I collect quotes (who doesn’t?). Really, it’s a good hobby. It’s cheap and often interesting. When they are really good quotes, it’s like a novel condensed to a mere sentence.

The first two of this set are about one of my favorite topics, rampant materialism. The others all relate closely to one another, but only if you have a wild imagination or if you think of a very broad topic like “meaning of life.” Without further ado:

Who is content with nothing possesses all things.
– Nicolas Boileau Despreaux

Wealth is the number of things one can do without.
– Feodor Dostoyevsky

The trouble is that you think you have time.
– Zen Master

Observe your enemies, for they first find out your faults.
– Antisthenes

A hole is nothing at all, but you can break your neck in it.
– Austin O’Malley

War is when the government tells you who the bad guy is. Revolution is when you decide that for yourself.
–Anonymous

Never mistake motion for action.
– Ernest Hemingway

(more…)

MSNBC has recently reported on the prosperity gospel of Televangelist Kenneth Copeland, which appears to be benefiting mostly—Kenneth Copeland and his relatives.

Kenneth Copeland, 71, is a pioneer of the prosperity gospel, which teaches that believers are destined to flourish spiritually, physically and financially — and share the wealth with others.

His ministry’s 1,500-acre campus outside Fort Worth is testament to his success. It includes a church, private airstrip, a hangar for the ministry’s aircraft and a $6 million, church-owned mansion.

I shake my head when I read these corporate media reports about these upstart religions. That’s because many long-established religions also allow their leaders to live in wanton opulence. Consider, for instance, the Catholic Church (in which I was raised). When is the last time the Pope or any of the Cardinals or Bishops missed a meal because they couldn’t afford it? Although I know of frugal (and morally admirable) priests and nuns, I have yet to hear of any high-ranking Catholic clergyman who had to scrape by. If you doubt this, check out the opulent living quarters of your local Cardinal or Arch-Bishop.

It’s also pathetic to watch the mainstream media attacking newly-established religions for preaching the prosperity gospel. You can almost hear the sneering and snarling when the big media outlets report that preachers like Copeland (or, another example, Joel Osteen) teaches that there’s nothing wrong with being rich or enjoying a life of conspicuous consumption.

It’s a rare religion, though, that has ever ejected any member for being rich or for consuming conspicuously. It doesn’t matter that Edward or Susan or Walter has five vacation homes or a private jet or pays 27 times more to eat at fancy restaurants than most people pay for food. Here’s what being rich does for members of organized religions: they get more deference and more respect than lower earning members of the church. Never are they scolded from the pulpit. I beg you—if anyone reading this knows of any rich person being asked by any mainstream church to stop living so lavishly, let me know.  I assume that it occasionally happens in tiny or fringe sects, but not in Big Church USA.  For instance, do you think the Catholic Church has ever told any of the Kennedys that they should sell their lavish property at Martha’s Vineyard or that they should otherwise cut down on their conspicuous consumption? Their whirlwind vacations or their fancy cars or their fancy jewelry?  Churches are utterly obeisant to rich people.

Here’s the real-life gospel every Sunday: “No matter what we say up here, it’s OK for you to keep the vast majority of your money and to blow it on any luxury you care to dream up.”

Mainstream certainly preach the gospel that “Blessed are the poor,” but they actually push their members to act on it. I’ve yet to see it. Therefore, why does the mainstream media pounce on churches that allow its leaders and members to flaunt their wealth?  Jealousy?  Schadenfreude? For rich people (and for many poor), church is for Sundays only.

Most churches founded by organized religions are country clubs with steeples. They are happy to accept most anyone who walks into the door, especially if that person has some resources he or she might donate to the church. In return, wealthy members of mainstream churches have grown accustomed to a substantial return benefit. Never will a church leader suggest that those wealthy members need to actually change anything about their lifestyle unless it involves something about family planning or sex for pleasure.

It’s less likely that a mainstream church will scold a member for conspicuous consumption than it would be for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.

In case you’ve been out of touch, a student in Florida took Our Lord Jesus Christ hostage a few weeks ago. He walked out of church with a consecrated communion wafer to show to a friend, rather than promptly eating the true flesh of the 2000 year old man. Ignoring the question of whether Jesus really did say, “Eat Me”, this little event became big news. First, the college and the church denounced and eventually impeached the poor kid. Demands that he be expelled and/or excommunicated flew. (Orlando Sentinel summary article).

Then famous rationalist and biologist PZ Myers got into the act. He published a post in which he suggested that those incensed need to get a reality-based life: “It’s a frackin’ cracker” said he. Myers even suggested that someone should procure for him one of these blessed wafers, so that he could personally desecrate it.

Then the spam hit the fan. Thousands of comments and emails and demands for his expulsion and his firing and even death threats followed. Well, back and forth over several posts. One woman made international news for being fired for using a company computer to send her death threat.

