I've heard Christian after Christian worry about their praying; whether they do it often and sincerely enough. They may describe prayer as their weakest suit in their Christianity. This depresses me. It's a inevitable result of there being an activity which is praised from all corners, yet whose process is rarely specified, whose techniques are disputed from one practitioner to another, whose results are predicted to very different degrees of confidence, then inevitably rationalized. Not to mention the discrepancies in different prayers’ experience — some people simply lack the “talking inner voice” or “inner other person” which others have. When you reify that voice into something more, into an actual deity or Spirit, it’s as if the same person loves talking to all those people but for some reason ignores you. It’s like feeling bad about yourself for not having flying dreams. Why can’t I fly? Am I not trying hard enough? And the worst of it is that some of the people who do experience the voice insist that indeed, you’re not trying hard enough.
There exist Christians who lambaste one another for praying incorrectly, and there are those who tolerate pretty much the entire gamut of praying-related attitudes — except, perhaps, the smiling affirmation of not praying at all. One finds contempt especially for the notion that prayer is no different than what it would be if God didn't exist, ie, prayer is not any kind of connection to God nor anything that God remotely cares about, it's just a kind of talking to oneself or (when spoken publicly) to other human beings. (This notion, interestingly, is almost synonymous with atheism, rather like how the disbelief in an omnimax god can be synonymous with atheism. In both cases, God can be defined in other ways, but usually is not.)
Come to think of it, it's rather like conventional attitudes about food. People get into tense debates over what they and others should and shouldn't eat (on grounds of taste, nutrition, and culture), while still other people accept the existence of every imaginable diet — but there's a definite consensus that everyone ought to eat something, if they want to be a healthy, complete person. And people can feel stressed that they’re not eating right, but I don’t think it’s as frequent. A key difference is that our understanding of food largely reflects the evidence (especially the conclusion that it is necessary for survival). And unlike with prayer, one can adjust one’s diet in accordance with the experts without finding nearly as much disagreement among them. (Well, maybe the same amount of disagreement, but perhaps that’s owing to the sheer diversity of food.)
I don't really think there's any solution to the problem except to advocate the attidute I described earlier: Prayer simply doesn't matter. Isn't that wonderful? (And supposing God does exist, wouldn't that make so much more sense, as other atheists have pointed out?)
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Incuriosity made double
Early in 2011, Bill O'Reilly told his atheist guest that science could not explain tides, ergo God.
The thing that most interests and depresses me about that is not O'Reilly's obvious ignorance, or his god-of-the-gaps argument. It's the lack of curiosity betrayed by that statement. And not just curiosity about the cause of tides, but curiosity about what scientists think causes tides. I'm talking about Bill O'Reilly's mental model of the scientists' mental model of tides. Did he have one? I doubt it. He wasn't remotely interested in contemplating the scientists as full human beings.
A real human being whose work deals with tides might naturally become curious about their cause. Yet not O'Reilly's model of a geophysicist, who is instead interested in nothing but furthering The Atheist Agenda. When an O'Reilly-geophysicist sees a mystery, she sees nothing more than a gap to keep God out of. Or, perhaps, she worriedly sees a gap God could fill, and does her best to ignore it altogether, denying the elephant in the ocean.
Yes, I'm accusing God-of-the-Gaps O'Reilly of a kind of inverse projection. I think there's an extent to which he sees people whose gut answer is not God as having a gut answer (and a sole answer) of "Not God!" (Heck, I may myself be projecting, given that I'm stereotyping O'Reilly's stereotype, but I won't let that stop me.)
Now I'll use myself as the Gallant to Bill's Goofus. Many times in my life, I've encountered (or re-considered) a seemingly strange idea in Christianity — the Trinity, the eucharist, prayer. In each case, I've experienced an impulse of curiosity about just how Christians conceptualize these things. What is it like to be a Christian looking at yet another double-blind study that prayer failed to pass? What's it like to be a young Catholic receiving first Communion — are you worried you'll taste flesh and blood and spit it out? And though I may instinctively consider the trinity nonsense, I don't assume that Christians fail to think about it at all. In fact, I know that they debate its nature almost as vociferously today as did the attendees of the first Council of Nicaea.
Of course, in some cases, I may be projecting my own curiosity. So far as I can tell, there's a wide range of attitudes, while some theists wrestle with this stuff, others don't really bother pondering their faith's tenets or examining its puzzles, so much as associating positive feelings with them ("All I know is that the trinity is a blessed mystery."). However, for every organized religion, there is a tradition of theology, because that's the sort of thing people like to do; we just didn't use that impulse of ours to full effect until developing science.
