Café of the Cosmic Dance

Computer Problems Suck

2012-02-10T20:17:00.000-07:00

These computer problems are beginning to get tedious.

Still Trying to Fix Computer

2012-01-24T01:01:00.000-07:00

I'm still trying to fix my computer. I've tried about a dozen things without success so far. Consequently, blog posting remains light. Lately, I've been considering fine tuning the thing with a sledge hammer, but I'm just not convinced yet that would actually be helpful.

Jiddu Krishnamurti on the Significance of Doubt

2012-01-20T15:18:00.003-07:00

"Why do we accept, why do we follow? We follow another's authority, another's experience and then doubt it; this search for authority and its sequel, disillusionment, is a painful process for most of us. We blame or criticize the once accepted authority, the leader, the teacher, but we do not examine our own craving for an authority who can direct our conduct. Once we understand this craving we shall comprehend the significance of doubt."

-- J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Learning that Comes with Age?

2012-01-19T18:11:00.000-07:00

I turned 55 earlier this month. One of the things I've enjoyed about getting older has been that I don't worry as much about my mistakes as I used to when I was younger.

I still make as many -- or even more -- mistakes as I ever did, but I just don't worry about them as much. Instead, I let the victims of my mistakes do the worrying, for part of my getting older has been my learning how to properly delegate responsibility.

The Modesty of Nudity

2012-01-17T19:30:00.000-07:00

I recently got involved in a discussion of nudity. Someone said that nudity was against Christian principles for women. That is, women should be modest in their apparel.

Then someone else pointed out there wasn't much that was more modest than nudity. "Hard to put on airs when you ain't got nothing else on."

Sporadic Posting

2012-01-16T11:22:00.000-07:00

I'm having some computer problems that might interfere with my posting to this blog. Hopefully, I'll be able to work around the problems until I can solve them. But if the blogging falls off, that's the reason for it.

UPDATED: Cell Phone Numbers Go Public This Month! Truth or Hoax?

2012-01-14T18:36:00.004-07:00

UPDATED

I just received this email from a friend, but it could be a hoax:

REMEMBER: Cell Phone Numbers Go Public this month.

REMINDER..... all cell phone numbers are being released to telemarketing companies and you will start to receive sales calls.

YOU WILL BE CHARGED FOR THESE CALLS.

To prevent this, call the following number from your cell phone: 888-382-1222

It is the National DO NOT CALL list. It will only take a minute of your time.. It blocks your number for five (5) years.

You must call from the cell phone number you want to have blocked. You cannot call from a different phone number.

However, Donna, Exrelayman, and Garnet have all pointed out in the comments on this post that the email is most likely a widespread hoax that was unwittingly passed on by my friend and me. I think they are right.

I apologize for my blunder, and I hope I have not caused any harm. New New Year's Resolution: Learn to use Google!

Do You Get Out of the House Much, Your Excellency?

2012-01-12T18:12:00.001-07:00

"The Minister for Family of the Papal Government, Cardinal Antonelli, told me a few days ago in Zaragoza that UNESCO has a program for the next 20 years to make half the world population homosexual. To do this they have distinct programs, and will continue to implant the ideology that is already present in our schools." -- Demetrio Fernández, Bishop of Córdoba.

(H/T: Pharyngula)

The Amazing Success of Trickle Down Economics

2012-01-12T08:10:00.001-07:00

Source

Some folks insist that anyone who is for raising taxes on the top 1% is engaging in class warfare. But as Warren Buffett said, “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

About 2000 years ago, Plutarch observed, "An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics." It will be interesting to see whether America has the political will to save its republic.

Four From Voltaire

2012-01-12T06:23:00.000-07:00

Les habiles tyrans ne sont jamais punis.
-- Clever tyrants are never punished.

C'est une des superstitions de l'esprit humain d'avoir imaginé que la virginité pouvait être une vertu.
-- It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.

Nous cherchons tous le bonheur, mais sans savoir où, comme les ivrognes qui cherchent leur maison, sachant confusément qu'ils en ont une.
-- We all look for happiness, but without knowing where to find it: like drunkards who look for their house, knowing dimly that they have one.

Il y a eu des gens qui ont dit autrefois: Vous croyez des choses incompréhensibles, contradictoires, impossibles, parce que nous vous l’avons ordonné; faites donc des choses injustes parce que nous vous l’ordonnons. Ces gens-là raisonnaient à merveille. Certainement qui est en droit de vous rendre absurde est en droit de vous rendre injuste. Si vous n’opposez point aux ordres de croire l’impossible l’intelligence que Dieu a mise dans votre esprit, vous ne devez point opposer aux ordres de malfaire la justice que Dieu a mise dans votre coeur. Une faculté de votre âme étant une fois tyrannisée, toutes les autres facultés doivent l’être également. Et c’est là ce qui a produit tous les crimes religieux dont la terre a été inondée.
-- Formerly there were those who said: You believe things that are incomprehensible, inconsistent, impossible because we have commanded you to believe them; go then and do what is unjust because we command it. Such people show admirable reasoning. Truly, whoever is able to make you absurd is able to make you unjust. If the God-given understanding of your mind does not resist a demand to believe what is impossible, then you will not resist a demand to do wrong to that God-given sense of justice in your heart. As soon as one faculty of your soul has been dominated, other faculties will follow as well. And from this derives all those crimes of religion which have overrun the world.

(Source)

Moderate Folks and Fanatics

2012-01-12T01:45:00.001-07:00

"The mark of a moderate man is freedom from his own ideas." Tao Te Ching, Ch. 59, as interpreted by Stephen Mitchell (1992).

The first two questions I have about this passage are relatively simple: If it is true that the mark of a moderate man is freedom from his own ideas, then is the mark of a fanatic that he is enslaved to his own ideas?

If so, how does a fanatic become enslaved to his own ideas?

The next two questions I have about this passage are perhaps less simple: In so far as most or all of us see the world through the lens of our ideas about the world, are not most or all of us somewhat less than free of our own ideas?

If so, what would it mean to be free of one's own ideas?

Slouching Towards America's "Lost Decade"

2012-01-10T19:02:00.001-07:00

I am re-posting the following article by Mark Weisbrot, with permission, because I think it speaks to one of the major issues facing the US -- as well as many other nations.

As you may know, the focus of the politicians has been on austerity -- cutting the budget -- despite that jobs are what most people want the politicians to focus on. Consequently, some folks are now predicting that, if the current focus continues, full employment will wait years to be achieved.

Such an outcome would be morally obscene and result in massive suffering.

The original article was first published on January 10th, in The Guardian (UK), under the heading, The Economic Idiocy of Economists. Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C.

The American Economic Association's annual meetings are a scary sight, with thousands of economists all gathered in the same place – a veritable weapon of mass destruction. Chicago was the lucky city for 2012 this past weekend, and I had just finished participating in an interesting panel on "the economics of regime change", when I stumbled over to see what the big budget experts had to say about "the political economy of the US debt and deficits".

The session was introduced by UC Berkeley economist Alan Auerbach, who put up a graph of the United States' rising debt-to-GDP ratio, and warned of dire consequences if Congress didn't do something about it. Yawn.

But the panelists got off to a good start, with Alan Blinder of Princeton, former vice-chairman of the US Federal Reserve, describing the public discussion of the US national debt as generally ranging from "ludicrous to horrific". True, that. He asked and answered four questions.

First, is there any urgency (to reduce the deficit or debt)? No. The government can borrow short term at negative real interest rates, and long-term at about zero. The world is paying us to hold their money. That is anything but a debt crisis. The Fed is out of bullets, he said – referring to the fact that the US Federal Reserve had lowered short-term rates to zero and had used quantitative easing to help keep long-term rates low. So we need more fiscal stimulus, preferably spending that focuses on actually creating jobs. Amen.

Second, should we focus on the next decade? No, he said, and noted that the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO's) budget deficit projections over the next decade are about 3.6% of GDP, which is not much to get agitated about. Also true.

Third, is government spending the problem? No, he said, it's healthcare costs, and mainly the rising price of healthcare (that is, not the ageing of the population). Most important truth yet! (More on this below.)

Fourth, is the public really up in arms about the deficit? No, actually, they care more about the economy and jobs. As they should.

Blinder concluded that since this is an election year, we can forget about having any fact-based discussion of these issues in 2012. Happy New Year, he said, and the audience laughed. Well, that was refreshing, I thought – an economist telling the unvarnished truth to hundreds of his people at the annual meetings.

