The Philosophy of the Socratic Gadfly

Are we all Kantians?

2012-01-25T20:27:00.000-06:00

At least in terms of major moral issues, it looks like we're Kantian rule-based decision makers.

That said, there's two caveats:
1. Just 32 people were studied;
2. It's based on fMRI evidence, which is, at its current temporal and spatial resolution, is but loosely connected to specific brain activities.

Mu to free will

2012-01-19T21:46:00.000-06:00

And to determinism, too.

Folr those of you not familiar with this word “mu,” I’m notbeing a cow with a French accent. Rather, I’m “unasking a question,” so tospeak. The word comes from Zen Buddhism.

If you’re read the magisterial “Gödel, Escher, Bach” byDouglas Hofstadter, of course, you ARE familiar with the word.

Anyway, by “unasking the question,” the word says that thepremises upon which a question is based are false.

And, in the case of free will VERSUS determinism, I believethat is very, very true.

First, per Dan Dennett, and many other students of GilbertRyle and others, there is no such thing as a little “Cartesian demon” in themiddle of our brains, choosing what thoughts in our minds rise to the level ofconsciousness. Rather, although Dennett at least, here as elsewhere,overextends Darwinian parallels, different subselves are competing, if youwill, for which one of them rises to the top. Arguably, more fragmentarysub-subselves are a level lower, but I’m not going to do a Hofstadter-typeeternal expansion! Of course, dissociative identity disorder is a case ofextreme lack of connection between these subselves.

In short, there’s no “Cartesian meaner” running theprojector of a movie theater.

However, Dennett doesn’t go to the logical next step, eventhough I know he full well knows it IS the logical next step.

If there is no Cartesian meaner generating consciousness,then there’s no Cartesian free willer generating consciousness-level free will.

Now, per David Hume living comfortably every day despite hisinability to “grasp” a “self,” we, too act “as if” we have conscious free will.But, that doesn’t mean we actually do, contra the Massimo Piglicccis of theworld.

But, just because we don’t have conscious free will, even ofa fairly weak sort of compatibilism, doesn’t mean that it’s all determinism,contra the Jerry Coynes of the world.

Rather, how “free” or how “determined” our actions are is acase-by-case basis issue, and it depends on which subself seems to be in thesaddle at the moment, and how determined or not a particular aspect of thatsubself is.

I wish we, both amateurs and professionals of thephilosophical world alike, could move beyond the “free will VERSUS determinism”issue. It has religious-type moral baggage, at least to a degree, on the free will side. More and more, it has scientism baggage on the determinism side. It’s so unproductive. But, I’m not holding my breath.

‘Healthy’ red wine data is bogus - Science, science and #scientism

2012-01-12T20:54:00.003-06:00

An AP story has the details:

A University of Connecticut researcher known for his work on the benefits of red wine to heart health falsified his data in more than 100 instances, and nearly a dozen scientific journals are being warned of the potential problems after publishing his studies in recent years, officials said Wednesday.

UConn officials said their internal review found 145 instances over seven years in which Dr. Dipak Das fabricated and falsified data, and the U.S. Office of Research Integrity has launched an independent investigation of his work.

There’s no indication of the motive, but the university just turned down nearly $1 million in federal grants related to the fake research.

Meanwhile, at least one resveratrol seller is scurrying to distance itself from these findings.

It's not surprising.

First, even legitimate medical claims have a much lower margin of error for false positives, or p-value, than do natural sciences research. 5 percen vs. 0.01 percent is huge indeed.

But, that's secondary to the huge nature of the fraud, and the second half of the header for this post.

Scientism is obvious to those who know about.

For those who don't, it's a bit of hyperrationalism that says almost everything in your, my and Horatio's universe is understandable by scientific investigation. Some Gnu Atheists engage in it, notably Sam Harris. Some "professional skeptics" at least skirt its edges.

Other "professional skeptics," along with some scientists, don't go that far but are bad enough.

For them, Science with a capital-S is put forth instead of science.

I use the capital-S Science for a Platonic Idea of science, if you will. The professional skeptics and some scientists claim that science is not only the best endeavor of the human mind, but that it's on a plane all by itself. In situations such as the above, though, they're stuck. Was Das never a scientist? Or, rather, a Scientist? Like a lapsed Christian, was he once a Scientist, only to become a heretic?

And here, though Science doesn't have exactly the same take on scientific research as does scientism, the end result ... idealizing science some way, and even as a quasi-belief system, is the same.

The reality? Science is no less a human endeavor and no more one, as far as ethics of its practitioners, than any other. Beyond the laughable but mild problems of Gnu-style atheists, we've seen Nazi and Japanese medical experimentation, Soviet Lamarckianism at the hands of Lysenko and much more.

The idea of rational, ethical, human behavior is one we hope for in fields outside of science, anyway. We shouldn't expect science to do better at it than we do other fields.

Some poetic thoughts on the "real" cowboy Texas

2012-01-07T21:17:00.000-06:00

LITTERED LANDSCAPES

Opportunisitic prickly pear

Prickly pear. Agave. Mountain cedar.

Patches of mesquite and the occasional crown of thorns.

Each sightly at times,

Picturesque, naturalistic.

But often, in the Texas Hill Country,

A sign of something else –

Man’s scarring of the soil,

Littered landscapes.

Opportunistic plants from dryland edges

Found their chance to invade

Overgrazed pasturelands, stony hills and cloudy draws.

When you eat that Texas beef on your plate,

The fuzzy-edged, grasping and extending fingers

Of the Chihuahuan Desert,

And its semidesert outliers,

Thank you.

When you admire an “authentic” Hill Country mock ranch

For artifice from drier lands

The desert flora thank you.

Yes, a few of the specimens were in place

Before Texas cattlemen, or “Old West” realtors

But not like this.

Beauty is in the eye – and the knowledge – of the beholder.

Jan.7, 2012

R. Joseph Hoffmann: frenemy of modern secular humanism

2012-01-06T20:16:00.002-06:00

R. Joseph Hoffmann, religious scholar, former chair of theCommittee for the Scientific Examination of Religion, and former associateeditor of the journal Free Inquiry is a good secular humanist in many ways.

He’s insightful enough about the realities of religion, andknowledgeable enough about the history of secular humanism, that Gnu Atheistscan’t refute most of his claims against their atheist evangelism and theconcepts on which it is built.

But, in a blog post like this, “Complacency and Excess,” heearns the title above: “frenemy of modern secular humanism.” I’m not a fan ofneologisims that are Internet or entertainment derived, but I make an exceptionin this case.

I’ve said before that Hoffmann’s brand of humanism is anEnlightenment-era humanism, one from the era when scientists were still“natural philosophers.” I don’t know if Free Inquiry founder Paul Kurtz wasquite as much that way as Hoffmann is, but Hoffmann is definitely that way.

For example, in a blog post of about a month or two ago, hewent beyond criticizing overblown claims some neuroscientists make for whattools like fMRIs of today show about brain functioning to, at least as I sawit, criticizing the entire idea of daring to make too much scientificinvestigation of what the mind is.

The “frenemy” part, and related concerns, starts here:

Let me stay with that last point for a minute–the beliefthat only science can answer all of our questions.

While it’s true that many Gnus believe that, not all do.More to the point of my previous critique, successors to fMRIs, CT scans,single-emission positron scans, etc., may just reveal much more of the brain’sworking, on a smaller scale, and in something nearer to “real time.”

Next comes a “huh” comment like this:

Can the numinous collapsing of all empirical religioustraditions into the word “religion” (equivalent to the equally mysticalcollapsing of all scientific inquiry into the word “science”) be justified onthe basis of a prior assumption–because that’s what it is–that gods don’texist?

I agree with the idea behind the first half of the quote.Liberal Episcopaleanism is nothing like the Church of Christ, for example. But,the part in parenthesis is a head-scratcher, at the least.

First of all, when did “collapsing” become “mystical” inthis instance? Second, is Hoffmann confounding “science” with “scientism”? Takeaway “mystical” and I’d agree with his parenthetical observation IF that is thecase. But, IF that is the case, then Hoffmann’s engaging in either sloppyverbiage or goalpost shifting.

And there's more that to come, if you'll look below the fold.

Next, there’s this:

(D)oes “subject matter” mean a certain kind of theology? Ordoes it mean (I think is often does in new atheist harangues) apologetics–whichis unknown in many religious traditions?

Well, it IS known outside of Christianity. Islam certainlyhas an apologetic tradition, albeit less than Christianity. Judaism does to adegree, also. Polytheistic traditions are less likely to do so, perhaps. But,even they do to a degree. And, as their face-to-face contact with Westernempiricism grows, their apologetics will, too.

Hoffmann knows his Greek, and knows that an “apologia” issimply a “defense.” Whether it’s a more “active” defense, as shown above all inAmerican Christianity, and somewhat in the rest of the Anglo-Saxon world, or amore passive defense like Buddhism’s moving target about what constitutes the“life force” that is reincarnated, well, that’s still apologetics.

But, let’s get to the next wrong quote:

Predictably, I am going to say that the besttheologians–those who still mistakenly think they have a “subject matter”–areaware of the sovereignty of science over theology in terms of explainingeverything from the cosmos to human origins and nature. And they have seen it thisway for a long time.

Nonsense.

I think everybody would call the Dalai Lama a theologian ina metaphorical sense, while allowing for him not believing in a personaldivinity, a personal theos (unless he believes in the old, old Tibetan pantheonof gods and demons).

Anyway, the Dalai Lama, allegedly a great ground-mover inreconciling science and religion, is on record as saying more than once ifscience presents evidence it strongly claims clearly shows the nonexistence ofeither karma or reincarnation, science goes out the door.

In the Christian world, I’ve no doubt the Archbishop ofCanterbury, for example, still believes in some sort of immaterial,metaphysical “soul” and, in the case of things like teratomas, brain-conjoinedSiamese twins, etc., rejects inferences from science about the nonexistence ofsouls, i.e., does the “bit of human” teratoma have a “bit of soul” inside thefull human “host”?

Next comes this fun one, where Hoffmann shows not much morepolitical insight than P.Z. Myers:

Atheists, as usual, weren’t quite sure what to do (about theIraq War) because while many hated George W. Bush they hated Islam more andso–like Christopher Hitchens–they backed the wars. They were, in a phrase,paralyzed and morally invisible.

Tosh, or bull, or, per an above comment of mine, sloppy.

Is he saying all atheists weren’t sure what to do, not justGnus? He’s very wrong there, as I can personally attest. And, speaking of P.Z.,I don’t think he ever supported the war. I don’t know about a Dan Dennett, aVic Stenger or other leading Gnus, other than to say most of them weren’tfocused on this, perhaps.

Finally, Hoffmann makes a simply unsubstantiated claim thata scholar of religion, or at least of the sociology of religion, shouldn’thave:

Complacency is what killed European Christianity. The fruitsand comforts of the industrial revolution killed it. Not education and science;not curiosity; not Darwin’s dangerous idea. Just the creeping rot of not reallygiving a damn about anything.

Nonsense. Western Europe had pretty high church attendancerates, fairly high “religiosity,” etc., until World War II. Nazism, theHolocaust, and the realization that in many countries, especially Catholicones, religious leaders were at least partially acquiescent in Nazism’s rise,is what killed Christianity in Europe as much as anything.

As for his paean to Stephen Jay Gould and his“nonoverlapping magisterial,” plenty of non-Gnu Atheists find it wanting. It’sreally just a science-based riff on the old “god of the gaps,” retitled as “religionof the gaps.” Again, for Hoffmann to not see that as being what it is leads meto raise an eyebrow.

And why, between this and his seeming Enlightenment-era gravitas, he is indeed a frenemy of modern secular humanism. And, why I hope that some of my online friends see that while he can be a useful A-list ally, he's not close to a fantastic one.

The worse angels of Steve Pinker's bloviating

2012-01-05T21:07:00.003-06:00

John Gray nails it; Pinker, as a libertarian with hard Pop Evolutionary Psychology leanings (Gray himself doesn't call Pinker out on that), kind of boxed himself in a corner in "Blank Slate" a decade ago. And, so, "The Better Angels of our Nature" starts out behind the curve.

If people's minds are largely a fixed template, it's hard to explain evolution to non-violence, or lesser violence, isn't it? Of course, Gray does note what I've noted: In the U.S., violence-making has been institutionalized due to the repressive policies of the War on Drugs. And, more interestingly, and more hypocritically, Pinker doesn't object, to the degree he looks at U.S. incarceration rates at all.

He also, as I've noted elsewhere, ignores World War I, WWII, the Holocaust (even using a 1930s European Jewish writer as his starting point) and more.

Timothy Snyder discusses other problems with and failings of the book. To consider violence as strategic, not just hydraulic, a result of societal pressures, means that H. sapiens has great capacity for cynical behavior, among other things. And, it ignores other loads of social science research.

One other brief observation on my part: While Pinker may be right that some people have a Rousellian, or "Gods Must Be Crazy," naivete toward the past, at the same time, he has a Pop Ev Psych "bloody red in tooth and claw" counter-naivete. Fact is that pre-agricultural humans were scavenger-gatherers long before they were hunter-gatherers, among other things that Pop Ev Psychers like to ignore. That issue alone has relevance to the issue of human violence and individual and social psychological malleability.

Book review: 'Cynics'

2012-01-05T11:47:00.000-06:00

Cynics by William Desmond

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a very good introduction to Capital-C Cynicism the philosophy, which is much different in many ways from cynicism the social behavior, though Cynics did at times act in a way that we might today call specifically cynical.

In the first semester of my college Philosophy 101 course, Cynics (and Skeptics) got short shrift among ancient Greek philosophies, not only compared to Socrates/Plato/Aristotle, but also compared to the Stoics, the Presocratics and to a degree, even the Epicureans.

Which is too bad, and was partially founded on wrong ideas.

First, the Cynics aren't sprung from the font of Socrates; the movement arguably has Presocratic roots, as Desmond shows. And, since Zeno the founder of Stoicism studied from a Cynic before going off on his own, Desmond notes the parallels between the two, and the likely direction of influence, an influence that continued as late as Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius both shows tints of Cynic stances.

Second, Desmond shows that Cynics were acting the way they were in what might be called an activist Westernized version of Zen. At their best, Cynics were encouraging a kind of activist detachment from conventional thoughts and mores, and even from all but the barest of physical needs.

That said, while some of their antics, like Diogenes telling Alexander to get out of his light, sound courages and enlightened, others, like Diogenes' masturbating in public, were as repulsive to his fellow Greeks as they are to readers today. But that was the intent.

Finally, Desmond addresses the "new search for the historical Jesus" types like John Dominic Crossan, who claim Jesus was the Jewish equivalent of a Cynic sage, and finds them largely wanting. It is true that Gadara of Legionary demoniac fame was an old center of Cynic thought, but the parallels between Jesus and a Iamblichus or similar are few and tendentious.

You'll learn all that and much more in this easy-to-read introduction to a sadly neglected and misunderstood school of philosophical thought.

View all my reviews

Sometimes the trouble does never happen

2012-01-04T22:19:00.002-06:00

Mark Twain has a famous quote, which has been botched a bit here and there, but which I believe is authoritatively rendered as, "I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them have never happened."

Well, I can personally relate to that.

I had a notice from the Postal Service in my box Tuesday night, to sign for a certified letter at the post office. My mind was racing.

Did my old apartment complex suddenly decide it wanted additional money from me somehow? (Even as I have two noncertified letters, one from the complex, one from the parent company, both of which came in the last week, on my table. But, I know what I signed, and signed for, when I moved.)

Did that traffic ticket I got lawyered out of two of three counts, but paid the remaining one, have the money order incorrect?

Something worse?

Well, it was from the Dallas County Sheriff's Office, which made me more nervous at first, since they're the folks who pulled me over in 2009.

What was it actually for?

I had a applied for a PR job, public information officer, with the office. I was being notified I didn't make the final cut - notified by certified letter.

I've played Twain's quote in my head many a time, but never before have I had this concrete of confirmation.

Poem: Too soon to tell

2012-01-03T22:53:00.000-06:00

TOO SOON TO TELL

A new job.

New bosses. New responsibilities.

Not-so-new computers.

Anger. Antsiness. Impatience. Control issues.

Was this the right decision?

Did I choose wisely in coming here?

Per Zhou Enlai,

When he was asked about the success

Of the French Revolution:

“It’s too soon to tell.”

It’s too soon to tell.

My mind will be a jumble

And even a bit shell-shocked

For more than a month.

Will weekend visits to Austin help?

To the degree they do,will they be worth the price?

It’s too soon to tell.

Was it just fear of change?

Or was my intuition correctly ringing out

A blaze of three alarms or more?

Should I have suffered

Through yet more feelings of being trapped,

Through low-grade ongoing anxieties,

Rather than the potential of high-voltage unknowns?

It’s too soon to tell.

When I left Dallas for Odessa,

The first domino of moving to fall in this chain,

After two months of unemployment,

Anxious over job hunting,

And recognizing the severity of the recession,

Yet loath to move

And depressed as I drove across the Permian,

Was it good or bad?

It’s too soon to tell.

Good and bad are relative, and utilitarian;

I did nothing “wrong” any of these times.

But I made decisions

In uncertainty, without knowing even

Rough percentages on outcomes.

And, so, in that utilitarian sense,

As to whether these choices were good or bad?

It’s too soon to tell.

December 26, 1963 – was it good or bad?

It’s too soon to tell.

Jan. 3,2012

A new mindset

2012-01-01T19:32:00.000-06:00

Shortly after I moved to Odessa, Texas in 2009, the sports editor at the paper recommended a Thai restaurant as a good eating place. As it turns out, it was next door to my apartment complex there.

Well, I never went there. And, my last night in Odessa, as I walked around the complex, I was glad.

And, there's a story behind that.

More than a decade ago, in southeastern New Mexico, my office manager was an interesting, and generally good-at-heart person. Her religious/philosophical/psychological beliefs were a mix of Joyce Meyer's riff on the success gospel and a vaguely Christian/New Age mashup of "things are meant to happen."

She wanted out of the city, and definitely to a better position. And she was smart enough.

That said, she sometimes said words to the effect of, "I probably haven't gotten out of here because I haven't done X."

Well, for various reasons, those words stuck in my mind after I was fired at that newspaper and moved on to a new newspaper job, new city. Those reasons included, among others, some major personal changes that led me to becoming acquainted with a 12-step group, attempting some sort of relationship with this woman and other things, at a time when my mind was in turmoil. I thought, at times, maybe I haven't left here yet because I haven't "done X."

Well, I eventually got moved to metropolitan Dallas, where there are a million X-es to do. After my newspaper in our suburban chain closed, I was trying to get out of my rural East Texas newspaper job after that as soon as possible. But, I didn't have that mindset, nor did I even think about it.

Nor did I after I got back to Dallas. Then, the entire chain closed.

And, I eventually wound up in Bush-ville.

And, as I walked past that Thai restaurant, I didn't think about not having gone there. I did think about how that old "thing must happen for a reason" and related mindset was pretty well purged.

I say this not idly, but as a serious issue. First, the 12-step culture can get a strong grip on the psyches of many a person early in sobriety. I tried giving a New Age/Unity-type Christianity believe system a whirl for about two full years, in large part due to that. I eventually went back to my previous secular self, but, not every tendril of the Step-world had been eradicated.

And now? "Eradicated" isn't the right word. Rather, such thoughts have, like Jesus' seed sown on rocks, eventually run out of nourishment. New and different, but still open-minded, thought has been nourished instead, or so I hope.

And, that's my New Year's resolution for myself and wish for you readers: A new mindset.

Skeptical about "received wisdom" in the best way, skeptical about myself in the best way, and open to new growth in the best way.

Happy New Year.

#Skeptic fail: #Dunning, #Shermer have blocked me at Skepticblog

2011-12-31T21:39:00.001-06:00

Looks like I can post about a bit of New Year's Eve "skeptic" (as opposed to actual skeptics) fireworks and narrow-mindedness.

I have apparently been blacklisted from posting comments at SkepticBlog, one of the allegedly top blogs for alleged skeptics. Anyway, that's what WordPress tells me when I try to post comments there.

Apparently, my last comment on libertarian and selective skeptic Brian Dunning's latest blog post, trying to poo-poo the idea that biopiracy exists (sorry, no links if you're going to blacklist me), including a snarky aside about Dunning's upcoming court date on civil and criminal fraud allegations, was too much.

I will, speaking of that, give you this link though, to a previous blog post of mine about Dunning's legal woes and their connection to his libertarianism and selective skepticism. I'll also give you this link to a blog post of mine about how I apparently had a comment on another post of Dunning's deleted a couple of months ago.

That said, Dunning's not the sole proprietor of the blog. In fact, it's theoretically headed by his fellow libertarian and selective skeptic, Michael Shermer, editor-in-chief of Skeptic magazine. So, any "block" decision ultimately falls

And, just as Gnu Atheists are a reason I don't primarily identify myself as an atheist, libertarian selective skeptics like Shermer, Dunning, magicians Penn/Teller and many others who deliberately conflate libertarianism and skepticism are another reason.

But, there's yet another reason.

More generally reasonable skeptics, like Daniel Loxton, have too narrow a definition of skepticism.

On this blog, I identify myself as a skeptical left-liberal (in U.S. terms, at least, I'm a left-liberal). That is, I apply skepticism to my own political stances and views. But, folks like Loxton don't want to apply skepticism to politics, or even too much to psychology or sociology, instead focusing on claims testable within the "harder" natural sciences only.

And, in addition to that, folks like Loxton are generally thinly informed on the history of Skepticism the philosophy. Were this not the case, and they had a deeper grounding in Philosophy 101, they wouldn't have such a narrow view of what "skepticism" is or should be.

That said, that's one blog to scratch off my reading list again. I went back there regularly about two years ago because friend Leo Lincourt said Shermer was posting less in the way of libertarian stuff there.

Well, he started again, and Dunning made up for that in spades.

And, I didn't think I'd have anything to blog about more than a trip to Austin (nothing big) or Iowa caucus thoughts

Moved ... and grateful

2011-12-23T19:42:00.002-06:00

I am at a Starbucks in Austin. Took my laptop, equipped with wi-fi antenna (part of why I bought it years ago) when I drove into Cedar Park, suburban Austin, to turn in my rental truck, not knowing if I would get back to the Starbucks in Marble Falls before it closed tonight, not having checked hours before I left there.

That said, I'm grateful for a Starbucks there. I'm grateful that, on the phone connection, Verizon got out this afternoon, said it had fixed what was outside, and contacted my apartment complex to do what it needed to do inside. So, between high-speed at work, wi-fi at Starbucks, and good old dial-up at home, assuming it's fixed by early next week, I'll be fine on Internet.