Finally, Myers posted “The Great Desecration” beginning with “It is finished.” He discusses the way the church has used just the allegation of wafer misuse in history to spur mobs to mass murder (with specific examples). He posts a few of the more lucid (and publishable) denunciations of his proposed desecration, with commentary. And finally, he shows a picture of the desecration itself. Not only does he drive a rusty spike through the cracker (wondering in print if Jesus has a current tetanus shot), he nails it through the Koran and into one of Dawkins’ books, then artistically covered it all with the traditional banana peels and coffee grounds.

Desecrating the Koran was a suggestion made by many of his Catholic detractors, who suggested that he didn’t dare offend the Muslims, but only picks on Catholics (the group from whom he received the most death threats) because they are so kind and forgiving.

Desecrating Dawkins is to point out that he is not selectively suggesting that the Biblical injunction against worshipping images be used only against Judeo Christian churches. But that all icons be examined from the point of view that the symbol is not actually the object. Or to quote Korzybski, “The map is not the territory, the word is not the thing”.

Tonight I watched “It’s Bad For Ya,” George Carlin’s final nationally televised performance. The entire show is available on YouTube (Below is Part I of VII). The show was broadcast live on March 1, 2008, only a few months prior to Carlin’s death (due to a heart attack, on June 22, 2008).

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Carlin opened the show by announcing that he was 70 years old. In Parts I and II, he speaks bluntly about society’s failure to deal frankly with death. It’s impossible to watch this performance without feeling the irony. At one point, he states:

So don’t be afraid to get old. It’s a great time of life. You get to take advantage of people and you’re not responsible for anything! You can even shit in your pants!

He dissects many other topics, including law, religion, children, education and national pride. He shows no patience for the way our culture handles any of these issues. His performance gets especially dark when he asserts that there is essentially no hope for us, ecologically speaking—he predicts that in 40 or 50 more years, the entire planet will be a massive ball of pollution. At many points in the performance, it’s not easy to tell whether Carlin retains any personal optimism. Is his performance intentionally injected with hyperbole or is this really and truly what Carlin thinks. I suspected the latter, but I don’t really know.

I heard many gems during the performance (meaning that I heard many things with which I agree wholeheartedly). Here’s my favorite, this one delivered during the topic of society’s often-stated goal that “we should teach our children to read.”

It’s not important to get children to read. It’s much more important to teach children to question what they read. They should be taught to question everything. Everything they read and everything they hear. They should be taught to question authority . . .

Amen.

I’ve written before about the work of Jonathan Haidt (pronounced “height”). He is a psychologist who has taken an experimental approach to investigating morality. I was highly impressed by Haidt’s analysis of conservative versus liberal versus of morality, for instance. In his previous work, Haidt determined that disgust played a significant role in the moral judgments of conservatives, but not so much for liberals. This result, based upon numerous surveys, sheds light on moral disputes regarding many things, including homosexuality.

Most liberals have no personal interest in homosexual sex, and many of them are disgusted by the thought of engaging in such an act. The liberal’s disgust regarding a particular type of sexual act does not constitute any basis for a moral judgment (in a liberal). For many conservatives, however, the disgust experienced for any thought that they might personally engage in a homosexual act often does provide the basis for a wide-ranging moral judgment against all persons engaging in any homosexual acts. The Science article suggests that many liberals could better understand how disgust might play into a moral judgment by considering their own moral judgments, including those related to the proper way of processing food, the proper type of food to eat or the disgust they might experience regarding symbolic issues.

The May 9, 2008 edition of Science reports that Haidt has taken his research on disgust and morality one step further (online access to this article is limited to subscribers). The article, entitled “The Roots of Morality,” describes Haidt’s experiments and results:

A team of psychologists recently asked dozens of college students to consider several morally charged situations. In one, a friend lies on his resume to land a job; in another, survivors of a plane crash consider cannibalizing an injured boy to avoid starvation. Students who pondered these hypothetical scenarios while sitting at a filthy desk with sticky stains and a chewed up pen rated them as more immoral than did students who sat at a pristine desk. In another version of the experiment, a nearby trash can doused with novelty Bart spray had a similar effect. The findings, in press at Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, demonstrate that emotions such as disgust exert a powerful influence on moral judgments, even when they are triggered by something unrelated to the moral issue, says study co-author Jonathan Haidt. . .”

This pithy article in Science describes Haidt’s position that people rely on their gut reactions to inform them of the morality of a situation, relying on their reasoning skills only after-the-fact. This is “not unlike an art museum visitor who is struck by the beauty of a painting but struggles to explain why.”

