In a recent History Channel (two-hour) program, the "end of the world" was featured in terms of certain forecasts made by Nostradamus, and the so-called Mayan "end of the planet" prediction due to arrive on Dece. 21, 2012. All over the net, it seems, people are going bonkers worrying about what will happen, whether daylight will "disappear" and all humanity will come to perdition.
The main thrust of the program (which went on for two hours) appeared to be that there existed a concordance between certain quatrains penned by Nostrodamus, and the Mayans' own prognostications based on their astronomy. At the heart of both was that on the day of note (December 21, 2012) the Sun would dawn and its rays would be reinforced by the "dark rift" of the Milky Way galaxy.
As with astrology (see my earlier blog entry from two years ago) the error made is one of specious symbolic association. Because the Milky Way has a "dark rift" which the Sun will be aligned with on some occasions (about once every 100 million years) then it must follow if the Sun's light is aligned with the dark rift something awful must happen. Perhaps, as the introduction to the program suggested, there will be no dawn on that day and the end of sunlight as we know it!
Poppycock! This is no different from one's "birth sign" (say Leo or Cancer) having Mars in it, and facing a violent day (according to many astrologers) - merely because Mars is "blood red" in color. (Actually, Mars is not blood red in color, it is ochre or rust-colored, on account of the large amounts of ferrous oxide).
The program is clever, however, in that it really doesn't expatiate or concentrate on the "dark rift" alignment and wanders off instead to considering a whole raft of disasters that Nostradamus' quatrains might mean. Such as, accelerated global warming. Or, some disaster - like an asteroid or comet strike - which heralds a nuclear winter. (In this case, the Sun is indeed blotted out, but by the trillions of tons of dust hurled into the atmosphere following a collision with a 1-2 mile rock from space- which may last for years and result in mass starvation on accoumnt of crops dying worldwide)
In a way this is cheating, because the intro led the viewer to believe or accept a direct causal link to the Sun's alignment with the dark rift. But if global warming or an asteroid collision is responsible for our end, then clearly it has nothing to do with any alignments with a dark rift. This is simply an obfuscation. A distraction, a red herring.
Neither is tying in Nostradamus or his quatrains very helpful, since the way they were written left open a multitude of interpretations. I can think of no better examples of a kind of poetic Rohrschach blot than any of those quatrains. But dragging in Nostradamus has the beneficial effect of adding a layer of mystery.
The program also mentioned the reversal of the Earth's magnetic field, which indeed could cause a lot of consternation - given our atmosphere would now be exposed to all the Sun's radiation and energetic particles (at the midpoint of reversal when the field ceases to exist or is at a minimum).
But again, this has absolutely nothing to do with any alignment of the Milky Way's dark rift with the Sun. To suggest such a connection is to practice unwarranted extrapolation which is not based on any credible astrophysical or astronomical data.
As I have said before, there are genuine threats to humanity out there, among which the two most prominent are a large asteroid collision, and the runaway greenhouse effect. The tragedy is that by focusing on fake catastrophes like the Mayan 'end of daylight', people will cease to attend to the real threats by taking actual actions now. Say like cutting back on consumption of fossil fuels to abate or delay the onset of the worst greenhouse gas warming.
Or, by writing letters and making calls to congressional representatives to get off their duffs and re-fund the 'Project Space guard' program which had attempted to develop improved methods of monitoring asteroids, and also implement ways to deflect them if they threatened Earth.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Monday, May 4, 2009
"Vitamin G" or B - for BUNK?
In a recent report in today's Denver Post (May 4, p. 4C), the headline in the Health section blared:
'Dose of 'Vitamin G' can keep you healthy'
The article begins:
"You want to live long and look good, so you do everything the experts suggest: you eat salmon, you wear sunscreen, lift weights, and jog. You floss, eat five fruits, take your vitamin D and you pray? Pray? Yes! God is now part of a healthful lifestyle. It turns out that God can save your life as well as your soul"
Of course, this is nonsense, never mind how the zany author (Diane Cameron) goes on to assert this is validated by "the newest research on aging and health". And that the push isn't coming from "churchmen" but from doctors, especially neurologists.
A top expert cited is Dr. Andrew Newberg who is claimed to be "a top spokesman in the new field of neuro-theology". This is claimed to be apparent in Newberg's book, 'How God Changes Your Brain'.
Neuro-theology? This is an oxymoron. One cannot have a science - a REAL science, wed to theology! Theology is poppyock, bunkum and gibberish. No serious scientists - I don't care if he's an astronomer or neurologist, marries his science to theology unless he prefers a one way pass to being marginalized.
Science, consisting chiefly of inductively formulated laws and postulates can stand in no meaningful relation to theology, since theology possesses no genuine knowledge about anything.
Knowledge presupposes open inquiry to obtain it in the first place. Theology’s multitude of dogmas and doctrines – not open to critical evaluation, forever forecloses such inquiry, and by doing so abdicates any claim to being called ‘knowledge’. As Sir A.J. Ayer has noted (‘Language, Truth and Logic’, p. 158):
“The fact that people have religious experiences is interesting from a psychological point of view, but it does not in any way imply that there is such a thing as religious knowledge.”
In the place of reason’s doubt and uncertainty, belief offers a pap in the guise of absolute certitude. A delusion purchased at the cost of intellectual gangrene. A gangrene rendered more ubiquitous now because bunkum and pseudo-science are now widespread, given that certain panderers (from the realm of science) have discovered they can get more books sold if they incorporate some religious subtext.
At least if I am told that electrons can sometimes behave like waves, there is experimental evidence, namely electron diffraction patterns, which I can find for support. If I’m told that such electrons can exhibit instantaneous connections, I need go no further than Alain Aspect’s 1982 experiment – and other more recent ones, which disclose this.
If I am informed, from Einstein’s special relativity, that the time for a moving object slows, I need look no further than the well-documented data for muons to find the empirical support.
If I am told there are solar explosions (flares) that can engulf twenty Earths, I need only go to my local Observatory telescope, put on a special H-alpha filter and view such flares with a superimposed graticule fashioned with the scales of Earth –sized objects, for support.
In other words, most physical concepts have a wealth of consistent and coherent data which, together with deductively formulated mathematical arguments, lend support to their existence. The same, unfortunately, cannot be said for theological ‘doctrines’.
While Newberg is not pushing theological doctrines, he is perilously close to pushing pseudo-science not much different from that already circulating compliments of physicist Frank Tipler in his 'Physics of Christianity' and 'Physics of Immortality' - both of which have been throroughly skewered in Amazon book reviews. Along with their flawed scientific assumptions and generalizations exposed.
Newberg, for example, never verifies a genuine, bona fide "God presence" in any of his subjects.
This means he's simply measuring the way the human brain creates its own subjective reality--basically, how we make stuff up. (An aspect that has actually been clearly and carefully exposed in truly serious work, such as Michael Persinger's 'The Neuro-psychological Bases of God Belief')
In Persinger's genuinely empirical research, electrodes were applied to the temporal lobes of the brain and inevitably triggered religious and "God ideation" by incepting temporal lobe transients (TLTs) - a kind of mini-seizure. Persinger placed TLT experience along a hypothetical continuum. Extreme symptoms included: circumstantiality, a sense of the personal (e.g. egocentric references (e.g. I am the one with whom God communes!) , divine guidance in one's life), perseveration (I can triumph through all) , hypergraphia (writing reams of one's experiences - beliefs to convert or convince others - like perhaps Newberg himself!) , altered affect, and most importantly an overwhelming sense of religiosity....fueling MORE faith. In other words, the faith achieved and the firm "happy" beliefs was little different from what one finds in a drunk who's imbibed too much Sterno or Ripple.
Even before Persinger there was Julian Jaynes in his landmark 1976 book: The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Jaynes, a Princeton psychologist, argued that the brain activity of ancient people - those living roughly 3,500 years ago, prior to early evidence of consciousness such as logic, reason, and ethics - would have resembled that of modern schizophrenics. Jaynes maintained that, like schizophrenics they believed they were beneficiaries of exceptional "divine" care, communications and "love". They were also able to directly communicate using "prayer" and actually had prayers answered.
Is this what Newberg and his ilk wish to take us back to? 3,500 years ago, to primitive-brained ancestors that were only able to think metaphorically? One is correct to ask this, if his subjects believe they are "in the presence of God or some other infinite power" - which may indeed dramatically affect the structures and functions of their brains- but Newberg does nothing to inform us whether these (subjective) apperceptions truly exist in the world outside those brains.