To phrase all this in a straight-up moral, it's this: Don't assume that because an idea is (seemingly) baloney, it's an actual black box in the mind of its adherents. Your model of the raw details of some idea, like evolution or communism or libertarianism, is likely rather different from that of its adherents (or opponents). Just as it can be good to assume good faith despite that not being a human universal, so too should we assume curiosity if the person's name isn't Bill O'Reilly.
Anyway, when he was told via Internet that the main cause of tides is the moon, he asked "How'd the moon get there? What put it there?" A pretty straightforward admission that his initial question was purely rhetorical (not that it wasn't already obvious); he doesn't give a damn about the ocean or the moon, the poor soul.
This is another hazard of incuriosity — sometimes your "rhetorical" questions turn out to have answers which you didn't bother to look up because you assumed they didn't exist. (Like if I were to assume that Christians have no answer to the Problem of Evil. Turns out they do, just not good ones.) What he really meant was to pose the First Cause argument; he just screwed up on his placement of the Inexplicability Boundary, about as much as if he'd asked if scientists can possibly explain the origin of Fox News. Every time he said scientists "couldn't explain" the origins of the sun or stars, it was another knife in my gut. He doesn't care! He doesn't care about the truth of anything! Was he ever even a child?
Now, O'Reilly's ignorance may be an extreme example, because just about everyone knows the moon causes tides (though people often confuse tides with waves, but that's another story). It makes my point for precisely that reason, though — so that just about everyone can understand.
A much more common instance of what I'm talking about would be many a creationist's take on evolution. The question "Why are there still monkeys?" is asked by people who actually want to know the answer even less often than is the question "How are you?" Again, the assumption on their part is that scientists flinch from the hard stuff instead of wrestling it to the ground. By extension, most of evolutionary science must be about inventing plausible- (or implausible-) sounding stories for the primary purpose of keeping God out of the picture.
But if I were a creationist, then in addition to yelling "Contradiction! Contradiction!", I would wonder how in the world scientists resolved the contradictions in their own minds. Such as it is, I can't help but wonder if the creationists project an inversion of their own way of thinking onto scientists, so that Origin of Species = Holy Bible, etc. (Except they know that scientists know of all the things that have since modified our view from Darwin's but they figure that not getting it all right the first time is a flaw in the system.)
The most common assumption here, and one that bugs the heck out of me, is that the only possible alternative to a given Holy Book is a complete postmodern free-for-all. I've seen theists and postmodernists argue the same thing! "Oh, you're just another religion, because you believe that X is definitely true. So there." Or: "Without going by the Bible, you must be using human reason, which means just making it up as you go along." Give me a break.
I must echo my favorite atheist blogger, Greta Christina: Why does no one tell a version of the blind-men-and-elephant-story whereby the men compare notes to learn what a real elephant actually is?
It seems there's something counter-intuitive about the idea of assembling a worldview derived from direct (or indirect) observation of reality, instead of the acceptance of authority or acceptance of your own whims. Is learning really that scary? I hope not.
Oh, and since I posted the video, I feel obligated to comment on the atheist guy. I thought he did a decent job, but what he should have said to recover ground from O'Reilly's attacks is that even the world's most intelligent person can be taken by the scam of religion (so calling religion a scam is therefore not an insult to anyone's intelligence, not that that makes the argument false, of course). Plus, of course, he could have emphasized the fact that the threat of Hell is outright bullying, never mind insulting, although he did only have a few minutes. Is there a phrase for l'esprit d'escalier felt for someone else?
The thing that most interests and depresses me about that is not O'Reilly's obvious ignorance, or his god-of-the-gaps argument. It's the lack of curiosity betrayed by that statement. And not just curiosity about the cause of tides, but curiosity about what scientists think causes tides. I'm talking about Bill O'Reilly's mental model of the scientists' mental model of tides. Did he have one? I doubt it. He wasn't remotely interested in contemplating the scientists as full human beings.
A real human being whose work deals with tides might naturally become curious about their cause. Yet not O'Reilly's model of a geophysicist, who is instead interested in nothing but furthering The Atheist Agenda. When an O'Reilly-geophysicist sees a mystery, she sees nothing more than a gap to keep God out of. Or, perhaps, she worriedly sees a gap God could fill, and does her best to ignore it altogether, denying the elephant in the ocean.
Yes, I'm accusing God-of-the-Gaps O'Reilly of a kind of inverse projection. I think there's an extent to which he sees people whose gut answer is not God as having a gut answer (and a sole answer) of "Not God!" (Heck, I may myself be projecting, given that I'm stereotyping O'Reilly's stereotype, but I won't let that stop me.)