In making moral judgments, then, there seems to be a quick and dirty road to judgment based upon gut feelings as well as a slowly and carefully reasoned road. This is not surprising in light of my own real-life experience with moral judgments (regarding both my own judgments and watching the judgments of others).

Nor is it unusual that the brain might have a quick and dirty method and also a more carefully considered (but slower) method for getting the job done. For instance, Joseph LeDoux has demonstrated that there is a quick and dirty neural pathway for experiencing human emotion as well as a more deliberate and intellectualized pathway. These normally work in tandem, but not always.

Similarly, perception appears to be mediated by multiple systems. In The Visual Brain in Action, Milner and Goodale argue that motor neural systems that underlie visually guided action (such as reaching) are distinct from conscious experiences associated with perception (such as recognition and categorization). [I was made aware of this work by Milner and Goodale by Andy Clark's introduction to cognitive science, entitled Mindware (2001)].

Haidt’s work, described in the above-described article in Science, provides further evidence that the brain is actually a big bag of tricks, rather than anything homogenous. Or, as Steven Pinker has put it, “The mind is not a single organ but a system of organs.”

I wrote about complacency once before. I focused on the complacency of most Americans in the face of the energy crisis that is clearly upon us. We have no assurance that gasoline won’t double or triple in price over the next five or 10 years, throwing our economy into a massive depression. With stakes like these, you would think that prolific energy wasters like us would immediately jump on our energy consumption problem by enacting a national conservation plan to cut our petroleum use in half. This could be accomplished by modifying our wasteful energy usage in dozens of ways. For instance, we really could carpool. We could build up our mass transit systems and encourage their use. We could walk and bike more. We could make our homes much more energy-efficient. Instead of building new homes in existing farm fields, we could renovate homes that already exist. While we’re at it, we could cut our use of all other forms of energy in half too. For instance, the technology already exists to make zero-carbon footprint buildings.

Others have written extensively regarding many methods by which we could reduce energy use. Due to the widely accepted law of supply and demand, cutting our use of energy would also have the effect of lowering the price of energy (relative to whatever it would have been had we not taken such measures), thereby diminishing the financial damage from our perennial trade deficits and budget deficits.

My concern is that so many people (including many people I know personally) are absolutely complacent about the need to change the way we produce and use energy. I keep hearing people say that “they will make our gasoline out of corn” or “we have plenty of coal” as though some unspecified “corn plan” would produce net energy without causing people to starve or some fantasy “coal plan” could be a foolproof substitute for petroleum, without somehow contributing massive amounts of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.

People are finally buying more energy-efficient cars, but that is only in response to the spiking costs of gasoline. It’s like we need to be kicked in the shin in order to get our attention. Many mainstream news articles discuss that this price jump of gasoline occurred “suddenly,” as though it was impossible to see that high gasoline prices were in our future. We still don’t get it, though. For example, many news articles are currently talking about the high price of gas as though gas will continue to be five dollars per gallon five years from now, as though we’ve hit a stable plateau.

As I suggested in my prior post about complacency, I sense that there’s a rampant attitude that most of the big things in life are not under our control. Rather, they simply “happen.” According to many people, the “free market” decides what will be available for sale and at what price it will be sold. Similarly, “God” makes decisions about disasters and diseases such as heart attacks and lung cancer (even though people cause many of their own problems through climate change in lifestyle at choices). The people who are big believers in the free market and a sentient God see humans as powerless children who simply react to situations. We act like there’s nothing we can do to root corporate corruption out of our national political system.

From so many people, I hear this solution: “They” will come up with something to solve our energy problems, our medical problems, our food production problems, our natural resource supply issues and our pollution problems, as though these problems don’t start with each and every one of us. As though we are not responsible for what “they” need to do. As though we don’t make the messes that “they” need to clean up.

I have no doubt that we could cut our energy usage in half. We could substantially reduce our risks of certain diseases by changing our lifestyles. We could eat foods that are friendlier to the planet, such that the average item of food would not actually need to travel 1000 miles or more to our plates. We could start making difficult decisions that would ensure sustainable supplies of water well into the future, at least for many communities (Las Vegas might not be in the plans). By using much less of everything we consume we could substantially cut the amount of toxic waste we generate. When “we” live more responsibly, “they” have less work to do to save us.

Admittedly, some bad things do seem to just happen to us. On the other hand, many of our biggest problems are caused by us. Therefore, to act complacently as a general rule is a huge cop-out virtually guaranteeing disaster. The real solution is to force ourselves to follow the chain of production through our use of our products and resources so that we can see that our local actions often have tangible national and global consequences. We are incapable of assessing these big problems to the extent that we allow ourselves to overlook problems that have solutions that would be expensive or inconvenient to us.