It evidently has escaped Newberg that scanning a brain for reactions to stimuli induced within the brain (meditation - whether on verbal or visual input) is unrelated to anything outside the brain. Hence, the problem is the sloppy way Newberg thinks about what he is allegedly researching. This also highlights the inherent flaw in his original hypothesis: which was to accept the validity of religious belief a priori.
Persinger, instead, adopted the more rational (skeptical hypothesis) that religious belief may not be healthy, may not be intrinsically valid, and may well be the result of a kind of pathology. It was via this more neutral stance, not accepting the positive outcome, that enabled him to expose the reality of TLTs and show precisely that God exists solely in the brain, as Jaynes earlier found.
Newberg's prescription, based on his hypothesis, is: "If it makes you feel good, about yourself, believe in it and it will change your brain and make you live longer, be happier".
Of course, then one can retain belief in Santa for the same reason, or the Easter Bunny, or even Saskwatch! Hey, if the belief gets you through the day and alters your brain!
This is why Michael Persinger's approach is the more truly scientific and open. Indeed, he makes his motivation clear in his book:
“As a human being, I am concerned about the illusionary explanations for human consciousness and the future of human existence. Consequently after writing the Neuropsychological Bases of God Beliefs (1987), I began the systematic application of complex electromagnetic fields to discern the patterns that will induce experiences (sensed presence) that are attributed to the myriad of ego-alien intrusions which range from gods to aliens. The research is not to demean anyone's religious/mystical experience but instead to determine which portions of the brain or its electromagnetic patterns generate the experience.
The research has been encouraged by the historical fact that most wars and group degradations are coupled implicitly to god beliefs and to the presumption that those who do not believe the same as the experient are somehow less human and hence expendable. Although these egocentric propensities may have had adaptive significance, their utility for the species' future may be questionable. "
This says it all, and also carries the keynote of skepticism, which one would do well to apply to Newberg. For glaringly missing (as it was in the earlier 'prayer' research that purported to show those who were sick in hospital fared better if prayed for) is the use of proper double-blind tests and discriminatory qualification and quantification.
What do I mean by this? I mean that in Newberg's book 'How God Changes the Brain', he fails to go on to discriminate the extent and degrees of how DIFFERENT God beliefs affect brains- quality of life, etc.. For example, is the Hindu God, Brahman, able to engender more healthy changes than the Christian exhibits with his God? And if in the Christian case, which version of Christian deity operates and bestows the most brain (and longevity) benefits? Does the Trinity trump all? Or is is Jehovah, or Jesus himself and exclusively? What about the Christian 'Science of Mind' claim of "Universal Mind"? Does that work even better for its adherents? What about Muslims and Allah? Does Allah vouchsafe greater longevity and brain-health benefits than any version of Christian deity?
Newberg deals with none of these aspects, which is logical, given he isn't interested in whether a real existent confers the benefits. If all he obsesses over is subjects' responses, and the validity of the external agent(s) is never substantiated or formalized, then it really doesn't matter what they are. Any artifact will suffice, including belief in elves, Santa, Easter Bunnies and leprechauns.
We don't need any "neuro-theology" any more than we need any other form of novel pseudo-science. If researchers in whatever field find that all their research "holes" have already been drilled and there is nothing new on offer, then I suggest the optimum response is to do, or write or propose nothing! For nothing is certainly preferable to most of the silly codswallop currently making the rounds, and passed off as "science". (On the other hand, as I have pointed out before, if the assorted authors wish to refer to their speculations or conjectures- that is acceptable.)
How startling is that?
'Dose of 'Vitamin G' can keep you healthy'
The article begins:
"You want to live long and look good, so you do everything the experts suggest: you eat salmon, you wear sunscreen, lift weights, and jog. You floss, eat five fruits, take your vitamin D and you pray? Pray? Yes! God is now part of a healthful lifestyle. It turns out that God can save your life as well as your soul"
Of course, this is nonsense, never mind how the zany author (Diane Cameron) goes on to assert this is validated by "the newest research on aging and health". And that the push isn't coming from "churchmen" but from doctors, especially neurologists.
A top expert cited is Dr. Andrew Newberg who is claimed to be "a top spokesman in the new field of neuro-theology". This is claimed to be apparent in Newberg's book, 'How God Changes Your Brain'.
Neuro-theology? This is an oxymoron. One cannot have a science - a REAL science, wed to theology! Theology is poppyock, bunkum and gibberish. No serious scientists - I don't care if he's an astronomer or neurologist, marries his science to theology unless he prefers a one way pass to being marginalized.
Science, consisting chiefly of inductively formulated laws and postulates can stand in no meaningful relation to theology, since theology possesses no genuine knowledge about anything.
Knowledge presupposes open inquiry to obtain it in the first place. Theology’s multitude of dogmas and doctrines – not open to critical evaluation, forever forecloses such inquiry, and by doing so abdicates any claim to being called ‘knowledge’. As Sir A.J. Ayer has noted (‘Language, Truth and Logic’, p. 158):
“The fact that people have religious experiences is interesting from a psychological point of view, but it does not in any way imply that there is such a thing as religious knowledge.”
In the place of reason’s doubt and uncertainty, belief offers a pap in the guise of absolute certitude. A delusion purchased at the cost of intellectual gangrene. A gangrene rendered more ubiquitous now because bunkum and pseudo-science are now widespread, given that certain panderers (from the realm of science) have discovered they can get more books sold if they incorporate some religious subtext.
At least if I am told that electrons can sometimes behave like waves, there is experimental evidence, namely electron diffraction patterns, which I can find for support. If I’m told that such electrons can exhibit instantaneous connections, I need go no further than Alain Aspect’s 1982 experiment – and other more recent ones, which disclose this.
If I am informed, from Einstein’s special relativity, that the time for a moving object slows, I need look no further than the well-documented data for muons to find the empirical support.
If I am told there are solar explosions (flares) that can engulf twenty Earths, I need only go to my local Observatory telescope, put on a special H-alpha filter and view such flares with a superimposed graticule fashioned with the scales of Earth –sized objects, for support.
In other words, most physical concepts have a wealth of consistent and coherent data which, together with deductively formulated mathematical arguments, lend support to their existence. The same, unfortunately, cannot be said for theological ‘doctrines’.
While Newberg is not pushing theological doctrines, he is perilously close to pushing pseudo-science not much different from that already circulating compliments of physicist Frank Tipler in his 'Physics of Christianity' and 'Physics of Immortality' - both of which have been throroughly skewered in Amazon book reviews. Along with their flawed scientific assumptions and generalizations exposed.
Newberg, for example, never verifies a genuine, bona fide "God presence" in any of his subjects.
This means he's simply measuring the way the human brain creates its own subjective reality--basically, how we make stuff up. (An aspect that has actually been clearly and carefully exposed in truly serious work, such as Michael Persinger's 'The Neuro-psychological Bases of God Belief')
In Persinger's genuinely empirical research, electrodes were applied to the temporal lobes of the brain and inevitably triggered religious and "God ideation" by incepting temporal lobe transients (TLTs) - a kind of mini-seizure. Persinger placed TLT experience along a hypothetical continuum. Extreme symptoms included: circumstantiality, a sense of the personal (e.g. egocentric references (e.g. I am the one with whom God communes!) , divine guidance in one's life), perseveration (I can triumph through all) , hypergraphia (writing reams of one's experiences - beliefs to convert or convince others - like perhaps Newberg himself!) , altered affect, and most importantly an overwhelming sense of religiosity....fueling MORE faith. In other words, the faith achieved and the firm "happy" beliefs was little different from what one finds in a drunk who's imbibed too much Sterno or Ripple.
Even before Persinger there was Julian Jaynes in his landmark 1976 book: The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Jaynes, a Princeton psychologist, argued that the brain activity of ancient people - those living roughly 3,500 years ago, prior to early evidence of consciousness such as logic, reason, and ethics - would have resembled that of modern schizophrenics. Jaynes maintained that, like schizophrenics they believed they were beneficiaries of exceptional "divine" care, communications and "love". They were also able to directly communicate using "prayer" and actually had prayers answered.