I'm grateful for not only Whole Foods but the even better Central Market (a Texas-only chain) in Austin. I've stocked up on good coffee, great dehydrated split pea soup, black bean stew and curry lentil stew mixes, three types of curry powder, charsalt-type dry hickory smoke flavor, some sparkling waters, some high-ginger ginger ale and such. (And, the bulk food stuff I mentioned is actually relatively inexpensive.) Oh, and I had to get some non-inexpensive cheese, an indulgence of mine.

Halfway between Marble Falls and Cedar Park, northwest suburban Austin, is the Balcones National Wildlife Refuge. So, you can guess where I will do some hiking! The road winds a bit, in a good sense, following Texas' Colorado River through hills, with a mix of red oaks, white oaks, live oaks and cedars (could get rid of a few of those!).

I have tuned in Austin's 24-hour classical music station. I've already visited the Austin Symphony website. The Austin Classical Guitar Society, I knew about years ago.

I am grateful; grateful enough to start tearing up when I got in. I don't have to make a lot of money in life, if I can have amenities like this.

Marble Falls is not your typical small town, either. There's old Texas rancher money and at least reasonable-money retirees there. Not many towns of 7,000 have a Home Depot and a Lowe's. And two Thai restaurants, as I discovered today. So, even without going into Austin, I think life will be at least OK if not better there.

I'm grateful the job came open and other things, to make this possible.

Finally, I am grateful for the people on this list, some of whom go beyond acquaintances to friends, whether I've met you in person or not.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Splendid Saturnalia and best of the new year to everyone.

Kyoto carbon poetry

2011-12-21T01:31:00.000-06:00

A comment from a friend on Google+, after he posted a haiku, led me to ask myself if I had a copy of this 1998 Kyoto treaty talks op-ed that I wrote all in haiku. And, I did. And yes, what follows was an actual op-ed column. (Small weekly paper, where I was publisher, and nobody to say 'You can't do that.')

Clinton seeks freer trade
With Chilean producers
Free wine, grapes, and fruit

Gephardt says "Never"
Dreaming Presidential dreams
Gore stands idly by

Newt and his minions
Will swap taxes for tariffs
Clinton: "See me next year"

He's to Kyoto
To cut back greenhouse gas growth
Subtle irony

Speaking, not doing
More global warming threatens
With his ev'ry word

Business USA
Claims the climate data is
Still insufficient

They preach doom and gloom
For our proud, strong economy
From mandated change

Clinton will stand and speak
To please Japan, Europe, home
And yet fall far short

Back in Washington
Ere his Orient Express
Reno had good news

Investigation
Of campaign violations
Is terminated

Clinton breathes easy
As does loyal Gore besides
But is it over

On the back benches
Hot Republican firebreathers
Demand impeachment

The outside person
Knows all hands are money-green
Has cynic disgust

Looking forward to Bob Carroll's new book

2011-12-11T19:41:00.001-06:00

Carroll, the author of "Skeptic's Dictionary," both a basic go-to guide for skeptical thinking as a book AND a continually updated website of skeptical analysis and critique of claims in religion and theology, philosophy, alternative medicine, fallacious thinking and more, was kind enough to send me an electronic draft copy of his latest work, "Unnatural Acts: Critical Thinking, Skepticism and Science Exposed."

I'm near the end of this book, which explains and documents how and why skeptical, critical thinking activities are "unnatural acts."

Here's a selection from the start of Chapter 8, "The Fallacy-Driven Life":

Fallacies are errors in reasoning.They drive the thought-engine of most people most of the time. We did notevolve to seek truth, beauty, and goodness. We evolved to survive and mate.Everything else is window dressing, including our so-called noble reason.Shakespeare may have mesmerized audiences with his lines:

What a piece of work is a man!

How noblein reason! How infinite in faculty!

In formand moving how express and admirable!

In actionhow like an angel!

Inapprehension how like a god!

The beautyof the world! The paragon of animals!

In fact, man is an irrationalanimal, driven by his needs, fears, and wants, and following logic or reasononly if it suits him. Our natural way of thinking, of making judgments, ofidentifying causal connections is to jump to conclusions on flimsy evidence.Critical thinking is unnatural. Following our feelings and emotions is morelikely to motivate our behavior than well-reasoned arguments. We are as likelyto be persuaded by irrelevant appeals as by relevant ones, and are more likelyto produce slanted, selective, biased, one-sided, incomplete arguments thanwell-reasoned, fair-minded, accurate, complete arguments. We make assumptionsthat aren’t warranted, create straw man arguments out of fragments of opposingviewpoints, offer up false dilemmas, and draw conclusions hastily. It’s amazingwe’ve made so much progress!

Carroll, from the point of a professional philosopher and skeptic, takes largely the same view of human nature as behavioral psychologists and economists such as Daniel Kahnemann and Amos Tversky.

But, Carroll gets his terminology right. I can't mention the number of times I have pointed out that a global warming denier's claims should be pulled under the credibility microscope because he works for a place like the far-right think tank, the Heartland Institute. He notes, on that:

Thead hominem fallacy is often confused with the legitimate provision of evidencethat a person is not to be trusted. Calling into question the reliability of awitness is relevant when the issue is whether to trust the witness. ... Good refutations of arguments try to underminethe accuracy, relevance, fairness, completeness, and sufficiency of reasonsgiven to support a conclusion. ... The fallacy in the ad hominem argument is due to the irrelevant nature of the appeal made, not to its falsity.

Regardless of one's political stripe, whether, libertarian, conservative, liberal or left-liberal, Carroll exhorts us to be more critical in our thinking about political events, scientific claims, sociological and psychological pronouncements and more.

One "None" doesn't speak for all "apatheists"

2011-12-10T22:55:00.001-06:00

An apatheist is the semi-technical term for someone too apathetic to care about atheism or theism.

A common nontechnical phrase is "nones" in vernacular sociological discourse.

Not being a Gnu Atheist, I therefore looked forward to a New York Times column written by a None.

However, to put it bluntly, Eric Weiner is NOT a "None." Selections from the column clearly show that:

We Nones may not believe in God, but we hope to one day. We have a dog in this hunt.

Really? Who's the "we" you claim to represent by such a blanket statement.

Nones don’t get hung up on whether a religion is “true” or not, and instead subscribe to William James’s maxim that “truth is what works.”

Again, since Nones by definition have no religion, many of them don't even have that much focus on religion.

God is not an exclamation point, though. He is, at his best, a semicolon, connecting people, and generating what Aldous Huxley called “human grace.”

So, you're actually a theist of sorts, of the Paul Tillich "ground of being" school of Protestant theology that still has antirational, anti-analytic-philosophy, anti-linguistic roots at places like Harvard Divinity School.

And, if those snippets aren't stupid and barf-inducing enough, the closing paragraph certainly is:

We need a Steve Jobs of religion. Someone (or ones) who can invent not a new religion but, rather, a new way of being religious. Like Mr. Jobs’s creations, this new way would be straightforward and unencumbered and absolutely intuitive. Most important, it would be highly interactive. I imagine a religious space that celebrates doubt, encourages experimentation and allows one to utter the word God without embarrassment. A religious operating system for the Nones among us. And for all of us.

No, honest religious seekers don't need a capitalist mass marketer as the person to lead them down the road of "wherever." That said, I don't think Eric Weiner would know intellectual honesty if it bit him in the ass.

But, knowing what he's written and reported before, he exemplifies the Peter Principle in action at public radio's Nice Polite Republicans.

And, at times like this, the anger that Gnus have at people who claim to be intellectuals is understandable.

Critiquing the "top 50 atheists"

2011-12-10T01:14:00.001-06:00

Via a Facebook friend, I saw this list of 50 top atheists, listed in part for influence and "seriousness." Comments of a critical nature (meant in the journalistic sense) are hereby offered about a few of them, based on their numeric ranking in the list. In some cases, my comment is a critique of the website more than the person

50. David Silverman. Until American Atheists' president officially disclaims its Muslim-bashing tendencies, he tars a lot of the Gnu Atheist movement. I'll pass on liking him.
46. P.Z. Myers. Isn't it a bit ego-deflating to only be No. 46, P.Z.?
43. Michael Newdow. He might have had a case on general principles, but he had a case for provoking revulsion on general principles by exploiting a child. Sue over an invocation at a city council meeting rather than the Pledge of Allegiance at your daughter's school, especially when you're a divorced parent who isn't primary custodian.
42. Greta Christina. Just.No. Were I Chris Hitchens, you'd get a boatload of snark of various sorts, including, were I Snitchens, some of it gender-based. But, I'm not Hitchens, for which I'm thankful.
41. Ophelia Benson. Hypocrite, for a reason which I'll show by quoting from her blurb on the website: "(B)est known for editing the atheist web site Butterflies and Wheels (the title refers to Alexander Pope’s counsel against rhetorical overkill, “Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?”)." This Gnu has broken plenty a butterfly in the name of Gnu Atheism.
30. Ray Kurzweil. Wrong. Not him (though he IS wrong), but the website, which says: "(H)is ideas are the logical extension of premises most atheists share." Totally untrue statement. Most atheists don't share most of his ideas and there's no logical extension from them to him, either.
26. Jennifer Michael Hecht. She teaches WRITING at Columbia? Her book "Doubt" has a number of its vs it's errors and other grammatical problems. The atheist Peter Principle at play. I did learn about Eastern "doubt" from her book, but, it could have been better in other ways, too.
24. Jerry Coyne. Opposed on general Gnu grounds.
23. Robert Wright. A one-trick pony as an author; "The Evolution of God" would have been bad enough without him trying to shoehorn other ideas inside that of his non-zero-sum games theory.
22. Richard Carrier. Deserves kudos as being the probable leader in the latest "nonhistoricity of Jesus" studies. I await his new book.

20. Steve Pinker. Pop Ev Psycher. And, I think his influence as an atheist is overrated by this website's ranking.
15. David Sloane Wilson. Someday, more group selection ideas will get better reception. He's a creative thinker.
13. Sam Harris. Just.Shoot.Me. But, first, lock him in a room with a couple of Iranian ayatollahs or something.
10. Christopher Hitchens. I've said plenty about him, the good, the bad and the ugly, elsewhere.
8. Steven Weinberg. A salute for an existentialist atheist outlook on life.
5. Dan Dennett. Didn't you used to be insightful, before you started recycling all your own shit? Daniel Wegner and others have WAY surpassed you in theorizing about consciousness. And, evolution is NOT algorithmic.
2. Kai Nielsen. A grand old man of modern atheism.
1. Peter Singer. WTF? He may be the world's most influential animal rights activist; he is NOT the most influential or most important atheist. Not even close.

Interesting that this was posted on a website for evaluating college choices. I'd be skeptical of some of their recommendations there, going by this.

Are atheists more charitable? Maybe, maybe not

2011-11-26T23:41:00.001-06:00

I was kind of sorry to see Skeptic's Dictionary author/editor Bob Carroll to post a link to a site that made that claim on less-than-rigorous evidence.

Atheists, non-believers, secular humanists, skeptics—the whole gamut of the godless have emerged in recent years as inarguably the most generous benefactors on the globe.

Inarguable, eh? It would be one thing, and possibly bad enough, to say that was an arguable claim. But, to say it's inarguable is even worse. The site goes on.

The current most charitable individuals in the United States, based on “Estimated Lifetime Giving,” are:
1) Warren Buffett (atheist, donated $40.785 billion to “health, education, humanitarian causes”)2) Bill & Melinda Gates (atheists, donated $27.602 billion to “global health and development, education”) 3) George Soros (atheist, donated $6.936 billion to “open and democratic societies”)
A century ago, one of the USA’s leading philanthropists was Andrew Carnegie, atheist.

Sorry, but, this sounds like cherry-picking. Picking out the top couple of individuals, and noting their religious belief, is different than general research polling. Gates and Buffett are the two richest people in America, as well as being atheists. (If they are. Many "famous atheist" websites either don't have them or list them as agnostic.) Beyond that, and also per the post, there are relatively few "secular" aid charities, so a place like Kiva will likely attract a higher concentration of secularists. It's no big deal for secularists to outraise Christians there. Similar might be true at a place like The Heifer Project.

Arthur Brooks, at Hoover, claims the religious are more charitable even to non-religious charities. However, Ilya Somin at the Volokh Conspiracy shoots down his methodology.

Some people like Brooks claim that the religious invest more time in charities, too. Well, religious, or non-religious but moral-based charities (like pro-life groups) expect that. Certainly, explicitly religious groups do.

This all said, the little I can find on this question to "settle" it one way or the other.

Of course, that gets back to the link Bob Carroll posted. Since there is little evidence one way or the other, it's an unsupported claim.

The chimera: More refutation of the existence of a soul

2011-11-21T17:30:00.000-06:00

Humans, though less often and less mixedly than marmosets, have "chimeric" offspring. A bit of a twin's body material, from embryonic stage, may be in your body. That's especially true since uterine research show that many human "singleton" births, probably around one-quarter, started as twin conceptions, and one embryo was partially absorbed by the other.

So, if, as many conservative Christians claim, a soul begins at conception, what happens to it at the time of a chimeric absorption? While I'm not a Gnu Atheist or a village idiot atheist, issues like this must be raised, not just of fundamentalist and conservative evangelical Christians, but of all Christians, all Jews, all Muslims, and all metaphysical dualists in general.

Period.

Atheism: What I lost

2011-11-19T14:47:00.001-06:00

A while back, on Facebook, or some blog, or something, there was a discussion thread, for those of us who weren't "born atheist," about what we lost.

Well, news from my sister underscored that today. My brother-in-law is going to a new congregation, as interim pastor with likely move to permanent. She said his total compensation package will be around $100K. I assume that includes salary, denominational pension, health care, parsonage or housing allowance, car allowance and probably a few other things. With allowances for all of that, it's still got to be a base salary of more than $50K in a "flyover" part of Texas, a large town/small city place. (And, this is a mainline Protestant denomination, not a stand-alone church.)

As a divinity school grad myself who just couldn't do it, that's what I lost, compared to my lower-paying, lower-perking by far newspaper reporter/editor's salary.

Envious? Yes, a bit. But more angry at other things.

I'm angry at the dad who pushed all of his kids to some degree toward church-work careers. I'm angry at the mom who said that's why she was divorcing him, but didn't fight for primary physical custody of me. I'm angry at the career interest neglect by both parents, Ward/June Cleaver stereotypes aside. I'm angry at parts ignorant of, or ignoring of, sexual abuse under their roof. I'm angry at the emotional and physical abuse of a dad and the emotional neglect and sexual manipulation of a mom. I'm angry at how "passive" this all left me as an adolescent and young adult.

That's why, as I've blogged before, I reject "no regrets about life" claims as bordering on pop psychology. But, I made my decision, as I blogged about in a series of posts, starting here. (To me, regrets are like old scars. I try not to pick at them, but I know that if they're deep enough, while they fade, they will never disappear. And, they have value for reminding me of the physical wounds that caused them, perhaps, just as it is with regrets.)

That said, there are many hypocrites in pulpits, whether atheist or otherwise. Even if they're not making $100K a year as a total package, they're still making decent money. Even if they're from a Baptist sort of hire-and-hire denomination or tradition, they still have pretty good job security. If, for whatever reasons, whether philosophical/metaphysical, more narrowly doctrinal or other reasons, if they're clinging to a job for job's sake when it's supposed to be more than a job, they're hypocrites.

They not only lose some self-respect, as they hang on to their jobs for money, they lose some of their self-image. If you're a hypocritical minister in a more conservative denomination, how do you counsel someone coming out of the closet? What do you say when someone asks you about gay issues? It was that, not just my changing belief/philosophy system, that led me to reject a guaranteed job (the Lutheran structure is similar to Catholics, not Baptists, in terms of job security) and more.

That said, philosophical/metaphysical issues can be hypocrisy producers. What do you say to the would-be mother who miscarried a three-month-old fetus if you don't believe in traditional ideas of "souls"? Ditto, as to what do you say to the son or daughter of a late-stage Alzheimer's parent? How do you tackle assisted suicide in general?

Religious obituary lines to shake your head over

2011-11-16T18:21:00.000-06:00

Working at a newspaper, I finally decided the only way this secularist could deal with it was to do a running blog post on the most ... to do a word mash-up ... insipidly tragic ones.

From an obit for a 1-year-old: "Returned to Jesus' arms." Why did Jesus let him escape for a year in the first place?

Similar, for an elderly person: "Lifted into the Lord's hands." Who lifted her out?

Free will - a "god of the gaps" parallel?

2011-11-13T23:01:00.001-06:00

Is "free will," at least as "compatibilists" generally strive to define (and save) it, a philosophical equivalent of "a god of the gaps"? I say the answer is an arguable yes.

Philosophy professor Eddy Nahmias is the latest to try to defend some neo-traditionalist, if you will, version of free will.

Of course, when you start with a straw man howler like this, it's easy for you to get called "a free willer of the gaps":

When (neuroscientist Patrick) Haggard concludes that we do not have free will “in the sense we think,” he reveals how this conclusion depends on a particular definition of free will. Scientists’ arguments that free will is an illusion typically begin by assuming that free will, by definition, requires an immaterial soul or non-physical mind, and they take neuroscience to provide evidence that our minds are physical.

First, not all neuroscientists make that assumption. And, philosophers like the Daniel Wegner whom you linked at the start of the column definitely don't link free will, or its absence, to dualism, or its lack.

Then, there's this:

Many philosophers, including me, understand free will as a set of capacities for imagining future courses of action, deliberating about one’s reasons for choosing them, planning one’s actions in light of this deliberation and controlling actions in the face of competing desires. We act of our own free will to the extent that we have the opportunity to exercise these capacities, without unreasonable external or internal pressure. We are responsible for our actions roughly to the extent that we possess these capacities and we have opportunities to exercise them.These capacities for conscious deliberation, rational thinking and self-control are not magical abilities.

Well, if you're not going to wrestle with what consciousness is, let alone what standing free will at the level of consciousness has in the absence of a Cartesian theater, you may have a problem. Nahmias does eventually get around to tacking Benjamin Libet and the famous 200-millisecond gap, but only to wave it away:

First of all, it does not show that a decision has been made before people are aware of having made it. It simply finds discernible patterns of neural activity that precede decisions. If we assume that conscious decisions have neural correlates, then we should expect to find early signs of those correlates “ramping up” to the moment of consciousness.

Ahh, this is a petard hoister. It's all in how you define "decisions" as well as "free will," isn't it? Under the Dan Dennett multiple drafts model, this is rather the subconscious impulse that "wins out" to the level of consciousness.

Finally, to riff on Samuel Johnson, Nahmias enters into the last refuge of a free-will philosophy scoundrel: He makes the "fatal" is-ought error.

We need conscious deliberation to make a difference when it matters — when we have important decisions and plans to make.

Need? As in "ought to have"? Ooops.

Some other thoughts from Wikipedia on free will, including reference to Haggard, here.

That said, I think it IS possible to talk about free will in some way, but only in a way that includes subselves and subconscious processes.

UPDATE, Nov. 26: Massimo Pigliucci actually defends Nahmias, claiming he "provides a nuanced and intelligent brief discussion of the topic." Massimo is often thought-provoking and never dumb, but he's just off base on this one. (In the same post, he says that way too much is read into Libet. I'll split the difference and say that somewhat too much may be read into him, and that what Libet's experiments study are somewhat imprecise. But, to claim he's pretty much irrelevant to discussions of free will is a stretch, at the least.)

UPDATE, Nov. 27: Add this excellent essay to your reading. From a neuroscience perspective, it argues that brain systems that evolved to detect actual (or apparent) "intentionality" are a focal point for the rise of an illusion of "self." And, here's the journal essay that influenced that blog essay.

This ties in with Dan Dennett's "heterophenomenology." We assume "selves" in others because of this 'intentionality set" that appears to be built into our brains. But, Dennett doesn't quite note this is a two-way street. Per modern social psychologists, the "self," or what we call a "self" for ourselves, is in part a construct based on our interaction with others. That includes them seeing, and noting, seeming "intentionality" in ourselves.

So, even if there isn't a unitary self, not only do we act "as if" there is, we find it hard not to do so because of this outside conditioning as well as our own brain's mindset.

Now, a Buddhist meditation adept, or a devotee of deep self-hypnosis, might be able to transcend that to some degree. But (and this is why I only half-jokingly say "the only good Buddhist is a dead Buddhist") the person who recognizes, and more than just intellectually understands, that "self" is to some degree an illusion is generally unable to hold on to that idea. The Zen monk rejoins the rest of the monastery; the hypnosis adept walks out the door and into the larger world. And "conventional" ideas of self get reinforced again.

Do animals have souls?

2011-10-10T22:54:00.001-05:00

The headline is facetious, of course. I'm a materialist, a philosophical as well as methodological naturalist.

But, in reference to ontological dualists, there's more good reason to be facetious.

Dogs and cats, even, and certainly other primates, might experience out of body experiences and near death experiences? Very interesting, and, neuroscience argues, likely true. Now the headline was fluff; dogs and cats, at least, surely don't have anything close to what we call "spiritual experiences."

But, a chimpanzee dancing himself or herself into a trance at the base of a waterfall? That's a different thing.

That said, of course, it doesn't have a soul, either.

Gnu vs. "thoughtful" atheism - a bit of history

2011-09-23T23:42:00.004-05:00

First, about that title.

Rather than have Gnu Atheists label (and as a pejorative, to boot) people like me as "accommodationist," to the degree I identify myself as an atheist at various times and in various venues and discussions, I thought, while not label myself, if a label is sometimes needed?

And, calling myself a "thoughtful atheist"? If you infer that I'm implying something about Gnu Atheists, well, there's nothing I can do about your inferences.

Now, the history. I believe that the history of atheist (in the western, naturalistic sense, not Theravada Buddhist sense) divisions can be traced back about 250 years to interactions between David Hume and the Baron D'Holbach during Hume's sojourn in France. (Wikipedia links for both.)

In its Hume entry, though I believe it overstates things a bit, we see this noted:

It is likely that Hume was skeptical both about religious belief (at least as demanded by the religious organisations of his time) and of the complete atheism promoted by such contemporaries as Baron d'Holbach. Russell (2008) suggests that perhaps Hume's position is best characterised by the term "irreligion". O'Connor (2001, p19) writes that Hume "did not believe in the God of standard theism. ... but he did not rule out all concepts of deity". Also, "ambiguity suited his purposes, and this creates difficulty in definitively pinning down his final position on religion".