Now I'll use myself as the Gallant to Bill's Goofus. Many times in my life, I've encountered (or re-considered) a seemingly strange idea in Christianity — the Trinity, the eucharist, prayer. In each case, I've experienced an impulse of curiosity about just how Christians conceptualize these things. What is it like to be a Christian looking at yet another double-blind study that prayer failed to pass? What's it like to be a young Catholic receiving first Communion — are you worried you'll taste flesh and blood and spit it out? And though I may instinctively consider the trinity nonsense, I don't assume that Christians fail to think about it at all. In fact, I know that they debate its nature almost as vociferously today as did the attendees of the first Council of Nicaea.
Of course, in some cases, I may be projecting my own curiosity. So far as I can tell, there's a wide range of attitudes, while some theists wrestle with this stuff, others don't really bother pondering their faith's tenets or examining its puzzles, so much as associating positive feelings with them ("All I know is that the trinity is a blessed mystery."). However, for every organized religion, there is a tradition of theology, because that's the sort of thing people like to do; we just didn't use that impulse of ours to full effect until developing science.
To phrase all this in a straight-up moral, it's this: Don't assume that because an idea is (seemingly) baloney, it's an actual black box in the mind of its adherents. Your model of the raw details of some idea, like evolution or communism or libertarianism, is likely rather different from that of its adherents (or opponents). Just as it can be good to assume good faith despite that not being a human universal, so too should we assume curiosity if the person's name isn't Bill O'Reilly.
Anyway, when he was told via Internet that the main cause of tides is the moon, he asked "How'd the moon get there? What put it there?" A pretty straightforward admission that his initial question was purely rhetorical (not that it wasn't already obvious); he doesn't give a damn about the ocean or the moon, the poor soul.
This is another hazard of incuriosity — sometimes your "rhetorical" questions turn out to have answers which you didn't bother to look up because you assumed they didn't exist. (Like if I were to assume that Christians have no answer to the Problem of Evil. Turns out they do, just not good ones.) What he really meant was to pose the First Cause argument; he just screwed up on his placement of the Inexplicability Boundary, about as much as if he'd asked if scientists can possibly explain the origin of Fox News. Every time he said scientists "couldn't explain" the origins of the sun or stars, it was another knife in my gut. He doesn't care! He doesn't care about the truth of anything! Was he ever even a child?
Now, O'Reilly's ignorance may be an extreme example, because just about everyone knows the moon causes tides (though people often confuse tides with waves, but that's another story). It makes my point for precisely that reason, though — so that just about everyone can understand.
A much more common instance of what I'm talking about would be many a creationist's take on evolution. The question "Why are there still monkeys?" is asked by people who actually want to know the answer even less often than is the question "How are you?" Again, the assumption on their part is that scientists flinch from the hard stuff instead of wrestling it to the ground. By extension, most of evolutionary science must be about inventing plausible- (or implausible-) sounding stories for the primary purpose of keeping God out of the picture.
But if I were a creationist, then in addition to yelling "Contradiction! Contradiction!", I would wonder how in the world scientists resolved the contradictions in their own minds. Such as it is, I can't help but wonder if the creationists project an inversion of their own way of thinking onto scientists, so that Origin of Species = Holy Bible, etc. (Except they know that scientists know of all the things that have since modified our view from Darwin's but they figure that not getting it all right the first time is a flaw in the system.)
The most common assumption here, and one that bugs the heck out of me, is that the only possible alternative to a given Holy Book is a complete postmodern free-for-all. I've seen theists and postmodernists argue the same thing! "Oh, you're just another religion, because you believe that X is definitely true. So there." Or: "Without going by the Bible, you must be using human reason, which means just making it up as you go along." Give me a break.
I must echo my favorite atheist blogger, Greta Christina: Why does no one tell a version of the blind-men-and-elephant-story whereby the men compare notes to learn what a real elephant actually is?
It seems there's something counter-intuitive about the idea of assembling a worldview derived from direct (or indirect) observation of reality, instead of the acceptance of authority or acceptance of your own whims. Is learning really that scary? I hope not.
Oh, and since I posted the video, I feel obligated to comment on the atheist guy. I thought he did a decent job, but what he should have said to recover ground from O'Reilly's attacks is that even the world's most intelligent person can be taken by the scam of religion (so calling religion a scam is therefore not an insult to anyone's intelligence, not that that makes the argument false, of course). Plus, of course, he could have emphasized the fact that the threat of Hell is outright bullying, never mind insulting, although he did only have a few minutes. Is there a phrase for l'esprit d'escalier felt for someone else?
