Daniel Dennett discusses closeted atheist preachers

Philosopher Daniel Dennett discusses closeted atheist preachers in this excellent one-hour video in which he undertakes a "reverse engineering of religion." At about the 20-minute mark Dennett focuses on the works of Bart Ehrman and Jack Good (The Dishonest Church). Dennett points out that Good is outraged by the conspiracy by preachers to keep accurate information from the laity, who "can't handle" the information. Per Dennett, seminarians work hard to devise clever ways to avoid divulging the full truth about the Bible. (minute 24). How did it come to this? Dennett addresses this at minute 25. Dennett quotes Donald Hebb: "If it's not worth doing, then it's not worth doing well." He focuses the question to this: Who needs theologians? His answer: Those preachers who want to avoid being candid with their parishioners. "Theologians are religions' spinmeisters." At minute 29, Dennett recites the "Canons of Good Spin." Two examples: "It has to relieve skepticism without arousing curiosity" and "It should seem profound." These principles can be summed up with Dennett's neologism "deepities." (minute 31). These are statements that seem to be true only because they are ill-formed, and they have two readings. One is true but trivial, and the other is false but would be earth-shaking if true. Examples are given up through the remainder of the video, including a Karen Armstrong assertion at minute 43. Theologians are like magicians, and the concept of "deepities" allows one to see the card up the magician's sleeve. More on Karen Armstrong's evasions at minute 45, including attacks on theologians who, cornered, suggest that existence is not an important attribute of "God." Dennett racks it all up to a belief-in-God-meme. These evasions of theologians are reasons without reasoners. They are the result of unreasoning processes. The "cunning" is in the institutions themselves. These sorts of pseudo-explanations result from "a conspiracy without a mastermind."

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Anthony Weiner aims his sarcasm at do-nothing Republicans

NPR is fighting hard to keep it's sliver of federal funding. On the Hill, Anthony Weiner aims his arrows at the Republicans. And at least one Republican, Ron Paul, understands that our Nation's (destructive) money pit is Afghanistan, not NPR. Every week we spend four times more on our military adventure in Afghanistan than we spend for one year on funding domestic public media (we spend a lot more on propaganda devoted for international audiences than we spend on domestic programming).

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Who paints better abstract art, professional artists or children?

Several years ago, I admitted my lack of appreciation regarding most abstract art. That voice in my head often says, "a child could have done that." And now this proposition has been tested. The result: People usually, but not overwhelmingly prefer the abstract art of professional artists to that done by children (and art done by animals). The results were reported by Discover Magazine.

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Anti-science increases regarding climate change

Brian Walsh of Time bemoans the increasing anti-science attitudes of Americans and its effect on our conversations regarding climate change.

We like to think of ourselves as rational creatures who select from the choices presented to us for maximum individual utility — indeed, that's the essential principle behind most modern economics. But when you do assume rationality, the politics of climate change get confusing. Why would so many supposedly rational human beings choose to ignore overwhelming scientific authority? Maybe because we're not actually so rational after all, as research is increasingly showing. Emotions and values — not always fully conscious — play an enormous role in how we process information and make choices. We are beset by cognitive biases that throw what would be sound decision-making off-balance.
Walsh mentions "loss aversion" as a driving factor (the fear that actively decreasing CO2 will lose jobs), and group identification . The bottom line is that "no additional data — new findings about CO2 feedback loops or better modeling of ice sheet loss — is likely to change their mind."

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Useful fragile accidents

I have long struggled to understand how it is that otherwise intelligent adults can make religious claims that make no sense at all. For instance, otherwise intelligent people will claim that Jesus walked on water, or that Mary had a baby even though she was a virgin. These claims have no factual basis. To my ears, these are ludicrous claims. How is it that the human intellect allows these things to be uttered? Well, perhaps the intellect barely tolerates this. The human intellect is a relatively weak Johnny-come-lately to our cognitive apparatus. What really drives our decision-making is a big elephant underneath a tiny lawyer. Each of us is a tiny lawyer riding a big elephant. It turns out, however, that the elephant has almost irresistible power to reach up and invade the lawyer's ability to articulate. It takes great training to resist the elephant and to maintain disciplined abstract self-critical thought.  When we speak words, then, it is rarely the lawyer in full command of the mouth. That elephant is smart in the sense that it was evolutionarily honed over many millions of years to allow us to survive; most of those years, we survived even though we were not even conscious. And that elephant is still powerful, compelling decision-making based upon millions of years of trial and error. And the intellect? We give it far too much credit, even though this is where humans can sometimes shine above and beyond the other animals. After all, other animals cannot calculate a 15% tip, and they cannot figure out how to invent medicines or discover DNA. [More . . . ]

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