I would at least agree with Russell, but think that O'Connor overstates that. Beyond that, some recent scholarship argues that "A Treatise on Human Nature" was a carefully crafted, carefully couched/disguised argument for atheism.

Meanwhile, per his entry, even many of the French philosophes found d'Holbach too radical and too acerbic. Again, no further comment, but what others do with inferences, I can't control.

Beyond style, I think Hume found d'Holbach too black-and-white in his thinking in general, as well as being, per Dan Dennett, a bit of a "greedy reductionist." Were d'Holbach around today, we'd maybe accuse him of scientism. And d'Holbach probably would have called Hume, the most thoughtful of people, an "accommodationist."

Anyway, this "tension," if you will, is nothing new.

But, for those of us who are nuanced, who are thoughtful .. we have a secular "patron saint." Fittingly, of course, we recently marked the 300th anniversary of Hume's birth.

Celebrate. Be ... reasonable. But not rationalistic!

Another Gnu Atheist, another lie about "growth"

2011-09-21T17:41:00.000-05:00

It's getting kind of tiresome, Gnu Atheists (whether explicitly self-identifed as such or not) who claim there's an "atheist growth explosion" in this U.S. When there's not.

The latest? Some B-ranker named Greg Paul at the Washington Post freelance forum, who wayyyy gets it wrong. Atheism is not growing. Period. That said, looking at the author's Wiki page, which I will not link, he seems disposed to overblown claims. The author doesn't explicitly call himself a "Gnu" there, but it wouldn't surprise me. In the column, he also repeats the Gnu canard that atheism, or "democratic atheism," as he notes (trying to cut Stalin and Mao out of the loop) are morally superior to theism. Since we don't have that long a time frame for democratic atheism, there's not much of the "scientific proof" that he claims, first. He also distorts information from Gallup polls, ignores the part in the Harris polls that undercuts him and more.

For someone who touts science in the same breath with "democratic atheism," he's got a lot of chutzpah.

Reality? As I've blogged before, the comprehensive 2008 ARIS survey does show a strong growth in the "irreligious," but they include people "spiritual but not religious," Christians tired of organized denominations, neopagans, New Agers and many others who either believe in one or more gods, or if technically atheist (some New Agers and Buddhists fit there) nonetheless have anti-naturalistic metaphysical beliefs.

‘Critical’ Xns not any more rational than fundys?

2011-09-17T23:30:00.000-05:00

Or at the least, they can be just as determined in theirhabits and depth of motivated reasoning, perhaps.

In one particular case, I know that’s true.

In an extended debate on Google Plus with a new HarvardDivinity School student, I wound up learning a number of things along that line.

I started the thread with this post:

If God wants us to be unselfish and think of others first,then why does he want us to think above him above everyone else?

I explained that this was influenced by an actual religioncolumn by a conservative, mainline Protestant (Lutheran) but nonfundamentalistminister.

Eventually, Mr. Harvard Div responded:

When you base your joke on an if thatpresumes the Christian God, you leave the question of whether God existsbehind. You enter a world that assumes such a God exists.

So, thing No. 1 I learned?

This person thinks a rhetorical device use of “if” thinksthat I’m actually committed to the propositional statement that follows the “if.”Either he’s clueless about use of rhetoric, or he’s willing to distort myrhetorical stance that much that he’s willing to engage in intellectualdishonesty. Or a bit of both.

Anyway, he then goes on to make a claim I expected more froma conservative, non-critical-scholarship Christian.

So you seriously think that, granting acreator of everything, literally an author of everything, that one couldeffectively do good without loving the author?-- and further you believe thatso strongly that you think it's not even a passably good argument?

I responded in two ways, saying, basically, Iand many other secularists feel that way, and we have nearly 2,500 years of philosophicalhistory behind us.

Plato raised this issue 2500 years ago in theEuthyphro – are things good because god(s) say(s) so, or is/are god(s) goodbecause they follow an order of goodness outside it/them? Plato saw way backthen that one cannot logically anchor morality on the existence of adivinity. I know many Christian apologists claim he presents a false dilemma, but theircounterarguments are weak. … The answer to your question, not just from me, butfrom many secularists of all sorts of nametags ... is YES. Yes, I believe onecan do good without loving a creator, and that logically, claiming a creator isnecessary is horribly illogical.

By this point, I wasn’t expecting him toaccept Plato’s argument. And he didn’t, with this response:

Plato's gods in the Euthyphro are not allthat similar to the Christian God which you were here critiquing, and Christianthinkers have described their God largely in terms that avoid the Euthyphrodilemma.

To which, and other things, I said,basically, “that’s your perception.” It wasn’t the first time in the threadwhere he made a statement of his opinion, IMO, assuming it was right.

Beyond that, the Wiki article on theEuthyphro dilemma, linked above, directly addresses his absurd claim that Plato’sthought can’t apply to the Christian god.

The dilemma can be modified to apply to philosophicaltheism, where it is still the object of theological and philosophicaldiscussion, largely within the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic traditions. As Leibnizpresents this version of the dilemma: "It is generally agreed thatwhatever God wills is good and just. But there remains the question whether itis good and just because God wills it or whether God wills it because it isgood and just; in other words, whether justice and goodness are arbitrary orwhether they belong to the necessary and eternal truths about the nature ofthings."

The fact that hordes of Christian, Jewish and Islamic philosophersworried about it shows they damn well knew just how much it applies.

And, the disingenuousness of their response shows that, too.Still from the Wiki article:

Anselm scholar Katherin A. Rogers observes, manycontemporary philosophers of religion suppose that there are true propositionswhich exist as platonic abstracta independently of God.Among these are propositions constituting a moral order, to which God mustconform in order to be good.Classical Judaeo-Christian theism, however, rejects such aview as inconsistent with God's omnipotence, which requires that all that thereis is God and what he has made."The classical tradition," Rogers notes, "also steers clear ofthe other horn of the Euthyphro dilemma, divine command theory."From a classical theistic perspective, therefore, the Euthyphro dilemma isfalse. As Rogers puts it, "Anselm, like Augustine before him and Aquinaslater, rejects both horns of the Euthyphro dilemma. God neither conforms to norinvents the moral order. Rather His very nature is the standard for value.”

The last two sentences, per the analytic philosophy thatsaid Harvard Div student showed elsewhere he (for good reasons, I guess, fromhis point of view) doesn’t like, are basically meaningless. The last sentence,if anything, accepts the first “horn” of the dilemma, that things are good onlybecause (a) god says they are.

The second-last sentence, combined with it, ifit came out of Paul Tillich’s mouth, would be calling God the “ground of moralbeing.” But, wordplay can’t escape logic.

He follows with this:

Now, you may find such a God logicallyimpossible, but it is still a mis-representation to say that if thislogically impossible God exists, then he couldn't do X because it is logicallyimpossible (ha ha, let's all have a laugh because of how these people didn'tthink of this). They did think of this. Their answer is fully consistent withthe nature of God that they point out; if God's nature is the embodiment ofmoral value, as in Christian thought, then it follows that tolove him is to love what is good.

I realize how wedded he is to Tillich-type thoughtwith that statement. In fact, in an earlier thread, on Facebook, he moredirectly referenced Tillich, in the same comment as saying how he rejectedanalytic philosophy.

Yep, and we know why.

Well, sir, Paul Tillich is as dead as god,and so is Tillich’s theology. Really, if that’s the best a supposedlybroad-minded student can bring to Harvard (it’s his first semester, so, I won’tblame it ON Harvard yet). In fact, I’m surprised the Wiki article on theEuthyphro dilemma didn’t bring Tillich into the discussion. After all, histheology is largely based on ontology, and, as I’ve blogged before about Anselm’sontological argument for the existence of god, it fails because …

Here’s that damned analytic philosophy again …

Because it commits a category mistake. “Existence”is NOT an attribute.

And, that said, I know where Mr. Harvard Div’sclaim that Platonic gods are not like the Xn god comes from. They’re not “theground of being.” And, that’s why people like this don’t like analytic theology– because it cuts through the attempted word play to get at actual meaning andcontent.

Anyway, lesson learned. Any time I should againget in a discussion of morals, ethics or related issues, let alone the “problemof evil,” with a “critical scholar” Christian, I’ll ask questions first.Starting with what they think about Tillich in particular and modern “ontologicaltheology” in general.

That said, and again, it’s meant to be snarky… what if a Hindu claimed Krishna was the “ground of being”? I suspect that atleast some “enlightened, tolerant” critical-thinking Christian scholars wouldfirst laugh, then go on the critical-philosophical attack.

UPDATE: Speaking of, a Western academic Buddhist, on a FB thread, says "Karma and reincarnation aren't falsifiable claims." So, this isn't even a liberal-vs-conservative Christianity deal, with them being the two sides of the same coin, it's really a religion vs. naturalism claim.

I of course responded that David Hume first pointed out, even if not using Carl Sagan's words, that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." I also, riffing on Ben Johnson's comment about patriotism, politely said the claim "metaphysical stance X isn't falsifiable" was the last refuge of the religious, without adding the word "scoundrel."

For both conservative and liberal Christians,not only is Yahweh jealous – so are his followers. That's the second lesson learned.

Liberals "project" themselves on conservatives

2011-09-16T21:05:00.001-05:00

A fair amount of this post involves politics, more than I normally post at this blog. But, there's psychological and philosophical angles behind that, so I'm putting it here.

Whether it's Chris Mooney thinking that conservative climate change denialists should be easy to convert to a Harvard Divinity School attendee really thinking that many conservative Christians operate on a love first, not a fear first (or anger or hate first), understanding of God, or whether it's Barack Obama in December 2010 thinking that John Boehner and other GOPers wouldn't hold the budget hostage to the national debt ceiling, I see a certain stripe of liberals do this time after time: Assume that conservatives think the same way, have their thought processes motivated the same way, and more.

Mooney, at least, even knows better. He's written before about "authoritative" reasoning styles and conservative-liberal thinking differences.

Obama has no excuse for not knowing better, if he doesn't.

And, liberal religionists? As I said on Google Plus, ever since hell came into the monotheistic theology workbook, fear, or better, a fear/anger/hatred mix, has pretty much always been the main driver of many religious conservatives. I really don't see that having changed today. Now, is it the primary driver, both from their own emotions, or what emotional drivers they see in their view of god, for all conservative religionists? No. But, in the monotheistic tradition, if you take hell literally, and don't try to spin it like C.S. Lewis as unbelivers' self-divorce from god, it has to be at least part of your emotional makeup.

Beyond that? The same people who reject evolution also reject the evolution of religious ideas.

Let's look further at the fear/anger/hate mix.

In times of uncertainty, people look to pass down stress and stressors by "kicking" the "other," whomever the "other" may be. And, yes, conservative people do that too, whether it's the social Darwinism of the Success Gospel, the "god hates gays" of homophobia or other things.

Beyond the fear of uncertainty, there's the fear of god. To nuance this by claiming it's healthy respect or whatever, no. Luther wanted to drive Jews out of their homes, hated peasants, and his own monastery-conversion superstitious fear never left him. Calvin burned heretics at the stake just like Catholics. Beyond the fear, and allied with it, was anger. The anger of people acting out of control. The anger of people thinking independently. And, beyond that, the hate. The hate of people waiting for vengeance. The hate of people at times seeing themselves as self-anointed prophets to bring about vengeance themselves.

And, look at the Nazarene himself. Angry at an unfruitful fig tree, even though it was out of season? Claiming that Bethsaida would "get it worse" than Sodom and Gomorrah? Anger there, and in the second case, jealousy behind it.

And, it plays out besides religion. Fear of actual problems with the climate becomes fear of being "stuck." That then becomes fear of the government taking something (even if the government's benefited you before.) It becomes fear of not having control, including control of information. From there, it becomes anger at those who claim to know more. And, from there, hatred. Yes, hatred. Look at death threats against climate scientists.

Now, active haters may be a small minority today. But, in an indirect riff on Martin Niemoller, how often are they condoned by others, in fear and anger?

That said, I'm not going to claim that fear, anger or hate have no part in being among my emotional drives. Of course they do. But, to the degree I rise above that, whether through "nature" or "nurture' or some mix, I don't assume others have.

Besides, if conservatives in general value maintaining the "status quo," so-called "negative" emotions generally make that easy to do.

Beyond that, liberal-minded people generally not only value the role of rational thought, but believe more in its potency than conservatives do. So, the very idea that conservatives will change their ideas on a rational-discussion basis is often a bit of a non sequitur.

As for me, I'd rather be a realistic pessimist here, just as I am elsewhere in life.

I'll never assume religious conservatives in general are motivated by love of god before fear of god. I'll never assume climate denialists are going to respond rationally even to "self-love by climate protection" arguments rather that anger at "scientific elites." I'll never assume Republicans will lovingly "act for the good of the country" or whatever.

This leads me to think of Hume's is/ought, and evolutionary psychology. We aren't limited to evolutionary nature, tis true. But, it is a constraint. And, when linked with nurture, is a double constraint.

People change, tis true. But not often. And often, not deeply. And even less often are multiple deep changes.

As part of the "dark side of the Internet," tribalism may well rise, not fall.

Gnu Athests are also guilty of "motivated reasoning"

2011-08-30T16:29:00.000-05:00

Motivated reasoning, or, as I call it, "pulling a Chris Mooney," after Chris Mooney, who popularized studies of the psychology, is reasoning that is designed to strengthen "in-tribe" support for a certain idea.

Christian Righters have long made a "tarring the lot" claim that Hitler, Stalin, Mao and others, like Cambodian mass murderer Pol Pot were all atheists.

Well, Al Stefanelli, who I am taking as a Gnu, shows motivated reasoning isn't restricted to theists. He claims that neither Hitler, nor Stalin, nor Pol Pot were atheists. I tackle, in response to his posting his column link on Google-Plus (the Examiner page won't allow comments) on how this is just wrong, on Stalin.

The typical Gnu-type atheist claims that because Stalin went to an Orthodox seminary, that means he can't be an atheist. Stefanelli adds the claim that because Stalin "revitalized" the Russian Orthodox Church as part of developing patriotism during The Great Patriotic War (WWII), Stalin couldn't be an atheist. Well, WRONG!

I'll explain why, below the fold, as well as tackling another case of motivated reasoning by a more famous atheist who's gotten other things wrong.

Just because Stalin was raised in an Orthodox household and even went to seminary doesn't make him a Christian, and doesn't mean he wasn't an atheist. I am tired of atheists repeating this old line, because it's sloppy thinking in the extreme. If you follow that logic, than John Loftus isn't an atheist, either, because he was a pastor. God, that's SO fucking stupid. And, the fact that Stalin revitalized the Orthodox church during the "Great Patriotic War" doesn't mean he wasn't an atheist, either.

Reality? By empirical evidence, as leader of the USSR, Stalin was indeed an atheist. The rest of Al's column on Stalin is splitting hairs at best. Sorry, but if an Xn rightist argued like that ...

Pol Pot? All we have is the claim of Sihanouk, not totally disinterested. Sorry. In the court of legal history, we throw that one out.

And, Al conveniently dodges talking about Mao. Probably because he can't even find a sliver of exculpatory evidence there to avoid the conclusion that ... Mao's an atheist.

Note: Before anybody asks, by metaphysical stance, I'm an atheist, though that's not the word I normally use to describe myself.

Now, on to case No. 2. Atheist, alleged skeptic, and known promoter of libertarianism under the guise of skepticism (not an ad hominem, a reflection on his reasoning credentials) Penn Jillette claims atheism is growing rapidly, even that "the population is going through the roof," and that some surveys show it's as high as 20 percent of the U.S. populace. Well, Mr. Penn, you're probably either reading poorly written surveys, or you're of your own accord conflating "irreligious" and "atheist," and, in all likelihood, given that I've seen other atheists (whether Gnu or not) make similar claims, you're likely doing the second.

Surveys DO show that the number of Americans who self-identify as "irreligious" or "nonreligious" is indeed growing rapidly. But ... that's far and away from being the same group as "atheists" or even as "atheists plus agnostics." For many such people, it simply means they don't go to church and don't align their belief systems with any particular denomination or tradition within Christianity.

Motivated reasoning is often sloppy reasoning, and sometimes willfully perverse reasoning, as the two examples above show. If Gnu Atheists' goal of atheist evangelism wants to have a chance of succeeding, not just in "reaching" open-minded "drifter" types, but, in not alienating secular humanists who don't like the word "atheism" a lot any more because Gnu Atheism has become its "face," they're going to have to be better.

'No regrets'? I have plenty in my life

2011-08-12T00:26:00.000-05:00

Time and time again, I hear people claim they have no regrets about how they’ve lived their life up to this point.

Taken literally, that means to me that they’d live their entire life the same way if they had a chance to live it over. Really?

There’s three problems here, as I see it. One is viewing “good/bad” (in a growthfulness, not a moral sense) as two polarities, not a continuum. The second is “no regrets” is imprecise, and probably doesn’t mean what it literally says in such cases. The third relates to the first second and impinges upon issues of free will.

The first issue? I believe life, and life issues, can be more, or less growthful. Even ones I regret going through because of bad decisions on my part. (Although I may guilt-trip myself, I can’t honestly be regretful about issues where my range of choice was constrained, or I was reacting to a bad decision/choice by another person; that’s the free will angle.) So, “regret” isn’t totally a bad thing. If I can look back, and see something to learn from the situation, to see how I didn’t handle it as well as I could have, or as well as I could have with more knowledge, then regret’s not bad.

At the same time, that “more knowledge” is another key. If there’s no way I could have known more at the time, whether conscious or unconscious knowledge, that is that. I’ll get to that more in a minute, too.

The imprecision of language? This is one of the few areas where I have fairly substantial agreement with Plato, with the caveat that I don’t limit myself to writing as a way of allegedly obscuring, or even bending or destroying meaning. Oral communication, contra him and the pre-Upanishad Brahmin priests of India, can be manipulated just as well, even when in a mnemonically-driven sacral structure.

I think what people really mean is, “I don’t have any regrets about past actions to which I am too attached.” That’s much healthier – if true. But … maybe it isn’t always true?

Maybe it isn’t so bad to retain a modicum of regret as a learning tool NOT as a “kick myself” tool but as a learning tool.

Finally, there's all sorts of free will aspects.

To the degree free will even exists, it may not exist on a conscious level. To the degree it exists within semiconscious subselves, it's constrained by past elements in our lives and how they've shaped the psyches of those subselves, as well as the fictitious unitary self that claims to be in the driver's seat. The idea of regret may be the right idea in one sense, but not at all in another sense. How can we regret an action that was not undertaken or done with full freedom? There may be a partialness of regret, but, can there be anything more?

#ChrisHedges: The good, the bad, the ugly

2011-07-26T21:31:00.000-05:00

All three attributes of much of Hedges' recent writing are encapsulated in his Truthout post about the Norway terror attacks, entitled, "Fundamentalism Kills."

The "good"? Yes, fundamentalism kills.

The "bad"? Claiming that most scientists practice "scientism."

The really, really "ugly"? A short sidebar screed against urbanization.

On the "bad," as in his anti-atheism book, Hedges simply fails to distinguish between a few scientists, or a few skeptics on the edge of science, just as he failed to distinguish between a few "Gnu Atheists" and the great many.

The caricature and fear are spread as diligently by the Christian right as they are by atheists such as Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens. Our religious and secular fundamentalists all peddle the same racist filth and intolerance that infected Breivik.

Those two don't totally represent all Gnu Atheists, let alone all atheists in general.

Beyond that? Science isn't a second fundamentalism. "Scientism" may be, but science isn't. Ditto that "Gnu Atheism" may be a fundamentalism, but atheism in general isn't.

That said, the "bad" doesn't come out of nowhere. When a third "Gnu," P.Z. Myers, claims Hitch and Harris aren't conservatives, he refuses to face that Gnu Atheism has a messaging problem, fails to admit that this affects all atheism, and propagates both of those problems.

So, while Hedges is (once again) guilty of shoddy, shoddy thinking, I can understand his passion.

Beyond that, though, the bad leads into the ugly.

Here's Hedges on urbanism:

The Industrial Age has provided feats of engineering and technology, yet it has also destroyed community, spread the plague of urbanization, uprooted us all, turned human beings into cogs and made possible the total war and wholesale industrial killing that has marked the last century.

The problem of the evil side of urbanization, whether overstated or not, is mankind, not 'urbanization."

Otherwise, the invention of agriculture "uprooted' us from nomadism. And it turned humans into cogs more than 10,000 years ago.

It's also the only way the planet supports more than a few hundred million people, not more than 6 billion.

And that's why people like Hedges are more than a touch hypocritical. Does Hedges want to take a raft, kayak or Kon-Tiki to all his war journalism reporting? And, does he want to stop writing on the Internet? Stop taking his prescription medications, etc..

And, if we need to reduce world population by 90 percent as part of getting rid of "urbanization," is he volunteering to be part of that 90 percent?

Even if we concentrate on the last 100 years, urbanization has brought economies of scale, a flowering of the arts, etc. if Hedges doesn't like 'urbanization," he can move to North Dakota of his own free will. If he doesn't like that, he can join the "90 percent" that need to leave this planet.

More proof Sam Harris is a #neocon - and irrational

2011-07-25T18:03:00.002-05:00

I've blogged before about how famous "Gnu Atheist" Sam Harris, with the intensity of his Islamophobia, how that seeped into his book "The (IM)Moral Landscape," including authors in his bibliography and more, are clear signs he's some sort of neoconservative. (His stance on other aspects of moral issues, outside of Islamophobia, kind of gives tangential credence to that, too.) I blogged about P.Z. Myers trying to claim Harris isn't a religious conservative, which Zed continues to refuse to accept.

More circumstantial proof is now in. Harris tries to defend Norwegian bomb/shooting suspect against claims he's a Christian fundamentalist.

Here's an extract from Breivik's 1,500-page manifesto that seems to be pretty clear evidence he's a fundamentalist.

When I initiate (providing I haven’t been apprehended before then), there is a 70% chance that I will complete the first objective, 40% for the second, 20% for the third and less than 5% chance that I will be able to complete the bonus mission. It is likely that I will pray to God for strength at one point during that operation, as I think most people in that situation would….If praying will act as an additional mental boost/soothing it is the pragmatical thing to do. I guess I will find out… If there is a God I will be allowed to enter heaven as all other martyrs for the Church in the past. (p. 1344)

If a Muslim bomber/shooter said that, Harris would be mad-dog foaming at the mouth.

Instead?

Here's Harris trying to explain this all away:

(T)he above passages would seem to undermine any claim that Breivik is a Christian fundamentalist in the usual sense. What cannot be doubted, however, is that Breivik’s explicit goal was to punish European liberals for their timidity in the face of Islam.

