exist (relatively very little) and what will be gained if he does - avoiding hell (an incalculably large amount).

There are problems with Pascal’s Wager though. (more…)

CNN reported last week that the US military has been ignoring its own rules concerning the deployment of soldiers known to be mentally ill.  Last year alone, the practice contributed to the suicide deaths of 22 US soldiers, which was a stunning 20% of all non-combat fatalities. 

I wish someone would explain to me why the US military believes it makes sense to deploy mentally ill soldiers, all of whom have access to high-powered weapons, while, simultaneously, it instantly discharges any soldier discovered to be homosexual (especially since many discharged homosexuals served in critical, hard-to-replace jobs, such as cryptography and Arabic languange translation).  I just don’t get it.