Faith-based science
The Onion does it again. All of you old-fashioned scientists should take a look and learn a thing or two.
Why gay people simply must go to hell
A few years ago I had an extended conversation about gay people with an evangelical man in his mid-50s. I thought that this conversation might be illuminating, in that this fellow is a decent fellow in many ways. He would make a nice neighbor, for instance. He works hard, pays his taxes, makes contributions to poor people, loves his children and abhors bigotry, at least when it involves blatant discrimination of African-Americans. On the other hand, he is deeply troubled with the “problem” of gays. For purposes of this post, I will refer to him as “Donald.”
Here’s how the conversation went:
Do gays choose to be gay? Donald is really perturbed that some people choose to engage in homosexual sex as a matter of sexual variety or perverted fun. On the other hand, he does acknowledge that there are numerous gay people who have not chosen to be gay. They were born or raised in such a way that they turned out “differently.” Donald admits that they had no choice. They have innocently found themselves attracted to members of the same sex. I asked Donald whether his God created them this way, and he shrugged.
Donald admits that many heterosexuals engage in sex that he considers degenerate or immoral. This would include oral sex, anal sex or S&M for example. Donald reluctantly admits that these people should nonetheless be allowed to marry. People who do not want to have children or who physically can’t have children should also be …
We must do X because we’ve ALWAYS done X
We’ve recently raised a few issues regarding justifications for bigotry. What especially rankles some of us is the often-heard argument that people should do something a particular way (recently, the issue is preventing gay marriage) because that is the way that it has been done in the past.
What a ridiculous-sounding principle on which to base an argument! Ridiculous sounding, unless you are a lawyer arguing an important case. In courtrooms across this country, multitudes of lawyers lawyers stand up every day with straight faces and proceed to argue to judges that a case should be decided a particular way solely because a previous and similar case was handled that same way.
In law, this principle that judges should rely on precendent is given the obscure and mysterious-sounding label “stare decisis,” from the Latin, “stand by the thing decided.” [Stare decisis et non quieta movere, meaning “to stand by the decisions and not to disturb settled points”].
There is the great power in this heuristic. At least it’s an equal opportunity principle: Analogizing to old cases is a technique that can be used by crafty opportunists, as well as good-hearted seekers of justice.
Though we are tempted to scoff at this principle (of relying on precedent) when it is employed by bigots, we need to keep things in context. That very same principle is the heartbeat of justice. How strange, you might think, that such an amoral principle determines outcomes of important cases! That’s the way it is, however. I’ll …
We need a “Defense of Drinking Fountains” Amendment to the Constitution.
Gays' enjoyment of drinking fountains undermines MY enjoyment of drinking fountains. Therefore, we need a "Defense of Drinking Fountains" Amendment to the United States Constitution. I'm simply extending this Administration's logic, you see. As Mr. Bush said “Our policies should aim to strengthen families, not undermine them. And changing the…
The importance of false and oxymoronic religious claims
Quite often, our use of language is puzzling, indeed. For instance, we often walk up to each other asking, “How are you doing?” or “what’s happening?” when we would be annoyed if the person we addressed tried to answer our question. We spend a lot of time talking about the weather when it really doesn’t affect most of us. We crave to talk with our friends and co-workers about entertainment such as the performance of professional sports teams, as though our lives and moods should depend upon such things. And we love to gossip.
What is language for? Most people consider language merely as a means of preserving and communicating ideas. In “Magic Words: How Language Augments Human Computation,” Andy Clark set forth six additional ways in which we use language, each of these uses serving to “re-shape the computational spaces which confront intelligent agents.”
Clark discusses Lev Vygotsky, the Soviet psychologist of the 1930’s who “pioneered the idea that the use of public language had profound effects on cognitive development.” Vygotsky focused on the role of private language and scaffolded action in guiding behavior by focusing attention and controlling action. For instance, he found that children who are working on their own internalize the verbal directions previously given to them by responsible adults in order to guide complex tasks.
Clark makes a strong case that his “supra-communicative” account of language can transform, re-shape and simplify computational tasks that confront our biological brains in six ways. According to Clark, we …