Sacrifice is a dirty word these days. No politician wants to tell the citizens that we will need to give up some of our wasteful ways. The same thing goes for the many “greenwashing” articles out there. For instance, I read several “green” magazines, including Plenty; they are extremely light on the need for self-sacrifice. (more…)

Why, we all wonder, is America alone among the “First World Nations” to have such a high proportion of science-denying religionists, and even in high offices? According to Gregory Paul and Phil Zuckerman in Why the Gods Are Not Winning (that I found via this summary by Pharyngula) religiosity is higher as the more poor more envy the more rich. That is, the bigger the difference between the downtrodden and the ruling classes, the more people turn to religion to explain their lot. Our country may still be relatively rich, but as the government openly appears to ignore the needs of the sugffering (Katrina, Economic collapse, National Guard and “Stop Loss” in Iraq, etc) more people turn to religion for comfort.

These articles attempt to show that we are not actually being overrun by religious thinkers, that mega-churches are just a consolidation of the remnants of dying neighborhood churches, and that the best chance that churches have of taking over like they had in the dark ages is to increase the disparity between rich and poor. The current administration has been doing them a bonny service, but it is not enough to stem the tide of ever increasing rationalism. So they claim, and I hope.

For three decades I’ve puzzled about the idea held by Christian Fundamentalists that the Bible must be proven absolutely and literally true in every way, or else Christianity is false. The latter clause being accepted as silly, therefore most science of the 19th and 20th century is patently on the wrong course.

I think I finally get it: It isn’t so much about the whole Bible, as about a literal Adam and Eve and serpent and fruit. If one even momentarily entertains the idea that this particular tiny part of the Bible is allegorical, then where is the original sin? If A particular orphan named Adam didn’t bite of a particular forbidden fruit, then the underlying momentary lapse of ancestral judgment for which Christians claim God holds all living people responsible didn’t happen. Therefore Jesus died in vain, if one belongs to a congregation for whom Original Sin is The Big One.

Therefore, one must reject the geology, astronomy, and functional biology as was available to 19th century discoverers like Darwin. One must also reject all the subsequent discoveries that frustratingly and consistently reiterate his conclusions, like the periodic table, plate tectonics, cell biology, quantum theory, biochemistry, radiological dating, germ theory, cosmology, dark matter/string theory, genetics, chaos theory, and so on. If it can cast doubt on the timing or existence of biblical original sin, it must be wrong.

It makes perfect sense, in a narrow world view sort of way.

If you’re looking for a thoughtful and balanced introductory documentary on the life and writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, here’s a good one. This video was produced by the BBC for television in 1999 and it’s entitled Human All Too Human. You’ll find a lot of information carefully packed into one hour.

Given the complexity of Nietzsche’s writings, this video can only serve only as an introduction. As an introduction, though, it does a good job.

When I was an philosophy undergrad in 1977, I took a course on Nietzsche and it turned me inside out. That course focused on one of Nietzsche’s later works: The Gay Science (1882), translated by Walter Kaufmann. Since that time, there has been at least one additional excellent translation of The Gay Science.

Nietzsche was a prolific writer, though, and there are numerous other Nietzsche works to explore.  To beginners, they will seem to be written by a man who was, in equal parts, severely emotionally scarred and an absolute genius. To a veteran reader they will still seem this way.   Highly recommended for anyone who is not afraid to risk wiping out many of assumptions that you currently rely upon as existential salve.

The next time someone gets all misty-eyed when talking about the saintliness of Mother Teresa, have them read this post by Ebonmuse at Daylight Atheism. Here’s an excerpt:

Teresa was a friend to vicious dictators, criminals and con men. As Christopher Hitchens documents in his book The Missionary Position, Teresa was acquainted with a startling number of unsavory characters. Two such were the Duvaliers, Jean-Claude and Michelle, who ruled Haiti as a police state from 1971 until they were overthrown in a popular uprising in 1986. (They looted the country of most of its national treasury when they fled.) Teresa visited them in person in 1981 and praised the Duvaliers and their regime as “friends” of the poor, and her testimony on their behalf was shown on state-owned television for weeks. Bizarrely, she also visited the grave of brutal Communist dictator Enver Hoxha in 1990, laying a wreath of flowers on the tomb of a man who had viciously suppressed religion in Teresa’s native Albania. The list also includes the Nicaraguan contras, a Catholic terrorist group who unleashed death squads on the civilian population in their bid to conquer the country.

Teresa was also a friend to Charles Keating, a conservative Catholic fundamentalist who served on an anti-pornography commission under President Nixon. Keating would later become infamous for his role in the Savings & Loan scandal, where he was convicted of fraud, racketeering and conspiracy for his involvement in a scam where customers were deceived into buying worthless junk bonds, resulting in many of them losing their life savings. Keating had donated $1.25 million to Mother Teresa in the 1980s, and as he was awaiting sentencing, she wrote a letter to the court on his behalf asking for clemency.