Harris then goes on to show how he and Breivik have further neocon backgrounds.
I have written a fair amount about the threat that Islam poses to open societies, but I am happy to say that Breivik appears never to have heard of me. He has, however, digested the opinions of many writers who share my general concerns—Theodore Dalrymple, Robert D. Kaplan, Lee Harris, Ibn Warraq, Bernard Lewis, Andrew Bostom, Robert Spencer, Walid Shoebat, Daniel Pipes, Bat Ye’or, Mark Steyn, Samuel Huntington, et al.
The last four are clear neocons, sometimes virulent. So is Lewis. Kaplan's on the fence. Warraq? Has other issues at times. I've not read too much of the others.

Sam Harris, you have now fallen into an even lower circle of any Dantean secular hell consignments that could exist.

Science, scientism, skepticism, atheism, ethics

2011-07-23T19:33:00.000-05:00

I'd been meaning to write a post like this for some time. Various issues within the worlds of science, philosophy, skepticism (which has a foot in both science and philosophy) and related issues have finally nudged me forward.

The first biggie was Sam Harris' "The Moral Landscape." I was pleasantly surprised when philosopher Massimo Pigliucci's review on Amazon largely agreed with mine in not only noting that Harris didn't have a good handle on morals and ethics issues in general, but also engaged in thought processes that rightfully could be called scientism.

Then, having read P.Z. Myers (he denies it, but Bob Carroll has a similar take on P.Z.) and Vic Stenger, amongst so-called Gnu Atheists, at least halfway claim to have proved the nonexistence of god, led me a bit further forward in this direction.

Add in the fact that, on a few recent posts on Skepticblog, some commenters there don't get, or else choose to ignore, the difference between empirical evidence for/against a particular idea of god vs. philosophical issues about what versions of a deity might logically be able to exist, and the issue grows.

Add in that a Michael Shermer post about SETI adds to what I see as one problem with many of its most ardent boosters: a quasi-religious faith that extraterrestrial life must exist.

Finally, some browsing on Amazon today, where a couple of reviews of a couple of books, bring back to mind claims that fundamentalist Christians make about horrific atheist murderers, i.e., Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and atheists, especially but not just Gnu Atheists, claiming that none of that terrible trio were atheists.

Well, now that I've laid all that out, here's where my thoughts go.

I'm going to tackle issues of religious belief, or lack thereof, and morality.

First, the "terrible trio."

Hitler? Yes, we know that he had a Catholic background and upbringing. What his adult religious beliefs are, we don't know. He cozied up to the Catholic church enough to get it to cozy up to him, while yet, early in his reign, ignoring it when he euthanized the mentally handicapped and others. So, let's bracket him.

Stalin? Yes, he went to an Orthdox seminary as a juvenile. So what. John Loftus went to a seminary. So did I. By this weak argument of atheists, John and I are both still Christians. Fact of the matter is, Stalin actively clamped down on Christianity in the Soviet Union, and otherwise gives clear indications of being an atheist. Beyond that, as Wikipedia notes in its article on Marxism and religion, the USSR was officially atheist.

Mao? We still don't know a lot about his personal life, but he gives no indication of being religious in any way.

As for studies which show that fundamentalist and evangelical Christians divorce as much as atheists in particular or nonreligious in general, that's also true. Two observations, though.

First, divorce is only one marker for morals, and isn't even that strong of a marker. Second, if the divorce rates are the same, that doesn't mean religious people are less moral, at least on marriage, just that they're tied.

Finally, because there are so many more religious than irreligious people in the world, for both better and worse, on both sides of the aisle, confirmation bias can easily raise its head. On the side of religious exemplars, that's because they're so many of them. On the side of irreligious exemplars, that's because deviations away from the moral mean stand out so much more.

This all said, more scientists could stand a little more grounding in philosophy. Not anything huge, but a basic college intro course, or better, an intro to logic course.

This leads to another issue, and back to what is called "skepticism" today.

I have a number of observations to make here.

First, many "skeptics" are unfamiliar with skepticism as a philosophy. I politely suggest addressing that.

Second, per my comment above on scientists, many "skeptics" don't know that much philosophy in general.

Third, many "skeptics" are somewhat to very selective in their skepticism. I'm not expecting perfection, but I politely suggest addressing that.

Fourth, true skepticism has become politicized, in part because of reason No. 3 above. I'm not looking for a "purge" of skeptics, unlike P.Z. Myers wanting to purge conservatives from atheism. A conservative skeptic who is honest about anthropogenic global warming is still a skeptic. A conservative "skeptic" who is dishonest about anthropogenic global warming isn't a real skeptic.

And this is why, like a couple of friends of mine, I weary of the world of "professional skepticism" at times. But, per that last point, if pseudoskeptics, including online trolls, aren't stood up to, they win.

"Emotional dissonance" - a term that needs more use?

2011-07-20T15:39:00.002-05:00

I have briefly mentioned the phrase, as a parallel to "cognitive dissonance," with support groups and friends.

In a comment on a SkepticBlog post about The Amazing Meeting 9 and cognitive dissonance, I mentioned the idea there.

As cognition is not done as a sterile intellectual exercise ... I think we need to stress this more.

One person responded that s/he thought that "emotions" were included in cognition, and in cognitive dissonance. I responded:

Understood on what “cognitive” entails. That said, it’s my guess that the “average Joe/Jane” thinks “intellectual” when they hear the term “cognitive,” though, or may at the least think the “intellectual” is being emphasized to the degree of less to much less attention on the emotions.

And, that, in term, gets to the “image of skepticism,” if you will. My skepticism (or better yet, per David Hume, my empirical stance) is driven by the interaction of the passions and reason.

Obviously, emotions are visible when one is being a dick, rather than when one is not … but showing positive emotional reasons for skepticism is the “hearts” of the “hearts and minds” battle.

This person then, in my opinion, undercut her previous comment. I will quote this person:

“(E)motional dissonance” implies that emotions are to blame for poor reasoning, which is usually not the case.

I humbly but firmly beg to differ.

Look at the religious right segment of the GOP, which continually votes on emotion even though the party's corporatist leaders really don't care about it that much. Ditto on tea partiers letting themselves be astroturfed and not starting a third party. Many "moderate" antivaxxers who aren't into conspiracy theories let themselves be swayed by emotions even though they know, intellectually, that expert medical opinion is usually right.

Hume reminded us, after all, that reason needs to follow the passions, not the other way around. This doesn't mean that reason accepts what the passions within us say, but it does mean it accepts as a starting point what the passions are saying to us.

If we want to take "emotional dissonance" more narrowly .... it affects our decision making all the time. We're conflicted about going to a family gathering because we like some people but hate others. We're emotionally conflicted about taking a new job. Etc.

Updating T.S. Eliot's "Hippopotamus" - "The Hippocampus"

2011-07-19T20:00:00.000-05:00

Updating TS Eliot, on the hippocampus and fearmongering. I kept in the "god" references so I didn't have to edit more, to change more rhymes, but I was actually thinking more of secular fearmongering such as the "War on Terror."

The broad-backed hippocampus
Rests on its axis in the brain;
Although it seems so firm to us
It is hard to explain.
Flesh-and-blood is weak and frail,
Susceptible to nervous shock;
While the True Fear can never fail
For it is based upon a rock.

The hippo's feeble steps may err
In compassing material ends,
While the True Fear need never stir
To gather in its dividends.

The 'campus can never reach
The mango on the mango-tree;
But fruits of pomegranate and peach
Refresh the Fear from over sea.

At mating time the hippo's voice
Betrays inflexions hoarse and odd,
But every week we hear rejoice
The Fear, at being one with God.

The hippocampus's day
Is passed in sleep; at night he hunts;
God works in a mysterious way --
The Fear can sleep and feed at once.

I saw the 'campus take wing
Ascending from the damp savannas,
And quiring angels round him sing
The praise of God, in loud hosannas.

Blood of the Lamb shall wash him clean
And him shall heavenly arms enfold,
Among the saints he shall be seen
Performing on a harp of gold.

He shall be washed as white as snow,
By all the martyr'd virgins kist,
While the True Fear remains below
Wrapt in the old miasmal mist.

First Pop Ev Psych, now Pop Ev Sociology?

2011-07-09T16:31:00.002-05:00

Remember those stories of a year or two ago about how things like obesity could be "socially contagious"?

Well, not so fast. It appears that they had a variety of statistical errors, the "research" behind them had never been published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal and other things.

Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler

That said, that didn't prevent the authors from giving a snazzy TED talk (it seems like TED is devolving more and more into pop science of various sorts and not always accurate pop science), and otherwise "selling" their findings.

That includes Fowler appearing on Colbert, where he made claims about losing weight himself as to not "infect" others. But, Fowler wants it both ways; he said he shouldn't have his research judged on comments like that.

Worse, showing once again that even actual science, not alleged science, isn’t perfect, the NEJM, per the story, is standing behind the claims.

And, that's sad, since the mainstream media never gives debunking stories the same play as it does original claims. If the NEJM isn't going to be a better gatekeeper, it's not so "good." Especially since it rejected a piece of debunking research. In short, professional journals like NEJM can "pull a Mooney," not just pseudoscience ones.

And, also "worse" is that Christakis and Fowler shoot legitimate research in the foot with antics like this:

So is obesity contagious? What about happiness and divorce and poor sleep? One irony of the contagion battles is that even if their methods are suspect Christakis and Fowler are obviously correct that peer influence exists and that it may be even more important than we realize. ...

But just because contagion is important in one context doesn't mean something like obesity spreads like a virus—much less one that can infect someone as remote from you as your son's best friend's mother. (For the record, I and my best friend's mother will eat our hats if it turns out to be true, as Christakis and Fowler claim, that loneliness is infectious, too.) Yes, we influence each other all the time, in how we talk and how we dress and what kinds of screwball videos we watch on the Internet. But careful studies of our social networks reveal what may be a more powerful and pervasive effect: We tend to form ties with the people who are most like us to begin with.

In other words, correlation is not always causation. And, to the degree causation is behind correlation, one had better get the correct order of cause and effect understood. Christakis and Fowler appear to be bad social scientists right there.

THE GREATEST IS HOPE

2011-07-08T01:47:00.001-05:00

St. Paul was wrong,
Especially if we remove religious and metaphysical overtones
From “faith, hope and love.”
Love cannot abide without hope,
Whether the hope that a lover, or an adult child,
Will change bad behaviors.
Or the hope that a parent will accept an adult child
With different values and beliefs.
Without such hope, love cannot abide.
And faith, not metaphysical faith in things unseen,
But, faith in the sense of trust?
Faith cannot abide, either,
Without hope that a person, or a place,
Will improve, even if we don’t yet know how.
Even faith in our own selves cannot abide,
Without hope that we have some degree of control,
If but in a small corner,
Over our own lives and selves.
The greatest, and most basic, of these
Is hope.

Democracy: An intrinsic good or "only" a utilitarian one?

2011-07-06T21:26:00.001-05:00

A British philosopher of science, Philip Kitcher, makes the argument that in at least some science issues, and specifically that of anthropogenic global warming, it's clear that democracy's "good" in general is "only" utilitarian, and that in the specific case of AGW, it has, at least right now, no intrinsic good at all.

In other words, to put this bluntly, sometimes, as in this case, democracy is bad.

Do we need this, or Kitcher to tell us that, though? Probably not.

Stereotypes about it aside, specifics of how democracy was structured in Weimer Germany show it was utilitarianly bad, in the end. Ditto for the fledging socialist democracy of Russia between the two 1917 revolutions.

When democracy in a specific situation is bad for structural reaons, that doesn't mean other versions of democracy would be bad in that situation. The more stable-post WWII Germany democracy might well have survived Weimar. A different Russian leader than Alexander Kerensky, western democracies not threatening a loan cutoff if Kerensky took Russia out of the war, or both, would have increased the survival odds for 1917 democracy.

That said, those historical issues all center on matters readily understandable by laypeople. The average citizen, though, as the SciAm blog points out ... just doesn't get global warming. Or other science issues.

Now, as the article notes, Kitcher's proposed solution is both expensive and unwieldy. Beyond that, psychologically, as Chris Mooney and others have noted, many people reason and argue to strengthen in-tribe beliefs, and Kitcher's program simply isn't likely to overcome that.

So, in a place like the U.S., a nonparliamentary democracy where the use of executive orders has steadily expanded over the last decades, how much democracy should a president "sacrifice" if he or she is really ready to "go to the mat" on this one?

I should add a bit about my philosophical inclinations, as part of why I think Kitcher has some good thoughts.

I'm an anti-absolutist in general, and specifically, somewhat related to this, an anti-idealist. So, I generally shy away from claims of things having intrinsic value, unless it's something like clear, evolutionarily-grounded questions of ethics.

At the same time, though, I'm not a utilitarian, certainly not ion the narrow philosophical sense, because utilitarianism has a boatload of philosophical problems, some of them ethical (as Sam Harris, probably unwittingly, demonstrated in "The Immoral Landscape.") What means are "allowable" to maximize the greatest good for the greatest number? If we decide, in dire emergencies, to "weight" needs of children vs. senior citizens, by how much do we do that? And who decide? How much of a supermajority, speaking of democracy, should be required for many "hedonistic" calculus" issues? Bentham, Mill and their followers, including Mr. Harris, basically ignore or dodge these and related questions.

So, really, my answer is that democracy doesn't have an intrinsic value, and that, in principle, we can never agree on how much utilitarian value most things in life do or do not have. That's kind of where Walter Kaufmann comes from on "Without Guilt or Justice" which pretty much demolishes Rawls, and by extension and indirectly, utilitarianism in general.

Why you shouldn't believe Shermer's 'Believing Brain'

2011-07-02T01:44:00.000-05:00

If you want to know why you shouldn't believe Michael Shermer's "The Believing Brain," as well as why, for parts that are any good, you should go to more original resources, read my latest Amazon reviews.

A sample:

Here's derivative and blind spots intersecting -- Shermer briefly, but briefly talks about Kahneman and Tversky's study in behavioral economics (without also citing Ariely, among others). One will learn much more about how irrational human behavior is in matters of economics, and related psychology, by going to the source. Shermer could have had a better book with a whole chapter just on this field.

So, why didn't he? I suspect because he knows how totally behavioral economics chops into little bitty pieces the claims of his beloved Ayn Rand and the Austrian School of Economics.

If you know Michael Shermer, and know he's not all he cracks himself up to be, you're not surprised by that. If you think you know Shermer, but don't necessarily worship the ground he walks on while thinking he is nonetheless a great skeptic, there's plenty more after those first two paragraphs of my review, so click the link and get enlightened.

Computer software confirms 'documentary hypothesis

2011-06-30T23:40:00.002-05:00

Ever since the idea was first proposed more than a century ago by Julius Wellhausen, nonfundamentalist biblical scholars (of course, fundamentalist, by self-definition, aren't full-fledged biblical scholars) have postulated, developed and refined a "documentary hypothesis" for the writing, then later editing together of various sections of the Torah/Penteteuch, or the first five books of the Tanakh/Christian bible, which the nonscholars allege was written by Moses.

The hypothesis says that a "Yahwist," called the J author because Wellhausen was German, and the J has the y-sound there, ja, wrote large chunks, especially of Genesis, that focus on the use of the divine name. Theoretically, this author lived about 900 BCE in the southern "kingdom" of Judah after a united Israel (if it existed, as Old Testament minimalists question) split.

Another author, writing slightly later, is the "Elohist" or E author. He allegedly wrote slightly later, from the post-split northern kingdom of Israel, which included Ephraim (an "E" help mnemonic, as Judah is for the "J").

Then, a third author, a "Deuteronomist," is posited as the primary author of the book of Deuteronomy, just in time for Josiah, king of Judah, to "discover" about 621 BCE.

Fourth, a "Priestly' author wrote down all the ritual observances, the first version of the Genesis creation story, the dietary laws and similar stuff, after leaders of Judah were carted off to exile in Babylon.

Some say this person may have lived later and been the scribe Ezra, of the book of that name. Some postulate an original priestly author, but Ezra as a major redactor.

Well, at least between the priestly and nonpriestly sections, new computer research confirms the division. That's despite this background:
Three of the four scholars are religious Jews who subscribe in some form to the belief that the Torah was dictated to Moses in its entirety by a single author: God.
Just a reminder that religious fundamentalism isn't limited to Christianity.

Anyway, the computer software found multiple authors elsewhere, not just in the Torah. The software sees multiple authors in Isaiah, as do critical scholars.

Chomsky should think again - within himself

2011-06-12T20:31:00.001-05:00

Sounds like this is a definite book to read: The Recursive Mind: The Origins of Human Language, Thought, and Civilization.

Michael Corbalis, as noted in this review, thinks its recursive thinking, done without any special fluency in language, let alone a language "module," that makes us human.

How and why I became an atheist, Part 6

2011-05-31T23:58:00.001-05:00

In part 1 of this series, I look at my conservative Lutheran childhood, above all my conservative Lutheran minister father's influences.

Part 2 gets into my high school and college years.

And Part 3 gets to my trying to follow in dad's footsteps at a Lutheran seminary, or divinity school.

In Part 4, I look at my "conversion" or transition period of my last year of school there and the first year after

In Part 5, I look at further personal, philosophical, unreligious and antimetaphysical development in my life during three years of living with my dad.

It's now 1997 and I'm on my own, editing a weekly paper. Working 60-70 hours a week, moving it from the red and into the black. Getting burned out. Drinking on the job.

At the same time, I'm now exploring more in things like cognitive science/philosophy, recognizing the origins in human brain dysfunctions of visions and hallucinations, etc. In short, I'm becoming more and more of not just an atheist, but an antimetaphysician in general.

I was eventually fired, for whatever reason. I listened to someone, and some inner part of myself, and quit drinking. And looked for support.

Well, the only game I knew of at the time for that was the religious-based sobriety support program of Alcoholics Anonymous. (And, that's what it is; don't believe the canard that "it's a spiritual program.")

Well, I was in such a post-alcohol mental fog, I didn't totally recognize that at the time. And, when I did, I was in a group, surprising for a small town in Texas, with many New Agey types and little in the way of people even approaching orthodox Christians. Well, I'd had enough happen in the last few months that I actually tried some Matthew Fox reading, even A Course in Miracles.

And, some degree of New Agey "power"-ness, but not a personal deity, "stuck" for a year or so.

That said, as noted on the previous part of this installment atheists (usually the P.Z. Myers type of "Gnu Atheists" who talk about religion as a psychological crutch don't get the time of day from me. I understand the desire for its comforts, still today. I don't find that necessary for myself today, but I'm not going to mock the people who have, not for 2,000, or even 5,000, but going by things like French cave paintings and some burials, but who have for 20,000 years sought out some sort of metaphysical support to help face the vicissitudes of life.

Anyway, I eventually moved on in many ways. I found a "secular sobriety" support group; I found a great group therapy counselor, and group, for some "childhood issues," after I moved to Dallas.

And, I moved beyond "just atheism." I could call it "positive atheism," or I could use the good old phrase "secular humanism."

I continued reading in philosophy of mind, cognitive science/philosophy and related subjects.

I saw more and more of how many of the allegedly metaphysical "artifacts" of religious belief, such as various visual and auditory "visions," deja-vu type events and more, were all parts of the wonder — and the humility — of the evolutionary cobbling together of the human brain and the eventual rise of what we could call an epiphenomenon, almost — human consciousness.

I saw that that, as well as Yosemite National Park and its falls, Grand Canyon and its vistas, Beethoven and the C sharp minor quartet and more, could all be approached with wonder, even with gratitude without having to be grateful to anybody, divinities included.

As I said in an op-ed column, riffing on Shylock in Merchant of Venice: "I am an atheist. Prick us; do we not bleed?"

But, as I said, at this point in my life, whether the term I use is "atheist," "secular humanist," "philosophical naturalist," "skeptic" or something else, I feel reasonably comfortable about where I am.

How and why I became an atheist, Part 5

2011-05-31T23:48:00.002-05:00

In part 1 of this series, I look at my conservative Lutheran childhood, above all my conservative Lutheran minister father's influences.

Part 2 gets into my high school and college years.

And Part 3 gets to my trying to follow in dad's footsteps at a Lutheran seminary, or divinity school.

In Part 4, I look at my "conversion" or transition period of my last year of school there, my first year of mixed part-time work after graduation, my moving to somewhere between Uniterianism and agnosticism, and an invitation from my dad to move back in with him.

So, it's up to Flint, Michigan.

Dad suggested that I might be able to get an adjunct teaching position at Baker College, which had an entire division called "Corporate Services," largely devoted to helping UAW workers using education benefits to get their degrees before the next automaker layoff.

He also said that that wouldn't pay a lot of money and might not offer a lot of hours. He said one of his members was the manager of a 7-Eleven and I could probably pick up a few hours there.

Well, between feeling depressed at "failing dad," feeling depressed at "having" to move back home, feeling depressed at having "fallen" to the level of 7-Eleven work, etc., I was depressed indeed. Add in the fact of feeling hypocritical by going to dad's church every Sunday and going through the motions, and that's serious depression.

So, I tried to kill myself. And nearly succeeded. I took half a bottle of over-the-counter sleeping pills while getting drunk, maybe more. And, was going to put a bag over my head to try to suffocate myself while sleeping, in the process.

Well, I didn't get the bag on tight enough. And the self-preservation powers of human physiology kicked in a few hours later, and I violently threw up the undigested portion of the sleeping pills.

As it was, I had double vision or worse 24 hours later, with very rubbery legs.

But, I'm here today.

Next?

I taught for a year, before the college said that, due to North Central Association accreditation changes, I could only teach religion classes, of which they had none open at the time. They also said that someone had filed a sexual harassment claim (unfounded) against me. And, three months after that, a 20-year-old, or so, held me up at the 7-Eleven with a 9mm automatic.

Dad was ready to get out of Michigan, so I moved with him to small-town Texas, fortunately not too far from Dallas. Meanwhile, I was becoming an ever-more-serious drinker, out of life-frustration, boredom, and PTSD (and trigger of past PTSD symptoms) over having a 9mm waved a foot in front of my nose.

All of the emotional reasons for questioning not just the existence of god, but the support value (other than purely human group support) of any metaphysically-based organization, were increasing ever more.

On the intellectual side, I had done further critical study of biblical texts plus more and more reading in comparative religion.

And, on the personal development side, probably more unconsciously than consciously, some growth was happening there.