Is this what Newberg and his ilk wish to take us back to? 3,500 years ago, to primitive-brained ancestors that were only able to think metaphorically? One is correct to ask this, if his subjects believe they are "in the presence of God or some other infinite power" - which may indeed dramatically affect the structures and functions of their brains- but Newberg does nothing to inform us whether these (subjective) apperceptions truly exist in the world outside those brains.
It evidently has escaped Newberg that scanning a brain for reactions to stimuli induced within the brain (meditation - whether on verbal or visual input) is unrelated to anything outside the brain. Hence, the problem is the sloppy way Newberg thinks about what he is allegedly researching. This also highlights the inherent flaw in his original hypothesis: which was to accept the validity of religious belief a priori.
Persinger, instead, adopted the more rational (skeptical hypothesis) that religious belief may not be healthy, may not be intrinsically valid, and may well be the result of a kind of pathology. It was via this more neutral stance, not accepting the positive outcome, that enabled him to expose the reality of TLTs and show precisely that God exists solely in the brain, as Jaynes earlier found.
Newberg's prescription, based on his hypothesis, is: "If it makes you feel good, about yourself, believe in it and it will change your brain and make you live longer, be happier".
Of course, then one can retain belief in Santa for the same reason, or the Easter Bunny, or even Saskwatch! Hey, if the belief gets you through the day and alters your brain!
This is why Michael Persinger's approach is the more truly scientific and open. Indeed, he makes his motivation clear in his book:
“As a human being, I am concerned about the illusionary explanations for human consciousness and the future of human existence. Consequently after writing the Neuropsychological Bases of God Beliefs (1987), I began the systematic application of complex electromagnetic fields to discern the patterns that will induce experiences (sensed presence) that are attributed to the myriad of ego-alien intrusions which range from gods to aliens. The research is not to demean anyone's religious/mystical experience but instead to determine which portions of the brain or its electromagnetic patterns generate the experience.
The research has been encouraged by the historical fact that most wars and group degradations are coupled implicitly to god beliefs and to the presumption that those who do not believe the same as the experient are somehow less human and hence expendable. Although these egocentric propensities may have had adaptive significance, their utility for the species' future may be questionable. "
This says it all, and also carries the keynote of skepticism, which one would do well to apply to Newberg. For glaringly missing (as it was in the earlier 'prayer' research that purported to show those who were sick in hospital fared better if prayed for) is the use of proper double-blind tests and discriminatory qualification and quantification.
What do I mean by this? I mean that in Newberg's book 'How God Changes the Brain', he fails to go on to discriminate the extent and degrees of how DIFFERENT God beliefs affect brains- quality of life, etc.. For example, is the Hindu God, Brahman, able to engender more healthy changes than the Christian exhibits with his God? And if in the Christian case, which version of Christian deity operates and bestows the most brain (and longevity) benefits? Does the Trinity trump all? Or is is Jehovah, or Jesus himself and exclusively? What about the Christian 'Science of Mind' claim of "Universal Mind"? Does that work even better for its adherents? What about Muslims and Allah? Does Allah vouchsafe greater longevity and brain-health benefits than any version of Christian deity?
Newberg deals with none of these aspects, which is logical, given he isn't interested in whether a real existent confers the benefits. If all he obsesses over is subjects' responses, and the validity of the external agent(s) is never substantiated or formalized, then it really doesn't matter what they are. Any artifact will suffice, including belief in elves, Santa, Easter Bunnies and leprechauns.
We don't need any "neuro-theology" any more than we need any other form of novel pseudo-science. If researchers in whatever field find that all their research "holes" have already been drilled and there is nothing new on offer, then I suggest the optimum response is to do, or write or propose nothing! For nothing is certainly preferable to most of the silly codswallop currently making the rounds, and passed off as "science". (On the other hand, as I have pointed out before, if the assorted authors wish to refer to their speculations or conjectures- that is acceptable.)
How startling is that?
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Wealth is "relative" - NOT!
According to a Wall Street Journal piece, 'Wealth-Less Effect: Earning Well, Feeling Otherwise' (April 16, p. A11) we are now supposed to shed tears and feel sorry for those making 250 grand or more per year, when millions have to line up for food stamps, or face foreclosure or losing their health coverage.
The basic proposition of the article is that wealth or rather "prosperity", is all relative. To quote:
"To a family earning $50,000, $250,000 a year is well off, but for the family earning $250,000, rising college and medical costs and dropping home values make the perception debatable"
Really? Says who? The family earning only $50,000 a year - which will be roughly $42,500 after taxes, also has to face rising medical costs. Indeed, because they have far less disposable income because they start out with so much less, they have far fewer options. Going to an ivy league college, for instance, is already foreclosed to their offspring unless they can get a full ride scholarship.
Meanwhile, the quarter mil family can garner even more disposable income simply by letting Junior go to a state school instead of Harvard, if s/he doesn't get the scholarship.
So the whole basis for comparison is false.
But then that depends on the definition of "well off", doesn't it? To me "well off" means that a person can, without desperate measures, live off half his income if need be. The changes made to their lifestyle, in other words, don't have to veer into the realm of food stamps, going to thrift shops or visiting food pantries. No $250,000 family need do those, since they can easily live off half their income (meaning half is disposable) if they have to.
Half their income would be $125,000 which after taxes (as currently pegged at marginal rates) is: $79, 375 which is still nearly TWICE the after-tax income of the family earning $50,000.
Again, this means they need not make drastic or draconian choices. (Possibly excepting re-financing a mortgage or moving to a lower cost home - and everyone ought to be simplifying or downsizing anyway!)
An even more glaring example in the article is the Duran family which earns $400,000 a year in Silicon Valley. According to Mr. Duran: "I am barely getting by". A hard sell to make to a guy in Miami whose just lost his job, his home and his health insurance, and is barely making it with food stamps and unemployment benefits.
Another family cited, the Parnells, only earned a measly $260,000 last year. As the article notes, "taxes, premiums for medical care and deductions for their 401k cut the gross to about $12,000 a month."
The poor little Parnells are left with "just over $1200 each month" disposable income, after they shell out for their mortgage ($4000 a month), college funds, and $1,300 to their church.
I am thinking here, $1,300 to a church? Reduce that to just $300 (which is still $3600 a year) and you have $2200 a month left over and no more whining! No church should be getting that much per month unless they are using it to directly feed and house homeless people.
All of this discloses how skewed and mangled the wealth concept is in the U.S.
That is, people making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year are professing some hurt, while low wage earners can't make ends meet because they aren't paid a living wage.
As the author of 'Nickel and Dimed' - Barbara Ehrenreich, noted, working at Walmart didn't even help her pay both food and rent at a dump motel. She had to go on food stamps to survive. (At least with that one 40 hr. job). There is a real moral problem here too, since without a living wage, economic warfare is all that remains- with each little person fighting and struggling against each other little person for survival.
Another point: why should the wealthy be exempt from the so-called financial 'laws' of nature? When most of them (94% by Michael Parenti's reckoning, in his 'The Dirty Truth') achieved their wealth not via labor or even competition in a labor market but via inheritance. How come a fluke of luck in life's draw enables them not to have to suffer, and work long hours at two or more jobs, but not the rest?
Extrapolating from this one beholds the loathsome moralizing issuing from certain wealthy enclaves whenever one of the hoi polloi slacks off, or refuses to seize a dirt job.
"They are too lazy! They feel too entitled and disdain a work ethic!" the wealthy moralists caterwaul.
But perhaps, they are simply too smart and perceptive and behold how much undeserved wealth inheres to a few who don't have to do a jot to earn it. Merely produce a birth certificate.
As Charles Reich poignantly notes in his book, Opposing the System, Crown Books, p. 103:
"When society itself comes to be modeled on economic and organizational principles, all of the forces that bind people together are torn apart in the struggle for survival. Community is destroyed because we are no longer 'in this together' because everyone is a threat to everyone else. "
In such a capitalist-driven, consumerist organizational economic model, wherein the resource “pie” for the non-wealthy elite grows ever smaller, the young are threats to us oldsters, as we are threats to them, as neighbor is to neighbor. It can't be otherwise. This capitalist model has seen fit, in other words, to destroy our areas of commonality and common cause, usually replacing neutral civic space (public halls, parks, libraries, rec rooms etc.) with demeaning commercial space and commercialist, capitalist values.
Reich then describes the visceral 'dog-eat-dog', endless economic warfare that ensues between people in the never ending quest to 'make it' and not be left behind. A tragic game wherein every one, every man, woman and child has a 'market value' and all abiding principles, social or moral, are reduced to economics. Alas, the cost resides in devastated marriages, families and communities.