Thursday, March 10, 2011
A common canard causes me to cry for curiosity
"Sure, religion doesn't have all the answers. But scientists don't know what caused the Big Bang!"
When was the last time you heard of a theologian or a New Ager researching the possible origins of God/Spirit?
When was the last time you heard of a cosmologist researching the possible origins of the universe?
What about such questions as: "Where did life come from?" and "How does the mind work?"
See the difference?
For the record, the theological answers to the questions posed on this page are:
1. God is without cause by definition
2. The universe was created by God, who used a process of creation (basically, he can will things into existence) to create it
3. Life was created by God, who used a process of creation to create it
4. Minds work by being minds, you know, with free will and such
Conversely, when it comes to those last three questions, a TLDR version of the relevant scientists' answers would be "We don't yet know for certain, but have have some very good guesses (hypotheses A, Q, X, etc) and we're in the process of testing them." (Or, "That's a very big and vague question, and you'll need to specify exactly what you mean.")
One possible rebuttal (to my insinuation of the superiority of the scientific approach to accessing truth) is that when it comes to resolving certain profound mysteries, scientists are wasting their time. The lack of curiosity betrayed by this view only further illustrates my point. (And it's depressing, too.)
When was the last time you heard of a theologian or a New Ager researching the possible origins of God/Spirit?
When was the last time you heard of a cosmologist researching the possible origins of the universe?
What about such questions as: "Where did life come from?" and "How does the mind work?"
See the difference?
For the record, the theological answers to the questions posed on this page are:
1. God is without cause by definition
2. The universe was created by God, who used a process of creation (basically, he can will things into existence) to create it
3. Life was created by God, who used a process of creation to create it
4. Minds work by being minds, you know, with free will and such
Conversely, when it comes to those last three questions, a TLDR version of the relevant scientists' answers would be "We don't yet know for certain, but have have some very good guesses (hypotheses A, Q, X, etc) and we're in the process of testing them." (Or, "That's a very big and vague question, and you'll need to specify exactly what you mean.")
One possible rebuttal (to my insinuation of the superiority of the scientific approach to accessing truth) is that when it comes to resolving certain profound mysteries, scientists are wasting their time. The lack of curiosity betrayed by this view only further illustrates my point. (And it's depressing, too.)
Monday, January 17, 2011
Science versus nonsensisms
I originally began this piece with just religion in mind but some months afterward, I wrapped it up with other varieties of “woo” in mind.
When theists take part in “science-vs-religion” arguments, they tend to try one of two things:
Examples of the first one would be: “Albert prayed for rain and it rained”, or “Sarah used the Bible Code to predict the stock market with breathtaking accuracy.” This contingent of arguments is pursued by a large minority, but tends to make more “sophisticated” believers cringe, because they are all too aware of what religion’s track record in those areas really looks like when an actual empiricism is applied. Hence, sophisticated theists prefer variations of the second line of argument.
The second line of argument involves many phrases which have become canards. “Scientists have faith too.” “Scientists still don’t know (the origin of the universe)/(the basis of mathematics)/(how to cure the common cold).” (And non-scientists do?) “Science is really another religion, with its own close-minded hierarchy of orthodoxy-defending priests.” “Science doesn’t answer the questions that matter.”
It’s been pointed out that the “Science (and/or atheism) is another faith” argument is generally delivered in an oddly sneering tone, rather than the welcoming tone with which theists usually praise such things as faith and religion. However, this is not entirely an inconsistency on the theists’ part. Rather, the argument as a whole is that something-like-faith is inescapable — all assertions about reality are “faith-based” in some non-trivial way. Hence, science has no better claim to “truth” than anyone else, at least empirically and in certain bodies of knowledge (especially those which directly concern us humans, like how our minds work). Then, within the realm of this thing called “faith”, one finds not only science but a plethora of religions. Now, since all these worldviews are really faith-based, one must use faith-based means to tease them apart and rank their efficacy. The “faith” criterion first makes the Bible is as good as a science textbook, after which some other faith-based criteria (which are almost never specified) render it superior.
In the course of that last paragraph, we drifted away from “sophisiticated” theists to the thinking of the hard-core literalists, but this is partly in keeping with the actual continuum of mindsets, ranging from a genial NOMA (Non-Overlapping MAgisteria), to a mild distaste for but resignation to science, to an outright declaration that one’s religious method serves as superior to the current scientific method. (I say “current” because different literalists will differ on the subject of whether science itself is at fault, or whether current institutions, a different beast from “real” science, are simply doing science incorrectly.)