But a rapid descent into hell was imminent. Former CBO director Douglas Holtz-Eakin was next, talking about the need to "repair" social security and Medicare. The United States has all the characteristics of countries that run into trouble, he said. Then he warned that the US is going to end up like Greece. This is one of the dumbest things that anyone with an economics degree can say.

Hello, Mr Holtz-Eakin! Have you ever heard of the US dollar, the world's key reserve currency?

The United States is not going to end up like Greece, any sooner than it will end up like Haiti or Burkina Faso. A country that can pay its foreign public debt in its own currency and runs its own central bank does not end up like Greece.

In fact, even Japan is not going to end up like Greece, and Japan has a gross public debt of about 220% of its GDP, more than twice the size of ours and vastly larger – again, relative to its economy – than that of Greece. And the yen is nowhere near the dollar in its importance as an international reserve currency. But the Japanese government is still borrowing at just 1% interest rates for its ten-year bonds.

At this point, it was clear that this panel, other than Blinder, was living in a dystopian fantasy world. Next up was Rudy Penner of the Urban Institute, another former CBO director. His perspective was not much different from that of Auerbach or Holtz-Eakin. He complained about the polarisation of the political process, which prevents the two major parties from reaching an agreement. It's not partisanship, he said: House speaker Tip O'Neill and President Ronald Reagan knew how to be partisan, but they were able to reach agreement on the 1983 social security package and the 1986 tax reforms. And yada yada.

He might have added that we have had 25 years of lying about social security since then, and even Reagan didn't dare try to privatise social security. And, of course, social security can currently pay all promised benefits for the next 24 years without any changes.

These arguments about polarisation really pose the key issue: from the viewpoint of the 99%, it's not polarisation, but weakness in defending our interests that is the problem. President Obama compromised much more than he should have last year, offering cuts to social security and Medicare, in exchange for a long-term budget deal. The 99% are just lucky that the Republicans were too extremist to make this kind of a "grand bargain" with Obama.

The last panelist was Alice Rivlin of the Brookings Institution, another former CBO budget director and Fed vice-chair, as well as a member of the president's (2010) National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. She agreed with Blinder that we need more stimulus. But we can only get this if we agree to long-run spending cuts – including social security, of course. Yuck. This is a political strategy that is sure to end in disaster, given the prevailing state of misinformation and disinformation.

During the discussion, Blinder – who identified himself as a Democrat – expressed his frustration in not being able to convince fellow Democrats to cut social security. Double yuck. The average social security check is about $1,177 a month, and a majority of senior citizens are getting most of their meager income from social security. Why these people insist on creating more poverty among the elderly, especially when the program is solvent for decades to come, is beyond me.

I got to ask the first question for the panel. I called attention to Blinder's presentation of the long-term budget problem as almost completely a problem of the rising price of healthcare. I pointed out that you could take any country with a life expectancy greater than ours – including the other high-income countries – and put their per capita healthcare costs into our budget, and the long-term budget deficit would turn into a surplus.

My question was simple: are Americans so inherently different from other nationalities that we can't have similar healthcare costs? And if not, then why are we talking about long-term budget problems – instead of how to fix our healthcare system?

None of the panelists offered a serious answer to this question. Auerbach, the moderator, said that other countries have rising healthcare costs, too. And some of the others said or implied that healthcare costs were rising at an unsustainable pace worldwide.

But this is nonsense. The United States pays about twice as much per person for healthcare as other high-income countries – and still leaves 50 million people uninsured. This is a result of a dysfunctional healthcare system that has had healthcare prices rising much faster than those of other high-income countries for decades.

What the budget hawks are basically telling us is that we must assume that insurance and pharmaceutical companies will have a veto over the provisions of healthcare reform for decades to come. And that, therefore, we must find other ways to make up for these excessive costs, including cutting social security and other government spending, and pushing us into higher rates of poverty and inequality than we already have.

And even worse in the short run, all this crap about the deficit and the debt will be used to block the necessary stimulus measures – "stimulus" has already become a dirty word that Democratic politicians are afraid to utter. This means high unemployment and a lot of unnecessary misery in the world's richest country for the foreseeable future.

A dismal performance for the dismal science, on some of the most important issues of the day. Of course, there are other economists, including Nobel Prize winners such as Paul Krugman, Joe Stiglitz and Robert Solow (full disclosure: the latter two are members of CEPR's advisory board), who would offer more sensible views. But this panel was, sadly, representative of economists with the most influence on public policy.

With a brain trust like this, a lost decade for America looks likely – unless the citizenry can steer a different course.

An Interview with Twinka

2012-01-09T17:43:00.000-07:00

I was recently offered an opportunity to submit a few questions to Twinka Thiebaud in connection with reviewing her new book, What Doncha Know? About Henry Miller. Her answers to my questions struck me as quite interesting and I have included them in this post. For those of you who are not familiar with Twinka, this is from the publicist's biography of her:

Twinka Thiebaud is a former artist's model who collaborated with many notable photographers of the 20th century.

"Imogen and Twinka," created by Judy Dater in Yosemite National Park became one of the most recognizable and iconic images captured by an American photographer. In it, 92- year-old Imogen Cunningham, a groundbreaking photographer in her own right, confronts and locks gaze with Twinka, who appears as a wood nymph frozen before the camera's lens. The image can been seen in private and major museum collections around the world.

For three years Twinka lived with the aging novelist Henry Miller in his Pacific Palisades home acting as his cook and caretaker while working as an artist's model, posing for art students and other noted photographers Mary Ellen Mark, Arnold Newman, Lucien Clergue, Eikoh Hosoe, Ralph Gibson and her father American painter Wayne Thiebaud, among others. At home with Miller, Twinka was captivated and delighted along with other dinnertime guests and celebrities by the revered author's nightly tales of his past exploits. Listening, she began to keep a notebook of her version of what he said each evening. Eventually showing him her notes, he expressed immense enthusiasm, encouraging her to write a book. The result is a compilation entitled What Doncha Know? About Henry Miller which includes both Miller's intimate conversations and Twinka's memoirs about the years she spent living under his roof and his lasting effect on her.

Twinka lives in Portland, Oregon and is working on a memoir entitled Twinka From Six to Sixty: Collected Images From the Life of an Artist’s Model.

And now, on to the questions and answers:

PAUL: I recently reviewed your book, "What Doncha Know?" Do you have any comment on the review -- anything to correct or add?

TWINKA: Thanks for the review of What Doncha Know? About Henry Miller. I was pleased to see you have a clear picture of what interests and intrigues me most of all: PEOPLE, with a capital P! Henry Miller was one of my greatest subjects of observation along with becoming a great friend and mentor. I think you summed up the book very well and I'm glad it left you wanting more. I would have liked to keep going but circumstances beyond my control created a sudden deadline I needed to honor. Your review captures, beautifully, the spirit in which I penned the book. Thanks again.

PAUL: How would you characterize Henry Miller's sense of humor? Did the two of you laugh at the same things? Did you frequently get on a roll bouncing jokes off each other?

TWINKA: I'd like to report I had as great a sense of humor as Henry had at that time but that would be a lie. I was an anxious and uncertain young woman; full of drama and angst, usually looking on the darker side of things and not the humorous aspects of life. Aging has helped me gain a more finely tuned sense of the ridiculous and I laugh and make others laugh quite often.

Henry's sense of humor was usually based on the stories he'd tell about his failed exploits and adventures and those of his friends. He could make fun of himself brilliantly and his characterizations of the quirky souls he'd run into along the road were positively hilarious.

PAUL: Henry Miller's influence on you was remarkably positive. Based on that, what advice would you offer to people who find themselves in Henry's position of mentoring a much younger person?

TWINKA: The first thing would be to remain positive in one's approach. Henry was always incredibly supportive and caring in the way he spoke to me and others when things weren't going so well.

Focus on the other person entirely; make them feel they matter, that their feelings matter, that they have everything within them needed to find the right answers, the right path.

Don't tell stories about yourself unless the story relates directly, and in a positive way, to the other person's struggle or dilemma.

Henry built me up again and again and when I left him I was changed forever. I had no real confidence in myself when I arrived at his doorstep and I was full of ego and false bravado. Henry helped me to feel strong and capable and urged me to believe in myself and my creative endeavors; to live a more genuine life and to let go of the superficial.

PAUL: What advice would you offer a much younger person who was being mentored?

TWINKA: 1) Open yourself up to the wisdom and experience of the person whose taken you on as your mentor and show gratitude for the time they're making for you.

2) Be unendingly curious and ask a lot of questions.