I don't want to stereotype agnosticism, but, for many, I think it's more a halfway house than a permanent stop; a seminary acquaintance actually pushed me back then to "declare myself" as an atheist and stop hiding out in agnosticism world. For those for whom "positive agnosticism" is a valid stance, though, my hat is indeed off to you. That said, I was also reading my first books on philosophical atheism before leaving Michigan. I knew I was at least at the farther edge of agnosticism.

And, as this part and part 4 of my journey have shown, atheists (usually the P.Z. Myers type of "Gnu Atheists" who talk about religion as a psychological crutch don't get the time of day from me. I understand the desire for its comforts, still today.

Two years of living with my dad in Texas got me a start in newspaper journalism, with a boss who was (himself) an alcoholic drinker, I believe. But, I got out of there, got a job as editor of a weekly newspaper and ...

I'll tackle more in Part 6.

How and why I became an atheist, part 4

2011-05-31T23:21:00.003-05:00

In part 1 of this series, I look at my conservative Lutheran childhood, above all my conservative Lutheran minister father's influences.

Part 2 gets into my high school and college years.

And Part 3 gets to my trying to follow in dad's footsteps at a Lutheran seminary, or divinity school, up to the point of realizing that psychologically, I didn't want to be a minister and that, at the same time, intellectually and emotionally, I had problems with what I had been raised to believe.

So, here I am after two years of classes and a year of internship similar to a medical residency (we ought to make would-be lawyers do one of those, too), back for a final, wrap-up year of classes and realizing that this is NOT where I wanted to be going. I had enough money from scholarships and part-time work at a Lutheran publishing house that I didn't have to borrow much money to finish getting the degree while trying to figure out what I did want to do. (I've not totally figured that, 19 years later.)

On the academic side, I started doing "intellectual judo" on what I had been taught to believe. We'd been taught the bare bones of historical-critical theology with the idea that, as one professor put it, when Time or U.S. News comes out with its usual Christmas or Easter story, we could explain to church parisioners in a semi-fundamentalist denomination what was wrong with the story.

Well, being near the top of my class academically, and interested in the study of the texts and their exegesis, I took to this like a duck to water. Soon enough, before the year was out, I realized the more liberal wing of Lutheranism, just like liberal mainline Protestantism in general, wasn't a viable stopping point or landing point for my spiritual development. I was going to be some type of Unitarian, or beyond.

Related to that, I was reading more about psychology of religion and related issues. With my dad a minister, my oldest brother in the same graduating class as me, my sister having married a minister from the class ahead of me and getting her own master of arts in religion degree, my dad's sister being a Lutheran parochial school teacher, there were these larger issues.

I was losing, or cutting myself away from, some existential moorings. So I had emotional and psychological issues to face.

At the same time, I was bringing emotions, and philosophy, to bear on other religious issues, religious problems not just Christian in nature.

Big-ticket problems like the "problem of evil."

And, though I knew the basics about Buddhism, already then I was realizing that it wasn't necessarily just Western religions that have problems with this issue.

(The problem of evil is this, for the three Western monotheistic religions: How can an all-powerful god also claim to be all-loving while there's still evil in the world? For theologians who blame human sin, the quickest "counter" is with "natural evil" like hurricanes, etc.

Eastern religions? With more and more years of thought, karma, as an all-powerful law of reincarnation, becomes as evil, in a sense, as an all-powerful god for this failure. And, in some sense, the Buddhism that holds to karma is to me more perverse than the Christianity/Islam/Judaism that at least attributes this to a personal deity. But, I digress.)

On the academic side, tender young mid-20s Lutheran minds of mush were apparently too sensitive to stand up to such ideas. The dean of students eventually told me, after he'd been approached by several other students, that the only way he'd let me stay in school and graduate was if I observed a gag order. No, seriously.

So, I felt more isolated. And, as a divinity school has just one objective for its graduates (and my Lutheran undergraduate college had declined due to lack of enrollment), I had other angst on my hands, increasing - employment issues and lack of support.

Well, I graduated, continued to work part time at the Lutheran publishing house for a year after that while doing other PT work, and working on figuring out whether I was a Unitarian, an agnostic or an atheist.

A year after graduation, I realized I was at least quasi-agnostic. I knew then that Unitarianism the denomination was broad enough to accept agnostics, but ... was halfway ready to abandon religion as an organization.

Anyway, this wasn't an overnight process. My apartment complex where I lived the year after graduation was next to a small suburban St. Louis city park. I would pace out there late at night, praying/talking, or "praying"/talking to Jesus, Buddha, Yahweh, Allah, the Tao and more, venting my psyche, running through emotions and more.

This is part of why atheists (usually the P.Z. Myers type of "Gnu Atheists" who talk about religion as a psychological crutch don't get the time of day from me. I understand the desire for its comforts, still today. Ditto for those who treat "conversion" to atheism as a relatively pristine, highly intellectual process.

Then, my dad offered to let me move back home ... with the hope of me teaching on an adjunct basis at a college there. Well, it was better than what I was doing ....

And, that will continue in Part 5.

Some thoughts for soul believers

2011-05-23T15:01:00.000-05:00

As Sean Carroll notes, it is technically true (Hume and the problem of induction strike again!) that an immaterial soul exists and is outside the provability bounds, or investigation, of current science.

But, as he also notes, it's also technically true that the moon, or some part of it at least, could in fact be made of green cheese!

And, he makes the burden heavy by whipping out Dirac's electron interaction equation and then asking soul believers to explain, in the terms of that equation, or if not, by adding scientifically measurable terms to that equation, how a soul could interact with the brain.

That said, one could be an epiphenomenalist. Perhaps Adam Frank, to whom Carroll is replying, is. But, while not logically impossible, nor inductively disprovable in a narrow sense, an epiphenomenalist soul that totally mirrors brain activity while never interacting with it is even more ludicrous than a soul that does. It's not too much to claim that it's impossible for such a critter to have evolved. And a deity that made that sort of soul would be even more ... risible? ... than one who made an immaterial, but interactionist, soul.

That said, it is true that science hasn't come close to investigating everything; it's also true that logically, you can't prove the nonexistence of anything — it's the equivalent of dividing by zero.

But, realistically? ....

Billy Graham is master of the obvious — and the clueless

2011-05-17T00:32:00.000-05:00

Actually, he's more the master of his interpretation of the obvious, when he says people are atheists because "they want to run their own lives." Actually, the fact of the matter is an acknowledgment of running our own lives.

Other than that, he repeats all the fundamentalist-type accusations about atheism — it allegedly can't explain why we exist/where we came from (try the Big Bang, and evolutionary biology, with details of abiogenesis between the two still being worked out); it allegedly leads to despair (a Religious Right wet dream of hell on earth for atheists); it imputes everything to chance (not true, evolutionary events lead to contingencies further down the line of development and chance vs. design is a false dichotomy); atheism allegedly can't tell right from wrong (nonsense, we see a common core of morals, with some moral relativity or situational moralism at the edges — just as fundies engage in relativistic or situational moral beliefs at times), etc., etc.

Of course, Billy Graham has never, I'm sure, had an honest, open dialogue with a real, live atheist.

Tradition — New Mexico style

2011-05-09T23:24:00.001-05:00

In dusty, high-country towns
Off the more-beaten path of northern New Mexico
Acequias still channel water from trickling streams
As they have for three hundred years.
Majordomos still oversee gates
While users maintain the precious ditches,
Along with log aqueducts
And anything else to redistribute liquid gold
In a dry, ancient land.
In the surrounding forests
Remnants of old Spanish land grants remain
With logging sections still parceled out
To descendents of 1700s settlers
Still holding on to old family rights
And old family tradition!
Tradition!
I could never bind myself to the land like that,
But I don’t have three hundred years
Of tradition to teach me how, and maybe even why.
I would, though, like to find a place
Where I would want to settle down
And establish a tradition, a tradition for one.

Nature is tenacious

2011-05-09T21:42:00.001-05:00

A pinon pine on a crag above Wolf Creek Pass/My pic

Tenacious grasp
Pinon pine on mountain crag;
Solitary life.

That lone rugged tree
Lives without one remembrance,
Growing but dumbly.

A lesson for life
That roots are oft unconscious
But still need much luck,

Refuting some rich
Who social Darwinism
Gave them all their wealth.

Happy 300th, David Hume!

2011-05-06T23:27:00.001-05:00

Think philosophy is dull? Want personal insight into Hume's claim that reason is and needs be "the slave of the passions"?

Here's a great column-essay in the New York Times which will take care of all of that.

2011-04-29T02:17:00.000-05:00

On a recent vacation, I happened to stop at and visit, for the first time, the world-famous El Santuario de Chimayo in New Mexico.

For those not familiar, the unincorporated community, and the Catholic sanctuary, are on the back road connection between Santa Fe and Taos, N.M.

For those unfamiliar with why it can be called world-famous, it is the second-most-popular Catholic pilgrimage site in the United States, and unarguably the top Catholic healing pilgrimage site.

In short, El Santuario de Chimayo is the Lourdes of the United States. Except at Chimayo, it's dirt, not water, that's supposed to have the healing properties.

Like Lourdes, it has an anteroom, to the side of the actual sanctuary but under the same roof, lined with dozens or more crutches. (There is a no-photo policy inside the sanctuary, which I respected.)

The parish priest at Chimayo, with cane.

The details of how this rural Spanish-American Catholic parish came to be a healing pilgrimage site are described at the top link.

That said, at such a place, like Lourdes, wouldn't you find it interesting, at least for the parish priest to be walking with a cane? Well, I did and he was. (Apologies for photo quality.)

I did a little journaling after I got to Taos, putting down some thoughts about how I felt about the priest, the church, and more.

1. Part of me was cynical, not just skeptical, after seeing not just the parish priest, but also an apparent parishioner, accompanied by a daughter or granddaughter, also on a cane. Now, the parishioner could perhaps be "excused" as elderly, but the priest was no older than I am. So, why did he still have the cane?

2. Part of me felt a bit sad for him. I looked at a bulletin, and saw that he did multiple Masses there and at nearby rural Truchas, as well as possibly at Espinola. And, he himself — had he ever tried the holy dirt or not? Was he a bit skeptical himself? Had anybody ever asked him about the cane? Even if not, he has to know that there are people like me. What's his attitude toward people like me in his mind — defensive? Apologetic?

A parishioner at Chimayo, also using a cane.

3. And what about his parishioners, even? Do any of them, even regular ones, wonder? How many of them eschew doctors entirely? How many, like among the world of New Agers and others, decry those who "just don't believe enough" as being the cause of their own lack of healing?

4. Part of me was cynical about the Catholic Church — starting with this parish, and not Benedict XVI in Rome or the soon-to-be beatified future patron saint of child molesters, John Paul II. The entire back page of the Santuario's bulletin was covered with ads for local businesses. To be snarky, I was kind of wondering if the Bingo sheet was missing from the inside of the bulletin. In the anteroom, along with crutches, were a variety of votary objects. I assumed they were all for sale, but didn't check on prices.

5. A skeptical part of me says, how can the dirt be so holy if it constantly has to be replaced? What would happen if we dug a second hole and did a double-blinded set of tests? A skeptical part of me also knows from Catholic history in the new world, Christian history in general, etc., that it's likely the Church appropriated a former Tewa shrine, just as did the particular appearance of Jesus in Guatemala with which the Santuario de Chimayo is connected. Meanwhile, a more cynical part of me notes that the Roman Catholic Church, as with Lourdes, takes no position on the actual occurrence of miracles. Perhaps the College of Cardinals doesn't want to be tested on the depth of its faith, either.

Just how irrational are we? Very?

2011-04-25T16:05:00.003-05:00

Very, or potentially very irrational, defining "irrational" and "rational" in terms of the great project of Descartes and followers, it seems.

In a blog post at Discover, in follow-up to his column last week at Mother Jones, Chris Mooney notes that the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences has devoted an entire issue to what he covered at Mojo, with links to summaries of key content.

Here's a couple of key outtakes:

First:

Reasoning is generally seen as a means to improve knowledge and make better decisions. However, much evidence shows that reasoning often leads to epistemic distortions and poor decisions. This suggests that the function of reasoning should be rethought. Our hypothesis is that the function of reasoning is argumentative. It is to devise and evaluate arguments intended to persuade. Reasoning so conceived is adaptive given the exceptional dependence of humans on communication and their vulnerability to misinformation. A wide range of evidence in the psychology of reasoning and decision making can be reinterpreted and better explained in the light of this hypothesis. Poor performance in standard reasoning tasks is explained by the lack of argumentative context. When the same problems are placed in a proper argumentative setting, people turn out to be skilled arguers. Skilled arguers, however, are not after the truth but after arguments supporting their views. This explains the notorious conﬁrmation bias. This bias is apparent not only when people are actually arguing, but also when they are reasoning proactively from the perspective of having to defend their opinions.

And more, from a response to some of the issues:

When people reason alone, there will often be nothing to hold their confirmation bias in check. This might lead to distortions of their beliefs. As mentioned above, this is very much the case. When people reason alone, they are prone to all sorts of biases.

In short, as Mooney notes, classical Cartesianism appears m ore and more dead in the water. First, Dan Dennett (and others) said there is no little man, no Cartesian homunculus, making magic rationality decisions inside us.

Now, BBS et al say that, even if there were such a critter, he wouldn't be a disinterested rationalist anyway.

But, not all commenters on Mooney's post want to accept that, it seems.

I responded to one:

Nullius, (you seem to present) a great defense of the “traditional” view of reasoning or whatever …

BUT, I’m going to argue with you.

First, the “reasoning as argumentation” model I think explicitly says this is NOT, NOT, NOT, a “human failing.” Rather, it is, if I may, “human ISness.”

I won’t propose abandoning “rationalism,” but I will say that it is even more unnatural than you may want to admit.

And, that IS a conflict with Cartesianism, which postulates rationality is a cornerstone of homo sapiens.

Sorry, but, either you don’t get the degree of implications this involves, or …
You DO, unconsciously, understand precisely what is up and by your conscious argumentation, actually support the fact at hand.

Of course, maybe I have reasons for my argumentation.

Meanwhile, this SciAm blog explains some of the reasons for our irrationality, in terms of motivators.

Getting Gospel sychronization wrong - Templeton-worthy?

2011-04-23T23:53:00.002-05:00

Or, why an academic expert in engineering should NOT stick his head into New Testament studies.

Colin Humphreys, a professor of materials sciences at Cambridge, claims to have "reconciled" John and the Synoptic Gospels' different datings of Maundy Thursday and the Lord's Supper, among other Passiontime events

The Telegraph explains the work of the professor:

Matthew, Mark and Luke say that it was at the start of the Jewish feast of Passover. John writes that it happened before Passover. In his new book, The Mystery of the Last Supper, Sir Colin deploys the full gamut of biblical, historical and astronomical sources to iron out the contradiction. The first three gospel writers – known collectively as the Synoptics because they largely tell the same stories, in the same sequence, of Jesus’s life – were, he suggests, using an old-fashioned Jewish calendar, whereas John was basing his timescale on the lunar calendar in official use back then, as now. Once you take this into account, he claims, all four writers were actually referring to the same date – April 1, 33AD. This was a Wednesday, rather than a day later, marked as Maundy Thursday by Christians. Because he can pinpoint the date, Sir Colin argues, Easter should move to a fixed time each year – the first Sunday in April – rather than being the current moveable feast.

Wrong, wrong and wrong.

Humphreys ignores that Mark ("father" to Luke and Matthew's accounts on the Two-Source Hypothesis) had good reason for dating the Last Supper differently in relation to Passover. He also presumes that the four "canonical" gospels are writing historically, should be considered as historical documents and, I guess, that they should be considered as accurate ones unless clearly not.

He's clueless, and Telegraph reporter Peter Stanford, who fairly gushes over Humphreys, is no better.

Of course, with the blathering of Cambridge University Press about his book, "The Mystery of the Last Supper," Humphreys is surely in the running for a Templeton Prize

Linguistics smacks down Pop Evolutionary Psychology

2011-04-20T22:40:00.002-05:00

I saw this while on vacation, and hadn't had a chance to blog about it.

Shades of Sapir-Whorf!

It appears that language usage, in the case of one language family versus another is fairly strongly influenced by cultural background.

The authors say their findings run contrary to the idea of Noam Chomsky's generative grammar, which says the brain has hard and fast ordering rules for language. They also contradict the "universal rules" of Joseph H. Greenberg, who said languages tended to choose certain patterns over others.

"Culture trumps the innate structure of the human mind," said study coauthor Russell Gray, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. "We need to take much more seriously the role of cultural factors in changing language diversity."

Even if overstating the case, if it's half true, it not only undercuts Chomsky, it's another blow to the "massive modularity" idea of the brain.

Without looking at it in just that light, though, it does raise other issues of social and cultural evolution. Nature has more.

Beyond the easy references to how this undercuts (what doesn't, really) the "Pop" version of evolutionary psychology, this has more serious linguistic implications.

Greenberg, beyond being a "universalist" on linking phenomena of languages, was also a "clumper" in terms of how many, or how few, language families he postulated. This is especially true in his analysis of Native American and sub-Saharan African families.

But, if his "implication universals" idea isn't so true, then perhaps some languages he has clumped together should be bound more loosely. If we don't become "splitter" into many more language families, perhaps we should at least discuss the idea of subfamilies.

Michael Ruse, Dawkins fail to understand philosophical necessity

2011-03-29T00:33:00.001-05:00

It's ironic to say that about a famed Ph.d. philosopher, and an atheist and skeptic of sorts to boot, as well as about a famous evolutionary biologist, if this is the case.

But, here, Ruse defends Richard Dawkins in advancing a secularist defense of natural evil in particular and, in relation to natural selection rather than a creator god, of the problem of evil in general.

But supposing that God did (and had to) create through law, then Richard Dawkins of all people offers a piece of candy to the Christian. Dawkins argues that the only physical way to get organic adaptation -- the design-like nature of living beings -- is through natural selection, that very painful mechanism that worried Darwin! Other mechanisms are either false (such as Lamarckism, the inheritance of acquired characteristics) or inadequate (such as saltationism, change by sudden jumps). In other words, although Darwinism does not speak to all cases of physical evil -- the earthquakes -- it does speak to the physical evil that it itself is supposed to bring on. It is Darwinism with suffering, or nothing.

So, Ruse seems to be claiming that Dawkins says a certain amount of "nature bloody red in tooth and claw" was necessary for evolution. And, as a philosopher, Ruse appears to be giving this the imprimatur that it was philosophically necessary.

But, just as there's no philosophical necessity for the amount of evil in the world for God to do good, there's no necessity for a certain amount of evil, in terms of natural evil, for natural selection to operate.

Dawkins isn't a philosopher, not even a real amateur one, so he can be partially forgiven. But, this is a BIG #fail for Ruse.

How and why I became an atheist, part 3

2011-03-25T22:05:00.001-05:00

OK, I'm now at the point of talking about my time in graduate seminary (divinity school) at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, Mo., the primary seminary of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.

That's after Part 1, covering childhood, and Part 2, covering high school and college years.

Concordia was and is an academically rigorous seminary. The Lutheran system requires taking undergraduate classes in biblical Greek and Hebrew, or taking noncredit classes on those languages at the seminary for those who didn't take them before.

It also required multiple classes in Old and New Testament interpretation, along with Christian and Lutheran doctrine, etc.

The program was a bit similar to medical school: Two years of classes, with occasional work at an area Lutheran church, then a full year of internship, paid, at a Lutheran church anywhere in the U.S., followed by one last year of academics, theoretically building in part on ideas learned, deficiencies, uncovered, etc., during that internship.

Well, I started my voyage of doubt near the end of that second year. And, used that internship year to further build on the "intellectual judo" I was starting to do on what I had been taught so far.

By the time I got done with that internship, between a mix of moral, intellectual and personal reasons (the not wanting to go down that career path anyway, even with the guaranteed job security), I knew I was no longer a conservative Lutheran. I knew I was moving through the liberal wing of Lutheranism, and at least in the direction of Unitarianism, and didn't know where I would stop.

I also knew that, thanks to childhood and lack of career dialogue and support from either parent, or the encouragement to search for that, I didn't know what I did want to do.

So, I figured that I would go back for that final year of seminary, get my degree, try to line up other job prospects in a metropolitan area like St. Louis, and sort my thoughts, mind and heart out more.

More on that coming up in Part 4.

Why do secularists make "just war" arguments?

2011-03-25T01:19:00.000-05:00

For example, take Massimo Pigliucci's argument for bombing Libya. It's a "just war" argument.

I raise this for several reasons.

First, most notably, the idea of "just war" arose from Christian dogmatic theology, namely starting with St. Augustine. From Thomas Aquinas, and onward, it got wrung through a sophistic wringer, and not just by Catholics, once the Protestant Reformation arrived.

Now, could one argue for something similar to a "just war" from a secularist point of view and with secularist bolstering?

One could try, I'll certainly concede, using tools such as evolutionary psychology. And please, only the real thing, not Pop Ev Psych.

But, a philosopher like Pigliucci ought to know that the idea of "justice" is philosophically iffy on utilitarian and other grounds.

First, can we even talk about "justice" in the abstract, whether retributive or distributive?

With Walter Kaufmann, I say no. I specifically refer to his hugely thought-provoking book "Without Guilt and Justice," which pretty thoroughly eviscerates John Rawls like an eight-inch herring.

To put it simply, neither form of justice, in the abstract, can be universally applied in the concrete. To execute what seems "just" to some, even many, will always or nearly so be unjust to somebody.

So, should we let a utilitarian hedonistic calculus apply?

But, that leads me to the old Chinese or pseudo-Chinese parable, with the ongoing refrain of "could be good, could be bad."

What seems "just" to and/or for the majority now may not five months, five years or five decades from now. Maybe not even five days from now.

So, no, we shouldn't.

So, what CAN philosophy tell us in situations like this.

First of all, looking elsewhere in the East, something like Taoism can tell us all decisions are fraught with uncertainties and shades of gray.

Second, we can move on to Iranian philosopher Idries Shah, who uttered the aphorism, "There are never just two sides to an issue." While that itself is a bit too black-and-white for me, it nonetheless has a large kernel of truth.

Take the air strikes against Libya.

There is:
1. The tribal rebels' side (or sides, depending on how much or how little coherence they have;
2. The U.S. side;
3. The Franco-British side;
4. The Turkish side;
5. The Arab League side;
6. Gadhafi's side;
7. The Russian side;
8. And, though we've not heard from Beijing yet, surely, the Chinese side.

Even if we narrow the issue of "justice" here, rather than play realpolitik, at least the first three, if not the first five, are all legitimate "sides." And, all with different definitions, at least in narrow particulars if not major strands, as to what might be "just."