When one pursues the arguments long enough, the fuzzy, “deep” wording must either vanish or give way to more concrete assertions, because a true discussion cannot be had with fuzz. If the only response recieved is “Whatever works for you, man”, then there is little that can follow such a rejection of truth in favor of an inconsistent politeness. For example, is my skepticism as valid as your credulity, or is it only the world’s relgions, spiritualities, and psuedosciences that earn this gracious acceptance? Often, it seems the answer is that everyone except atheist rationalists are okay (despite apparent contradictions among all the other groups) because “you have to believe in something.” Specifically, in something whose actual existence can only be believed in and never shown — solely believing in the apparently real stuff makes you boring and/or intolerant.
It’s like insisting that everyone root for a sports team, and it doesn’t matter which team or what sport, so long as the players and equipment are invisible, inaudible, and otherwise beyond the realm of empirical detectability. Cold materialists, why do you hate the Fighting Unicorns so?
When theists take part in “science-vs-religion” arguments, they tend to try one of two things:
1. Show religion to be useful in the way science is useful.
2. Show science to be useless in the way religion is useless.
The second one sounds silly, but it’s actually a much more popular line of argument these days.Examples of the first one would be: “Albert prayed for rain and it rained”, or “Sarah used the Bible Code to predict the stock market with breathtaking accuracy.” This contingent of arguments is pursued by a large minority, but tends to make more “sophisticated” believers cringe, because they are all too aware of what religion’s track record in those areas really looks like when an actual empiricism is applied. Hence, sophisticated theists prefer variations of the second line of argument.
The second line of argument involves many phrases which have become canards. “Scientists have faith too.” “Scientists still don’t know (the origin of the universe)/(the basis of mathematics)/(how to cure the common cold).” (And non-scientists do?) “Science is really another religion, with its own close-minded hierarchy of orthodoxy-defending priests.” “Science doesn’t answer the questions that matter.”
It’s been pointed out that the “Science (and/or atheism) is another faith” argument is generally delivered in an oddly sneering tone, rather than the welcoming tone with which theists usually praise such things as faith and religion. However, this is not entirely an inconsistency on the theists’ part. Rather, the argument as a whole is that something-like-faith is inescapable — all assertions about reality are “faith-based” in some non-trivial way. Hence, science has no better claim to “truth” than anyone else, at least empirically and in certain bodies of knowledge (especially those which directly concern us humans, like how our minds work). Then, within the realm of this thing called “faith”, one finds not only science but a plethora of religions. Now, since all these worldviews are really faith-based, one must use faith-based means to tease them apart and rank their efficacy. The “faith” criterion first makes the Bible is as good as a science textbook, after which some other faith-based criteria (which are almost never specified) render it superior.
In the course of that last paragraph, we drifted away from “sophisiticated” theists to the thinking of the hard-core literalists, but this is partly in keeping with the actual continuum of mindsets, ranging from a genial NOMA (Non-Overlapping MAgisteria), to a mild distaste for but resignation to science, to an outright declaration that one’s religious method serves as superior to the current scientific method. (I say “current” because different literalists will differ on the subject of whether science itself is at fault, or whether current institutions, a different beast from “real” science, are simply doing science incorrectly.)
When one pursues the arguments long enough, the fuzzy, “deep” wording must either vanish or give way to more concrete assertions, because a true discussion cannot be had with fuzz. If the only response recieved is “Whatever works for you, man”, then there is little that can follow such a rejection of truth in favor of an inconsistent politeness. For example, is my skepticism as valid as your credulity, or is it only the world’s relgions, spiritualities, and psuedosciences that earn this gracious acceptance? Often, it seems the answer is that everyone except atheist rationalists are okay (despite apparent contradictions among all the other groups) because “you have to believe in something.” Specifically, in something whose actual existence can only be believed in and never shown — solely believing in the apparently real stuff makes you boring and/or intolerant.
It’s like insisting that everyone root for a sports team, and it doesn’t matter which team or what sport, so long as the players and equipment are invisible, inaudible, and otherwise beyond the realm of empirical detectability. Cold materialists, why do you hate the Fighting Unicorns so?
Friday, December 24, 2010
Real Americans are Grinches
This rant was prompted by this post on Greta Christina's excellent blog.
Christmas is fun for me… but I really can't stand this culture's "You Must Love Christmas" thing. (As exemplified by fiction's various Grinchy McScrooges: not celebrating Christmas = misanthrope.) You can shrug your shoulders on Valentine's Day, but naysay Yule and you might as well be praising Nazis.