3)Hang out with your mentor; go to the theater, watch a film, listen to music together and take long walks (with your cell phone turned off).

PAUL: Please tell me a bit about the direction you're headed with your painting? What do you feel you've accomplished and what more do you hope to accomplish in the immediate future? I'm quite fascinated by what little I've heard of your work, so please feel free to go into any amount of detail you wish.

TWINKA: This is the hardest question for me to answer. My painting is all about learning to "see". I'm searching, learning and feeling my way along quite slowly.

I don't show my work publicly and, perhaps, I never will. It's all about the process and the joy of not having to make a career or produce paintings for anyone but myself.

I have been in a bit of a rut for a few years with my painting so I turned to interior design projects to give myself some new challenges which I find incredibly rewarding.

Still, I love being alone in my studio with oil paint loaded on my brush, listening to great music and feeling connected to all the artists in the world throughout time.... all of us searching... and all of us learning how to see.

And the Lucky Winner is....!

2012-01-09T17:03:00.000-07:00

The lucky winner of a free copy of Twinka Thiebaud's new book, What Doncha Know? About Henry Miller, is The Wise Fool!

To determine the winner, I entered all the people who responded to my call for self-nominations in a random drawing. The drawing was conducted by computer at Random.org. And up popped The Wise Fool!

Congratulations, TWF! Please email me the address you would like your free copy shipped to. paul_sunstone [at] q.com I will pass your shipping address on to Twinka's publicist, Darlene Chan, but it will otherwise remain confidential. She will ship the book to you free of any charges.

Thank you everyone who entered in the giveaway!

Why This Election is a Yawn?

2012-01-09T09:04:00.001-07:00

So far as I can see, the real issue in politics this year is not the presidential election. The election will, of course, get most of the media coverage since most mainstream reporters and commentators are the tame little pets of the 1% who rule us.

Those tame little reporters and commentators will try to create as much excitement around the election as they possibly can. But I think people nowadays are becoming increasingly aware that national elections in America are for the most part charades to decide which candidate of the 1% gets elected. If you are not a candidate of the 1%, you have very little chance of election.

Both Mitt Romney and Barrack Obama are candidates of the 1%. There may be a few real differences between them, but, in general, both are owned by the same people.

So, the real issue in politics this year is not the presidential elections. Nor most any elections. The real issues, so far as I can see, are being raised by the Occupy Movement. Only the Occupy Movement is serious about addressing the problems facing this country.

It will be interesting to see if the Occupy Movement survives the winter to rebound in the Spring. The issues that fuel the Movement are not going away -- so I think there's a good chance the Movement will still be around in a few months.

But what do you think? Is the election the most important think happening in politics this year? Why or why not?

Help! I am Being Assailed by a Bizarre and Shocking Notion Involved in a Theory of History!

2012-01-09T01:46:00.002-07:00

Few things can shock the worldly epistemologist. Even those folks who insist the Red Herring is not a proper fallacy of logic must fail to scandalize the man or woman who has seen it all.

Seen the careless confusion of analytic and synthetic propositions. Seen operational definitions rise and fall in faddish favor. Seen whole and entire epistemologies come and go.

No, the most experienced epistemologists are very much like old sailors who have been to nearly every major port: Not many sights are left to shock either one of those old hands.

Yet, I must confess to being horrified by Hans-Hermann Hoppe's notions of historical truth. Horrified!

Hoppe begins his argument by asserting that history "reveals nothing about causes and effects" since "each sequence of empirical events is compatible with any number of rival, mutually incompatible interpretations."
He then goes on, "To make a decision regarding such incompatible interpretations, we need a theory. By theory I mean a proposition whose validity does not depend on further experience but can be established a priori."
And then he follows up his strange argument by reasserting that, "Experience may thus illustrate a theory. But historical experience can neither establish a theorem nor refute it."

If you're like me, you must now -- despite your worldliness -- feel significantly more shocked than if someone were to suggest to you that you might someday wake up with a hang-over in a South China Sea whorehouse to find yourself in bed with a grinning orangutang -- and not a truth-table in sight! That's to say, Hoppe has suggested a notion of history no less bizarre!

So, let's put Hoppe's notion in perspective. Every science in one way or another makes use of experience to test and collaborate its hypotheses. But Hoppe is insisting that experience cannot be used to test and collaborate hypotheses in history. Why?

Well, Hoppe argues that any sequence of historical events is open to multiple, mutually exclusive interpretations, and that historical experience cannot provide a way to chose between those interpretations.

Now, if that is true -- genuinely true -- then history can tell us nothing beyond mere fact. "In the centuries following Columbus' arrival, many native Americans died from diseases of Old World origin." Presumably, Hoppe would allow that history could establish the die-off as fact.

But suppose we had an hypothesis: "The presence of Europeans in the Americas brought about a flourishing of native American well-being." According to Hoppe, no set of facts -- no matter how great their number, nor how relevant their meaning -- could ever establish that hypothesis or refute it.

That's because, for Hoppe, historical facts are always compatible with mutually exclusive interpretations of them. In other words, for his notion to be more than mere noise, Hoppe must argue that the die-off of native Americans is a fact that is just as compatible with the hypothesis, "The presence of Europeans in the Americas brought about a flourishing of native American well-being", as it is compatible with the competing hypothesis, "The presence of Europeans in the Americas brought about a decrease in native American well-being."

If he cannot show the fact of the die-off is just as compatible with the one hypothesis as it is with the other, then he cannot logically demonstrate his notion that historical experience is unable to provide a means to choose between mutually exclusive interpretations.

For that, and for other reasons, I submit that Hoppe's bizarre notion of history is mere noise.

Yet, why, if it is mere noise, does Hoppe advance his notion of history in the first place? I am largely speculating here, but I suspect Hoppe does it in order to support his political, social, and economic theories.

You see, Hoppe wants to argue that the "natural order" of humanity is a stateless society of private property owners. But what we know of history renders that notion absurd -- even more bizarre than the notion we've just discussed. So -- and here is my speculation -- Hoppe decided to redefine how hypotheses are tested in history, rather than admit his "natural order" is a joke.

Bottom Line: Regardless of his motives for them, Hoppe's ideas are bad enough that, like McDonald's "hamburgers" and Ayn Rand's "philosophy", they are bound to become popular.

Last Day to Sign Up!

2012-01-08T12:33:00.000-07:00

This is the last day to enter the drawing for a free copy of Twinka Thiebaud's new book on Henry Miller. Click here for details!

Where Did the Notion the Gods Care About Our Morals Come From?

2012-01-07T19:43:00.002-07:00

I am of the tentative opinion the notion the gods care about our morals was invented by our ancestors precisely 15 minutes after they elevated from among themselves the world's first priest:

ANCESTORS: "Now that we have made you the highest among us, the intermediary between us and our gods, O Priest, tell us what me must do."

PRIEST: "You must sharpen your pointy sticks for we must soon war upon the nation of the Amourites, because men with men and women with women of that nation have fornicated with each other."

ANCESTORS [embarrassed]: "Ummm...are you sure it's wrong for same sex couples to fornicate with each other? I mean, we ourselves have been....."

PRIEST: "Of course it's wrong!"

ANCESTORS: "But why? Why is it wrong?"

PRIEST: "Well, I don't actually...[suddenly has an idea]...Wait! It's because the gods forbid us to fornicate with the same sex. Yes! That's it! Because the gods forbid it!"

From such humble beginnings, the notion the gods are keenly interested in our morals eventually spread to all the nooks and niches of the earth so that, today, it is second nature for us to believe that every religion goes hand in hand with its own moral code.

Joking aside, though, I think there might be a relationship between priests (or a priestly class) and the notion the gods are concerned with our morals.

Based on my very limited knowledge, I cannot think of a society in which the notion is prevalent that does not have priests. Although, I can think of at least one society in which I suspect the notion is either quite weak, or simply does not exist, and yet there are priests (Japan).

Moreover, as Jared Diamond somewhere points out, the New Guinea highlanders -- like many other tribal peoples -- do not think of their gods as beings interested in human morals. That is, the notion is not intrinsic to religion, and you can, and do, have religions without it.

So, do you think there might be a relationship of some sort between a presence of priests and the notion the gods are concerned with our morals? Why or why not?