The capitalist driven “rupture” can occur as quickly as when your neighbor builds a large recreational pool, or puts in a hot tub, and you can’t afford one. Or when he makes a great home improvement add-on while you are left to humble by with the status quo.
How do the wealthy, or even relatively wealthy, get away with their whining and feeling so downtrodden when millions of their countrymen have to dumpster dive to survive? The core reason is that too many have a meager comprehension of economics and their economic station relative to the whole.
Evidently, many working class people especially, have no remote concept of where they stand in the financial, economic spectrum. If they're ignorant of their economic position, then it follows that they can't know when that position is being compromised, far less HOW. A case in point was a survey conducted by The Economic Policy Institute some time ago. It asked generally where people thought they were in the economic spectrum: upper 1% (earning $320,000 year or more); upper 5% (> $80,000) or where.
A full 19% in this random survey claimed they were in the privileged class of the top 1%. A virtual statistical impossibility in any random study. In fact, internal survey cross-check questions on income category showed many of these working at a little above minimum wage, and even the highest at barely $44,000/yr. Nowhere near the 1% threshold.
Other commentators on this study (e.g. Froma Harrop, Ellen Goodman) have pointed to this ignorance as a basis for supporting such crap as the Bush tax cuts. Thus:
A) They didn't know where they themselves fit, and indeed inflated their wealth and positions and
B) they actually believed they'd be millionaires one fine day and be able to partake of the tax cuts. (Or 'death tax' benefits).
In fact, they are deliriously out of touch with reality. As author Michael Parenti noted ('The Dirty Truth') 94% of all wealth comes by way of inheritance not paid work. So, they are fooling themselves.
One good thing to arise out of this recession is that it has scaled down people's earlier unrealistic wealth expectations, and also toned down consumption. Now, even if a rich man wants to do a boffo major new home improvement, including putting in a dozen hot tubs, he thinks two or three times about how he will be perceived.
The more we can get the "relatively wealthy" to fret over how their ignominous consumption or tempted consumption is perceived, the better!
The basic proposition of the article is that wealth or rather "prosperity", is all relative. To quote:
"To a family earning $50,000, $250,000 a year is well off, but for the family earning $250,000, rising college and medical costs and dropping home values make the perception debatable"
Really? Says who? The family earning only $50,000 a year - which will be roughly $42,500 after taxes, also has to face rising medical costs. Indeed, because they have far less disposable income because they start out with so much less, they have far fewer options. Going to an ivy league college, for instance, is already foreclosed to their offspring unless they can get a full ride scholarship.
Meanwhile, the quarter mil family can garner even more disposable income simply by letting Junior go to a state school instead of Harvard, if s/he doesn't get the scholarship.
So the whole basis for comparison is false.
But then that depends on the definition of "well off", doesn't it? To me "well off" means that a person can, without desperate measures, live off half his income if need be. The changes made to their lifestyle, in other words, don't have to veer into the realm of food stamps, going to thrift shops or visiting food pantries. No $250,000 family need do those, since they can easily live off half their income (meaning half is disposable) if they have to.
Half their income would be $125,000 which after taxes (as currently pegged at marginal rates) is: $79, 375 which is still nearly TWICE the after-tax income of the family earning $50,000.
Again, this means they need not make drastic or draconian choices. (Possibly excepting re-financing a mortgage or moving to a lower cost home - and everyone ought to be simplifying or downsizing anyway!)
An even more glaring example in the article is the Duran family which earns $400,000 a year in Silicon Valley. According to Mr. Duran: "I am barely getting by". A hard sell to make to a guy in Miami whose just lost his job, his home and his health insurance, and is barely making it with food stamps and unemployment benefits.
Another family cited, the Parnells, only earned a measly $260,000 last year. As the article notes, "taxes, premiums for medical care and deductions for their 401k cut the gross to about $12,000 a month."
The poor little Parnells are left with "just over $1200 each month" disposable income, after they shell out for their mortgage ($4000 a month), college funds, and $1,300 to their church.
I am thinking here, $1,300 to a church? Reduce that to just $300 (which is still $3600 a year) and you have $2200 a month left over and no more whining! No church should be getting that much per month unless they are using it to directly feed and house homeless people.
All of this discloses how skewed and mangled the wealth concept is in the U.S.
That is, people making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year are professing some hurt, while low wage earners can't make ends meet because they aren't paid a living wage.
As the author of 'Nickel and Dimed' - Barbara Ehrenreich, noted, working at Walmart didn't even help her pay both food and rent at a dump motel. She had to go on food stamps to survive. (At least with that one 40 hr. job). There is a real moral problem here too, since without a living wage, economic warfare is all that remains- with each little person fighting and struggling against each other little person for survival.
Another point: why should the wealthy be exempt from the so-called financial 'laws' of nature? When most of them (94% by Michael Parenti's reckoning, in his 'The Dirty Truth') achieved their wealth not via labor or even competition in a labor market but via inheritance. How come a fluke of luck in life's draw enables them not to have to suffer, and work long hours at two or more jobs, but not the rest?
Extrapolating from this one beholds the loathsome moralizing issuing from certain wealthy enclaves whenever one of the hoi polloi slacks off, or refuses to seize a dirt job.
"They are too lazy! They feel too entitled and disdain a work ethic!" the wealthy moralists caterwaul.
But perhaps, they are simply too smart and perceptive and behold how much undeserved wealth inheres to a few who don't have to do a jot to earn it. Merely produce a birth certificate.
As Charles Reich poignantly notes in his book, Opposing the System, Crown Books, p. 103:
"When society itself comes to be modeled on economic and organizational principles, all of the forces that bind people together are torn apart in the struggle for survival. Community is destroyed because we are no longer 'in this together' because everyone is a threat to everyone else. "
In such a capitalist-driven, consumerist organizational economic model, wherein the resource “pie” for the non-wealthy elite grows ever smaller, the young are threats to us oldsters, as we are threats to them, as neighbor is to neighbor. It can't be otherwise. This capitalist model has seen fit, in other words, to destroy our areas of commonality and common cause, usually replacing neutral civic space (public halls, parks, libraries, rec rooms etc.) with demeaning commercial space and commercialist, capitalist values.
Reich then describes the visceral 'dog-eat-dog', endless economic warfare that ensues between people in the never ending quest to 'make it' and not be left behind. A tragic game wherein every one, every man, woman and child has a 'market value' and all abiding principles, social or moral, are reduced to economics. Alas, the cost resides in devastated marriages, families and communities.
The capitalist driven “rupture” can occur as quickly as when your neighbor builds a large recreational pool, or puts in a hot tub, and you can’t afford one. Or when he makes a great home improvement add-on while you are left to humble by with the status quo.
How do the wealthy, or even relatively wealthy, get away with their whining and feeling so downtrodden when millions of their countrymen have to dumpster dive to survive? The core reason is that too many have a meager comprehension of economics and their economic station relative to the whole.
Evidently, many working class people especially, have no remote concept of where they stand in the financial, economic spectrum. If they're ignorant of their economic position, then it follows that they can't know when that position is being compromised, far less HOW. A case in point was a survey conducted by The Economic Policy Institute some time ago. It asked generally where people thought they were in the economic spectrum: upper 1% (earning $320,000 year or more); upper 5% (> $80,000) or where.
A full 19% in this random survey claimed they were in the privileged class of the top 1%. A virtual statistical impossibility in any random study. In fact, internal survey cross-check questions on income category showed many of these working at a little above minimum wage, and even the highest at barely $44,000/yr. Nowhere near the 1% threshold.
Other commentators on this study (e.g. Froma Harrop, Ellen Goodman) have pointed to this ignorance as a basis for supporting such crap as the Bush tax cuts. Thus:
A) They didn't know where they themselves fit, and indeed inflated their wealth and positions and
B) they actually believed they'd be millionaires one fine day and be able to partake of the tax cuts. (Or 'death tax' benefits).
In fact, they are deliriously out of touch with reality. As author Michael Parenti noted ('The Dirty Truth') 94% of all wealth comes by way of inheritance not paid work. So, they are fooling themselves.
One good thing to arise out of this recession is that it has scaled down people's earlier unrealistic wealth expectations, and also toned down consumption. Now, even if a rich man wants to do a boffo major new home improvement, including putting in a dozen hot tubs, he thinks two or three times about how he will be perceived.