It seems to be partly an outgrowth of plain ol' Christian exceptionalism, whereby You Must Love Jesus. And it's really reared its head in these past couple years, where not saying "Merry Christmas", or even saying "Happy Holidays", is seen as part of a massive underground effort to besiege Traditional Values and destroy Christians. The wildest irony is that the holiday itself was once seen as just that! In this country, the only ones to have actually "banned Christmas" are Christians themselves, namely Puritans. Christmas was thought to exemplify the sort of secular debauchery that fundamentalists fear today.
Nowadays, each of us is forced to "take sides" on an issue that can't even be articulated. It's just a vague notion of "Christmas is one worthy holiday among many, and its traditions come from all sorts of pagan and monotheistic practices" versus "Since when did all this non-Christian stuff and these non-Christian people even exist? Grrr! Get with the program."
Still, as much as or perhaps even more than folks like me, Christians are very much the victims of the You Must Love Christmas madness. With lucky exceptions, each American gets torn by rival factions — families, charities, and stores — to make this year's the most Wonderful Christmas Ever. And a lot of that isn't just from the pressure of the various institutions, but because so many of us really do have nice nostalgic memories of how wonderful our own Christmases used to be, back when we didn't have to worry about giving, only whether or not we would receive. Come the sacred morning, lo, we did receive, hooray! What did you get? Neat!
So we feel this tremendous guilt to give that childhood-sized emotional experience back to our parents, even if they're not alive anymore. There's this vague duty to pull off something flawless. And in the midst of all this, the failure to enjoy oneself is seen (as illustrated by Scrooge and others) to arise purely from some unwillingness to part with money, or from a displeasure that other people are having fun! (What other people? What fun? They're usually as freaked as we are!) Thanksgiving is stress-free by comparison. At least the meal can be delegated so everyone has something small to do, and much creativity isn't usually expected.
Did I mention that Christmas is fun for me? Yeah, in December I basically do my best to trim down any sense of holiday-specific obligation. Plus, even while I despair at the panic and neurotic stress of all the other celebrants, I deeply enjoy what it's really about, which is the axial tilt of the Earth with respect to the Sun, and the fun of lying to children.
Christmas is fun for me… but I really can't stand this culture's "You Must Love Christmas" thing. (As exemplified by fiction's various Grinchy McScrooges: not celebrating Christmas = misanthrope.) You can shrug your shoulders on Valentine's Day, but naysay Yule and you might as well be praising Nazis.
It seems to be partly an outgrowth of plain ol' Christian exceptionalism, whereby You Must Love Jesus. And it's really reared its head in these past couple years, where not saying "Merry Christmas", or even saying "Happy Holidays", is seen as part of a massive underground effort to besiege Traditional Values and destroy Christians. The wildest irony is that the holiday itself was once seen as just that! In this country, the only ones to have actually "banned Christmas" are Christians themselves, namely Puritans. Christmas was thought to exemplify the sort of secular debauchery that fundamentalists fear today.
Nowadays, each of us is forced to "take sides" on an issue that can't even be articulated. It's just a vague notion of "Christmas is one worthy holiday among many, and its traditions come from all sorts of pagan and monotheistic practices" versus "Since when did all this non-Christian stuff and these non-Christian people even exist? Grrr! Get with the program."
Still, as much as or perhaps even more than folks like me, Christians are very much the victims of the You Must Love Christmas madness. With lucky exceptions, each American gets torn by rival factions — families, charities, and stores — to make this year's the most Wonderful Christmas Ever. And a lot of that isn't just from the pressure of the various institutions, but because so many of us really do have nice nostalgic memories of how wonderful our own Christmases used to be, back when we didn't have to worry about giving, only whether or not we would receive. Come the sacred morning, lo, we did receive, hooray! What did you get? Neat!
So we feel this tremendous guilt to give that childhood-sized emotional experience back to our parents, even if they're not alive anymore. There's this vague duty to pull off something flawless. And in the midst of all this, the failure to enjoy oneself is seen (as illustrated by Scrooge and others) to arise purely from some unwillingness to part with money, or from a displeasure that other people are having fun! (What other people? What fun? They're usually as freaked as we are!) Thanksgiving is stress-free by comparison. At least the meal can be delegated so everyone has something small to do, and much creativity isn't usually expected.
Did I mention that Christmas is fun for me? Yeah, in December I basically do my best to trim down any sense of holiday-specific obligation. Plus, even while I despair at the panic and neurotic stress of all the other celebrants, I deeply enjoy what it's really about, which is the axial tilt of the Earth with respect to the Sun, and the fun of lying to children.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
The Desperate Defense of DADT
According to some survey , the majority of that minority of troops who oppose the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell (or, to be precise, who predict negative consequences from its repeal) are from combat arms units. As part of the grand tradition of lying with statistics, this datum was marshaled by Republicans in opposition to DADT .