The above post is a potent counter-balance to all the Mother Teresa hype.

My biggest concern with Mother Teresa was her destructive approach to family planning. How is it possible that she didn’t see the connection between the out-of-control birth rate and the resulting poverty? I suspect that she did see the connection, but was unwilling to speak the obvious. That would have caused people to stop adoring her. Further, Mother Teresa was far too enamored with the rich and famous and she was unwilling to give up that limelight. In the meantime, her irresponsible approach to family-planning created an ocean of grief which she tried to clean up, a teaspoon at a time.

Simple-minded self-ignorant acts of kindness can be destructive in the aggregate. Mother Teresa’s advocacy of the lack of family planning is on a continuum with all of those politicians who kiss all those babies (perhaps because they really do like babies), but then go back to Washington to rip away their health care coverage.

To cap it all off, Mother Teresa was intellectually dishonest, living a closeted a life as an agnostic while publicly proclaiming her alleged great faith.

There’s not nearly as much work for saints to do when we all start living responsibly and honestly, focusing on the root causes of problems.

David Horton asks “How do you recognize a civilized country?” He has a list of 25 criteria so far.  Here are the first six:

1. The military-industrial complex plays no role in government.
2. Religion plays a very small role in society, not forbidden, but not compulsory.
3. Scientists, teachers, nurses, artists, are all valued more than sports people and celebrities.
4. Speech is free and the media varied.
5. There are few if any guns.
6. The environment is cared for.

I was meandering in cyberspace, and stumbled onto this column by Australian Michael Ruse: The struggle between evolution and creation: an American problem. This appeals to me after all the news about Australian Ken Ham and his Creation Museum here in the U.S. The muse of Mr. Ruse is that the U.S. is vocally and publicly debating the science of evolution versus competing Biblical philosophies, and their roles in education and culture

But his main point is that this is just a symptom. Ever since the Scopes trial, the vocal Biblical Literalism Fundamentalist minority has been fighting for its life. Part of their claim is that evolution is not as values-neutral as proponents like to claim. Ruse agrees. Evolution theory was bolstered by Darwin’s books with his additions to the theory. But it might have stayed a quiet and intellectual revelation, had it not been for Darwin’s contemporary, scientific and social activist Thomas Huxley.

Huxley, who was known in the popular press as “Pope” Huxley, preached evolution-as- Christianity-alternative non-stop at working men’s clubs, from the podia in presidential addresses, and in debates with clerics, notably Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford. Huxley, who invented for himself the religious label of “agnostic”, even aided the founding of the new cathedrals of evolution, stuffed as they were with displays of dinosaurs newly discovered in the American west. Except that these halls of worship were better known as museums of natural history.

Ruse follows the history forward to show why he considers this to be An American Problem. The rest of the world’s Christians are content to accept science for what it can provide, and leave to the Bible issues outside of what can be examined. But America was settled in part by religious extremists, exiled from England and other countries for their radical beliefs. This culture is diluted, but still present and very vocal. The founding fathers were well aware of this element, and set the nation up to minimize the damage that they can cause, while allowing them to be themselves.

As the orders of magnitude of scientific understanding kept expanding beyond the narrow scale of the Biblical universe, the Biblical Literalists had to draw a line. It was too late to hold at a geocentric universe, and much too late for a flat Earth. Sin and demonic possession as the causes of disease also gave way to germ theory without much of a fight. But spontaneous divine creation of man is now the sticking point. Any evidence or theory that contradicts direct and intentional divine creation is labeled unholy.

In America the battle between secular government and a theocracy is being fought in the guise of Evolution versus Intelligent Design (or whatever name Scientific Creationism is using). From the vantage of Australia, it is an interesting skirmish. Here in the Bible Belt, it scares me.

That’s the message of Audrey Schulman, writing in Orion Magazine. Her article is entitled, “How to be a Climate Hero.”

Schulman describes psychology experiments where the subject is surrounded by stooges, everyone in the room doing a mundane task.  Eventually, something untoward happens. For instance, smoke starts pouring out of the vents, indicating a dangerous fire. If there are stooges present and they do nothing, the subject will usually do nothing.

It’s been repeated with many variations on the type of emergency: staged robberies, lost wallets, people in hallways crying for help, etc. Every time, if there was more than one person witnessing the event, all of them were almost certain to do nothing.

What does this lesson about the Bystander Effect have to do with climate change? Most of us are sitting around doing nothing at all, because most of us are sitting around doing nothing at all.

Right now everyone understands that something truly horrible is happening to the planet’s climate. The heat waves and forest fires, the floods and droughts. But there are 6 billion of us now—quite the Bystander Effect. So we stay in our seats filling out forms, trying to ignore the smoke swirling thicker around us. We bustle about our normal lives, assuming it can’t be as bad as it seems because surely, then, everyone would be marching in the street about it.