And, also, since "just war" ultimately has religious roots, shouldn't we be careful about it for that reason, too? Monotheistic religions deal in black and white; I prefer my philosophy with more nuance. And, my secularism in general.

Philosophy is like statistics, or law

2011-03-24T16:42:00.002-05:00

You can slice and dice logical arguments to support all sorts of claims. That includes what evidence you include as warrants vs. what countervailing empirical evidence you exclude from discussion.

Especially in real-world informal logic, how you frame the parameters of the argument is another way of slicing and dicing an issue to an already-held conclusion.

Take Massimo Pigliucci's argument for bombing Libya.

Sure, in a vacuum of Libya and no other foreign policy worries, might be great. But, why Libya and not Yemen? Or, why not Cote d'Ivoire a year ago?

Massimo goes on, in what is nearly 100 posts down the list, in response to me, to say he has non-humanitarian reasons, as well, to support intervention in Libya. I've asked what they are, because I don't see any that aren't either directly or indirectly related to oil. Terrorism? Since we intercepted the ship with nuclear supplies headed to Libya several years ago, Gadhafi had become "our guy," so scratch that, even if Massimo makes that claim.

Massimo also limits the parameters of the argument by saying his support for air strikes doesn't mean support for intervention. But, given criticism of the Obama Administration, that it doesn't have an exit policy, and that our British and French allies have pushed going beyond air strikes, if necessary, that "restriction" might work in formal logic, but, in a real-world political situation, doesn't.

I drop by Massimo's blog regularly, and have totally agreed with his take on people like Sam Harris and Jonathan Haidt.

But here? Being logical isn't the same as being right.

At the least, without engaging in serious multi-valued logic, with answers that would include things like "maybe" and "maybe not." With that in mind, I wouldn't say Massimo is wrong on his support for Libyan air strikes. I would say that, to use the old Scottish jury verdict, he's only reached the "not proven" state.

And, I wouldn't say I, or others, are "right" to argue against air strikes.

At bottom line?

Not only is being logical not the same as being right, the use of bipolar western logic to try to "prove rightness" is often wrong.

Arguably, such situations are even a good example of Hume's famous dictum: "Reason must be the slave of the passions."

Again, there's not necessarily a "right" or a "wrong" involved. But, in this particular case, since Massimo is claiming non-humanitarian reasons for Libyan intervention, and I doubt he can name a good non-oil-related one, I think, on the passions, he's wrong.

Beyond that, I haven't even touched on the issue of "just war." (I believe, per Walter Kaufmann's evisceration of "justice" as an abstract concept, that "just war" as an abstract concept is a mix of philosophical non sequitur and invitation to political mischief in democratic or quasi-democratic societies, especially when inveighed with religious overtones.)

I should note that I've hinted before that Massimo practices "philosophism," the hyper-philosophic parallel to scientism.

Can science predict the decline of religion?

2011-03-22T02:10:00.000-05:00

According to one topic at the American Physical Society's annual meeting, the answer is yes. The study uses modeling similar to that used to predict the decline of languages.

I'll give it m ore credence if similar modeling can also predict the rise of religion, or explain the anomalous outlier of religion in the U.S. vs. western Europe.

Karma — as offensive as hell

2011-03-20T22:07:00.000-05:00

This extended CNN blog, with broadly multifaith comments on "why suffering" in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear worries, following the Japanese tsunami and eaerthquake, makes the case well for me.

Is it any worse for a fundamentalist Christian to say:
1. God is inscrutable;
2. Original sin brought on this disaster for you;
3. It's God's prerogative to damn some people to hell.

Or a hardcore Buddhist to say:
1. Karma is inscrutable;
2. Your past life that you can't even remember brought on this disaster for you;
3. It's a cyclical universe's "prerogative" to damn some people to recurring rounds of bad karma.

I know of people who are skeptics, and atheists, even, in the sense of not believing in a western monotheist divinity, that still believe in the metaphysics of karma. Well, sorry, but, karma's as offensive as the heaven-hell of western monotheism.

Beyond that, both western and eastern religion offer the same pablum when confronted with the problem of evil.

And, a "shout out" to "it's not a religion" Buddhist Sam Harris — what say you now?

And, speaking of that, I give a kudo to Chris Hitchens, the one "name" New Atheist to look at eastern religions just as toughly as those of the west.

How and why I became an athest, part 2

2011-03-19T20:51:00.001-05:00

In part 1 of what I am starting as a series of posts explaining the origins of my current naturalist, non-metaphysical stance, called atheism by some, I talked about the childhood roots of my doubt.

Now, I advance the stage to high school and college.

My parents divorced at the start of my freshman year of high school. Per the religious background on my dad's side of the family, my mom said the divorce was because he was trying to force all us kids into church work careers. Funny, but mom didn't fight for primary physical custody of me and my sister, in light of this. I know there were other issues, but I'm not sure what all of them were. I'm not sure my mom even knew, but that's something entirely different.

Anyway, I stayed with my dad, even when he moved from rural New Mexico to St. Louis, to go back to his seminary to complete a second masters, then a doctorate of theology.

I wound up only completing one college application, and that was to his undergraduate alma mater Lutheran college. I had started one to New Mexico Tech and hid it, mindful of what my mom had said. When I looked for it later, it was gone. Years and years later, re-reading a letter he sent me my freshman year in college, I realize he found it and threw it away.

Well, it was nice, small, very small, as far as college size. That was good in the sense of not making me "lost" and even more vulnerable to depression, which would have happened had I gone to Enormous State U. But, it was bad, especially with no career guidance or discussions from my dad, as far as academics.

Well, I changed majors half a dozen times, spending most of it in the pre-divinity program. But, when I graduated, I didn't go immediately to seminary.

While I was there, at times I did feel a warm religious glow I hadn't felt at home, or at church during home days. But, it wasn't that common, and in hindsight, it was a glow of "community" as much as it was of religious faith. It was a glow of belonging and acceptance for a kid who no longer felt he was the target of bullies, and was growing up physically at least.

However, besides my dad, I also felt "control" issues from my oldest brother, who had returned to college - at that same school.

I suppose my academic "drift," as far as choice of majors, may also have been a bit of rebellion, a passive-aggressive one.

But, after graduation, I worked 2 years in the volunteer-based U.S. mission church building program the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod had. But, that was only a stopgap. Finally, I subconsciously bit the bullet, and decided I would become a pastor, and told my dad so.

I figured ministry, even as a Protestant, was a bit of escapism. Plus, Lutheran pastors, like Catholic and Episcopalian priests, have a "divine call." They're not hired and fired like Baptist preachers. Hey, guaranteed job security, eh?

More coming in part 3.

How and why I became an atheist, part 1

2011-03-19T18:19:00.001-05:00

The denouement came near the end of my graduate divinity degree studies, as I realized I just could not follow in the footsteps of my conservative Lutheran father.

First, a touch of family background. My dad'ss mom's mother had been a minster, and he wouldn't hear of my grandma becoming a missionary, so wish fulfillment surely passed down to my dad, her only son. The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, then as now, has an all-male ministry, but, my dad's sister became a Lutheran parochial school teacher.

And, it went on from there.

My oldest brother? A minister? My second brother has a day job at LCMS headquarters and is a part-time paid music director at a fair-sized church. My third brother is a fairly active layperson. My sister, after saying when she was younger she'd never marry one, married a minister.

And, there's me.

For those unfamiliar with the conservative wing of Lutheranism, I say, picture a near-Catholic, or Episcopalian, worship style mixed with conservative Southern Baptist beliefs. This denomination still believes in a literally inerrant bible, while making allowance for poetic passages in some places. (That said, how the four corners of the earth can be poetic, but Genesis 1, or Genesis 2, can't be, and must be understood literally, is ... one of those things within conservative Christianity in general.) Some allowance is made for "gaps" in genealogies, so the LCMS doesn't believe in Bishop Ussher's 4,004 BCE. But, it is some sort of young-earth creationist, i.e, 100,000 BCE or so.

My dad pushed me through confirmation class in one year rather than two, to show off his skills at educating his children. And, at the same time, or before, I willingly sat apart from the rest of the family, in the front pew, staring up at the pulpit every Sunday and taking sermon notes. Many family dynamics were involved.

However, I had the first "slippage" in belief at the same time.

At about the same time, when I was about 11 or so, at the end of Ash Wednesday church services, a stranger came in our sanctuary.

After church, he asked my dad to exorcise a demon or demons from him. Yes, really.

Well, among our church members was a man who was a psychiatrist at the local Indian Health Service hospital. After a brief, brief of listening to the stranger, my dad told the psychiatrist to start calling.

That said, I was disappointed. I knew Jesus' "O ye of little faith" admonition to his disciples when they once failed at an exorcism.

But, I was more than disappointed.

I was also, silently, laughing on the inside. Laughing at my dad's lack of faith and lack of faith-based power.

So, how much, at all, was my eventual move away from religious belief due to some sort of rebellion? Setting that aside, how much of it was matters of the heart and how much of it was matters of logic and/or empirical evidence (or lack thereof, on both evidence and logic)?

More on that in following sections, starting with Part 2. It is followed by parts 3, 4, 5 and 6.

The opposite of "scientism" is???

2011-03-03T01:06:00.000-06:00

I have had no problem labeling the thought processes of people like P.Z. Myers and Sam Harris with the tag of "scientism" at times when it was clear they were trying to address nonscientific issues from a scientific point of view. Especially with Harris, allegedly a philosopher because he has a degree in the subject, it's frustrating, off-putting, undercuts the "cause" of secularism and more.

Philosopher Massimo Pigliucci also has no problem pegging people like that.

So, it's a bit disconcerting when he says social science research into people's moral judgment thinking not only is not philosophy, but that it can't even lead to philosophy, in his perspective.

And, so, I ask, the opposite of scientism, in this case, is ...

"Philosophism"?

His argument, in a nutshell, is in a comment of his near the end of the comment thread:

Similarly, we evolved the ability to make moral judgment, but that doesn't begin to equip us for professional-level moral reasoning ...

I saw "professional-level moral reasoning," which I inadvertently shortened to "professional moral reasoning" (though I don't think that significantly changed anything) and ... well, I cringed.

It's like Massimo wants to do data-free, research-free philosophy. And, even if (I'm not going to say "even though") he may not have meant it in an elitist way, it sure comes off that way, which is the main reason I cringed.

Loch Ness Monster cousin is NOT found

2011-02-20T00:53:00.001-06:00

In the British paper the Telegraph, there's a gullible story claiming that someone with a cell phone caught a picture of "Brownessie," hailed as the English cousin to the Loch Ness monster.

Well, the story's not totally gullible. It did interview one skeptic:

Photo expert David Farnell of Farnell’s photographic laboratory in Lancaster said: “It does look like a real photo but because it’s been taken on a phone the file size is too small to really tell whether it has been altered on Photoshop or not.”

OK, here's why I'm skeptical.

Shutterbug Tom Pickles describes the event:

“It was petrifying and we paddled back to the shore straight away. At first I thought it was a dog and then saw it was much bigger and moving really quickly at about 10mph.

Really? 10 miles per hour? I would think something swimming that fast would produce more ripples.

OK, so Pickles misestimated the speed. Then, we can rightfully ask, what else did he misjudge? The size?

He claims it was three cars in size. Moving even close to 10 mph, something that big would surely produce bigger ripples than in the picture.

Then, we have conflicting comments.

Pickles says:

“Its skin was like a seal’s but it’s shape was completely abnormal – it’s not like any animal I’ve ever seen before."

But kayak companion Sarah Harrington says:

“It was like an enormous snake.

Snakes don't have abnormal shapes. True, eyewitnesses have unreliable testimony, but that different?

The kicker? The story says Pickles and Harrington were out "as part of a team building exercise with his IT company, CapGemini."

OK, how many other people were getting built up? Any of them want to comment?

That said, speaking of comments, people on the story's website nail it. The "creature" looks too sharp, compared to the rest of the image. The perspective looks too "high" for it to be shot from a kayak, unless it was quite close. And, in that case, something three car lengths in size and moving at 10 mph would surely have swamped a kayak. In which case, the couple would have been seen being swamped by other IT team builders.

One other commenter notes a 24-year-old man and 23-year-old woman out on a lake together ... this might be a hoax not just to be a hoaxer, but to cover some tracks ...

Don't fret over Watson too much?

2011-02-19T01:27:00.000-06:00

Wired reminds us that Ken Jennings' human brain used as much energy as a 12-watt light bulb on Jeopardy, while Watson the computer needed special cooling equipment, and that the Deep Blue computer that beat Gary Kasparov at chess was a fire hazard.

And, does Watson have "metaknowledge"? Can it recognize that it can't quite remember something but knows that it's on the tip of its cybertongue? Does it have the emotional power of "knowing"?

Not yet. Watson's interesting. Is it intelligent? No.

Emotions, especially when understood as value judgments, are part of the package of intelligence.

So, while Watson may have been hot under the cybercollar from the heat of his circuits, he never really was sweating, so to speak, because he couldn't.

New life for the old EEG?

2011-02-09T01:40:00.001-06:00

A couple of Toronto doctors say yes, that they can make it worth more than fMRIs, PET scans, etc.

Two Toronto doctors are claiming to have written software to generate real-time 3D brain images from the venerable EEG. Let's stay tuned!

One significant advantage of the Doidge/Mocanu invention – dubbed dynamic electrical cortical imaging (DECI) – is speed. Other imaging technologies snap pictures of the brain once every few seconds. DECI takes visual impressions less than 1/1,000 of a second apart – in virtual real-time.

If this bears up, maybe neuroscience moves out of the Neolithic, or Early Bronze Age, or whatever.

That said, Dr. Mark Doidge is, as the story notes, brother to writer and psychiatrist Norman Doidge, author of the bestselling "The Brain That Changes Itself." I'm not saying that that gives his research an edge, but it may.

On the other hand, I find it hard to believe this will add much to neuroscience. And, why can't similar software improve CTs or PET scans? And, given that the biggest complaint on Amazon about Norman Doidge's book is that he fills pages with sales and marketing "pushes" of often costly programs and treatments that will allegedly boost brain plasticity, we might want to be skeptical about the Toronto doctors' findings for other reasons. Can anyone give me an "Amen," as in Dr. Daniel Amen, and his overblown claims about single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT)?

Neuroscience roundup - brains, guts, meds

2011-02-09T01:29:00.002-06:00

Antipsychotic drugs could be shrinking brains. A large study seems to offer a fair degree of confirmation. I think, among other things, we should look more carefully at off-label use of these drugs. Smaller brains may not be bad, but ...

Meanwhile, about 50 percent of people prescribed antidepressants are off-label users. It's stuff like this that leads to "Big Pharma" cries.

You not only have a "second brain" in your gut, but your intestinal microbes may influence both that and the actual brain, through effects on neurotransmitters. Woo-ers running wild with this aside, how could this affect antibiotics prescriptions? What is antibiotic resistance going to do to this?

Academia — hotbed of liberal bias? Or conservative isolation?

2011-02-09T01:17:00.000-06:00

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt says yes, and, if Michael Shermer is Twittering about this — AND getting info wrong ... the 6-1 ratio is among general faculty, not social scientists! with Shermer thereby bringing his rush-job Tweeting into question — it's going to spread to Palinista land by tomorrow afternoon.

The reality? Probably a bit different.

First, upon what in-depth research did he make this observation?

He polled his audience at the San Antonio Convention Center, starting by asking how many considered themselves politically liberal. A sea of hands appeared, and Dr. Haidt estimated that liberals made up 80 percent of the 1,000 psychologists in the ballroom. When he asked for centrists and libertarians, he spotted fewer than three dozen hands. And then, when he asked for conservatives, he counted a grand total of three.

“This is a statistically impossible lack of diversity,” Dr. Haidt concluded, noting polls showing that 40 percent of Americans are conservative and 20 percent are liberal.

Let's now enumerate all that's wrong with this.

First, political labels are notoriously imprecise among the American populace. Among the 40 percent that label themselves conservatives, many favor more moderate political positions. Prime example: Tea Party grandmas and grandpas telling the government to keep its hands off their Medicare.

Second, short of a position-by-position poll, both among the general public and among academia, there's no telling how you can label people's positions consistently.

Related to that is this:

The politics of the professoriate has been studied by the economists Christopher Cardiff and Daniel Klein and the sociologists Neil Gross and Solon Simmons. They’ve independently found that Democrats typically outnumber Republicans at elite universities by at least six to one among the general faculty, and by higher ratios in the humanities and social sciences.

Is "liberal" 100 percent correlative to "Democrat" and "conservative" to "Republican"? Assuming they're not, how close is the relationship? Do we even know? Are people using a party label for a political stance label?

Assuming, for the sake of argument, that there is a high degree of correlation and that Haidt's observations reflect that, let's ask why this ratio exists.

In a sentence? Christian fundamentalism and evolution. In other words, many Christians are not going to go to mainstream universities, especially top-tier ones, in the hard sciences. (Remember, Shermer, the 6:1 ratio was for general faculty, not just social sciences.)

In a second sentence? Alternative takes on the social sciences.

Especially for fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals, the mainstream psychological take on things from gay marriage to what is appropriate child discipline are going to keep conservative Xns away from those disciplines at mainstream universities, too.

In a third sentence? It's the political wars.

With the Federalist Society, the best entree is a JD at a non-mainstream school, like Regent University's law school. Places like that are starting their own political science and public policy graduate schools in more numbers, too, for similar reasons

If Haidt went to private colleges, what would he find there?

As I Tweeted Shermer:

What if Haidt went to Xn colleges? Would you be shocked/offended at 6:1 conservative ratio?

I wouldn't be shocked, myself. And I'm not shocked.

I am a bit shocked, though honestly, not at all surprised, at the cheapness of Micheal Shermer's thought.

Sam Harris' Immoral Landscape

2011-02-04T00:11:00.001-06:00

Sam Harris' "The Moral Landscape," much lauded by many reflexive, relatively unthinking New Atheists who have made him into a rock star of the movement, falls far short of its hype. In fact, I one-starred it on Amazon.

What's wrong? Harris is a Platonic idealist in drag. He also engages in scientism. Related to both of these, despite his having an undergraduate degree in philosophy, he really appears not to understand a lot of philosophical issues relevant to this book's subject. Or else, he doesn't care to.

Beyond that, his Islamophobia in the early part of this book seems to largely come straight from the neoconservative playbook. Possibly related to that, he creates straw men out of liberals all allegedly being moral relativists.

Sam Harris tries to draw a hard-and-fast dichotomy between science-based morals and ethics and religious-based morals and ethics in this book.

However, this is the real world, not a Platonic idea (Harris comes off as quasi-Platonic in more than one way in parts of this book), and so, it's not totally amenable to Harris' bifurcation.

Take abortion. Many religious people support at least some right to abortion, but noted atheist Nat Hentoff is 100 percent prolife. Ditto on end of life issues. And, if I looked a little bit, I could surely find atheists and agnostics with less enlightened views on gay rights than many religious people.

Now, as to the science part ... the idea that we can have a science-based morality? Harris offers little in the way of actual neuroscience studies on the brain processing moral issues.

We may well get oodles more such studies in the future, but that's not today. Harris also doesn't address the issues of what MRIs measure, how well this correlates with thought output, etc.

Likewise, he discusses little in the field of well-done evolutionary psychology (to distinguish it from Pop Evolutionary Psychology).

Beyond that, he simply ignores that the study of the human mind, whether from the POV of cognitive neuroscience or evolutionary psychology, is at best in the Early Bronze Age and is arguably, at least on the matter of morality and ethics, still in the Neolithic.

So, while science may at some point (far?) in the future offer us significant oversight on specific moral issues, it doesn't today because it can't. And, per the specific moral issues I listed above, it may never be able to.

Indeed, with reference to that, Harris' approach to science and morality smacks of a fair degree of scientism. And, I write this as an irreligious, skeptical naturalist.

That said, there's several other problems with this book. Read on at the jump for the details! I'm going to address several overview issues first, before making any page-by-page critique of the book.

First is the matter of Harris' Islamophobia. Since Islam is in general cited regularly for examples of immoral behavior and beliefs, we need to examine this.

First of all, it seems much of Harris' Islamophobia comes from the neoconservative political playbook. He favorably references an off-the-wall neocon writer, Bat Ye'Or, whose book on Islam's alleged takeover of Europe was one-starred by me.

Secondly, he's confusing a static historic snapshot of history with a moving picture. If we went by snapshots, 900 years ago, Christian Crusaders would have been the poster boys for immoral behavior. 750 years ago it would have been pagan/animist Mongols. 600 years ago, polytheistic Aztecs.

Finally, if we confine ourselves to today, the Hindu Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka killed 30,000 in their civil war, far more than al-Qaeda has killed.

Second, whence comes Harris' moral stance, ultimately? I believe he is not just a moral objectivist, albeit a consequentialist (a stance more often associated with moral relativism but compatible with objectivism too), but a moral absolutist -- specifically a Platonic Idealist moral absolutist. There's irony there in spades, since the early and middle Platonic dialogues were devoted to Socrates, deconstruction of other people's definitions of moral issues such as justice. (Of course, Socrates usually doesn't offer his own idealist definition back; such things arise only in later dialogues.)

Third, what of Harris' claims to be examining morality and its foundations from a scientific perspective?
First of all, he's not the first to do so. He didn't invent sociobiology or evolutionary psychology. (Let me be clear here -- much of what passes for science in alleged evolutionary psychology is actuallly the pseudoscience of Pop Evolutionary Psychology. However, unlike a P.Z. Myers, there is legitimate work being done in this field, albeit little and far between.) So, Harris isn't new in his effort and he's certainly not new in his hope.

That said, for someone who wants to be scientific, he seems often lacking. (No shock here; I saw the same problem way back in "The End of Faith." First, from an evolutionary standpoint, Harris doesn't address issues of individual vs. group selection. Now, I'm not as bullish on group selection as, say, David Sloan Wilson, but I do think it deserves more consideration than many evolutionary biologists give it. Second, Harris doesn't devote any scientific examination to cultural evolution. Admittedly, there's not a lot to really nail down ant this intersection of biology and sociology, but Harris doesn't even get into what is out there.

Beyond what I mention above, for someone with a graduate degree in neuroscience, he spends about ZERO time referencing actual neurological study of the brain. No V.S. Ramachandran here, folks! Not even close.

Fourth, Harris and philosophy, not just the "is-ought" issue, but certainly including that.

First of all, for people who have read previous works of his, and not embraced him as a bundle of light, his arrogance in dealing with the philosophical background should be of no surprise. But, it still needs quoting.