Why is this dishonest? Several reasons. For one, of course some number of troops would oppose it, and of that number, a plurality will be part of some group that can easily be thought of as especially valorous — this is the military, after all! It's not like there's some part of it that Americans agree are a bunch of losers.
Relating to this, a politician saying "The majority of those who believe X are of group Y" is not a meaningful fact about the opinion of Y, because it remains quite possible that the majority of Y take the other side of the question. In fact, it's almost certain that that's so, because otherwise the politician would have used the more straightforward phrasing, "Most Y believe X".
An unspoken implication here is that the opinion of group Y — combat arms units — should be weighed more heavily than the rest of the military. Except, of course — guess what! — most combat arms units actually didn't care either.
Using this statistic is a blatant attempt to screw with the brain in the same way the affirming the consequent does. If P, then Q — so if Q, then P, right? Most X-believers are Y — so that must mean most Y are X-believers, right?
Another thing that really gets me is John McCain's repeated message along the lines of "You non-troops don't know what it's like". But in addition to his being just one person and not the Navy Incarnate, the man hasn't served in almost 30 years! Would he say that the 70% of current troops who are fine with serving alongside gays are naive elitists who have no idea what it's really like to be in the military?
In any case, if your military readiness is profoundly affected by the knowledge that one of your fellow soldiers is gay, then I, a man who would likely wet his pants in a combat zone, am quite happy to question your courage. I mean, seriously, huh?
It's as pathetic as it's insane. Hooray the bigots lost!
Why is this dishonest? Several reasons. For one, of course some number of troops would oppose it, and of that number, a plurality will be part of some group that can easily be thought of as especially valorous — this is the military, after all! It's not like there's some part of it that Americans agree are a bunch of losers.
Relating to this, a politician saying "The majority of those who believe X are of group Y" is not a meaningful fact about the opinion of Y, because it remains quite possible that the majority of Y take the other side of the question. In fact, it's almost certain that that's so, because otherwise the politician would have used the more straightforward phrasing, "Most Y believe X".
An unspoken implication here is that the opinion of group Y — combat arms units — should be weighed more heavily than the rest of the military. Except, of course — guess what! — most combat arms units actually didn't care either.
Using this statistic is a blatant attempt to screw with the brain in the same way the affirming the consequent does. If P, then Q — so if Q, then P, right? Most X-believers are Y — so that must mean most Y are X-believers, right?
Another thing that really gets me is John McCain's repeated message along the lines of "You non-troops don't know what it's like". But in addition to his being just one person and not the Navy Incarnate, the man hasn't served in almost 30 years! Would he say that the 70% of current troops who are fine with serving alongside gays are naive elitists who have no idea what it's really like to be in the military?
In any case, if your military readiness is profoundly affected by the knowledge that one of your fellow soldiers is gay, then I, a man who would likely wet his pants in a combat zone, am quite happy to question your courage. I mean, seriously, huh?
It's as pathetic as it's insane. Hooray the bigots lost!
Friday, November 19, 2010
On fine-tuning
Inspired by a recent slew of posts at Common Sense Atheism, specifically this one.
The “fine-tuned Universe” is the one theistic assertion to which most atheist rebuttals sound like special pleading. In nearly all other domains of argument, it’s the religious who find themselves saying things like, “Well, maybe it works like thus-and-such, how do you know?” For example, Alvin Plantinga has argued that a natural evolution of the human brain could lead to thoroughly erroneous conclusions about the world, and therefore if naturalism is true, we shouldn't trust our own minds. (He's actually used the example of a caveman who has evolved both the desire to be eaten by tigers and the belief that any given tiger will not eat him, thus leading to his survival. This is grade-A nonsensical pleading, here.) And there's always the standard-issue mystery-card played in discussions on the problem of evil. But when it comes to fine-tuning, it’s the atheist proposals (especially the many-worlds possibility) that sound like empty insistences.
Some of this may simply be a reward for the side that showed up first. It’s possible that had the many-worlds view somehow become predominant before the rise of monotheism, then the latter would resemble, in the public’s eye, a desperate attempt to avoid the former. (In other words, it would feel like people were making up this bodiless-male-human-who-creates-one-universe because they didn’t like multiple-worlds.) In any case, the many-worlds concept is a nice resolution to certain puzzles of quantum mechanics, an idea proposed well before the fine-tuning argument came about, so it’s kind of silly to tar it as something cobbled together to deny deism. (Come to think of it, this view of that argument is rather like a common creationist view of evolution, as something that Darwin invented in order to avoid the implications of having a Creator in charge.)