Rick Santorum's Strange Notions of Sex and Sexuality

2012-01-06T23:47:00.004-07:00

"One of the things I'm constantly reminding people about Rick Santorum is that he doesn't have merely an anti-gay agenda -- he has an anti-straight agenda too. He's against birth control, he's against abortion, he's against pornography, he's against all sorts of things that straight people use and enjoy frequently....You need to know, heterosexual Americans, that gay-bashing isn't his only hobby." -- Dan Savage

As long term readers of my blog know full well, I am a man of passions -- huge, towering passions -- passions that are apt to wantonly reveal themselves in my unbridled gallops through flowering fields of epistemology, in my full frontal assaults upon the castle walls of logical fallacies, in my undying lover's devotion to well-evidenced arguments. And so forth, etc. Still, it may come as some surprise to my readers that I am not entirely unfamiliar with sex. Especially if said readers have been listening to the bitter and scurrilous reports of my two ex-wives.

Because I have in the past been on intimate terms with sex (see, for instance, my treasure for newlyweds, Towards an Epistemology of Carnal Knowledge, by Paul Sunstone, Bust, Colorado: Charging Boar Books.) I sometimes take an understandably passionate interest in sex. Specifically, in:

what people are saying about sex,
what their reasoning is,
and how they have arrived at their conclusions about sex.

Today, two of my online friends -- Nance and the Cognitive Dissenter -- both urged me to examine the reasoning on matters sexual of the GOP presidential candidate, Rick Santorum.

I was at first reluctant to attempt such an examination, for I am nearly settled in the opinion that the man or woman who sets forth upon the task of extracting a reasonably logical and well-evidenced argument on sexual matters from a 21st Century American politician might as well indulge his or herself in trying to fornicate on the hop with a fleeing kangaroo.

Yet, Nance and CD finally aroused my interest by suggestively hinting that Rick Santorum might be downright promiscuous in both his fallacies and his falsehoods. And, as you know, few things have the power to titillate one's interest as do logical and factual errors.

So, one of the first things I discovered about Santorum is he seems to be best known for his opposition to gay marriage. But after a little digging, I discovered that he is also opposed to contraception.

For instance, as recently as last October, he stated in an interview with CaffeinatedThoughts.com editor Shane Vander Hart that, if elected president, he would repeal all federal funding for contraception because contraception devalues the act of procreation:

“One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before, is I think the dangers of contraception in this country." And also, “It’s not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.” (Source)

So, boiling that down, we might arrive at somewhat of an argument: Contraception is a license to do things that run counter to how things are supposed to be. Therefore we should repeal all federal funding for contraception.

However, as an argument, it fails to satisfy. Perhaps it is not penetrating enough. Or, perhaps the premiss is too vague. After all, what can you do with words like, "how things are supposed to be", besides ask for clarification?

In the same interview, Santorum also says:

[Sex] is supposed to be within marriage. It’s supposed to be for purposes that are yes, conjugal…but also procreative. That’s the perfect way that a sexual union should happen…This is special and it needs to be seen as special.

I'll wager if we squint hard, we might extract an argument from that statement! An argument such as this one:

Sex is supposed to be for purposes both conjugal and procreative.
The perfect way to realize those purposes is within the context of a marriage.
Therefore, sex should take place [only?] within the context of a marriage.

Does the conclusion follow logically from the premisses? To my thinking, that would depend on whether Santorum believes sex should take place only within the context of a marriage. He doesn't quite come out and say that here, so I have placed "only" in brackets. But from everything else he's said elsewhere, I would guess he believes sex should only take place within the context of a marriage. And if that is so, then I believe his reasoning to be invalid.

Let's grant, for the sake of demonstration, that "sex is supposed to be for purposes both conjugal and procreative." Let's further grant that "the perfect way to realize those purposes is within the context of a marriage." Even if we grant both premisses, the conclusion does not necessarily follow because it is conceivable that one might yet argue for sex outside of marriage as a less than perfect, but nevertheless still desirable, activity.

TUT! TUT! MR. SANTORUM! TUT! TUT!!!

I must now beg my reader's forgiveness for my sudden, emphatic outburst.

There is much else -- much else -- that could be said about Santorum's strange sexual statements. Not just the ones presented here, but statements he's made elsewhere as well. If I were to attempt to analyze them all fully, it might take several blog posts. But it's getting late, and I still have work to do before I can go to bed. However, I would like to mention one last thing.

Santorum brings up the notion that sex is for procreation. Sometime ago, I wrote on that subject. My post began:

It’s easy to believe the natural purpose of sex is reproduction. Offspring, after all, are the single most spectacular result of sex. Many of us seem bedazzled by that fact. Consequently, some of us seem to have got the notion the natural purpose of sex is reproduction and that sex without the possibility of reproduction is at best selfish indulgence and, at worse, perversion.

I then sally on to bring up a few of the many reasons sex cannot be legitimately seen as solely for reproduction -- nor even as having a purpose! I recommend reading that post if you are interested in the topic. It can be found here.

Sex and Fallacious Reasoning

2012-01-05T16:53:00.000-07:00

Like most people, I am keenly aware the reason you do not often see "sex" and "logical fallacies of relevance" in the same sentence together is because logical fallacies of relevance are intrinsically so exciting they do not need sex to sell them.

Merely mention one of the numerous fallacies of relevance -- say, the Ad Hominem Fallacy, the Red Herring Fallacy, or the Naturalistic Fallacy -- and you create an atmosphere of tingling anticipation. To toss "sex" into the mix would only be overkill.

So it may astonish my readers that I am about to bring up both the Naturalistic Fallacy and the subject of biological reproduction -- together.

Make no mistake about it, though: I am not mixing sex with ~~pleasure~~ logic merely in order to titillate you, my beloved readers. Nor am I mixing sex with logic merely because I am a man of passions -- strong, huge, even alarming passions. No, there is nothing gratuitous about this. Instead, it has simply become necessary to mention the two together.

And why is that? Because someone -- someone! -- has made a mistake on the internet! That is, they have committed the Naturalistic Fallacy in the all but certain presence of impressionable children. Children who might now grow up to promiscuously introduce fallacies into the very core of their reasoning. Children who might one day run large multinational corporations, huge NGOs, entire governments, or even departments of philosophy. DOESN'T ANYONE THINK OF THE FUTURE OF OUR SPECIES BEFORE THEY COMMIT FALLACIES OF RELEVANCE ANYMORE?

The person in question -- let us call him the "perpetrator" -- committed the fallacy in the course of arguing that we should derive our morals from "evolutionary biology". Allow me to quote:

My position is that evolutionary biology lays on us certain [moral] absolutes. These are adaptations brought on by natural selection to make us functioning social beings. It is in this sense that I claim that morality is not subjective. [bracketed material mine]

As it happens, there is more than one way to lay out his argument. In the spirit of good sportsmanship, I shall now lay out the perpetrator's argument in the strongest possible manner I can come up with, despite the risk of giving us all the vapours:

We evolved various behaviors ("adaptations") that make us functioning social beings.
Because the evolved behaviors ("adaptations") make us functioning social beings, they are moral absolutes.
We ought to behave according to moral absolutes.
Therefore, we ought to behave according to the various behaviors ("adaptations") that make us functioning social beings.

As you see, the second premiss is the offending one. It constitutes a mini-argument within the larger argument, for it has the form of a premiss ("our evolved behaviors make us functioning social beings") and a conclusion ("our evolved behaviors are therefore moral absolutes").

But that is precisely the form of the Naturalistic Fallacy, which can be described as, "An argument whose premises merely describe the way that the world is, but whose conclusion describes the way that the world ought to be...." The Naturalistic Fallacy is a fallacy because you cannot reason from an "is" to an "ought".

If you could reason from an "is" to an "ought", you could reason all sorts of ridiculous things. "There is theft, therefore there ought to be theft." "There are wars, therefore there ought to be wars." Even, "There are murderous fallacies of logic, therefore there ought to be murderous fallacies of logic."

Yet, for the moment, let us accept the perpetrator's reasoning, despite it's power to shock us. What, then, might happen if we were to buy into his notion that "evolutionary biology lays on us certain [moral] absolutes?

Would not any behavior with a genetic basis that increased someone's reproductive success then become moral? I cannot see why it would not.

For instance, it appears that war has a genetic basis in territorial instincts and other such things. But if that is so, then wars would be moral if they increased someone's reproductive success. Again, there is a hypothesis that rape has a genetic basis. But if that is so, then rape would be moral if it increased someone's reproductive success.

Such implications must disturb even the calmest of men and women. To permit the notion that evolutionary biology lays on us moral absolutes seems to invite a deluge of undesirable consequences. Fortunately we need not permit it, for sound logic does not compel us to permit it. For that, and for other reasons, men and women of conscience may justifiably and emphatically wag their fingers while saying to the perpetrator in the most passionate terms, "Buffoonery! Mr. Perpetrator, your notion is buffoonery!"