Page 197, footnote 1: "Many of my critics fault me for not engaging with the academic literature on moral philosophy. ... First ... I did not arrive at my position ... by reading the work of moral philosophers; I came to it by considering the logical implications of our making continual progress in the sciences of the mind. Second, I am convinced that every appearance of (academic terminology) directly increases the amount of boredom in the universe. ... (T)he professional philosophers I've consulted seem to understand and support what I'm doing"
Let's unpack what's wrong with this quote.

1. Harris might actually have learned something by engaging with other moral philosophers either of today or the past. That would include wrestling more with Hume's is-ought; that would certainly include a provocative AND nontechnical book like Walter Kaufmann's "Beyond Guilt and Justice."
2. Is Harris saying he's either too dumb or too lazy to "translate" language of academia to a general audience? Or a too-arrogant mix of both? One of the best classical philosophers on moral issues was Hume, precisely because he wrote in a way for the general public (of a certain educational level) to understand.
3. Neuroscience is a "hard" science with plenty of its own technical language. That doesn't stop Harris from wanting to focus on advances in scientific discovery, albeit while, rather than discussing them in a nontechnical level, not discussing them at all. I smell a HUGE steaming pile of hypocrisy here.
4. In light of what I noted above about Socratic dialogues, Harris never discusses what happens when two big moral issues, like "fairness" and "compassion," collide. This is one of the brilliancies of Kaufmann's book mentioned above.

In light of all that, let's look at Hume's famous is-ought issues.

Hume discusses the problem in book III, part I, section I of his A Treatise of Human Nature (1739):

In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remark'd, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary ways of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when all of a sudden I am surpriz'd to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, 'tis necessary that it shou'd be observ'd and explain'd; and at the same time that a reason should be given; for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it.

Hume calls for caution against such inferences in the absence of any explanation of how the ought-statements follow from the is-statements. But how exactly can an "ought" be derived from an "is"? The question, prompted by Hume's small paragraph, has become one of the central questions of ethical theory, and Hume is usually assigned the position that such a derivation is impossible. This complete severing of "is" from "ought" has been given the graphic designation of Hume's Guillotine.

See Wikipedia for more on the "is-ought" issue.

Several issues here:
1. "Ought" is multivalent. Sometimes, most notably in ethics, it has an explicitly moral tone. Other times, far from that. For instance, in late 19th-century physics, scientists said the ether, the luminiferous ether, "ought" to weigh a certain amount, even though experiment rebelled against that.
2. In the case of ethics, to worry about "is-ought" is to approach the issue the wrong way. Rather, staying within Hume, one can ask what ethics can be naturalistically devised and supported. In this case (contra what Harris seems to say) we turn to evolutionary psychology **properly done** (and not Pop Ev Psych), as well as evolutionary biology of non-hominids. We can, through cultural anthropology, partially reinforce hominid ev psych findings. That then said, we would note that often, there is not one "right" ethical answer to some issues of ethics. We also should note, per someone like Walter Kaufmann, sometimes there is no right answer at all, or that a "right" answer may be culturally determined, or that a "right" answer for an individual may be the "wrong" answer for society. In this last case, no science gives us "the answer" as to whether individual needs or societal needs should prevail. And, for that matter, different religions may give us different answers, or the same religion may give us different answers at different times, as they do on other issues such as collective guilt.

Re a critic of my Amazon review, who invited me to look at a Harris post on Huffington Post.

Harris' "refutation" of his critics actually confirms much of what they say about him on the Islamophobia. Ditto on his .... gullibility, for want of other words, on the credibility of the psi folks.

As for his stance on Buddhism, it seems clear he's trying to have his cake and eat it, too, by purporting to be on a search for "the authentic Buddha," in essence. Shades of Albert Schweitzer!

That said, the review by John Horgan, which Harris loathes? I think Horgan goes too far in taking science to the moral woodshed, but, in a general way, he's right. To this day, Western scientists still have few problems with exploiting indigenous peoples, for example. One might fault Horgan for failing to distinguish science from individual scientists, but this is part of connecting Harris' stance to scientism, I think.

On the good side, though, he does some great petard-hoisting on Harris:

Some will complain that it is unfair to hold science accountable for the misdeeds of a minority. It is not only fair, it is essential, especially when scientists as prominent as Harris are talking about creating a universal, scientifically validated morality. Moreover, Harris blames Islam and Catholicism for the actions of suicide bombers and pedophilic priests, so why should science be exempt from this same treatment?

And more:

Harris asserts in Moral Landscape that ignorance and humility are inversely proportional to each other; whereas religious know-nothings are often arrogant, scientists tend to be humble, because they know enough to know their limitations. "Arrogance is about as common at a scientific conference as nudity," Harris states. Yet he is anything but humble in his opus. He castigates not only religious believers but even nonbelieving scientists and philosophers who don't share his hostility toward religion.

Finally, Horgan raises the same concerns about neuroscience I do:

Harris further shows his arrogance when he claims that neuroscience, his own field, is best positioned to help us achieve a universal morality. "The more we understand ourselves at the level of the brain, the more we will see that there are right and wrong answers to questions of human values." Neuroscience can't even tell me how I can know the big, black, hairy thing on my couch is my dog Merlin. And we're going to trust neuroscience to tell us how we should resolve debates over the morality of abortion, euthanasia and armed intervention in other nations' affairs?

Indeed. But, that, too, is part of Harris' scientism. That said, P.Z. Myers and Vic Stenger, on their claims to have proved the nonexistence of god, show that Harris isn't alone among New Atheists in falling into the pit of scientism.

NYT has narrow views on classical music

2011-01-17T23:59:00.000-06:00

There's an interactive poll on a New York Times page right now, where you can vote for your top 10 classical musicians.

That said, it's sadly lacking at both endpoints of the time scale. No Palestrina? Or Monteverdi? Guess pre-Bach doesn't exist. And while it's not bad on modernist times, no Penderecki? No Schnittke?

What is "enlightenment," anyway?

2011-01-16T20:55:00.002-06:00

I just got done reading John Horgan's "Rational Mysticism," a very good book. And, it provokes the question.

Is enlightenment recognizing there is no need for enlightenment? Is it recognizing that he self, the alleged target of enlightenment, is fleeting and changing? Is it recognizing that an alleged enlightenment experience cannot be seized, captured or chained up? Is it living in an "eternal" present that isn't eternal, only momentary, recognized as such, and therefore recognized as being incapable of being "lived in"? Is it accepting that life is often no more than muddling? Is it recognizing that there is no such thing as Big E-Enlightenment? Is it recognizing that while some experiences and moments may be more enlightening than others, there is no absolute enlightenment?

I think "enlightenment" of the best kind ultimately involves acceptance, in some way, shape or form. and, acceptance of one's self, and the self's circumstances, is usually at the bottom of that, followed by acceptance of the luck, arbitrariness and capriciousness of life.

So, viva Steven Weinberg!

Atheists are religious? Who'd have thunk?

2011-01-07T01:59:00.000-06:00

A flawed poll indeed, from Gallup.

How can atheists be very religious, moderately religious or nonreligious? But, that's what Gallup claims. Gallup says:

Americans' degree of religiousness, as defined in this analysis, is based on responses to two questions asking about the importance of religion and church attendance, yielding the "very religious," "moderately religious," and "nonreligious" groups. (See page 2 for details of this classification procedure.)

Gallup does say that the effect is probably based on contact with others in a group.

Beyond that, this poll has other "issues."

The main one is, what is "wellbeing"? In the story about the poll, that's not really explained. Even if it is, that's a subjective issue. For some, it might be more a good partner relationship. For others, it might be a Maslow-type actualization. For others, it might be a $100,000-a-year job.

But, beyond that, what's with the nearly 3 percent of atheists/agnostics supposedly strongly religious?

In this case, it's bad linguistics. I guarantee.

After I wrote a newspaper column, years ago, about my non-metaphysical stances, I was asked to speak at a philosopher's club in Dallas. And, a philosophy professor at a community college told me he prayed regularly. (I had the good grace not to ask him directly, "To whom?")

Another, also illustrative anecdote. I started making a connection with a woman on Match.com several years ago who said she was an atheist. But, as she learned from me what that really meant, well, she "ran like hell." As vest I could figure from hindsight, to her, "atheist" meant something like "spiritual but not religious."

And, that's the problem with polls of his nature by somebody like Gallup — terms aren't clearly identified and nailed down.

John Steinbeck - fabulist; maybe plain old liar

2010-12-25T00:04:00.001-06:00

So, it turns out "Travels with Charley" isn't true. It's not even "true to life." Not even close. That said, because it's deliberate confabulation, it's not really a novel, either, is it? It's a lie. Should we then re-address the motive behind Steinbeck's actual novels? Did he actually sympathize with Joad-type characters, or did he just think it was a good storyline?

I mean, "Grapes of Wrath" and "Cannery Row" are powerful and stirring. But, reading just how much Steinbeck fabulized, or just made stuff up, in "Travels with Charley," seriously makes me wonder if he was writing them for the story line more than the message.

AND ... although the Nobel Literature committee, unlike the Downtown Athletic Club with a Heisman Trophy, doesn't seem like it would ever revoke an awarded prize, IF Steinbeck was writing his novels for story lines more than any "message," should we reconsider his place in the literary canon?

That said, per Leo on Facebook, The Harvest Gypsies (the series of articles about migrant workers Steinbeck wrote for the San Francisco News) was the nonfiction basis for "The Grapes of Wrath." As Leo notes, what if Steinbeck faked that, too?

An 'aha' moment from 'It's a Wonderful Life'

2010-12-24T22:19:00.001-06:00

At the end of George's extended vision, when he goes back to the bridge and discovers he's still alive? I believe the music at that point is a major-key variation on the medieval Dies Irae melody. (Doubt the average watcher would even pick up on that.)

That said, what if Capra had ended the movie with George jumping? Or, had run it out another 30 minutes after the tear-jerker ending?

If you want to get more thought on that line, go here; is it "the most terrifying movie ever"?

Semi-holiday for one?

2010-12-24T00:32:00.000-06:00

Secularists, how do you "celebrate" Christmas? Especially if you're not from a Christian background pre-secularism, DO you celebrate it? If your other family isn't secular, or highly accepting of your nonbelief, do you not visit them?

And, do you feel that lonely doing so? Or do you handle Christmas as a simple holiday like Labor Day?

Gallup: Very religious are healthier

2010-12-23T18:10:00.000-06:00

Gallup notes, in a new research poll:

Very religious Americans are less likely to report that they smoke and are more likely to say they eat well and exercise regularly than those who are moderately religious or nonreligious. Nonreligious Americans have the worst health habits of the three groups.

Fortunately, Gallup recognizes that a statistical correlation is not necessarily a causal one:

There are a number of factors that could contribute to very religious Americans' healthier lifestyle choices. Some of these factors are likely overt products of religious doctrine itself, including rules related to smoking and substance abuse. Seventh-Day Adventists, for example, strictly adhere to vegetarian lifestyles free of alcohol and smoking, while orthodox Mormons and Muslims do not drink alcohol. In some Christian denominations, gluttony and sloth are considered two of the seven deadly sins, and many evangelical faiths frown on drinking and smoking. The Bible indicates that one's body is the "temple of God," which could in turn help explain the relationship between religious orthodoxy and exercise and certain types of food consumption. It is possible, of course, that the noted relationship between health and religiosity could go in the other direction -- that people who are healthier are the most likely to make the decision to be religious. This could be particularly relevant in terms of church attendance, one of the constituent components of Gallup's definition of religiousness. Healthier people may be more likely and able to attend religious services than those who are less healthy.

It also notes that, if there is a causal correlation, it could go in the other direction than fundamentalist types will claim?

It may also be possible that certain types of individuals are more likely to make healthy lifestyle choices and more likely to choose to be highly religious. The most parsimonious explanation, however, may be the most intuitive: Those who capitalize on the social and moral outcomes of religious norms and acts are more likely to lead lives filled with healthier choices.

That said, besides allowing for Mormons and Adventists, how much of this is age-specific? I'll bet that once we get past the age of 40 or so, the gap narrows a fair degree.

Adam Smith, mercantilism, 'invisible hand' and Deism

2010-12-23T01:08:00.001-06:00

I've written an occasional post touching on the edges of what's at the heart of this one.

And, that is that Smith wasn't such a pure-blooded Platonic idealist capitalist, first.

Even more important, secondly, is how his economic theory, especially as connected to his moral-sense ideas, and economically culminating in his "invisible hand," were based on Enlightenment Deism, an optimistic version of that religion that is scientifically, philosophically and psychologically untenable today.

For defenders of Smith the simon-pure free trader? You're wrong on the mercantilism, Smith and the colonies (Google Docs link). I quote, from a book: "Smith likewise approved of the laws which authorized the payment of a bounty for the production of naval stores in the American colonies and prohibited their export from America to any country other than Great Britain. This typical mercantilist regulation was justified, in Smith’s view, because it would make England independent of Sweden and the other northern countries for the supply of military necessities and this contribute to the self-sufficiency of the empire"

Source? "Wealth of Nations," Book IV, pp. 545-546, 609-610, 484, note 39.

Now, naval stores isn't all colonial goods, but given that they related to national defense, albeit loosely, Smith had no problem bringing them under a mercantilist umbrella.

Elsewhere, Smith accepted government support for start-up industry, retaliatory tarrifs (albeit on a limited basis) and other things.

On whence Smith derived ideas of "an invisible hand" or "the invisible hand," no, I can't prove it's from the wind-up-the-universe God of Enlightenment Deism. Nonetheless, it sounds reasonable, and I know it can't be disproven either, that as a source. Per Wikipedia, referencing his obit as a source, he rejected Orthodox Christianity at Oxford and was generally understood to have become a Deist.

Beyond that, von Mises says in Wikipedia again that he thought Smith thought the invisible hand was God.

Beyond that, we know that Deism was a strong influence on Smith's theory of moral sentiments. (Google Docs link.)

It's arguable, and has been argued by some, that the "invisible hand" doesn't apply to the workings of the market. But, even if it's considered an "inner witness," and not directly linked to Deism, nonetheless, via Smith's theory of moral sentiments being Deist influenced, a denial of any connection at all is hard to maintain. Certainly, the ideas that an invisible hand will rationally maximize production to the ultimate benefit of all is pure Deism at its most optimistic and moonshiney.

And, of course, Deism was scientifically undercut in 1900 by Max Planck. Before that, indirectly, as Voltaire knew, such an optimistic Deism was shaken by the 1755 Lisbon tremblor. Since then, nuclear weapons, world wars and the Holocast have further shattered Smith's blithely optimistic Deism.

Speaking of science, James K. Galbraith argues Smith is non-scientific in another way - he's pre-Darwinian! Very interesting. And, Galbraith applies this thought to all Smithian descendants, namely those nutbar Strausians and related Chicago School economists.

Pop psychology becomes pop philosophy and it's kind of ugly

2010-12-22T00:18:00.004-06:00

Just got done reading "How Philosophy Can Save Your Life: 10 Ideas That Matter Most."

It's pop philosophy if it's philosophy rather than psychology.

That's part of my review, noting the book doesn't answer "why" and "how" questions too much.

The biggest "why" that Marietta McCarty doesn't answer? Why are these the 10 most important ideas in philosophy? Personally, "skepticism" would be at or near the list of my top 10, with Hume definitely being one of the two or three exemplar philosophers. What led her to the conclusion that these are the 10 most important ideas? How does she justify the generalization that what appear to be the 10 main ways philosophy can save HER life will apply to all?

The biggest "how" question that is unasked? How do different of McCarty's 10 principles balance with each other? "Individuality" and "belonging" came immediately to mind. Now, one could say that McCarty is inviting the reader to figure that out on his or her own, but ... if one is to make a value judgment between two principles, is there a guiding idea McCarty has for that?

And, it gets worse. It's got some great individual and small-group reflection and discussion exercises, but with such a non-critical background, the author might have them discussing peripherals.

Free will not so free? And not so human-specific?

2010-12-19T02:21:00.000-06:00

I've long been of the opinion that "free will" vs. "determinism" is, if not a false dilemma, at least something close — a pair of false polarities, rather than something on a continuum.

(I've also been of the opinion, taking Dan Dennett's stance on consciousnesss that there's no "Cartesian meaner" to its logical conclusion — as does Daniel Wegner and others, I'm not alone — that there's no conscious, central, controlled location for free will in humans, as well. That is, there's no "Cartesian free willer" either. But, I digress.)

There's a German-based neuroscientist who agrees with me on the "polarities" angle. But, that's not all.

Bjoern Brembs also says that this free will — free will within constraints — is exhibited by animals, too.

Brembs and others have used mathematical models to simulate brain activity on a computer, finding that what worked best was a combination of deterministic behaviour and what is known as stochastic behaviour - which may look random but actually, in time, follows a defined set of probabilities.

Personally, I actually don't see this as that big of a deal. Given that consciousness itself is understood as being on some sort of continuum, rather than "we conscious humans" vs. "you unconscious animals," how could a will, and a will that is partially free, also not exist, and again, on a continuum?

That then said, I do find it a bit more questionable to extend some degree of free will, as Brembs does, all the way down to the level of flies, just as I would find it questionable to attribute consciousness to an animal with so few neurons.

To talk about a dog, or the old laboratory vertebrate standby, the lab rat, as having some degree or type of free will? Yes. The laboratory insect standby, a fruit fly? Per Carl Sagan, that's an extraordinary claim. I expect more evidence.

I'll stand by for more research; this is surely going to be a hot topic not just for months but for years.

ANGER IN THE KEY OF C-SHARP MINOR

2010-12-15T02:08:00.000-06:00

Minor keys often have melancholy, plaintive laments,
More so than jarring stridency,
Unless a sudden dissonance intrudes;
And, so it is with my anger.
Slow to form, with an undercurrent of counterpoint,
Spoken and developed in individual voices,
Like a late Beethoven quartet,
Or, maybe, even more, one by Shostakovich.
I don’t even realize that I am angry until the score plays out,
Usually about halfway through the third movement.
Then, a diminished seventh lingers, a four-part pedal point, if you will,
Until the cello transitions out, into a growling presto ostinato,
And I can no longer deny to my conscious self that I am angered,
As my emotions now move attacca, without pause,
Into a final movement,
Where resolution is supposed to be found,
But, per the style of musica moderna,
Is not guaranteed.
— Dec. 14, 2010

Why Socrates is overrated

2010-12-12T01:47:00.000-06:00

Yeah, given my blog name and handle, it sounds ironic for me to say that, no?

Of course, some people might accuse me of being hypocritical, if I do think he's overrated. That said, my blog name trades on the myth of Socrates, which we shall now call into account ... by using some Socratic-like questioning!

Questions
1. If he really were ignorant of so much, how could he always be right in his dialogues -- especially since he proves his opponents wrong in every one of them and therefore he couldn't have learned from them?

2. If he really were so ignorant, and knew that he were, then why didn't he follow Wittgenstein and remain silent about what he did not know?

3. If he really were so ignorant, then how can we believe he understood the Sophists' teachings so well?

Answers

The baseline answer to all of these individual questions and more is that Socrates, that is, the Socrates who is a Platonic mouthpiece (and, an ideal one for Plato, pun intended!) makes straw men out of Sophists and their thought, opposes the democratization (for money) of knowledge that they offer because it upsets his classist views and more.

But, specifically:

1A. The Platonic wordsmith hoists him by his own petard, not to mention, especially in the Cave analogy, also getting hoist on the petard of ineffability.

2A. Because it does that, Plato's Socrates only mimicked the idea of being ignorant.

3A. This builds on the "baseline" answer. In a sense, Socrates, to the degree we can really guess at who he was, DOES know the ideas of the Sophists well — and fears their democratizing strain.

Memory, time and change

2010-12-12T01:32:00.002-06:00

A poem on change, influenced by the book, "How Philosophy can Change Your Life."

Memory's malleability and time's tempo
Play out life in complex 7/8 rhythm
Like free verse that shifts mood, mode and meaning
Midstream.
An unconscious under-rhythm, more than mere backbeat,
Is each individual's I Ching
A changing round of changes on the them of change.
Nature is a humanist, with contradictions writ large.

Salon's theater critic knows bupkis

2010-12-12T01:30:00.000-06:00

First, on page 2 of a 10-page slideshow about the best Shakespearean movies, Matt Zoller Seitz insults Orson Welles in his weighty later life, apparently believing he was born fat:

I must acknowledge Orson Welles' 1966 epic "Chimes at Midnight," a low-budget labor of love that stitches together bits of several Shakespeare plays, including "Henry IV Parts I and II," "Henry V," "Richard II" and "The Merry Wives of Windsor." Welles wrote the script, directed and costars as Falstaff — pretty much the only great Shakespeare part that such a huge actor could convincingly play.

But, it gets much worse.

Omitting Welles' Macbeth entirely in his discussion of best movie versions of that play?

Instead, Welles' Macbeth, with his excellent use of shadows, Jacques Ibere's excellent musical score and more, is head and shoulders above Polanski's version, with Seitz ignorantly tabs as his No. 1.

Add in the fact that he omits the Burton/Taylor version of Taming of the Shrew, even from his "Wild Card" (the wild card here being the fact of art imitating life) and he appears even more clueless.

Libertarianism, skepticism shouldn't be mixed

2010-12-12T00:08:00.002-06:00

The potentially extended about dangers of mixing libertarianism and skepticism? Look at SkepticBlog and some of its recent posts, especially by Michael Shermer and Brian Dunning.

Shermer has been a libertarian of long standing. Outside this blog, as editor of Skeptic magazine, he's been an "enabler" of racialist Frank Miele for what, more than a decade now. Fellow racialist and co-author of "Race" with Miele, Vincent Sarich, is on the editorial board; Miele is listed as "senior editor."

Brian Dunning is currently engaged in bald-faced denialism of his libertarian sourcing, especially Steve Milloy's JunkScience.

Of course, here's why Dunning's such a denialist — Milloy's blatant denialism on global warming is trumpeted on the front page of JunkScience:

Now that the most absurd but potentially catastrophic junk science in human history is unraveling and we are preparing to declare victory over gorebull warbling we can devote more attention to neglected junk.

Taking Liberty -- How Private Property is being Abolished in America

Click here to jump straight to the global warming (a.k.a. "climate change", "global weirding", "people are icky, nasty, weather-breaking critters"... ) section if you so desire.

It's clear from that that Milloy engages in pseudoscience. Dunning was busted on using this website as a source, so hides his embarrassment at his ideological bias being discovered by raging against critics allegedly engaged in conspiracy theories, distortions, not telling him his errors and more.