Still, when it comes to denying theism, many-world is not really “necessary” one way or the other, for this simple reason: The God hypothesis is no hypothesis at all, lacking any sort of mechanism and ridiculously violating Occam’s razor.
The only reason people don’t think it’s guilty of the latter charge is that we think of minds as somehow “simple” or basic, but science has shown that nope, minds are quite complex. Logic alone does that trick. Consider this: If God existed before “anything else” in the universe, but was capable of imagining many worlds in full and perfect detail — how different is that from the actual existence of many worlds? And if it is different, how is it any simpler?
As for my charge that theism is mechanism-free, this one basically goes without saying. It almost seems that God is mechanism-free by definition — a God who fiddles with molecules and/or acts predictably won’t really “be” God anymore.
When I consider the nitty-gritty of how divine creation “works”, I can't help but lose distinctions between pantheism and “ordinary” monotheism. I've heard it said that the Universe is a fleeting idea in God’s mind, and I’ve come to feel that if God exists, then logically, our situation can’t be anything other than that. The Universe can’t be anything other than God’s mind, which would in turn make it equal to God. This, of course, is an idea sufficiently vacuous as to justify atheism. It would come to make more sense to ask "How does the Universe work?" than "Does God exist?"
On top of everything else, the deism of fine-tuning renders the God argument content-free. What is God? God is a being with the desire and the ability to make life-supporting universes. Brilliant! If you add any other attributes (such as omnibenevolence), the various atheist arguments are more than enough to whittle that being away.
The “fine-tuned Universe” is the one theistic assertion to which most atheist rebuttals sound like special pleading. In nearly all other domains of argument, it’s the religious who find themselves saying things like, “Well, maybe it works like thus-and-such, how do you know?” For example, Alvin Plantinga has argued that a natural evolution of the human brain could lead to thoroughly erroneous conclusions about the world, and therefore if naturalism is true, we shouldn't trust our own minds. (He's actually used the example of a caveman who has evolved both the desire to be eaten by tigers and the belief that any given tiger will not eat him, thus leading to his survival. This is grade-A nonsensical pleading, here.) And there's always the standard-issue mystery-card played in discussions on the problem of evil. But when it comes to fine-tuning, it’s the atheist proposals (especially the many-worlds possibility) that sound like empty insistences.
Some of this may simply be a reward for the side that showed up first. It’s possible that had the many-worlds view somehow become predominant before the rise of monotheism, then the latter would resemble, in the public’s eye, a desperate attempt to avoid the former. (In other words, it would feel like people were making up this bodiless-male-human-who-creates-one-universe because they didn’t like multiple-worlds.) In any case, the many-worlds concept is a nice resolution to certain puzzles of quantum mechanics, an idea proposed well before the fine-tuning argument came about, so it’s kind of silly to tar it as something cobbled together to deny deism. (Come to think of it, this view of that argument is rather like a common creationist view of evolution, as something that Darwin invented in order to avoid the implications of having a Creator in charge.)
Still, when it comes to denying theism, many-world is not really “necessary” one way or the other, for this simple reason: The God hypothesis is no hypothesis at all, lacking any sort of mechanism and ridiculously violating Occam’s razor.
The only reason people don’t think it’s guilty of the latter charge is that we think of minds as somehow “simple” or basic, but science has shown that nope, minds are quite complex. Logic alone does that trick. Consider this: If God existed before “anything else” in the universe, but was capable of imagining many worlds in full and perfect detail — how different is that from the actual existence of many worlds? And if it is different, how is it any simpler?
As for my charge that theism is mechanism-free, this one basically goes without saying. It almost seems that God is mechanism-free by definition — a God who fiddles with molecules and/or acts predictably won’t really “be” God anymore.
When I consider the nitty-gritty of how divine creation “works”, I can't help but lose distinctions between pantheism and “ordinary” monotheism. I've heard it said that the Universe is a fleeting idea in God’s mind, and I’ve come to feel that if God exists, then logically, our situation can’t be anything other than that. The Universe can’t be anything other than God’s mind, which would in turn make it equal to God. This, of course, is an idea sufficiently vacuous as to justify atheism. It would come to make more sense to ask "How does the Universe work?" than "Does God exist?"
On top of everything else, the deism of fine-tuning renders the God argument content-free. What is God? God is a being with the desire and the ability to make life-supporting universes. Brilliant! If you add any other attributes (such as omnibenevolence), the various atheist arguments are more than enough to whittle that being away.
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