Mending Fences with Believers and Moving On – Part I

I do not believe in any sort of sentient "God." I do not believe in any sort of personified "Creator" of the universe. I never had any such beliefs. Nor do I think that science has all of the "answers" (as though we know how to ask the right questions). Looking back over my past few years of writings, however, I can see that I have come a long way regarding my approach to religion. Prior to 2001, I was mostly in the live-and-let-live camp. Then came 9/11 when the destructive power of many religions (including American religions) came front and center. Out of mouths allegedly professing the words of God Himself, we heard plenty of bigotry (often aimed at gays, non-believers, people of Middle Eastern ancestry and, of course, members of other religions), war-mongering, anti-science, pro-ignorance, and biblical literalism. I pushed back forcefully--one of my prime motivations for starting Dangerous Intersection was my strong reaction to the rise of conservative religions in the United States. Eventually, though, I came to realize that my reaction was overbroad. My concern should not so much have been against religion, but against those specific religious communities that encourage their members to engage in destructive behavior. I think that I understand why I made this error; following 9/11, almost all American religions chose to be silent in the face of the destructive behavior by competitor religions. I viewed that widespread silence as general approval. I assumed, based somewhat on the increasingly conservative views of several close acquaintances who had been religious moderates, that even moderate religious beliefs too often served as slippery slopes to fundamentalism. I eventually developed a more nuanced view. I have come to believe that religions serve as grouping techniques that help good-hearted people do group-oriented good-hearted things and, yes, that religions invoked by mean-spirited and violent people amplify their destructive ways. Even though I have my intellectual differences with virtually all people who profess religious claims, it turns out that many such people have more in common with me, politically and religiously, than many non-believers. There are many issues that we need to grapple with as communities and individuals, many of them having very little to do with religions claims. Further, after the 9/11 smoke cleared, I could see better that many good-hearted religious believers were of the live-and-let-live persuasion. These were important realizations. I eventually came to appreciate that many religious folks are truly my allies in what should be a joint quest to make the world a better place. Over the past year, I spent many hours writing a long article on my own "spiritual" journey. Writing this chapter was an intense exercise in self-discovery that drew from many of the posts I've made at this blog. I originally planned to publish my article as a book chapter that was to be called "Mending Fences with Believers and Moving On." My chapter eventually grew to an unwieldy length that branched off into several distinct (but related) topics. What follows is list of each of the Parts of "Mending Fences with Believers and Moving On." I. The day I discussed atheism at a church service II. My atheism III. It’s time to call a truce. IV. What about the science? V. The many things we have in common VI. Where do we go from here? VII. Conclusion I do believe that the full finished product works well on its own and I've decided to break it into several parts here at Dangerous Intersection. Parts I and II of my article are included as part of this post. I'll post the other sections over the next few days. I hope this collection is as engaging for you to read as it was for me to write. [More . . . ]

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Fading creativity

As IQ inches upwards, creativity is sagging, according to this Newsweek article:

Like intelligence tests, Torrance’s test—a 90-minute series of discrete tasks, administered by a psychologist—has been taken by millions worldwide in 50 languages. Yet there is one crucial difference between IQ and CQ scores. With intelligence, there is a phenomenon called the Flynn effect—each generation, scores go up about 10 points. Enriched environments are making kids smarter. With creativity, a reverse trend has just been identified and is being reported for the first time here: American creativity scores are falling.
Why is this happening? The article suggests some possible reasons. "One likely culprit is the number of hours kids now spend in front of the TV and playing videogames rather than engaging in creative activities. Another is the lack of creativity development in our schools."

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Mel Gibson and the Problem of Public Privacy

So Mel Gibson has been exposed (once again) as an intolerant, sexist, abusive person. A recording of a phone conversation with his former girlfriend is now Out There on the internet and one can listen to Mel spill molten verbiage into her earpiece while she calmly refutes his charges. All I can wonder is, So what? What business is this of ours? This is private stuff. People lose control. Between each other, with strangers, but more often with those closest, people have moments when the mouth ill-advisedly opens and vileness falls out. The question is, does this define us? Are we, in fact, only to be defined by our worst moments? That would seem to be the case for people like Gibson. The reason, I think, is that for most of us, the Mel Gibsons of the world have no business having shitty days and acting like this. For most of us, there is just cause for having these kinds of days and attitudes, because for most of us the world is not our oyster and we do not have the luxury of squandering time, friends, and money. Mel Gibson is wealthy and famous and, at one time, admired. He ate at the best restaurants, appeared on television, gave interviews, has his picture on the covers of magazines. Is seen with other people, regularly, who fall into that category of Those Who Have It Made.

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Time to really focus on the banks

At The New Republic, James K. Galbraith argues that "The financial crisis in America isn't over. It's ongoing, it remains unresolved, and it stands in the way of full economic recovery."

To restore the rule of law means first a rigorous audit of the banks and of the Federal Reserve. This means investigations—Representative Marcy Kaptur has proposed adding a thousand FBI agents to this task. It means criminal referrals from the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, from the regulators, from Congress, and from the new management of troubled banks as they clean house. It means indictments, prosecutions, convictions, and imprisonments. The model must be the clean-up of the Savings and Loans, less than 20 years ago, when a thousand industry insiders went to prison. Bankers must be made to feel the power of the law in their bones.
I agree with much of what Galbraith says, although he wants to give the ratings agencies a free pass, which is, in my view, outrageous. If the ratings agencies had bothered to inspect even a few loan files, they would have seen the exploding ARMs triggered by 2 or 3 year teaser rates and the scant or non-existent documentation. A huge percentage of subprime loans were guaranteed to fail. It add insult to injury that the ratings agencies are successfully (so far) invoking the First Amendment to defend their incompetence and fraud.

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