The more we can get the "relatively wealthy" to fret over how their ignominous consumption or tempted consumption is perceived, the better!
Friday, April 24, 2009
Ten Myths About Atheists
Myths and reprehensible misinformation persist concerning Atheism and Atheists, and are regularly spread through the media and especially on the Net. It seems at times as if there is little accountability, and some of the most outrageous violators tend to be religious zealots and extremists who have fixed preconceptions about us embedded in their heads.
One of the most articulate disposals of such myths was published in the LA Times of Dec. 24, 2006. It listed each of ten major myths regularly circulated about Atheism, and a compelling rebuttal to each. Given there is little I can do to improve on any of them, and "re-inventing the wheel" appears unproductive, I provide them here for readers' convenience and invite comments you may have:
Ten Myths About Atheists
1) Atheists believe that life is meaningless.
On the contrary, religious people often worry that life is meaningless and imagine that it can only be redeemed by the promise of eternal happiness beyond the grave. Atheists tend to be quite sure that life is precious. Life is imbued with meaning by being really and fully lived. Our relationships with those we love are meaningful now; they need not last forever to be made so. Atheists tend to find this fear of meaninglessness … well … meaningless.
2) Atheism is responsible for the greatest crimes in human history.
People of faith often claim that the crimes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were the inevitable product of unbelief. The problem with fascism and communism, however, is not that they are too critical of religion; the problem is that they are too much like religions. Such regimes are dogmatic to the core and generally give rise to personality cults that are indistinguishable from cults of religious hero worship. Auschwitz, the gulag and the killing fields were not examples of what happens when human beings reject religious dogma; they are examples of political, racial and nationalistic dogma run amok. There is no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.
3) Atheism is dogmatic.
Jews, Christians and Muslims claim that their scriptures are so prescient of humanity's needs that they could only have been written under the direction of an omniscient deity. An atheist is simply a person who has considered this claim, read the books and found the claim to be ridiculous. One doesn't have to take anything on faith, or be otherwise dogmatic, to reject unjustified religious beliefs. As the historian Stephen Henry Roberts (1901-71) once said: "I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."
4) Atheists think everything in the universe arose by chance.
No one knows why the universe came into being. In fact, it is not entirely clear that we can coherently speak about the "beginning" or "creation" of the universe at all, as these ideas invoke the concept of time, and here we are talking about the origin of space-time itself. The notion that atheists believe that everything was created by chance is also regularly thrown up as a criticism of Darwinian evolution. As Richard Dawkins explains in his marvelous book, "The God Delusion," this represents an utter misunderstanding of evolutionary theory. Although we don't know precisely how the Earth's early chemistry begat biology, we know that the diversity and complexity we see in the living world is not a product of mere chance. Evolution is a combination of chance mutation and natural selection. Darwin arrived at the phrase "natural selection" by analogy to the "artificial selection" performed by breeders of livestock. In both cases, selection exerts a highly non-random effect on the development of any species.
5) Atheism has no connection to science.
Although it is possible to be a scientist and still believe in God — as some scientists seem to manage it — there is no question that an engagement with scientific thinking tends to erode, rather than support, religious faith. Taking the U.S. population as an example: Most polls show that about 90% of the general public believes in a personal God; yet 93% of the members of the National Academy of Sciences do not. This suggests that there are few modes of thinking less congenial to religious faith than science is.
6) Atheists are arrogant.
When scientists don't know something — like why the universe came into being or how the first self-replicating molecules formed — they admit it. Pretending to know things one doesn't know is a profound liability in science. And yet it is the life-blood of faith-based religion. One of the monumental ironies of religious discourse can be found in the frequency with which people of faith praise themselves for their humility, while claiming to know facts about cosmology, chemistry and biology that no scientist knows. When considering questions about the nature of the cosmos and our place within it, atheists tend to draw their opinions from science. This isn't arrogance; it is intellectual honesty.
7) Atheists are closed to spiritual experience.
There is nothing that prevents an atheist from experiencing love, ecstasy, rapture and awe; atheists can value these experiences and seek them regularly. What atheists don't tend to do is make unjustified (and unjustifiable) claims about the nature of reality on the basis of such experiences. There is no question that some Christians have transformed their lives for the better by reading the Bible and praying to Jesus. What does this prove? It proves that certain disciplines of attention and codes of conduct can have a profound effect upon the human mind. Do the positive experiences of Christians suggest that Jesus is the sole savior of humanity? Not even remotely — because Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and even atheists regularly have similar experiences.
There is, in fact, not a Christian on this Earth who can be certain that Jesus even wore a beard, much less that he was born of a virgin or rose from the dead. These are just not the sort of claims that spiritual experience can authenticate.
8) Atheists believe that there is nothing beyond human life and human understanding.
Atheists are free to admit the limits of human understanding in a way that religious people are not. It is obvious that we do not fully understand the universe; but it is even more obvious that neither the Bible nor the Koran reflects our best understanding of it. We do not know whether there is complex life elsewhere in the cosmos, but there might be. If there is, such beings could have developed an understanding of nature's laws that vastly exceeds our own. Atheists can freely entertain such possibilities. They also can admit that if brilliant extraterrestrials exist, the contents of the Bible and the Koran will be even less impressive to them than they are to human atheists.From the atheist point of view, the world's religions utterly trivialize the real beauty and immensity of the universe. One doesn't have to accept anything on insufficient evidence to make such an observation.
9) Atheists ignore the fact that religion is extremely beneficial to society.
Those who emphasize the good effects of religion never seem to realize that such effects fail to demonstrate the truth of any religious doctrine. This is why we have terms such as "wishful thinking" and "self-deception." There is a profound distinction between a consoling delusion and the truth. In any case, the good effects of religion can surely be disputed. In most cases, it seems that religion gives people bad reasons to behave well, when good reasons are actually available. Ask yourself, which is more moral, helping the poor out of concern for their suffering, or doing so because you think the creator of the universe wants you to do it, will reward you for doing it or will punish you for not doing it?
10) Atheism provides no basis for morality.
If a person doesn't already understand that cruelty is wrong, he won't discover this by reading the Bible or the Koran — as these books are bursting with celebrations of cruelty, both human and divine. We do not get our morality from religion. We decide what is good in our good books by recourse to moral intuitions that are (at some level) hard-wired in us and that have been refined by thousands of years of thinking about the causes and possibilities of human happiness.
Most of these, of course, I have addressed and prior to this piece was written in the TIMES. I addressed points in Amazon.com book reviews, as well as in exchanges conducted on other blogs I have posted on such as www.smirkingchimp.com, and www.salon.com.
So it isn't as if these are new to me, in fact, I elaborated my own myths about Atheists in my (2007) book 'Atheism: A Beginner's Handbook' - most of which dovetail with the above. I listed 7 myths as follows (with brief rebuttals much shorter than in the book):
1. Atheists Deny God
Impossible - since one cannot "deny' that which has no evidentiary basis anyway. Do we "deny" Easter Bunnies? Fairies? Leprechauns? No - because ab initio they are groundless and preposterous and no evidence has been offered to change that.
2. Atheists reject morals
More nonsense, since any persistent observer of human social interaction will note that the vast majority of people are law-abiding and decent folk who naturally practice a common-sense, utilitarian ethics similar to what has been described. No supernatural law or commandment ordains this behavior. Instead it is the conscious and deliberate recognition that the promotion of the welfare of others is directly linked to the one's own welfare. Compromise others' security, and you in effect compromise your own. Undermine their welfare and you also undermine your own. No god is necessary.
3. Most criminals and insane are atheists
Totally wrong, since the statistical evidence shows unambiguously that most criminals and insane are religious believers (e.g. McLoughline, Emmett, 1962:” Let the Statistics Tell Their Tragic Story,” in Crime and Immorality in the Catholic Church, Lyle Stuart Books, New York, pp. 189-214)
4. Atheists Always Recant Near Death
A myth created and fueled by bible punchers. See any issue of American Atheists, which monthly has a profile on a real, 'Foxhole Atheist'. Soldiers in action now in Iraq and Afghanistan who are Atheists.
