Banning Gas Stoves is Now a Priority for Some

The federal government is considering a ban on gas stoves.

Three points.

1. They will need to pry my gas stove from my cold dead hands.

2. Do you really want to shut down all the restaurants that use gas to cook, including my favorite little stir fry take-out place at the end of my block.

3. If you are REALLY worried about particulates, don't read Sam Harris' article about the dangers of fireplaces (link in the comments). Here's an excerpt:

It seems to me that many nonbelievers have forgotten—or never knew—what it is like to suffer an unhappy collision with scientific rationality. We are open to good evidence and sound argument as a matter of principle, and are generally willing to follow wherever they may lead. Certain of us have made careers out of bemoaning the failure of religious people to adopt this same attitude.

However, I recently stumbled upon an example of secular intransigence that may give readers a sense of how religious people feel when their beliefs are criticized. It’s not a perfect analogy, as you will see, but the rigorous research I’ve conducted at dinner parties suggests that it is worth thinking about. We can call the phenomenon “the fireplace delusion.” . . .

Here is what we know from a scientific point of view: There is no amount of wood smoke that is good to breathe. It is at least as bad for you as cigarette smoke, and probably much worse. (One study found it to be 30 times more potent a carcinogen.) The smoke from an ordinary wood fire contains hundreds of compounds known to be carcinogenic, mutagenic, teratogenic, and irritating to the respiratory system. Most of the particles generated by burning wood are smaller than one micron—a size believed to be most damaging to our lungs. In fact, these particles are so fine that they can evade our mucociliary defenses and travel directly into the bloodstream, posing a risk to the heart. Particles this size also resist gravitational settling, remaining airborne for weeks at a time.

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Split Brain Patient is Half-Atheist

Fun Fact.

V.S. Ramachandran presented at the Beyond Belief Conference in 2006. He discussed an experiment where he asked the split-brain patient’s right hemisphere “Do you believe in God”? The right hemisphere pointed to the answer “no," while the left hemisphere pointed to “yes”.

Ramachandran then joked that after death the patient’s left hemisphere would go to heaven and his right hemisphere would go to hell.

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Modern Day Religions

I agree with Zuby. As I see it, traditional religions were serving a purpose that was not fully appreciated. I'm not claiming that the religious claims touted by most traditional religions were true. The truth of such claims is not where the source of the power of a religion. It is more accurate to state the the falsity of the dogmatic claims underlie the power of a religion. I explain this in a five-part series of articles I titled "Mending Fences."

What happens when you take eliminate a popular institution?  We're finding out as it is occurring, as described by Chesterson's Fence:

The principle that reforms should not be made until the reasoning behind the existing state of affairs is understood.

The most powerful social dynamic is our tendency to form tribes. Whenever people do this, they point to principles and beliefs, but there is no need for these principles or beliefs to be factually true to serve as the "reason" for the tribal affiliation. We often see this: the wackier the belief, the stronger the tribal ties, because proclaiming nonsensical things serves as a badge of tribal belonging.

John McWhorter has repeatedly made this point with regard to Wokeness. It is not like a religion. Rather, he says, it is a religion. “The reality is that what the Elect call problematic is what a Christian means by blasphemous.” The following excerpt is from the introduction of McWhorter's book, Woke Racism (2021):

My main aims will be:

1. To argue that this new ideology is actually a religion in all but name, and that this explains why something so destructive and incoherent is so attractive to so many good people.

2. To explain why so many black people are attracted to a religion that treats us as simpletons.

3. To show that this religion is actively harmful to black people despite being intended as unprecedentedly “antiracist.”

4. To show that a pragmatic, effective, liberal, and even Democratic-friendly agenda for rescuing black America need not be founded on the tenets of this new religion.

5. To suggest ways to lessen the grip of this new religion on our public culture.

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Glenn Loury and Jonathan Haidt Discuss the Structural Stupidities of the Left and Right

In this video, Glenn Loury and Jonathan Haidt Discuss the Structural Stupidities of the Left and Right. It is a fantastic conversation by two good-hearted nuanced thinkers who are concerned about the damage being done to many American institutions.

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In in Forthcoming Book, Bart Ehrman Discusses the Book of Revelations

I don't hear much from the religious right these days, but I do know quite a few people who believe strongly in the Bible (some of them actually read it).  I have a lot of posts early in my writings criticizing Bible cherry-picking (here's an irreverent look). Here are my top eight parts of the Bible that are ignored by most Christians.

I have also praised parts of the Bible, including the advice that one should always "Love your enemies." Most people who tell you that the Bible is the Way only tell you about their favorite parts and suppress the embarrassing parts.

I've commented on Bart Ehrman's writings before. He is a Bible scholar, a fundamentalist turned agnostic/atheist (his position--I agree--is that one can be both of these simultaneously).  In a post I wrote in 2006, I summarized Ehrman's findings that many parts of the Bible are not as written by the original authors (whoever they might be). Who changed the Bible and why? That post drew many hundreds of comments, back in a time when far more people claimed to be practicing Christians (30% of Americans are now religiously unaffiliated). Ehrman is about to release a new book on Revelations and he has some strong critical opinions about its message and tone, about its attempts to censor and violently coerce (and see here).  Here's an excerpt from his website:

The overwhelming emphasis of Revelation is not about hope but about the wrath and vengeance of God against those who have incurred his displeasure.  For the author of Revelation, that entails the vast majority of people who have ever lived, including, perhaps surprisingly, a number of committed Christians.  The book repeatedly indicates that God is angry and that Christ seeks to avenge his own unjust death, not just on those who were responsible for it; his vengeance falls on the “inhabitants of earth.”  His followers too want revenge and are told to go out and get it.  The largest section of the narrative thus describes God and his “Lamb” inflicting horrible suffering on the planet; war, starvation, horrid disease, drought, earthquake, torture, and death.  The catastrophes end with the Battle of Armageddon, where Christ destroys all the armies of earth and calls on the scavengers of the sky to gorge themselves on their flesh.  This, then, is the climax of the history of earth.

But it is not the end of all things.  After that there will be a final judgment.  God’s faithful followers, his “slaves,” will be saved; everyone else who has ever lived will be brought back to life, judged for their wickedness, and then thrown, while still alive, into a lake of burning sulfur. Afterward, God will reward his obedient slaves by giving them a glorious new city of gold with gates of pearl.  They then, the followers of Jesus, will rule the earth forever.

That is indeed a happy ending for some people.  But it not because God loves them deeply – at least the book never says so.  The saved are God’s enslaved minions who do what he demands.  The love of God – for anyone or anything – is never mentioned in the book, not once.  The book is instead about the “wrath of God” — as stated repeatedly — as well as the wrath of Christ, and the violent vengeance wreaked on the inhabitants of earth leading up to the appearance of the glorious city from which God’s slaves will rule the planet.

At first glance this summary may seem slanted and implausible.  I will try to show, however, that it is exactly what the book itself repeatedly emphasizes.  Its troubling emphases have been seen by other modern readers, of course, including, rather unexpectedly, D. H. Lawrence, who described Revelation as the “dark side of Christianity.”  I could not agree more.

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