Bush Administration destroyed cancer research center and scattered the researchers

Affiliated Press - May 13, 2009 Recently discovered secret documents indicate that, in 2006, the Bush Administration ordered the destruction of a major cancer research center and banned the doctors and researchers from ever again communicating with each other. Dr. Rod Nym, former Director of the center, recently agreed to discuss this disturbing incident with the Affiliated Press. Nym indicated that the towering brick and mortar research center had its genesis several years ago thanks to a large grant by the Marduk Foundation. The Center was built in the middle-east corridor of the tri-state region to bring together hundreds of cancer researchers from all corners of the globe. Even though the researchers and doctors came from many different countries and spoke many different languages, they were able to communicate efficiently thanks to special software installed throughout the center. The software was similar to Babelfish, and it instantly translated any language into any other language, enabling the researchers to collaborate to an extent never before seen in an international research team.

Continue ReadingBush Administration destroyed cancer research center and scattered the researchers

The end of rational discussion

Recently I wrote a fake news item that took the Genesis story of man’s ejection from the Garden of Eden and transplanted it to the present day. I thought that it would be a great way to get believers to view this story in a fresh way before they even realized that they were doing so. I wanted them to judge the actions of God without realizing that it was God that we were talking about. It worked well...a little too well. Many of the believers that I routinely tussle with about religion on various forums did not immediately see the satire for what it was. They became enraged at the fictional stand-in for God, Mr. Ian Oda, and demanded in their posts that justice be done. When I pointed out the many clues to the true nature of the news story, I was criticized. My analogy was "way off" and "all wrong", they said. I didn’t understand the bible at all, they said. God was exonerated once again. One particular forum member was quite interested in pursuing the discussion further. He made some good points. I made mine. Eventually I had him backed into a corner (at least I thought so) when I told him that it seemed clear to me that the God of the bible was a badly written fictional character created by men and reflecting all of men’s inadequacies and flaws. This was his reply. "I guess you can say ‘I believe he is fictional’. I felt the same, before having him work in my life. I’m not going to write a book about it, but I’ve been through the worst and have seen plenty of miracles in my life. I have seen the horrors of sin, and have seen God's work to correct that in my life. I am a better person, because of it. Something is working in my life, whether you believe it is God or just something that happens, I know the truth, because I have witnessed it. Why can’t you just accept God’s love in your life? Mike, you are a destroyer of hope." So there it was once again. The wall that is impossible to penetrate. The wall that I have hit many times in my discussions with believers, when they are honest enough to take me all the way up to it. It’s a wall made of the Pain and the Need that drives someone to discard rationality because the alternative is just too horrific to face. Is the only thing standing between me and a belief in God some catastrophic personal event? Do I have to become a drug addict or a cancer patient in order to understand? Do I not believe in God because I've been too lucky in my life? Could that be true?? My own brother, who is as staunch an atheist as I, admitted to me that when he was very sick last year he “...actually prayed”. He went on to say that it was, “...fear of death...pure and simple. When that moment is upon you (or you perceive it is) you will do and believe anything that lets you think there is a higher power that may be able to save you from this.” What do I hope to gain by exposing what I see as the absurdity of their beliefs? I have hit my wall, my crisis of non-faith. How can I, in good conscience, continue to be a “destroyer of hope”?