5. Hitler was an Atheist.
Wrong! Technically Hitler was a Roman Catholic. Robert Payne notes [1]:
“Adolf Hitler's birth certificate records that he was born at six o'clock in the evening on April 20, 1889, and goes on to record that two days later, at a quarter past three in the afternoon, in the presence of Father Ignaz Probst, the boy was baptized in the local Catholic Church”
As is known from standard Roman Catholic doctrine, once one is baptized a Catholic, he or she technically remains a Catholic unless excommunicated, or until death. Payne later documents Catholic Church attendance by a number of Hitler's luminaries, including Gregor Strasser, Erich von Ludendorff and others.
6. Atheism is a Religion
This claim is absurd on its face. The misplaced strategy, however, is always to attempt to place atheism within the same logical context as religion and then attack it on the basis of occupying an analogous “belief” spectrum. In the end, this is a fool’s errand.
For one thing it turns the very meaning and basis of religion on its head. We know all religions embody centralized beliefs or dogmas that issue from some sacred scripture or a body of theology based on scriptural interpretations.. Atheism has none of these, since there are no central propositions or beliefs with which all atheists agree.
First, atheists withhold belief, they do not invest it. This alone separates atheists from religionists or people of faith. Second, atheists make no positive claims for any transcendent existent that requires their worship or obeisance. They simply acknowledge no god or entity with which to build a religion in other words. Third, atheists maintain no sacred works, scriptures, or ancient artifacts, from which their “truths” are extracted. They have no analog to a Bible, Qu’ran, Talmud or anything remotely similar.
If religionists insist on calling atheism a "religion" they essentially destroy the very meaning of the word they are trying to use.
7. All Atheists are Materialists
Nonsense, because there is no single form of Materialism. Hence it is absurd to say this without qualifying which form of Materialism. And once one does that he automatically concedes ALL Atheists cannot adhere to a single version! For example some discrete types include: hylozoism, which ascribes vital characteristics to all matter, and panpsychism, which attributes a mindlike character to all constituents of material things. Then there is epiphenomenalism, according to which sensations and thoughts do exist in addition to material processes but are nonetheless wholly dependent on material processes and without causal efficacy of their own.
Then there is physicalism, which asserts all agents, entities that exist must be some manifestation of physical cause- either by way of matter, energy or fields.
[1] Robert Payne: 1973, The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler, Praeger Publishers, p. 15
One of the most articulate disposals of such myths was published in the LA Times of Dec. 24, 2006. It listed each of ten major myths regularly circulated about Atheism, and a compelling rebuttal to each. Given there is little I can do to improve on any of them, and "re-inventing the wheel" appears unproductive, I provide them here for readers' convenience and invite comments you may have:
Ten Myths About Atheists
1) Atheists believe that life is meaningless.
On the contrary, religious people often worry that life is meaningless and imagine that it can only be redeemed by the promise of eternal happiness beyond the grave. Atheists tend to be quite sure that life is precious. Life is imbued with meaning by being really and fully lived. Our relationships with those we love are meaningful now; they need not last forever to be made so. Atheists tend to find this fear of meaninglessness … well … meaningless.
2) Atheism is responsible for the greatest crimes in human history.
People of faith often claim that the crimes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were the inevitable product of unbelief. The problem with fascism and communism, however, is not that they are too critical of religion; the problem is that they are too much like religions. Such regimes are dogmatic to the core and generally give rise to personality cults that are indistinguishable from cults of religious hero worship. Auschwitz, the gulag and the killing fields were not examples of what happens when human beings reject religious dogma; they are examples of political, racial and nationalistic dogma run amok. There is no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.
3) Atheism is dogmatic.
Jews, Christians and Muslims claim that their scriptures are so prescient of humanity's needs that they could only have been written under the direction of an omniscient deity. An atheist is simply a person who has considered this claim, read the books and found the claim to be ridiculous. One doesn't have to take anything on faith, or be otherwise dogmatic, to reject unjustified religious beliefs. As the historian Stephen Henry Roberts (1901-71) once said: "I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."
4) Atheists think everything in the universe arose by chance.
No one knows why the universe came into being. In fact, it is not entirely clear that we can coherently speak about the "beginning" or "creation" of the universe at all, as these ideas invoke the concept of time, and here we are talking about the origin of space-time itself. The notion that atheists believe that everything was created by chance is also regularly thrown up as a criticism of Darwinian evolution. As Richard Dawkins explains in his marvelous book, "The God Delusion," this represents an utter misunderstanding of evolutionary theory. Although we don't know precisely how the Earth's early chemistry begat biology, we know that the diversity and complexity we see in the living world is not a product of mere chance. Evolution is a combination of chance mutation and natural selection. Darwin arrived at the phrase "natural selection" by analogy to the "artificial selection" performed by breeders of livestock. In both cases, selection exerts a highly non-random effect on the development of any species.
5) Atheism has no connection to science.
Although it is possible to be a scientist and still believe in God — as some scientists seem to manage it — there is no question that an engagement with scientific thinking tends to erode, rather than support, religious faith. Taking the U.S. population as an example: Most polls show that about 90% of the general public believes in a personal God; yet 93% of the members of the National Academy of Sciences do not. This suggests that there are few modes of thinking less congenial to religious faith than science is.
6) Atheists are arrogant.
When scientists don't know something — like why the universe came into being or how the first self-replicating molecules formed — they admit it. Pretending to know things one doesn't know is a profound liability in science. And yet it is the life-blood of faith-based religion. One of the monumental ironies of religious discourse can be found in the frequency with which people of faith praise themselves for their humility, while claiming to know facts about cosmology, chemistry and biology that no scientist knows. When considering questions about the nature of the cosmos and our place within it, atheists tend to draw their opinions from science. This isn't arrogance; it is intellectual honesty.
7) Atheists are closed to spiritual experience.
There is nothing that prevents an atheist from experiencing love, ecstasy, rapture and awe; atheists can value these experiences and seek them regularly. What atheists don't tend to do is make unjustified (and unjustifiable) claims about the nature of reality on the basis of such experiences. There is no question that some Christians have transformed their lives for the better by reading the Bible and praying to Jesus. What does this prove? It proves that certain disciplines of attention and codes of conduct can have a profound effect upon the human mind. Do the positive experiences of Christians suggest that Jesus is the sole savior of humanity? Not even remotely — because Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and even atheists regularly have similar experiences.
There is, in fact, not a Christian on this Earth who can be certain that Jesus even wore a beard, much less that he was born of a virgin or rose from the dead. These are just not the sort of claims that spiritual experience can authenticate.
8) Atheists believe that there is nothing beyond human life and human understanding.
Atheists are free to admit the limits of human understanding in a way that religious people are not. It is obvious that we do not fully understand the universe; but it is even more obvious that neither the Bible nor the Koran reflects our best understanding of it. We do not know whether there is complex life elsewhere in the cosmos, but there might be. If there is, such beings could have developed an understanding of nature's laws that vastly exceeds our own. Atheists can freely entertain such possibilities. They also can admit that if brilliant extraterrestrials exist, the contents of the Bible and the Koran will be even less impressive to them than they are to human atheists.From the atheist point of view, the world's religions utterly trivialize the real beauty and immensity of the universe. One doesn't have to accept anything on insufficient evidence to make such an observation.
9) Atheists ignore the fact that religion is extremely beneficial to society.
Those who emphasize the good effects of religion never seem to realize that such effects fail to demonstrate the truth of any religious doctrine. This is why we have terms such as "wishful thinking" and "self-deception." There is a profound distinction between a consoling delusion and the truth. In any case, the good effects of religion can surely be disputed. In most cases, it seems that religion gives people bad reasons to behave well, when good reasons are actually available. Ask yourself, which is more moral, helping the poor out of concern for their suffering, or doing so because you think the creator of the universe wants you to do it, will reward you for doing it or will punish you for not doing it?
10) Atheism provides no basis for morality.
If a person doesn't already understand that cruelty is wrong, he won't discover this by reading the Bible or the Koran — as these books are bursting with celebrations of cruelty, both human and divine. We do not get our morality from religion. We decide what is good in our good books by recourse to moral intuitions that are (at some level) hard-wired in us and that have been refined by thousands of years of thinking about the causes and possibilities of human happiness.
Most of these, of course, I have addressed and prior to this piece was written in the TIMES. I addressed points in Amazon.com book reviews, as well as in exchanges conducted on other blogs I have posted on such as www.smirkingchimp.com, and www.salon.com.
