Language wars: it all begins with subtle early skirmishes

Recently on Huffpo,George Lakoff has written an important piece on the ongoing political battle to define words.

I’m keenly aware of this battle.  Here’s one way it affects me.  I do not believe in a sentient Creator.  Some would label me an atheist, but that would be horrible unfair.  Why?  Because that term has been successfully loaded with far more than lack of a belief in a traditional God.  The conservative movement has successfully defined “atheists” as strident, immoral, untrustworthy and threatening to America’s families. 

This ugly baggage is why I have embraced the term Bright. I am a “bright.”  I have a naturalistic worldview free of supernatural and mystical elements.  Does that make me threatening?  I don’t think so.  Does it make me prone to mob violence like members of many religious groups?  I would think the opposite—I have to cut my own philosophic path thorough life.  I doubtless have different politics and beliefs than many other Brights.  Narrowly construed, I’m an organization of one.  But there are certain people are perturbed with me, I’m sure, because I refuse to claim allegiance to the insecure God of the Bible and we just can’t have that.

The word battles, however, are taking place on many other fronts.

As Lakoff writes, such word battles comprise “the struggle to define our democratic principles and values. The right wing has worked for decades to alter the meanings of concepts that define our way of life.”  For instance, consider the word “liberal.” …

Share

Continue ReadingLanguage wars: it all begins with subtle early skirmishes

See no evil: comments on the comments to the Bart Ehrman post

My earlier post regarding Bart Ehrman was not meant to provoke in an outrageous way, although I suspected that it might distress some people.  That post drew much more traffic than we are used to at the site, approximately 25,000 unique visitors in three days.  It also pulled in more than 200 comments.  I was intrigued by the nature of the comments, especially those comments written by people who ostensibly disapproved of Ehrman’s work or his conclusions.  In fact, I did a small informal analysis based upon the comments posted by last night (I believe there were about 150 comments posted at that time).

I need to state at the outset that there were more than a few Believers among the commenters who appreciated and even applauded Ehrman’s work.  Some of these Believers specifically stated that even if Ehrman was correct, they could still believe in God and Jesus, they could still be good Christians and they found that Ehrman’s work had enriched their understanding of the Bible. My criticism of the distressed commenters is not directed toward these people.

Approximately 35 of the comments were written by people who appeared to be distressed or dismayed by Ehrman’s work.  Notably, only three of those commenters acknowledged the basic points made by Ehrman. 

What were Ehrman’s basic points?  That earlier manuscripts did not contain some information that was contained in some of the later manuscripts that were ultimately adopted part of “the Bible.” Therefore, the new material found in later writings …

Share

Continue ReadingSee no evil: comments on the comments to the Bart Ehrman post

Actors, athletes, tell us not to try to save lives using stem cell research

Here is a video of the latest bit of fundie propoganda, airing in Missouri, where voters will soon have the opportunity to vote "yes" to allow the full range of stem cell research.  These anti-stem-cell actors and athletes should be made to walk through hospitals and hospices.  They should be made to…

Continue ReadingActors, athletes, tell us not to try to save lives using stem cell research

How to clean up your moral act: take a bath

Mark Johnson and George Lakoff have written several compelling books based on the premise that humans must use conceptual metaphors to understand abstract concepts.  For example, we say "Things are looking up" to express optimism (i.e., good is up). Lakoff and Johnson actually go further. They argue that without metaphors,…

Continue ReadingHow to clean up your moral act: take a bath

Apollo 13, early course corrections and the soul

Erika Price’s article about the soul, “Soul Searching,” intrigued me.  I’ve always assumed that people believed in the soul because they were terrified at the thought of being permanently deprived of the companionship of those they love.

I think, though, that there is a often-unnoticed prerequisite to believing in souls.  One first needs to make an intellectual move that is so commonplace and subtle that it is easily missed.  This early profound move, that of presuming that the soul is a thing, is a critical move with profound ramifications.

Subtle early changes often play out profoundly in the long run.  Consider, for instance, the sensitive dependence on initial conditions within chaotic systems popularly known as the butterfly effect. Small variations of the initial condition of a dynamical system may produce large variations in the long-term behavior of the system. 

Here’s another example of a subtle early adjustment paying off in a big way.  In 1970, when it was still 321,860 km from earth, the Apollo 13 spacecraft was damaged by an explosion, causing the Service Module to lose its oxygen and electrical power.  The astronauts were required to carefully fire the engines briefly and manually to correct their course to achieve a re-entry angle of 6.49 degrees. That short burst of the engine thus effected a tiny course correction that was a matter of life and death by the time Apollo 13 hit Earth’s atmosphere. 

We also make subtle language moves that eventually make huge differences in …

Share

Continue ReadingApollo 13, early course corrections and the soul