If You Have Not Changed Your Beliefs...

2012-01-03T20:05:00.002-07:00

“If you have not changed your beliefs in the last few years, check your pulse as you may not be alive”. -- Gelett Burgess, as paraphrased by Ken Perrott at the Open Parachute blog.

Sexism in the Skeptic Community

2012-01-03T04:14:00.000-07:00

"Unfortunately, it [sexism] is [rampant within the skeptic community]. I say this from my own experiences within it, hearing stories from friends, etc." -- Hemant Mehta, aka "The Friendly Atheist".

Hermant Mehta is in a position to know better than most people whether sexism is rampant within the skeptic community. So, I'm guessing he might be right, despite that the relative handful of skeptics I myself know are overwhelmingly non-sexists. But, if Mehta is right, why are there so many sexists among skeptics? That seems to be a real puzzler.

Any ideas?

Free Book! Win a Free Book!

2012-01-02T18:24:00.001-07:00

Twinka Thiebaud's publicist, the wonderful Darlene Chan, is allowing me to give away -- entirely free! -- a copy of Twinka's new book to a lucky reader of this blog. I reviewed the book in a post here, and the bottom line is I think the book is good enough that you should covet it with all your heart and all your might!

So, here's how you can lay your paws upon the free copy of Twinka's book: Anyone who comments on this post will automatically be entered in a random drawing for the free copy. That's it! That's all you have to do. Just comment on this post.

The only catch is you must live in the lower 48 states to be eligible for the free copy. I will hold the random drawing one week from today, on Monday the 9th of January. You have until Sunday at midnight to enter by posting a comment. But don't forget! Enter now!

Good luck!

Coming very soon: A short interview with Twinka Thiebaud.

One Way to Approach Philosophy

2012-01-02T17:39:00.000-07:00

Although I cannot prove it, I suspect the ancient Greeks typically approached philosophy in the spirit of a contest, game, or sport.

One of their core values was areté. The word is usually translated as "virtue" or "excellence", but perhaps a better translation is "being the best you can be" or "reaching your fullest potential".

From what little I know, the Greeks believed the best way to bring out a person's areté was through competition. And, for that and other reasons, I think it's likely they treated philosophy as a competition designed to bring out the best reasoning in the competitors.

Regardless of whether or not I am right about that, it seems that philosophy in their day had only one rule: You could advance any position you wished so long as you supported it with reason(s). Or, in other words, you couldn't simply say, "I think the gods exist" -- you had to state (and defend) your reasons for supposing the gods exist.

Today, it might be the best way to approach philosophy is to think of it as a game you play in order to determine the scope and limits of reason. That is, don't ask, "Do the gods exist", in order to discover whether or not the gods exist. Rather, treat the issue as a case study in the application of reason to the question, "Do the gods exist". After all, if you can learn anything from philosophy it is not whether the gods exist, but the scope and limits of reason in addressing the question of whether the gods exist.

The same can be said of most other well-known philosophical questions. "What is truth?" "What can be known?" "What is moral?" "What is the logic and method(s) of the sciences?" etc. They can all be treated as case studies in the application of reason. The goal is not so much to arrive at a straight-forward answer to each question, but mainly to uncover the scope and limits of reason when applied to each question. And if you come up with a defensible answer, so much the better.

Of course, there are many other ways to approach philosophy. Obviously, one of those is to ignore it altogether. But in that respect, philosophy is also like a sport -- it's not everyone's game.

Happy New Year!

2011-12-31T19:35:00.000-07:00

Have a happy New Year! And a safe celebration!

Jiddu Krishnamurti on Writing Down What One Thinks and Feels

2011-12-29T18:32:00.003-07:00

"If you find it difficult to be aware, then experiment with writing down every thought and feeling that arises throughout the day; write down your reactions of jealousy, envy, vanity, sensuality, the intentions behind your words, and so on."

"Spend some time before breakfast in writing them down, which may necessitate going to bed earlier and putting aside some social affair. If you write these things down whenever you can, and in the evening before sleeping look over all that you have written during the day, study and examine it without judgment, without condemnation, you will begin to discover the hidden causes of your thoughts and feelings, desires and words."

"Now, the important thing in this is to study with free intelligence what you have written down, and in studying it you will become aware of your own state. In the flame of self-awareness, of self-knowledge, the causes of conflict are discovered and consumed. You should continue to write down your thoughts and feelings, intentions and reactions, not once or twice, but for a considerable number of days until you are able to be aware of them instantly."

"Meditation is not only constant self-awareness, but constant abandonment of the self. Out of right thinking there is meditation, from which there comes the tranquility of wisdom; and in that serenity the highest is realized."

"Writing down what one thinks and feels, one's desires and reactions, brings about an inward awareness, the cooperation of the unconscious with the conscious, and this in turn leads to integration and understanding."

-- J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

What Causes Us to Think Immodest Women are the Downfall of Men?

2011-12-29T13:52:00.001-07:00

Perhaps we can discuss once more the curious notion that immodest women are the downfall of men? But I am not so concerned today with refuting the notion. It seems to me an irrational notion -- and, as a friend likes to remind me, you cannot reason a person out of a notion they did not reason themselves into in the first place. So, instead of discussing its reasonableness, I would like to take a guess at its possible origins or causes.

It is a serious question why such an unwholesome notion is spread over several cultures and why it can be found in countries as diverse as India, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and America. Taking its strangely ubiquitous nature into account, is there any universal root for the notion that would explain why it appears in both India and Israel, in both Saudi Arabia and America, and -- apparently -- in most other countries?

I know of very little science on this issue, but I seem to recall one hypotheses: At root, the notion that immodest women are the downfall of men is part of a male strategy -- a tactic, if you will -- to put men in control of women's reproductive choices.

Sometimes the hypothesis is reasoned this way:

(1) Women, when they have the freedom to choose their own mates, typically go about that task by a process of attraction and selection. Basically, they make themselves as attractive to men as needed -- especially as physically attractive as needed -- and then they select a mate from among the men who are attracted to them.

(2) Given that women most frequently exercise choice by a process of attraction and selection, men have a number of options if they want to control women's reproductive choices. Those options include placing restrictions on a woman's freedom to make herself attractive. Such restrictions might include requiring her to dress in a manner that hides her physical attractiveness; requiring her to walk with eyes downcast; requiring her to speak of herself "modestly" or dismissively; prohibiting her from asking a man for a date; etc.

(3) The notion that immodest women cause a man's downfall is thus seen to be a cover, mask, or rationalization for controlling women's reproductive choices by restricting their ability to attract mates.

(4) Men who succeed in controlling women's reproductive choices thus place themselves in a better position to make those choices for women. And if they can make those choices for women, they will presumably make them most frequently for their (the men's) own benefit.

For the sake of discussion, let's now assume the hypothesis is sound. That is, the notion immodest women cause the downfall of men is a tactic men employ to assist them in controlling women's reproductive choices. Does that mean that every time we hear some man encourage some woman to "be more modest" we can be confident he is doing so to control her reproductive choices?

I don't think so. I think the hypothesis, if it is sound at all, would at best explain why the notion ever caught on, why it persists, and why it became nearly ubiquitous in its distribution. That is, it might explain the majority of cases. But as for explaining the behavior of any one person, I think it's quite likely that a significant minority of people who encourage women to be modest do so for reasons having nothing to do with the hypothesis.

For instance, I came across a comment left on a blog yesterday by a teenager that asked women to dress modestly for two reasons. First, to help the comment's author avoid masturbation. Second, to help its author avoid objectifying women.

Now, you might grin at that (as did I), but if we take his two reasons at face value, we have there a male who is asking women to "be more modest" for reasons other than to restrict women's reproductive choices. So, I think it would take a lot of work to sort out all the reasons people might have for the belief that immodest women are the downfall of men. But what do you yourself think might be the reasons or causes of such a heavy, gloomy, and unhealthy notion?

Book Review: Twinka Thiebaud's "What Doncha Know? About Henry Miller"

2011-12-28T14:04:00.006-07:00

212 pages

Henry Miller was seventy-one years old when the teenage Twinka Thiebaud met him. Of course, Miller had not only long been famous as one of the Century's greatest novelists: He had also long been famous as one of the Century's greatest pornographers and dirty old men.