Here’s an important lesson you can learn from Schulman’s post. Learning about the Bystander Effect “innoculates” you against its destructive effect. When you are made aware of the Bystander Effect, you don’t have to do nothing just because most everyone else is doing nothing. You can jump into gear, reducing your carbon footprint and making lots of noise for change. Write those letters to the editor and write to your representatives. Discuss these issues with even a few friends; they will then be comfortable talking with their friends. We don’t have to be a country that still sells SUV’s and incandescent bulbs, a country that is still carving out exurbs and failing to enact a responsible national energy policy.

The lesson Schulman is teaching is a lesson we can all use every day in a massively dysfunctional society. It’s time to speak up, even if no one else is speaking up. Everyone else needs you to act first.

In the April 24, 2008 edition of Nature (available online only with a subscription), it is reported that the Swiss Federal Government has issued guidelines to help granting agencies “decide which research applications deeply offend the dignity of plants.” Those studies that fail to treat plants with “dignity” won’t be funded.

This is not a spoof report.  It is real, and this new requirement has many scientists wondering what it could possibly mean to consider the “dignity of plants.”

The Swiss Ethics Committee has offered little guidance to this point, but suggests that genetic modifications causing plans to “lose their independence” by “interfering with their capacity to reproduce” could be suspect.  This leaves many plant geneticists wondering whether there is now a problem with traditional plant hybridization.  For instance, roses require male sterility.  The article raises the question of whether the development of seedless fruits is now unethical in Switzerland.

This article leaves me wondering what new ethics guidelines we’ll see next.  Perhaps there will be a new law requiring the ethical treatment of non-living things, such as rocks, clouds or spoons.  Perhaps there will be new labor restrictions imposed to keep us from abusing our computers by constantly giving them keyboard commands or by making them work more than forty hours per week.

I’m tired of hearing Neocons cavalierly talking about “nuking” one or more Middle Eastern countries. These days, Neocons often talk about this “need” to use nuclear weapons to show people in the Middle East that “we” mean business. I have personally heard this sort of talk several times (when you mostly listen instead of talk, you’d be amazed at what Neocons tell you). Former U.S. presidential candidate Tom Tancredo talks like this, for example.  [If you want to get a flavor for the scariest segment of the crowd that takes lightly the idea of using nuclear weapons, Google the phrase "nuke Mecca Medina."]

Here’s what I propose. The next time someone somberly (or cheerfully) suggests that the United States “nuke” a country in the Middle East, tell them to take a look at what it really means to use nuclear weapons on human beings. A site called Atomic Tragedy recently released these graphic photos of Hiroshima that had been donated to the Hoover Archives by a U.S. serviceman in 1998, with the provision that the photos shouldn’t be released until 2008. These horrific photos were taken by an unknown Japanese photographer.

Anyone inclined to use nuclear weapons should first be made to take a close look at what it means to use nuclear weapons by studying these photos and meditating carefully on the phrase “Love your enemy.” Yes, “Love your enemy,” that superb meditation on empathy. I don’t believe in the divinity of Jesus, but I do think that it’s time for Neocons to stop cherry-picking the Bible and to take their own Holy Book seriously.

I’ve been following the reviews of the Ben Stein “Expelled” movie since it was first shown. Many of them properly criticize it for its many inherent cinematic flaws. Others angrily take it to task for its clear violations of sense or sensibility. There is also ExpelledExposed.com, the not-mentioning of which I get chided for every time I post about this movie.

Then there are some who applaud it for “speaking the truth” and “opening conversations”. On my second post about this movie, I asked people to send me links to any non-negative review coming from sources outside of the Discovery Institute (Answers in Genesis, EvolutionNews.org, etc). I suspect that there is now an effort afoot to produce as many positive reviews as there are negative ones, in order to keep things “fair and balanced” online.

After the initial spate of bad reviews by reputable critics, various Christian columnists have been lauding it for exposing the religious suppression of the “Scientific Theory of Intelligent Design” and especially the efforts of reviewers (and scientists, and “W” appointed conservative judges) to associate this “scientific theory” with the openly religious (and mostly equivalent) ideas of Creationism. Bad intellectuals, bad experts.

But, what is this Scientific Theory? Well, an idea has to have 3 elements to qualify as a scientific theory :

1. Explain all currently and previously observed facts in the category of interest in terms of natural laws.
2. Describe what facts, if discovered, would prove it false.
3. Make predictions about future (as yet undiscovered) measurements or discoveries, and suggest how these might be found.