Continue ReadingThe end of rational discussion

On Truth and Power

Recently on Dangerous Intersection, an article was posted about the problem of Power in relation to truth. I wrote a response and decided to post it here, at more length, as a short essay on the (occasionally etymological) problem of Truth. When people start talking about what is true or not, they tend to use the word like a Swiss Army knife. It means what they want it to mean when they point at something. Truth is a slippery term and has many facets. Usually, in casual conversation, when people say something is true, they're usually talking something being factual. Truth and fact are conjoined in many, possibly most, instances, but are not the same things. The "truth" of a "fact" can often be a matter of interpretation, making conversation occasionally problematic. The problem is in the variability of the term "truth"---like many such words, we stretch it to include things which are related but not the same. There is Truth and then there is Fact. 2 + 2 = 4 is a fact. It may, if analyzed sufficiently, yield a fundamental "truth" about the universe, but in an of itself it is only a fact. When someone comes along and insists, through power (an assertion of will), that 2 + 2 = 5, the "truth" being challenged is not in the addition but in the relation of the assertion to reality and the intent of the power in question. The arithmetic becomes irrelevant. Truth then is in the relationship being asserted and the response to it. The one doing the asserting and the one who must respond to the assertion. Similarly, in examples of law, we get into difficulty in discussions over morality. Take for instance civil rights era court decisions, where there is a conflation of ethics and morality. They are connected, certainly, but they are not the same thing. Ethics deal with the proper channels of response within a stated system---in which case, Plessy vs Fergusson could be seen as ethical given the criteria upon which it was based. But not moral, given a larger criteria based on valuations of human worth. To establish that larger criterion, overturning one system in favor of another, would require a redefintion of "ethical" into "unethical", changing the norm, for instance in Brown vs The Board of Education. The "truth" of either decision is a moving target, albeit one based on a priori concepts of human value as applied through ethical systems that adapt.

Continue ReadingOn Truth and Power

That strange relationship between power and truth

I have a question for readers and a request for guidance. My gut feeling is that political power has nothing to do with truth. It doesn’t matter that someone is encouraging me or threatening me to believe that 2 + 2 =5. The truth is that 2 +2 is always 4. Even if someone enacts tax incentives for me to say otherwise. Even if police officers put guns to my head. Even if every other person in my country ostracizes me and calls me immoral. It seems, though, that there are what seem to be (to many people) strange but unrelenting version of truth that are guided by the exercise of power. This occurs most often in closed systems. For instance, one would be scolded if one stood up and announced that Mary wasn’t a virgin while in a Christian church. If you take a megaphone at a Fourth of July picnic in middle-America, you’d better damn well say that the United States is the world’s greatest democracy, even though our voting rates are pathetically law and even though our political system is thoroughly corrupted thanks to legalized bribes termed “campaign contributions” (see this telling comment, which SHOULD shock us into starting a massive revolution). Within a closed social system, then, it seems as though political or social power can be used to make many people mouth many blatant untruths. After mouthing them for long periods, many of these people start believing these untruths. For instance, did we invade Iraq to confiscate known weapons of mass destruction? That idea served as truth to many people during the run up to the invasion (some people still cling to that falsehood). Now, with a new power order in place in Washington DC, the prevailing truth is that the Bush Administration intentionally conjured up fake evidence regarding WMD. This inter-relationship between truth and power reminds me of Thomas Kuhn’s suggestion that scientific fields undergo periodic revolutions ("paradigm shifts"), in which the nature of scientific inquiry within a particular field is abruptly transformed. I’m also somewhat acquainted with various “post-modernist” writings that seem to address this general issue. For instance, consider this definition of postmodernism by Josh McDowell & Bob Hostetler, which I pulled from Wikipedia:

A worldview characterized by the belief that truth doesn’t exist in any objective sense but is created rather than discovered.”… Truth is “created by the specific culture and exists only in that culture. Therefore, any system or statement that tries to communicate truth is a power play, an effort to dominate other cultures.

Continue ReadingThat strange relationship between power and truth

NYT says “It’s Torture!”

The NYT today published an obituary for a deceased American fighter pilot who was captured by the Chinese:

Harold E. Fischer Jr., an American Flier Tortured in a Chinese Prison, Dies at 83... From April 1953 through May 1955, Colonel Fischer — then an Air Force captain — was held at a prison outside Mukden, Manchuria. For most of that time, he was kept in a dark, damp cell with no bed and no opening except a slot in the door through which a bowl of food could be pushed. Much of the time he was handcuffed. Hour after hour, a high-frequency whistle pierced the air. [...] Under duress, Captain Fischer had falsely confessed to participating in germ warfare.
So - when the Chinese do it it's torture. When the US do it it's "harsh interrogation". We expect more consistency of our major news organizations. We expect more of our own government. It's time to call for a special prosecutor, Mr. Attorney General. [via Glenn Greenwald, and Andrew Sullivan]

Continue ReadingNYT says “It’s Torture!”