The labels of "pornographer" and "dirty old man" came courtesy of the American press, which had (inevitably) discovered itself scandalized by the raw sex scenes in Miller's novels (Naturally, we Americans are not actually happy about raw sex scenes unless we feel scandalized by them -- and the more scandalized, the happier).

Miller's novels had been at first banned in the US, which caused them to be smuggled into the country as contraband. The bans were eventually overturned in an historic 1964 Supreme Court decision. Yet, though the Court ruled Miller's books "literature", that did not stop the press from casting Miller as a lecherous old man. And Thiebaud was quite aware of Miller's nasty reputation the day she met him.

Thiebaud describes herself on that day as an "seventeen year-old virgin" swamped by "intense anxiety" at the prospect of meeting the "salacious beast" Henry Miller. The very last thing she expected to find was a charming old grandfatherly man who showed no signs of wanting to seduce her, and who instead took simple delight in her company. But that is exactly what she found.

A few years after their first meeting Thiebaud moved into Miller's home as his cook and housekeeper. She describes her rapport with Miller (pp. 17):

"Henry was one of the most open people I have ever known. I knew what was going on in his head as well as his heart nearly all the time. He did not keep many secrets and, like me, his emotions were written all over his face."

I get the impression that when Thiebaud walks into a room, the first things she notices are the people. After that, she notices the art on the wall, then the furnishings, and then the diamond sparking on the table.

Moreover, I could be wrong about this, but I get the impression her interest in people often dominates and restrains her natural human inclination to judge people. That is, she simply takes folks as they are without trying to change them because she is so gawd awful interested in them.

If any of that is true, then it seems significant to me because Thiebaud has written a book. A book that demands and requires its author to be a keen observer of people. And namely, a keen observer of Henry Miller. As well as of herself.

Miller had a gift of gab and loved to entertain his household and his guests over supper. At some point, Thiebaud took to keeping a journal in which she would write down her recollection of the evening's conversation before bed. What Doncha Know ? About Henry Miller * is the product of that effort.

The book mostly focuses on Miller's recollections of, and reflections on, the people and events in his life. But it does touch a little bit on Twinka herself. An especially revealing passage about Twinka concerns her relationship with Warren Beatty -- whom she met through Miller.

Imogen and Twinka (1975)

Warren courted Twinka in 1975, after seeing the famous photograph of her with Imogen Cunningham. He won her over, and the affair lasted until Twinka tired of Warren's sleeping with women too numerous.

Of course, when such things occur -- when a woman discovers there is a long line of other women beyond the door to her lover's bedroom -- the moment is a delicate one. Anything can happen. It is common enough for the woman to denounce her lover as a jerk.

Twinka reveals herself to possess thoughts and feelings that are just as graceful as her pose in the photo with Imogen. She broke off her sexual relationship with Beatty, but did not discard her appreciation for him as a superb lover (pp.34):

"He was always graceful, mannered, relaxed and confident, never mussed or awkward and never out of line. Even though I was one of many, when we were together, Warren knew exactly how to make me feel absolutely extraordinary. Now that's a great gift!"

For that and many other reasons, the passages in this book that deal with Twinka herself are just as engaging as the passages that deal with Henry Miller.

Apparently, Miller himself was not a great lover of women in Warren Beatty's sense. For one thing, most of Miller's loves were never consummated. And it seems he did not always leave his lovers much better off for having known him. But Miller knew several great truths about love, and he practiced them.

For one thing, Miller knew sex was not a necessary ingredient in great loves -- the kind of loves that inspire, affirm, and renew us. To love and to be loved in that way is to be reborn. And I suspect that such loves are especially valuable to artists and other creatives, for they seem to be associated with great bursts of creativity.

That was one kind of love Miller had experience and insight into. Another, and perhaps for Miller, a more important kind of love, was the one-sided affair -- the love that longs, yearns for an impossible to obtain lover.

Unrequited love is also associated with great bursts of creativity. But it is a darker creativity, born more from the suffering and angst associated with thwarted desire than from the love itself.

Miller (pp. 169): "Love is the most important theme in my life because it has provided me with almost all my creative fuel. I could've written volumes on the subject of unrequited love."
Miller again (pp.170): "I was in love with many women, but I haven't really written about love with a capital L. I wrote about sex!"
And later on (ibid): "I'll sacrifice everything, anything -- money, jobs, wives, children -- all for love! And always for the love of an unattainable woman, an elusive woman."

From those and various other things said in Twinka's book, I get the impression Miller was more at home with a one-sided love than with a mutual love, although he experienced both in his life. But regardless of what kind of love he was at home with, Twinka's book makes it clear love was, in Miller's eyes, a -- or even the -- motivating factor behind his writing.

As I was reading her book, I hoped for more details of her relationship with Miller. There wasn't quite the dept of description I wanted, and too few anecdotes, so I was a bit disappointed. But that's probably just me.

Twinka's book is fun. In it, Miller tells a charming/sad/funny/revealing story about the revolutionary, Emma Goldman, that I thought taken alone was probably worth a third of the book's $15 price. (If anyone feels they will just die unless they hear the Goldman story ASAP, email me for the scandalous details.) There are several other precious little stories like that one, too. Overall, the book is a quick, easy read, and you will probably not drink yourself to death out of regret if you read it.

By the way, I have emailed Twinka a few questions, and I will be posting her answers soon. Also, Darlene Chan, Twinka's publicist, has graciously agreed to give away a free copy of Twinka's book to a lucky reader of this blog. I will post details on that free give away soon.

I have an interview with Twinka posted here.

____________________________

* Twinka Thiebaud's publicist, Darlene Chan, sent me a free copy of the book, which I read as part of the prep for this post.

Coffee and Dreams

2011-12-28T08:08:00.000-07:00

I bounced out of bed this morning, strode into the kitchen, drank some water, glanced at the empty coffee pot and shrugged. Today, would be coffee free. I could feel it: After months of trying to cut back, I no longer needed coffee to survive.

And that's when I realized I was still asleep and dreaming. I mean, even by the fantastic standards of a dream, the idea that one does not need coffee is outrageous, impossible, beyond consideration. One might as well say one does not need air, or water, or food, or chocolate.

So have you woken up from any dreams lately because they were just too implausible, too ridiculous, or too something else? If so, do tell!

"An Honest and Pure Drive for Truth"

2011-12-27T18:24:00.000-07:00

"Deception, flattering, lying, deluding, talking behind the back, putting up a false front, living in borrowed splendor, wearing a mask, hiding behind convention, playing a role for others and for oneself — in short, a continuous fluttering around the solitary flame of vanity — is so much the rule and the law among men that there is almost nothing which is less comprehensible than how an honest and pure drive for truth could have arisen among them." -- Friedrich Nietzsche, On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense.

I have mentioned previously on this blog the interesting theory of Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber that reasoning evolved -- not to nobly discern truths -- but to persuade our fellow apes to cooperate with us. Thus Mercier and Sperber argue:

"The evidence reviewed here shows not only that reasoning falls quite short of reliably delivering rational beliefs and rational decisions. It may even be, in a variety of cases, detrimental to rationality. Reasoning can lead to poor outcomes, not because humans are bad at it, but because they systematically strive for arguments that justify their beliefs or their actions. This explains the confirmation bias, motivated reasoning, and reason-based choice, among other things."

In other words, those of us who wish in at least some cases to arrive at rational beliefs and rational decisions are somewhat in the position of a person who must drive screws with a hammer -- the tool we have available to us (reason) did not evolve for the purpose to which we wish to employ it, and only by taking the greatest care can we arrive safely at our goal.

I do not think Mercier and Sperber quite address Nietzsche's question of how any of us could actually have "an honest and pure drive for truth". Moreover, I'm not sure Nietzsche in his later writings maintained that any of us had such a drive. But I'm curious what you think: Do any of us -- even the rarest of us -- have what Nietzsche called "an honest and pure drive for truth", or do we always have one or another ulterior motive on those occasions when we actually seek the truth (as oppose to a mere justification for our beliefs or actions)?

Are Misogynists Wimps at Heart?

2011-12-27T09:44:00.000-07:00

"The same broadcast featured a religious eight-year-old girl terrified to walk the short distance between her home and school, since she is subject to verbal abuse of ultra-Orthodox men who claim her attire is not sufficiently 'modest'." -- Source.

They must be very macho men to verbally abuse an eight year old girl. I would like to meet them in person so I could personally congratulate these men on their macho. I would also like to ask them what they think of Yocheved Horowitz.

Horowitz, you see, is an Orthodox woman who does not buy into the bullshit of these Orthodox men. And apparently, because she is not a (understandably) frightened eight year old girl, she is sometimes able to shut them up.