So it isn't as if these are new to me, in fact, I elaborated my own myths about Atheists in my (2007) book 'Atheism: A Beginner's Handbook' - most of which dovetail with the above. I listed 7 myths as follows (with brief rebuttals much shorter than in the book):
1. Atheists Deny God
Impossible - since one cannot "deny' that which has no evidentiary basis anyway. Do we "deny" Easter Bunnies? Fairies? Leprechauns? No - because ab initio they are groundless and preposterous and no evidence has been offered to change that.
2. Atheists reject morals
More nonsense, since any persistent observer of human social interaction will note that the vast majority of people are law-abiding and decent folk who naturally practice a common-sense, utilitarian ethics similar to what has been described. No supernatural law or commandment ordains this behavior. Instead it is the conscious and deliberate recognition that the promotion of the welfare of others is directly linked to the one's own welfare. Compromise others' security, and you in effect compromise your own. Undermine their welfare and you also undermine your own. No god is necessary.
3. Most criminals and insane are atheists
Totally wrong, since the statistical evidence shows unambiguously that most criminals and insane are religious believers (e.g. McLoughline, Emmett, 1962:” Let the Statistics Tell Their Tragic Story,” in Crime and Immorality in the Catholic Church, Lyle Stuart Books, New York, pp. 189-214)
4. Atheists Always Recant Near Death
A myth created and fueled by bible punchers. See any issue of American Atheists, which monthly has a profile on a real, 'Foxhole Atheist'. Soldiers in action now in Iraq and Afghanistan who are Atheists.
5. Hitler was an Atheist.
Wrong! Technically Hitler was a Roman Catholic. Robert Payne notes [1]:
“Adolf Hitler's birth certificate records that he was born at six o'clock in the evening on April 20, 1889, and goes on to record that two days later, at a quarter past three in the afternoon, in the presence of Father Ignaz Probst, the boy was baptized in the local Catholic Church”
As is known from standard Roman Catholic doctrine, once one is baptized a Catholic, he or she technically remains a Catholic unless excommunicated, or until death. Payne later documents Catholic Church attendance by a number of Hitler's luminaries, including Gregor Strasser, Erich von Ludendorff and others.
6. Atheism is a Religion
This claim is absurd on its face. The misplaced strategy, however, is always to attempt to place atheism within the same logical context as religion and then attack it on the basis of occupying an analogous “belief” spectrum. In the end, this is a fool’s errand.
For one thing it turns the very meaning and basis of religion on its head. We know all religions embody centralized beliefs or dogmas that issue from some sacred scripture or a body of theology based on scriptural interpretations.. Atheism has none of these, since there are no central propositions or beliefs with which all atheists agree.
First, atheists withhold belief, they do not invest it. This alone separates atheists from religionists or people of faith. Second, atheists make no positive claims for any transcendent existent that requires their worship or obeisance. They simply acknowledge no god or entity with which to build a religion in other words. Third, atheists maintain no sacred works, scriptures, or ancient artifacts, from which their “truths” are extracted. They have no analog to a Bible, Qu’ran, Talmud or anything remotely similar.
If religionists insist on calling atheism a "religion" they essentially destroy the very meaning of the word they are trying to use.
7. All Atheists are Materialists
Nonsense, because there is no single form of Materialism. Hence it is absurd to say this without qualifying which form of Materialism. And once one does that he automatically concedes ALL Atheists cannot adhere to a single version! For example some discrete types include: hylozoism, which ascribes vital characteristics to all matter, and panpsychism, which attributes a mindlike character to all constituents of material things. Then there is epiphenomenalism, according to which sensations and thoughts do exist in addition to material processes but are nonetheless wholly dependent on material processes and without causal efficacy of their own.
Then there is physicalism, which asserts all agents, entities that exist must be some manifestation of physical cause- either by way of matter, energy or fields.
[1] Robert Payne: 1973, The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler, Praeger Publishers, p. 15
Thursday, April 23, 2009
A World Without Math - None I'd Choose to live in
Take a close look at the image of our planet, seen from space. It shows as no other the isolation of our little orb against the vast blackness of the cosmos - and that we are all passengers (crew) on Spaceship Earth.
Now, consider this: In a world without mathematics we'd never have been afforded such a view. It would have been impossible. It is mathematics (specifically differential calculus) that enabled us to engineer the rockets that attained an altitude to snap our world from space.
A world without math, featuring creatures evolved with no left-brain abilities to quantify or analyze, would be impoverished indeed. Truthfully, we'd not even be aware that our planet is spherical -curved and not flat, since the geometry necessary to attain that awareness (as performed by Eudoxus, Eratosthenes etc) would never have existed.
It is math that has opened the doors to the level of analysis needed to expose facets of the world and universe otherwise invisible.
Consider just trigonometry. No trig and no ability to plot altitudes or find heights! No ability to find distances between different levels. Think of a humdrum skyline for our cities, as opposed to the exotic and geometrical spires that populate most of the world's urban centers, from London to Paris, to Seattle to New York.
Calculus! No differential calculus or differential equations, and no ability to do celestial mechanics - which is the basis for actually sending a rocket from Earth to any other planet! Indeed, the equations of celestial mechanics from Kepler's equation: E - e sin(E) = n(t - t_o)
to the energy integral: r' x r" = - u/ r^3 [r' x r]
to the angular momentum defined for a 3-body system:
h = r x r’ = r x dr/ dt =
(y z’ - z y’)
(z x’ - x z’) = (C1 C2 C3)
(x y’ - y z’)
so (r x r’) = (C1/ h, C2/ h, C3/h)
is the whole basis for not only predicting the future positions of planets, but for launching spacecraft to other worlds, and landing them. Minus such advanced math, we'd have no close-up images of Saturn, or Neptune, or Uranus - nor would there be any Mars Rover plodding the dusty surface of that planet and sending back surface images.
In a world without math, most new medical devices would never have emerged. There'd be no MRI machines, no stereoscopic machines, no x-ray machines or radiotherapy-brachytherapy cancer treatment machines, or software.
There would be no computers, nor any software to run them, since the latter requires math-based code, and the former a level of engineering that makes use of everything from quantum tunnelling to quantifying thermal processes and inputs.
No telescopes would exist, or microcopes, or TV sets.
A world without mathematics would be so barren, so devoid of richness, it would be nearly impossible to imagine.
Blog Marked as "spam"?
What gives? Why would THIS blog be marked "spam" for a review? Nevertheless on trying to sign in, this was the message received! If one were to allow his paranoia to run riot, it would translate into certain religious psychos (my brother) being annoyed at the content and sending in a complaint to blogspot.com. Go ahead, Mike, give it your best shot!
There is NOTHING here that is spam, all the blog entries are my own, and merely because the content might offend some sensibilities is no reason to remove it!
Has free speech gone the way of the eddoes, as the Bajans say?
We will see.
I do hope whichever "reviewer" examines the blog will do so carefully and come to understand that it is serious, imbued with intellectual content and NOT SPAM!
Nothing gets my dander up faster than the swatch of little easily offended folk across the net who now register complaints at the slightest whiff of controversy.
This is sad. The country was founded on free speech, and if a person objects to some of what may be posted here, let him (or her) enter the fray with their own arguments, challenges.
But don't run to the authorities to try to get the blog removed because you are exercised and annoyed at the content.
Newsflash: If this blog is too intense for you, don't read it!
There is NOTHING here that is spam, all the blog entries are my own, and merely because the content might offend some sensibilities is no reason to remove it!
Has free speech gone the way of the eddoes, as the Bajans say?
We will see.
I do hope whichever "reviewer" examines the blog will do so carefully and come to understand that it is serious, imbued with intellectual content and NOT SPAM!
Nothing gets my dander up faster than the swatch of little easily offended folk across the net who now register complaints at the slightest whiff of controversy.
This is sad. The country was founded on free speech, and if a person objects to some of what may be posted here, let him (or her) enter the fray with their own arguments, challenges.
But don't run to the authorities to try to get the blog removed because you are exercised and annoyed at the content.
Newsflash: If this blog is too intense for you, don't read it!
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Time to Stop Protecting Religions
I was intrigued to read a recent comment by harleyman in which he references some of my preacher brother's (Pastor Mike's) latest fulminations against "blasphemy" and insinuating I am lax because I refuse to control the content of comments on this blog. It perhaps escaped my brother's attention that: a) this blog is intended to promote free speech not circumscribe or delimit it artificially, and b) I have never, ever accepted the validity of the "blasphemy" concept.