As near as I can tell the Scientific Theory of Intelligent Design misses on all three counts. (more…)

The United States and the European Union have taken a “criminal path” by contributing to an explosive rise in global food prices through using food crops to produce biofuels, the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to food said today.At a press conference in Geneva, Jean Ziegler of Switzerland said that fuel policies pursued by the U.S. and the EU were one of the main causes of the current worldwide food crisis.

The Special Rapporteur warned of worsening food riots and a “horrifying” increase in deaths by starvation before reforms could take effect.

For the full article, visit Common Dreams.

I’m constantly learning valuable new lessons, but I generally find it difficult to recall any particular good lessons at any particular moment. I got the same problem with jokes. I’ve heard a lot of good jokes in my life, but if I’m put on the spot, I’m at a loss to remember more than one or two.

I thought it might be a good time to dig deep to try extra hard to remember a few of those lessons that have taken deep root with me. One shortcut would be to cite some of the books I have read which have provided some good lessons. For me, one of those books has been Inner Peace for Busy People, by psychologist Joan Borysenko (2001). She divided her book into 52 chapters, each of them offering a strategy for holding things together and finding peace in one’s life.

In chapter 1 Borysenko recommends that we pay attention to the Yerkes-Dodson law, which holds that increased stress makes us more productive only to a point, while further increases decrease productivity. Borysenko argues that many highly productive people operate “on the descending limb of the stress/productivity curve.” In short, they could be more productive if they could only push themselves a bit less, which would reduce the toll they are putting on their overstressed bodies.

In chapter 2 (of her 52 chapter book), Borysenko draws on the Buddhist saying that “Peace is like a sun that’s always shining in your heart. It’s just hidden behind clouds of fear, doubt, worry and desire that continually orient you toward the past or the future. The sun comes out only when you are in the present moment. Step one when you feel crazy busy is to take a breath to help let go of whatever it is on your mind. Think, here I am. Let your body relax, and feel your connection to the larger whole.” Breathing is so incredibly important that Borysenko devotes her entire third chapter to teaching her readers how to breathe.

Many of the worthwhile lessons I have learned have come in the form of written quotes. For instance, you can see that many of the posts at this site have been categorized as “quotes.” Those “lessons” arrive in a constant stream. Here are three recent quotes that constitute good “lessons” for me:

When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad, and that is my religion.
Abraham Lincoln

It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its government.
Thomas Paine

We don’t know a millionth of one percent about anything.
Thomas Edison

I do not follow any form of organized religion, but some of the figureheads of some of the most popular religions teach some excellent lessons. One of those impressive religious leaders would be the Buddha, who taught that A) suffering is an inherent part of existence; B) that the origin of suffering is ignorance and the main symptoms of that ignorance are attachment and craving and C) that attachment and craving can be ceased. I find these lessons to be incredibly important in my life, even though I struggle to employ these lessons in my daily existence.

Speaking of religious leaders, some critically important lessons have been attributed to Jesus. Again, I do not follow any organized religion; I certainly don’t believe in any of the supernatural claims that many Christians proclaim.  In fact, here is a post that presents some of the many reasons I disbelieve claims of supernatural occurrences and indicating my doubts that the “Jesus” of the Gospels ever actually existed. On the other hand, the lesson that one should love one’s enemy is both elegant and powerful, no matter who taught this lesson. (more…)

In about 300 B.C., Epicurus eloquently summed up the problem of the existence of evil. It has come to be known as the Riddle of Epicurus or the Epicurean paradox. It was translated by David Hume in the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion:

If God is willing to prevent evil, but is not able to
Then He is not omnipotent.

If He is able, but not willing
Then He is malevolent.

If He is both able and willing
Then whence cometh evil?

If He is neither able nor willing
Then why call Him God?

In “The Death of Conscience (Part One),” (Free Inquiry, April/May 2008 –not available online) Shadia B. Drury makes it clear that not all religion is bad.  She recognizes the religious backdrop to the successful efforts to repeal slavery, to promote civil rights and to create the Red Cross. “As these examples show, religion cannot simply be dismissed as pure evil or the ally of all the evils in the world.  Life is not that simple.”

Where is it, then, that religion goes bad?  “The human inability to accept a flawed and in perfect world and the longing for a world of perfection and Justice (either here on Earth or in the beyond) are at the heart of the problem.”  She argues that it is the dream of “escaping” to some perfect world that invites religious madness.  And she doesn’t mince her words on this: “Religiously inspired crime is unsurpassed in malignity and moral blindness.”

I disagree with Drury when she attributes all the worst human rights abuses to religion.  It is my belief that wickedness comes in many flavors.  Many horrid acts are clearly based on religion.  Others, however, are based upon a pretend religiousness and some of them are not based upon any form of religion at all.  To me, religion is one way (among many) that people can be inspired to do good things and one way (among many) that people can be inspired to do bad things.