Steven Novella originally got snookered by Milloy years ago and refusing to weigh in on Dunning's defense of "accidentally using" Milloy now.

Regarding that:

An irony in all of this is that if you go back and listen to early episodes of SGU, the Novella gang praised junkscience as a reputable website. They even had Milloy on to talk about his website (didn't discuss DDT, as far as I can remember). But you can tell that red flags were raised during the interview with Steve Novella, when Milloy was using language suggesting an ideological bias when discussing certain issues. And after that interview, SGU never mentioned junkscience again, except when criticizing it in an interview (I think, with Christopher Mooney). If only Brian had been privy to those early episodes, he may have steered away from the site all-together.

Well, considering that Dunning refuses to pull in his horns, AND that Novella has yet to put up his own post on Skepticblog about this at all, I doubt Dunning would have "steered away." Shermer hasn't steered away from worse; rather, he's gone swimming in it again.

Add, speaking of that, Skepticblog partner No. 4 (more on "partner" below) Daniel Loxton claimed that Shermer was past that, on a comment to a skeptic friend's Facebook post about a month ago. That makes almost half of the group, four of ten, having some degree of question mark over their heads on conflating libertarianism and skepticism.

Now, that "partner" talk? With 10 different members, I say it's a legitimate analogy to compare SkepticBlog to a law firm, with each blogger a "partner" similar to those at a law firm.

And, based on my experience with a with a particular political blog, Daily Kos, we're going to take that analogy in a particular direction.

Back about four years ago, Armando Llorens-Sar was Kos founder Markos Moulitsas' right-hand man. But, many people including me, asked and kept asking why he was refusing to reveal the name of the law firm where he "worked." He claimed it was because it could hurt his business.

Not quite. It turned out he was a partner at the firm, as opposed to "working" there. It a corporate representational firm which had some clients, such as Clorox and Walmart, taboo to many liberals.

I noted on Kos, before being banned, that Armando could have sold out of his partnership or asked to be bought out and how he ignored this idea. Note that a similar analogy applies here, to getting rid of Shermer and Dunning, or else others starting a new group blog. The six "silent partners," or the six + two, if you count the "abetting" duo of Loxton and Novella, have their chance to stand up for skeptical credibility, principle and practice.

As it stands, though, this conflation is bad for skepticism in a number of ways. Credibility, confusion of what skepticism is and more all result.

Specifics?

Some people may thing that there's a litmus test on political skepticism, i.e., you're not a good enough skeptic unless you're a libertarian. Others may think that the skeptical enterprise has an javascript:void(0)inherent bias. (Note the explicit libertarianism of Pop Ev Psycher Steve Pinker, for a parallel.) And more.
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Now, if like Howard Gardiner apparently did on religious belief to a degree, if Shermer and Dunning want to compartmentalize their skepticism, fine. Just be honest about it!

2010-12-12T00:08:00.000-06:00

CFI and organization — Kurtz maybe DID need to go

2010-12-05T20:42:00.002-06:00

I didn’t carefully and thoroughly follow every step of the Council for Inquiry’s organizational issues up to the time Paul Kurtz was pushed out as executive director.

Since that time, I started paying more attention, for a number of reasons.

First is related to the reasons Kurtz was allegedly pushed out — the difference between “confrontationalists” (especially among “New Atheists”) and “accommodationalists” as far as how to deal with the nonatheist world in general and especially its more hostile elements. I lean toward the accommodationalist side but, per Ecclesiastes, know there is a time for everything.

Second is related to the organizational issues themselves, specifically, the loss of a $2 million a year donor, because of losing Kurtz. And, there are two subissues here.

No. 1? Orac (sorry, didn’t bookmark a link) is right: You do NOT use the money of one donor in your general fund when that donor’s contributions make up a full one-quarter of your total income. You put that in a trust and use the interest, after a couple of years. OR, as many environmental groups do, you try to set up a matching fund drive between small donors and this guy. You could then use that portion of his $2M a year donation in your general fund but bank the rest.

That one hangs totally on Kurtz’s shoulders. My impression is that he ran CFI too much like a ma-and-pa shop long after it had expanded beyond that point. He obviously needed a full-time director of development who would know this, know how to do this, and tell Kurtz that.

If Kurtz resisted any of this, then he needed to go.

No. 2? The donor dropoff has led to a number of other issues, one related to a CFI job for which I applied, the position of director of communications.

Now, this spring, Nathan Bupp was still listed as vice president of communications. I assume his position was cut in the financial turmoil, and now, the director of communications opening is a partial replacement, at lower salary.

That said, it’s been going on eight weeks now since the application deadline for that job. I have no idea of where Barry Karr of CFI is at in the process. My guess is that, based on the number of resumes he got early on, a CFI disorganizational disorder has overwhelmed him. I’m assuming that he, and any assistant(s) he has in the hiring process, did NOT start a “preliminary cull” of resumes after getting more than 120 in the first 36-48 hours after announcing the opening. Assuming they didn’t, that’s another organizational black mark.

If CFI doesn't have the money to hire more staffers to help organization, then it needs to focus solely on development issues (along with narrower PR issues in the sense of perception) before anything else.

If staff levels are semi-adequate, then Bruce Lindsey needs to do a better job as new CEO, or hire an assistant, with appropriate title, who knows more about management and organizational issues.

Anyway, I have no idea of I will get the CFI position. I know I’m well-qualified for it.

But, in any case, CFI has issues it needs to address.

Beyond the organizational ones, it still needs to address the confrontationalist vs. accommodationalist issue. It also needs to address just what skepticism is and who a skeptic is. It also needs to address legitimate claims for the explanatory power of science vs. “scientism,” as my recent blog on a John Shook post shows.

And, that kind of reflects on why CFI needs a director of communications. Bloggers and online columnists there are kind of scattershot, and the thought quality isn't always that high. If you want to continue to be, and to be seen as, America's top secular humanist organization, well, you have at least some of your work cut out for you.

Critical thinking goes missing again at CFI

2010-12-05T02:32:00.001-06:00

I am starting to think with Mr. Leo Lincourt, and surely others, that it's perhaps time to be more skeptical about alleged skepticism.

Besides the obvious offenders like Michael Shermer, there are others.

The latest? John Shook at Center for Inquiry.

His latest blog post? "How Does Science Defeat Religion." It's targeted NOT at fundamentalists, but the religiously liberal, those who might well be quite comfortable with Steve Gould's "non-overlapping magisteria" on certain items.

My short, on-site reply:

NOT a good post. First, science is not designed to "defeat" anything, John.

If you had rewritten the whole "defeat" idea about philosophy and how the liberally religious try to deal with the problem of evil, you'd be cooking with gas. Instead, you don't even have a campfire.

Longer thoughts here.

If this is what the "Vice President and Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Inquiry Transnational" thinks is the nature of science, oy. Really.

I agree with where I think Shook is coming from philosophically — rejecting the idea held by both Gould and liberally religious on dual magisteria. But, that's a philosophical issue as much as a scientific one, at least. Certainly, once you get past naturalistic issues, with the liberally religious accepting evolution, etc.,. it is. Science works with methodological naturalism. Therefore, if a liberally religious person claims that an incorporeal deity intruded into the natural world it's ultimately a philosophical issue.

If you go beyond methodological naturalism to philosophical naturalism, well, obviously, by definition, you're now in philosophy.

Second, as Mr. Lincourt has noted in response to me, he misdefines science:

Aside from the fact that he never defines religion, rather just assumes the reader agrees with whatever nebulous definition he's using, I found this 'graph to be particularly troublesome:

"After science was invented, all things were no longer equal. Science supplements ordinary knowledge with vastly improved knowledge, and common consent gets overruled by scientific knowledge. There is a parallel superiority of ethical judgment over the "common consent" of humanity on moral matters -- after past experiments with slavery caused horrible consequences for all to see, no society could justify slavery anymore."

Umm... science was invented? I rather thought science was a constellation of philosophies, methodologies, practices and social norms that evolved out of our capacity to reason, not some monolithic creation that was conjured whole cloth out of the void one fine day by some old, bearded, toga-wearing dude and has remained relatively static ever since then.

So, moving on, science supplants ordinary knowledge? Really? I can think of half a dozen types of knowledge where science neither supplants or even has anything to say. Literature and music, just to pick two.

Leo doesn't use the word "scientism," but it seems that's exactly what Shook is practicing.

Third, Leo passed on Massimo Pigliucci's latest blog post, called "Why Plumbing is not Science."

The title of this entry is a reference to Jerry Coyne’s occasional remark that there is no substantial difference between plumbing and science because plumbers test hypotheses based on empirical evidence.

Except, of course, that plumbing is not science, and here is why. ... I don’t actually believe that anyone takes seriously the proposition that all reason-based knowledge is “scientific.” If that were the case, then pretty much everything we do every day should count as science — from picking a movie based on a review by a critic we usually like (induction!) to deciding to cross the street when the pedestrian light is green (hypothesis testing!). If the concept of science is that expansive, than it is also pretty close to meaningless.

Bingo, and it reflects at least in part another Shook mistake and why he needs to listen to some philosophers, as David Buller knows most scientists do. (Jerry Coyne and P.Z. Myers, who probably applaud thoughts like Shook's, definitely need to.)

Oxytocin, MSM science reporting, scientist fluffery

2010-12-04T00:38:00.001-06:00

Oxytocin is a two-edged sword; it can increase distrust as well as trust or love. Once again, the claim that it's the "love hormone" is in part the fault of MSM science reporters, but it's also the fault of scientists playing up preliminary or partial research findings too much.

Read the story for just how varied oxytocin's effects actually are. That said, the research that showed it increased mistrust in some cases had a small sample size, so there may be some self-referential irony to both the story and this blog post.

Hindus want to reclaim yoga

2010-11-28T23:43:00.003-06:00

A group of ardent Hindus, some called "Hindu nationalists," want to reclaim yoga to what they claim are its Hindu roots. An eclectic group of opponents, ranging from Deepak Chopra to religious scholars, says it's not Hindu but pre-Hindu.

Is yoga from before Hinduism? Well, I think that it depends on part what you call Hinduism.

Western critical religious scholars, for example, call everything in the Bible before the Babylonian exile "Israelite religion," reserving "Judaism" only for post-Exilic religion.

If that standard is followed, AND if roots of yogic practice can be traced back that far, then, no, it's not Hindu.

That said, conservative Christians and Jews alike, today, reject the scholarly distinction mentioned above. I'm sure the "nationalist Hindus" do the same. (That said, I think it's fair to say Hinduism is not "just" a religion, but, more than any other world religious tradition, a sociology as well.)

That said No. 2, folks like Chopra have good financial reasons for denying the Hindu roots of many religious practices from India that have become relabeled as "spiritual." Per the story, even if you're not a conservative Baptist minister who believes yoga is of the devil, telling many practitioners that they're engaged in a Hindu religious exercise will surely drive them off.

But, package it in smiley New Age wrapping and ...

Too bad PZ Myers can't write an unbiased poll

2010-11-28T00:18:00.006-06:00

In his parting shot about whether a convention called Skepticon should be about skepticism or atheism (such a convention could discuss, of course, how many atheists came to their state of disbelief via skeptical reasoning) he skews the works with a false-answer poll.

The only thing fully accurate is the "so-called" in the first sentence:

How much of a so-called skeptic convention can be about religion?

None 0% (0 votes)
No more than 25% 0% (0 votes)
No more than 50% 0% (0 votes)
Just so long as it isn't all of it 25% (3 votes)
All of it, why not? 75% (9 votes)

First, he implies that a skeptics' convention, according to some "straw man skeptical purists," can't discuss religion at all.

No, we so-called "purists" object instead to the unskeptical promotion of atheism, or the claim that only atheists are real skeptics, being promoted at a so-called skeptic convention, about which phrase you are right.

Then, with this:

There's only one choice that isn't arbitrary and incoherent and unjustifiable; I'd like to see the complainers confront the specific details of their position.

He of course implies that people who question him and other hyperatheists are "arbitrary and incoherent and unjustifiable."

Well, I'm not going to confront any "specific details" in a post on your blog; given the way rabid Pharyngulacs are, that would be like debating Ken Ham or his ilk at a fundamentalist college.

Petrified wood, petrified psyche

2010-11-21T20:47:00.000-06:00

PETRIFIED

Massive, towering trees
Were transformed into stone
In the twinkling of a geological eye.
All the remains petrified 300 million years.
As Heraclitus’ permanent change
Hit a wall of geochemical inertia.
So, too, can human attitudes, emotions and states
Suddenly and sharply change,
Then become frozen in the face of many a further assault —
Petrified.
Death is the final dissolve
But short of that, few life acids can eat away
Frozen fear, lithified anxiety, calcified cowering.
But the hurts themselves remain liquid,
Even if partially congealed;
Only the reaction and the framings become concretized.
And so, like marrow inside bone
New psychological antibodies still spew forth,
Even if fighting the wrong issues the wrong way —
Petrified to do anything else.
Life is often neither growth nor regression.

Nostalgia, time, feelings, and the difficulties of language

2010-11-21T17:54:00.000-06:00

NOSTALGIA AND THE FIERCE URGENCY OF THE NOW

I looked in Carefree, and found coffee,
But not that Starbucks where you and I sat.
I moved on down the road,
To Anthem, and fond the place of which nostalgia sang.
Kevin, I remembered our time there,
And several visits to Phoenix
And hiking with you
And receiving your insight,
Including on some new issues and decisions,
Even if my time is limited,
And the road calls again.
I think you with thoughts
And a secular blessing,
Knowing, as my friend Paula said
That “we” sometimes struggle for the right language
For such things, to speak deeply yet nonmetaphysically.
But, I cannot tarry;
The fierce urgency of the now calls to my intuitional mind
And so, I prepare to click the pen shut,
Gather up this notebook, and hit the road —
While taking nostalgically warming coffee with me.

Desert ambivalence: a poem

2010-11-21T17:46:00.000-06:00

DESERT AMBIVALENCE

I love the desert — in small doses.
I love its variety, if sharp and sere,
Frm slickrock redness of Utah
To the tangled shrubbery of the Chihuahuan’s edges;
From the sky blues of the southern borderlands
To Death Valley’s raw, existential rigor.
I love it all.
But in small doses.
Without sky islands,
The Chihuahuan and eastern Sonoran would hold less charm.
Likewise for Death Valley without nearby Sierras.
As for the Great Basin?
Its sky islands seem smaller and poorer to me,
And have never touched me as much.
And, so it is —
Desert ambivance.

Nov. 10, 2010

Is Michael Shermer a racialist?

2010-11-21T12:58:00.001-06:00

Years ago, the editor of Skeptic magazine had made it clear through his blogging that he was a thoroughgoing, and thoroughly nonskeptical, economic libertarian when it came to matters of government regulation, economics, economics and allegedly rational human behavior, etc.

So, I stopped reading Skepticblog.

Well, recently, out of boredom, an expansion again of my skeptical horizons and other things, I started reading again. And, there is a lot of good stuff.

But, Shermer's at it again, with a hugely unskeptical lovefest for Bjorn Lomborg's newbook and movie.

The main thrust of the blog post is bad enough.

But, here's what caught my eye:

My own Senior Editor, Frank Miele, who is an expert on evolutionary biology and biodiversity (and is one of the fastest and most facile researchers I’ve ever known), challenged Lomborg on several of the chapters in his book, and we had a lively and successful debate.

That would be the same Frank Miele who is coauthor of the book "Race," about which I blogged when it came out as being "Bell Curve light."

A few comments from that blog post:

Pages 9-10 have a laughably racist “genetic” rather than sociological assumption of evidence for various types of athletic prowess. (I await every new world-class African swimmer or hockey player to refute "athetics of the gaps" thoughts like this.)

More seriously, here's a sociological counterexample. Chinese children, and adults, are known from research to have an above-average percentage of musical perfect pitch. Genes?

And, the piece de resistance on page 10 — the “mean sub-Saharan African IQ of 70.” All together, now, can we say Bell Curve? (See below.)

Add to this the fact that Miele and his co-author think blacks are "stuck with being stupid:

239: “No one has demonstrated a method of compensatory education that produces relatively permanent increases in mental ability, as opposed to learning how to answer specific test items correctly.”

Five years ago, Miele held the same position vis-a-vis Shermer that he does today: Senior editor at Skeptic magazine.

"Race" was never questioned, let alone dismantled, in that magazine's pages.

Since Miele is clearly a racialist, and maybe even a full-blown racist for all I know, how can we assume any different of Shermer?

Reason trumps religion, even in Bible Belt, at times

2010-10-22T00:31:00.002-05:00

Out here in Odessa, Texas, aka Bushville with a capital B (he grew up 20 miles east, in Midland) a man was convicted of Murder 1 today, with the jury deliberating just 20 minutes over the guy asphyxiating his wife.

The religion part? He said it was accidental while trying to exorcise a demon from her, that he demon did leave her ... and entered him.

ESPN's Scoop Jackson should move past dime-store sociology

2010-10-08T02:56:00.000-05:00

ESPN's resident raceologist claims that reaction to Brett Favre's repeated retirement dances has been nothing compared to fan reaction to LeBron James' "Decision."

Bull. Scoop occasionally has good things to opine, but, more and more, he seems to be playing a character with a shtick. Jason Whitlock has smacked him down far better than I could, but has probably gotten tired of it.

Fact is, Favre never strung Green Bay out the way James did Cleveland. The full-blown retirement dances only came later. Ditto on undercutting coaches.

Is there no racism involved with white reaction to James? Of course not. And, someone like Whitlock would say the same. But, is it the primary driver? No.

As for blacks rallying around James, that's another issue, and arguably a problem itself. Scoop, if you want to move above the dime-store level of sociology of racial issues, try tackling that.

Beyond that, if you'll pardon the pun, race issues in general aren't always black and white; they're certainly not in this case.

Why "Planet Goldilocks" likely isn't

2010-09-30T01:57:00.000-05:00

All the science stories in the last 24 hours have been touting the alleged "Planet Goldilocks" as the first outside our solar system compatible for life similar to ours.

Fact one - its revolution and rotation are synchronous, so that it eternally turns the same face to its home star. At a distance of just 19 million miles, then sunlit side is getting fried more than Mercury. And, unless it has a thick enough atmosphere, the star-based side is chilling. That said, it would also be a fine line between "just enough" atmosphere to keep the dark side warmed up a bit, and so thick an atmosphere that you get Venerean effects.

Besides, if the atmosphere is that thick enough, that close to the home star, with that short of a revolutionary period, what sort of storms might be generated?

Beyond that, we're talking massive solar wind that close to the home star, with a planet that might well not have enough magnetic field to keep the planetary surface from heavy bombardment.

So, Goldilocks it ain't.

Atheists know the bible better than Christians

2010-09-28T02:07:00.001-05:00

Nope, no joke. (And, like other atheists, no, I'm not surprised, either.)

And, some of the results are just sad, for the people involved, that is. 45 percent of American Catholics, on the Eucharist, apparently think their church is Reformed, for example.

Here's why I think this is like this. Usually a convert has fuller knowledge than a lifelong adherent. Since Christians are a much bigger pool than atheists and agnostics, and also atheists and agnostics who "convert" to that want to know what they're converting from ...

Several new Amazon reviews are up

2010-09-26T02:30:00.000-05:00

One of the best books I've read on the folly of believing that economic "engagement" with China will make it more democratic, "The Beijing Consensus," was very good. Read what I thought about it and other books.

God's running out of money ...

2010-09-25T01:53:00.000-05:00

Or, at the least, the entities that serve him are. And, no, it's not just the liberal mainline Protestant bodies It's evangelical churches of various stripes. And, it's not even churches, it's synagogues, too. (No word in the story on mosques, Hindu temples, etc.)

And, no, it's not the recession, either. Or not primarily.

It's two things.

One is the aging of baby boomers. As they retire, they cut back on giving of all sorts.

The second is, below the upper end of the baby boom, the ongoing decline in emotional and psychological investment in authoritative institutions of all sorts.

“When the foundation falls, when the base isn’t there, then you have problems,” said Elbert T. Chester, an accountant in Queens who has more than 60 churches along the Eastern Seaboard as clients. “And we haven’t even seen the worst of it.”

Don't expect this to change. Baby boomers aren't getting any younger, and the tail end of boomers, Gen Xers and younger yet, aren't gaining in enthusiasm for organized religion or even semi-organized spirituality.

Add in the Catholic priests' sexual abuse, more and more Protestant ministers getting flagged for the same, more and more ministers from conservative backgrounds getting exposed as gays (and perverted ones within their repressed sexuality), and you have even more reason for the trend to continue.

For Xns or Jews worried about "American sharia"

2010-09-24T00:49:00.000-05:00

Substitute "halaka" for "sharia" and this is what you get. "Halaka communities," already in existence.

Antisemitic, or just concerned about preservation?

2010-09-19T00:13:00.001-05:00

I can see both sides of the issue in a long-ongoing standoff in Litchfield, Conn.

It's a complicated issue. Having seen communities try to preserve historic districts, I can appreciate Litchfield's stance. And, a swimming pool certainly doesn't fit the idea of "historic preservation."

The group's plans included a synagogue, living space for Rabbi Joseph Eisenbach and his large family and a swimming pool for the Chabad group's popular summer camp.

"This case is not about the construction of a synagogue," (Borough of Litchfield historic district commission attorney James) Stedronsky said recently. "It's about the construction of a personal palace for Rabbi Eisenbach, complete with a 4,500-square-foot apartment and an indoor swimming pool big enough to serve a summer camp."

At the same time, rich, WASPy Connecticut communities have some history of being antisemitic sundown towns. Including Litchfield. As the Hartford Courant notes, a Willson Whitman, visiting in 1943, discovered Jews were not allowed to own property there.

That said, on the next page of the Courant story, we find that Jews do live in Litchfield today, and at least some of them oppose the Lubavitcher Chabad project on grounds similar to the historic commission: it's too big and unfitting.

From what I read, I'd say the commission isn't being antisemitic. That said, I don't know if either side has discussed or offered compromises, or not. Unfortunately, a judge and court is not an arbitrator. All the judge can do is rule for either the commission or Chabad; he or she can't craft a compromise. (I wonder if in Continental European jurisprudence, as opposed to the Anglo-American model, judges can do that.)

Monkey (mind) wrench some Buddhists

2010-09-18T00:34:00.002-05:00

I know many people have seen, via PBS or elsewhere, Tibetan Buddhists evaporating the water from cold, wet sheets draped across their bare backs.

No, I'm not challenging what PBS or others have seen and filmed; the effect is legit.

That said, what would happen if I visited such a monastery and said something like this:

Who is the I who is evaporating those sheets and why are you still attached to it?