Horowitz was on a public bus one day when one of these macho men told her to move to the back of the bus:

"Women to the back," he called out like a conductor. "To the back, to the back." He trembled with anger. A man sitting in the first row whose appearance revealed him to be a Gur Hasid, shushed him, with a finger to his lip. But the shouter paid no attention to him. "Men's area," he continued to shout. "Women to the back."

Now Horowitz turned around and said loudly and clearly: "What do you mean by 'men's area'? A geographical area?" she wondered. "What is mehadrin? Are you talking about an etrog, a lulav?" she queried, referring to two of the principal symbols used during the festival of Sukkot. "Nowhere in rabbinical law does it say that it is forbidden to sit behind a woman, not in the Shulchan Arukh and not in the Yoreh De'ah [two classical compilations of Jewish law]. What is written in the Torah and in rabbinical law is that it is forbidden to humiliate sons and daughters of Israel."

Like a deflated balloon, the man became quiet, and maintained his silence for the rest of the bus ride.

What do you think? Do you think maybe these macho misogynists are not really so macho unless they outnumber their victims?

I have often wondered what relationship there might be, if any, between a man being a misogynist and a man being a wimp?

_________________
(H/T: Hoyden About Town)

Can Jesus Christ Empower Us to be True to Ourselves?

2011-12-27T04:01:00.000-07:00

I once overheard a young woman all but violently diss her pastor. He had offered his sermon that Sunday on the commandment of Jesus to "love your neighbor as yourself". But, while her fool of a pastor thought "neighbor" referred to everyone and anyone, she just knew that Jesus meant by "neighbor" only those folks who were members of her church. "How could her pastor be so wrong?"

When I was younger, I assumed that whatever influence the teachings of Jesus had on people was straight-forward. That is, I assumed if someone read, say, "love your neighbor as yourself", they would either reject that teaching or accept it, and if they accepted it, they would attempt to live up to it. What I did not grasp for many years was the extent to which people would interpret the teachings of Jesus, to say nothing of interpreting the rest of the Bible.

The Bible is the book everyone quotes and no one reads. Hence, ignorance of the Bible might explain how there can be so many interpretations of Jesus' teachings. But another possibility is a bit more subtle. We often project ourselves into things without realizing it. Or, as an old joke has it:

A new patient comes to see a psychiatrist. The doc decides to give the patient a Rorshach Test, and shows him a series of cards with different inkblots on them.

“What do you see on the first one?” asks the shrink.
“That’s a man and a woman making love.”

“And the second one?”

“That’s a couple who just finished making love.”

“And the third one?”

“That’s a man asking a woman to make love, and she’s deciding what to do.”

The shrink asks, “Don’t you think it’s interesting that you see sex in every card?”

“Don’t blame me,” says the patient “they’re your cards.”

So ignorance of the Bible might not be the main culprit here. Instead, it might well be that many of us -- perhaps even most of us -- interpret Jesus in light of our own selves. If we love everyone we meet, then we tend to think Jesus meant everyone we meet by "neighbor". If we love only those we feel a strong commonality with, then we tend to think Jesus meant only a our favorite group by "neighbor". But whatever the case, we read into the teachings of Jesus as least as much as we get out of them.

I often hear the religious folk among us talk about being "empowered by Christ's message". And, almost as often, I find myself wondering what that really means. And, in attempting to answer that question -- "What does it mean to feel empowered by Christ's message" -- I naturally turn to my own experience. That is, I do exactly what I have suggested many (or most) of us do when interpreting Jesus' teachings: I project myself into the message.

As it happens, I was once a Christian. My "Christian phase", which occurred during middle school, lasted less than a month, and in the end, I rejected Christianity on the grounds that -- if my unsaved family was going to hell -- I would rather join them in hell than be separated from them, though in heaven. For a short while, however, I was Jesus-intoxicated, and hour by hour yearned and stretched myself to live up Christian ideals -- as I understood those ideals.

That experience, however brief, was enough to teach me how strangely empowering it is to feel Jesus is on your side. For instance, when I was a kid, I valued honesty, but I didn't always feel I was supported in that by my peers and teachers. After I became a Christian, however, I felt immensely supported in that valuation because now Christ was on my side. If I had any doubts about whether honesty was appropriate in some given circumstance, I had only to ask, "What would Jesus want me to do?" And Jesus, of course, always wanted me to do what I was inclined at the time to do anyway -- that is, he always wanted total honesty.

Because of my own limited experience, I think there might be some circumstances in which a commitment to the teachings of Jesus can empower us to be true to ourselves. Or, at least, to be more true to ourselves than we might be otherwise. Yet, I do not think everyone discovers that a commitment to the teachings of Jesus empowers them to be true to themselves.

I once told my friend Don what a positive experience it had been for me to be a Christian. Unfortunately, Don's own experience of being a Christian -- an experience that had lasted decades, rather than mere days -- was far from positive. Christianity, rather than empower him to be true to himself, had too often caused him to feel daunting fear and guilt when he tried to be true to himself.

So,. I suppose it might depend on whether we get past reading our own self into the teachings of Jesus. I never really did during my short time as a Christian. Everything Jesus wanted of me was what I myself wanted of me. Hence, Jesus was emotionally empowering.

But Don got way past reading his own self into the teachings of Jesus. Then, like many, many other people, he discovered things in the teachings of Jesus -- or things in his religion as a whole -- that were self-alienating, rather than self-affirming. Consequently, Jesus was not an overall empowering influence in Don's life.

What do you make of this issue? Can faith in Jesus empower us to be true to ourselves? If so, how so? If not, why not?

______________
(H/T: Was Jesus a great teacher? Sabio Lantz has begun a promising series of posts on that subject over at his Triangulations blog. His core question -- "Was Jesus a great teacher?" -- inspired this blog post.)

Should We Legalize Polygamy?

2011-12-26T22:26:00.001-07:00

Although I fancy myself a man of passions -- even strong passions -- loyal, experienced readers of this blog are sure to know that few issues -- no matter how controversial -- are likely to give me the vapours (except, of course, egregious mistakes in the noble field of epistemology). Therefore, it might come as something of a shock when I confess that the issue of legalizing polygamy has all but reduced me to my smelling salts.

The problem, you see, is I can't make up my mind whether I am for or against the legalization.

On the one hand, I can think of at least two powerful arguments for the legalization:

As a general principle, I favor allowing informed, consenting adults to choose whatever marriage arrangements they deem best for themselves. By the same token, I believe that the marriage arrangements of informed, consenting adults should not be restricted -- unless a weight of reason and evidence demonstrates those arrangements to be injurious to others.
It has been my experience that a person can have more than one great love in his or her life. But to restrict marriage to two people would seem to force some people to cruelly reject or deny at least one of their loves. Consequently, I believe restricting marriage to only two people should never be done for light and transient reasons -- but only for the soundest of reasons.

Either one of those reasons alone would be enough to satisfy me that we should legalize polygamy -- except for the fact there seem to be several reasons not to legalize it. The best summary I've found of the reasons against legalization comes from a Canadian court case.

In 2010, the Supreme Court of British Columbia was asked to reconsider a ban on plural marriage. The core issue was whether polygamy was bad for society. That is, whether anyone besides the partners to a polygamous marriage were harmed by it.

As part of its deliberations, the Supreme Court called upon the expertise of Joseph Henrich, an inter-disciplinary professor whose scientific credentials are so extensive they require 17 pages to list and are of such quality as would be lightly dismissed only by a madman or a Republican candidate for the presidency. That's not to say Henrich is above being wrong -- for who among us is -- but only to suggest his findings might be worth some consideration by reasonable folk.

Before being called upon by the Court, Henrich had never published on polygamy nor formed any reasoned and evidenced opinion of it. However, after reviewing a large body of evidence from several fields -- including psychology, anthropology, sociology, and economics -- he reached several provisional conclusions. His conclusions, however, dealt with only one aspect of polygamy -- polygyny, or the marriage of a man to multiple wives (.pdf pp. 25):

A non-trivial increase in the incidence of polygyny, which is quite possible if polygyny were legalized given what we know about both male and female mating preferences, would result in increased crime and antisocial behavior by the pool of unmarried males it would create.
Greater degrees of polygyny drive down the age of first marriage for (all) females on average, and increase the age gap between husbands and wives. This generally leads to females marrying before age 18, or being "promised" in marriage before age 18.
Greater degrees of polygyny are associated with increased inequality between the sexes, and the relationship may be causal as men seek more control over women when women become scarce.
Polygynous men invest less in their offspring both because they have more offspring and because they continue to invest in seeking additional wives. This implies that, on average, children in a more polygynous society will receive less parental investment.
Greater degrees of polygynous marriage may reduce national wealth (GDP) per capita both because of the manner in which male efforts are shifted to obtaining more wives and because of the increase in female fertility.