Even though I disagree with Drury on the above point, she does present some interesting reasons for how and why things go wrong when they go very wrong in the name of religion.  I think that she is right about these factors where great evils are, indeed, perpetrated in the name of religion:

Religion is akin to a mind altering or hallucinogenic drug-in small doses it may be harmless (or even beneficial) but in large doses lethal.  There are several reasons for this.  First, the otherworldly sensibility that religion makes it seem as if death, suffering and construction in this world are of no consequence.  This is particularly true of Islam and Christianity.  Second, the belief in the gratuitous wickedness of humanity makes it seem as if no amount of horror inflicted on human beings is undeserved.  This is particular true of Christianity.  Third, and most significantly, religion (and lethal doses) undermines the rational faculty and it leads, for all practical purposes, to the death of conscience.  Ghastly deeds can then be carried out in good conscience.  In the absence of any pangs of conscience, wickedness reaches new heights.

[Emphasis added to the above quote.]

Note:  in this same issue of Free Inquiry (April/May 2008), articles by entomologist E.O. Wilson (”Denial and Its Risks”) and Preacher P. Andrew Sandlin (”Global Ecology and Godly Stewardship”) are evidence that Believers and non-Believers can collaborate on accomplish important tasks (preserving biodiversity), albeit with distinct motivations.

Imagine that a neighbor walks up today and tells you that he really cares about you.   In fact, he loves you like a daughter/son and he wants to show his love.  You might be delighted to hear such an expression of affection. 

Then imagine that he tells you that he wants to prove to you that he cares for you.  He wants to prove it in a way that you will never doubt the depth of his caring.  

You would probably be thinking that he’s going to do something nice.  Maybe he will give a big donation to charity in your name.  Or maybe he will go buy you something nice, or take you to dinner at a good restaurant.  But then he surprises you.

He reminds you that he has an adult son named Bill (which you knew, because you know Bill).  He then tells you that he is going to let a mob of goons torture and murder Bill in a bloody spectacle, for you!

You are aghast, but he continues on.

He tells you that he is going to let that mob drive large nails through Bill’s hands and feet, for you, to prove that he cares about you.   For a grand finale, he is going to allow this sadistic crowd to jab a spear through Bill’s side, to make sure that every drop of blood has been drained from Bill’s body.

It would be patently obvious to you that decent people don’t “show their love” by allowing their loved ones to be murdered.   At this point you are thinking that your neighbor is nuts and probably highly dangerous, because your neighbor’s logic points to an eternal regress.  If he lets Bill (his beloved son) get killed to show his love for you, then someday he might allow you to be killed to “show his love” to someone else. Where might this ever stop? 

The much bigger problem, of course, is that being complicit in murder is not a healthy way to show love to anyone.   Decent human cultures prohibit gratuitous murder.  We deplore those who allow mergers to happen when they could intervene and stop them.  Facilitating murder is a warped and disturbing attempt to demonstrate love.  

Similarly, the claim that God sacrificed his Son to show his love for us appears to be a blatant non sequitur.  It shouldn’t make sense for anyone, anywhere.  Except that it does make sense to Christians. Christians make a jarring and nonsensical exception for God, who is supposedly the most intelligent and loving Being in the universe.  (more…)

In an earlier post, I argued that people need to better appreciate that dollars are fungible (see here  and here).  Why is it important to understand that dollars are fungible?  A case in point is the new American enthusiasm for turning food into fuel. Consider this report from Fortune Magazine:

The growing myth that corn is a cure-all for our energy woes is leading us toward a potentially dangerous global fight for food. While crop-based ethanol -the latest craze in alternative energy - promises a guilt-free way to keep our gas tanks full, the reality is that overuse of our agricultural resources could have consequences even more drastic than, say, being deprived of our SUVs. It could leave much of the world hungry.

We are facing an epic competition between the 800 million motorists who want to protect their mobility and the two billion poorest people in the world who simply want to survive. In effect, supermarkets and service stations are now competing for the same resources.
 
This year cars, not people, will claim most of the increase in world grain consumption. The problem is simple: It takes a whole lot of agricultural produce to create a modest amount of automotive fuel.

The grain required to fill a 25-gallon SUV gas tank with ethanol, for instance, could feed one person for a year.

And consider this additional bad news from Earth Policy Institute: 

We are witnessing the beginning of one of the great tragedies of history. The United States, in a misguided effort to reduce its oil insecurity by converting grain into fuel for cars, is generating global food insecurity on a scale never seen before.

The world is facing the most severe food price inflation in history as grain and soybean prices climb to all-time highs. Wheat trading on the Chicago Board of Trade on December 17th breached the $10 per bushel level for the first time ever. In mid-January, corn was trading over $5 per bushel, close to its historic high. And on January 11th, soybeans traded at $13.42 per bushel, the highest price ever record