In a word, blasphemy is phony. There is no such thing, it is made up merely to provide special protective cover to religious beliefs and ideas- which if forced to stand alone and compete freely in the idea marketplace, would likely fall under their own absurd weight.
Given this, the invocation of the charge of "blasphemy" to protect religions is scurrilous. It presumes that religious belief itself merits protection but not believers. It effectively places the belief ABOVE humans! But what truly needs to be protected is not this false belief that blasphemy is real, but rather that anyone has the right to express any belief he or she so wishes.
If some of my commentators on this blog express beliefs that are radical (to Pastor Mike) or inveigh drastically against his own, that is their right. It isn't his business to try to remove it or entice me to clamp down (like he does) and censor their expression. If they believe that all King James bibles need to be burned up, then so be it. Given how god-awful (in terms of historical fact) the KJV bible is, and how bereft of value, one can understand the belief that it needs to be consigned to flames. (Not that I would do it. I happen to think the KJV bible is one of the finest works of English literature, but so is Camelot, the Legend of King Arthur. )
One of the most salient and compelling references to the perversity of religious faith was rendered by Sam Harris in his superb book, The End of Faith (pp. 65-66):
"Faith is what credulity becomes when it finally achieves escape velocity from the constraints of terrestrial discourse – constraints like reasonableness, internal coherence, civility and candor…
In the absence of evidence, to the highest place in the hierarchy of human virtues goes ignorance – the true coinage of the realm (e.g. John 20:29): “Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed”. And so every child is instructed that it is at the very least – an option - if not a scared duty, to disregard the facts of the world out of deference to the God who lurks in his mother’s and father’s imaginations..
This is the very same faith that will not stoop to reason when it has no good reason to believe….
This proves that these beliefs are not born of any examination of the world or the world of their experience. It appears that even the Holocaust did not lead Jews to doubt the existence of an omnipotent and benevolent God. If having half of your people delivered to the furnace does not count as evidence against the notion that an all-powerful God is looking after your interests, it seems reasonable to assume that nothing could"
Now, if nothing else, the holocaust ought to have shown once and for all that no ‘super Being’ exists other than as a phantasm in the imaginations of the weak-minded – those unable to face the reality of a purposeless cosmos on their own. A cosmic “Santa” if you will. But my umbrage doesn't inhere with such folk, but rather those who use religious belief like a cudgel to bash and seek to intimidate all others into THEIR fold. And they are then given all manner of respect in the press, in the wider culture and especially kowtowed to in the political realm.
As Harris points out, the fact we give any credence at all to such institutional madness, shows our civilization is headed for a new Dark Age – wherein reason’s light will finally be dimmed.
If this is indeed a threat, as I believe, then it surely is a monumental mistake to include a clause prohibiting the "defamation of religion" in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights - which for 60 years has otherwise provided a sound framework for a number of international agreements protecting the world's civil, economic and political life.
However, establishing a provision or resolution against the defamation of religion is inimical to the cause of establishing human rights. It doesn't even take a genius here to realize that it is wide open to abuse of power, especially in fundamentlist Islamic states which already are over the top with their "Sharia" laws (e.g. ordering females to be whipped 75 times if they are unmarried and found in the company of males).
Forget the whipping punishments, and the fact that recently in the Kingdom of Saud they were applied against a 72-year old lady, just consider the potential for suppression of ordinary dissent under "blasphemy" prohibitions such as Pastor Mike wants established on this blog. They also inveigh against a citizen's right to express legitimate criticism of practices and laws that may be in drastic violation of human rights. (Such as people in Saudi Arabia protesting the whipping of the 72-year old, or more recently in a Taliban-occupied region of Pakistan, thousands protesting the whipping of a 17 year old girl).
IF indeed, people are exercised about verbal abuse hurled at their religions or beliefs, they can exact justice by appealing to regular civil courts. If there is a law against the harsh criticism they have seen, let them use it, or their lawyers, to halt it. If not, there is no need to appeal to specious blasphemy rot and canards.
It is high time people understand that no one has any absolute right not to be offended. And those who don't grasp that have no business mounting defenses invoking the irrelevant, nonsense issue of "blasphemy". This is simply a blatant excuse to censor those who would legitimately criticize an aspect of a religion, while leaving the worst purveyors of religious mulch untouched..
In a word, blasphemy is phony. There is no such thing, it is made up merely to provide special protective cover to religious beliefs and ideas- which if forced to stand alone and compete freely in the idea marketplace, would likely fall under their own absurd weight.
Given this, the invocation of the charge of "blasphemy" to protect religions is scurrilous. It presumes that religious belief itself merits protection but not believers. It effectively places the belief ABOVE humans! But what truly needs to be protected is not this false belief that blasphemy is real, but rather that anyone has the right to express any belief he or she so wishes.
If some of my commentators on this blog express beliefs that are radical (to Pastor Mike) or inveigh drastically against his own, that is their right. It isn't his business to try to remove it or entice me to clamp down (like he does) and censor their expression. If they believe that all King James bibles need to be burned up, then so be it. Given how god-awful (in terms of historical fact) the KJV bible is, and how bereft of value, one can understand the belief that it needs to be consigned to flames. (Not that I would do it. I happen to think the KJV bible is one of the finest works of English literature, but so is Camelot, the Legend of King Arthur. )
One of the most salient and compelling references to the perversity of religious faith was rendered by Sam Harris in his superb book, The End of Faith (pp. 65-66):
"Faith is what credulity becomes when it finally achieves escape velocity from the constraints of terrestrial discourse – constraints like reasonableness, internal coherence, civility and candor…
In the absence of evidence, to the highest place in the hierarchy of human virtues goes ignorance – the true coinage of the realm (e.g. John 20:29): “Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed”. And so every child is instructed that it is at the very least – an option - if not a scared duty, to disregard the facts of the world out of deference to the God who lurks in his mother’s and father’s imaginations..
This is the very same faith that will not stoop to reason when it has no good reason to believe….
This proves that these beliefs are not born of any examination of the world or the world of their experience. It appears that even the Holocaust did not lead Jews to doubt the existence of an omnipotent and benevolent God. If having half of your people delivered to the furnace does not count as evidence against the notion that an all-powerful God is looking after your interests, it seems reasonable to assume that nothing could"
Now, if nothing else, the holocaust ought to have shown once and for all that no ‘super Being’ exists other than as a phantasm in the imaginations of the weak-minded – those unable to face the reality of a purposeless cosmos on their own. A cosmic “Santa” if you will. But my umbrage doesn't inhere with such folk, but rather those who use religious belief like a cudgel to bash and seek to intimidate all others into THEIR fold. And they are then given all manner of respect in the press, in the wider culture and especially kowtowed to in the political realm.
As Harris points out, the fact we give any credence at all to such institutional madness, shows our civilization is headed for a new Dark Age – wherein reason’s light will finally be dimmed.
If this is indeed a threat, as I believe, then it surely is a monumental mistake to include a clause prohibiting the "defamation of religion" in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights - which for 60 years has otherwise provided a sound framework for a number of international agreements protecting the world's civil, economic and political life.
However, establishing a provision or resolution against the defamation of religion is inimical to the cause of establishing human rights. It doesn't even take a genius here to realize that it is wide open to abuse of power, especially in fundamentlist Islamic states which already are over the top with their "Sharia" laws (e.g. ordering females to be whipped 75 times if they are unmarried and found in the company of males).
Forget the whipping punishments, and the fact that recently in the Kingdom of Saud they were applied against a 72-year old lady, just consider the potential for suppression of ordinary dissent under "blasphemy" prohibitions such as Pastor Mike wants established on this blog. They also inveigh against a citizen's right to express legitimate criticism of practices and laws that may be in drastic violation of human rights. (Such as people in Saudi Arabia protesting the whipping of the 72-year old, or more recently in a Taliban-occupied region of Pakistan, thousands protesting the whipping of a 17 year old girl).
IF indeed, people are exercised about verbal abuse hurled at their religions or beliefs, they can exact justice by appealing to regular civil courts. If there is a law against the harsh criticism they have seen, let them use it, or their lawyers, to halt it. If not, there is no need to appeal to specious blasphemy rot and canards.
It is high time people understand that no one has any absolute right not to be offended. And those who don't grasp that have no business mounting defenses invoking the irrelevant, nonsense issue of "blasphemy". This is simply a blatant excuse to censor those who would legitimately criticize an aspect of a religion, while leaving the worst purveyors of religious mulch untouched..
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)