Henrich then offers the Court what seems to me substantial evidence for his provisional conclusions. But, perhaps even more striking than his conclusions, he goes further to offer the Court "a speculation".

That is, he suggests that monogamy -- which is historically much rarer among our societies than polygyny -- might be linked to democracy and gender equality (.pdf pp. 64): "Historically, we know that universal monogamous marriage preceded the emergence of democratic institutions in Europe, and the rise of notions of equality between the sexes." The idea there might be a relationship between monogamy and social and political equality is intriguing, although I gather much more work would need to be done for the claim to be reasonably evidenced.

Now, I myself am a polyamorous individual. I have experienced at least three great loves in my life -- women I have been inordinately passionate about -- women who, at times, I have even loved more deeply and truly than ever I loved a well-formulated operational definition. Consequently, I'm conflicted by Henrich's findings.

Fortunately, I never had to choose between one of those loves and another since several years separated each from the other. But I can imagine how cruel it would have been had I been forced to choose. Yet -- if Henrich is right -- the consequences of legalizing polygyny seem to me dire enough to warrant the ban of it.

What do you think? Should we legalize polygyny? Why or why not? And, just out of curiosity, have you ever found yourself profoundly in love with two people at once?

My Dear Readers...

2011-12-24T10:03:00.005-07:00

Dear Readers,

I'm off for a day or two to celebrate Christmas with my family. And contrary to what my ex-wives might have told you, I am -- when warranted -- a real party-animal!

For instance, this year, I aim to delight my nephews (ages 8 and 9) by showing them how to deduce a first order propositional calculus from scratch given a mere four axioms. Naturally, there is no guarantee such a gutsy move will meet with success, but the fun for the children will be in the sheer reckless thrill of it all!

Regardless of which of the several holidays you celebrate around this time of the year, please have a joyous one! And don't hesitate to email me if you need any party tips!

Paul

Do You Have Any Idea How Pissed Off I Am?

2011-12-22T15:32:00.002-07:00

Do you know how pissed off I am?

As it happens, I am at this very moment pissed off enough to say, "intersubjective verifiability is the core of the empirical sciences" -- say it and mean it!

That's how pissed off I am.

I have just come from a kerfuffle. Someone (the nerve of that person! The Nerve!) at this very moment is -- despite my protests -- asserting that "objectivity is the core of the empirical sciences". And they are saying it on the internet -- on the internet, where impressionable children might see it and thus have warped their tender, young epistemologies!

Please allow me to quote the fool: "The basis for science is objectivity, yet the foundational premise for science is based on an assumption (existence of objects)."

DOESN'T ANYONE THINK THROUGH THEIR TERMS THESE DAYS?

I humbly apologize if the sheer emotional violence of my response to that person has caused you to reach for the smelling salts. I realize I am a man of passions. Strong passions. And that sometimes my passions might be a tad overwhelming, especially when an epistemology is involved. But please bear with me while I say this: It is a myth -- it is only a myth -- that in order to do science I must believe in an objective reality. I am, of course, permitted to believe in an objective reality. But my belief in an objective reality is not necessary because I can do science even if I do not believe in an objective reality.

I myself favor throwing the concept of objectivity out the door. We don't need it. It is unnecessary baggage, and it reeks of the Middle Ages. Moreover, the concept of objectivity is quite easily and very soundly replaced by the concept of intersubjective verifiability.

All of us intersubjectively verify things -- even if we do not call it "intersubjective verification". Someone tells us something is true and we say, "Show me!" In a nutshell, that's the principle behind intersubjective verification.

Suppose I say to you, "It is snowing outside." You look out the window, see snow, and say, "So it is!" You have just intersubjectively verified my statement, "It is snowing outside."

Again, you say to me, "If you run an electric spark through a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen, the mixture will explode, after which, you will be left with some water." I don't believe you. So I experiment by running an electric spark through a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen. The mixture explodes, after which I notice some water. I have just intersubjectively verified your claim.

Imagine thousands of people do the same experiment and almost all of them get significantly the same results. Would we not have considerable evidence -- a weight of evidence -- that we can rely on a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen to produce water when a spark is passed through it? I think so. But have we in any way demonstrated there is some objective world out there -- a world separate from our awareness -- in which hydrogen and oxygen are real things that produce real water when a real spark is passed through them?

Strictly speaking, we have not.

Yet -- and this has a certain beauty to it -- we don't need to. We do not need to figure out with absolute certainty what the ultimate nature of reality is before we can arrive at reliable facts through processes of intersubjective verification. For example, we can discover that a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen reliably produces water when a spark is passed through it without ever needing to speculate about metaphysics.

In short, science does not crucially rest upon the metaphysical notion that objects really exist.

So take that, Mr. Internet-Child-Corrupting-"The-Basis-For-Science-Is-Objectivity"-Poo-Poo-Head-Man!

Once again, I must apologize to you, my dear readers, on the chance that my strong, vigorous language has caused you to reach for your smelling salts.

My High School Math Teacher Was A Space Alien!

2011-12-21T09:36:00.001-07:00

I am fascinated -- I have long been fascinated -- that the same person can be smart in some ways and stupid in others.

If I were a scientist with an adequate research budget, I would probably want to study human intelligence just to find out what I could about that one unexpected fact. (Of course, if I were a scientist and I had an adequate research budget, that, too, would be an unexpected fact.) How can the same person be both smart and stupid?

I don't know a reliable answer to that question, but I do think many of us -- perhaps even most of us -- more or less fit the description of being smart in some ways and stupid in others. And those of us who do not fit that description seem more often stupid in everything than smart in everything.

I'm aware of Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences. And his theory would seem to explain why the same person can be smart in some ways and stupid in other ways. Yet, so far as I know, Gardner's theory is as yet unsupported by much in the way of hard evidence. Consequently, I remain an agnostic about it.

Often, when I think of the people in my life who have most deeply -- some might say "most traumatically" -- impressed me as smart in some ways and stupid in others, I think of my high school math teacher, Mr. B.

No one -- not even I -- questioned Mr. B's competence as a mathematician. I will submit, however, that Mr. B, despite his smarts in math, was twenty years ahead of his time in some kinds of stupid.

I had Mr. B as a teacher in the early 1970s. William F. Buckley was alive, and Buckley was frequently a very smart man. He also had the clout to be the intellectual guardian of the Republican Party. That is, if he decided someone or some group was too stupid to fit in as a Republican, Buckley would use his considerable influence to exile them from the Party. The Republicans have no one like him today. Today,. the crazies have become the Party.

The John Birch Society was one of the groups Buckley succeeded in kicking out of the Party. The "Birchers" believed -- in the way stupid people fanatically believe things -- all sorts of nonsense. For instance, they thought Dwight D. Eisenhower was a willing tool of the Soviet Union and a deliberate traitor to America. Buckley thought the Birchers were in danger of sliding into fascism. Perhaps he was right.

My math teacher subscribed to the John Birch Society, and perhaps to other Radical Right organizations as well. We knew whenever he had received in the mail another one of their newsletters -- he would put aside teaching mathematics for the day and instead lecture us on themes that were rarely enough heard in the early 1970s outside of certain circles.

I can still recall a few of his more memorable pronouncements: "Pollution never killed anyone". "Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Communist out to destroy America. Don't let anyone tell you different." "The Soviets will invade us any year now. Maybe any day now." "Women don't need equal rights. Men do! Women are smarter than men." "Negroes are shameless whiners. They haven't been discriminated against since the end of the Civil War."

I am a strong believer in the notion that, although everyone has a right to his or her opinions, not all opinions are created equal. Some opinions are forged of sound logic and a weight of evidence. Some other opinions are forged of logical fallacies and bullshit. Many people believe that differences of opinion never reflect differences of intellect. I disagree. Some opinions are so stupid their owners, if not merely ignorant, must be stupid.

Yet, it is simply true that -- often enough -- the same one of us who is so stupid as to believe the Theory of Evolution is a conspiracy of the world's 500,000 biologists, is nevertheless a brilliant (or at least competent) engineer. How can we account for that?

Mr. B once said something that I think is about half true: “No matter how good you get at math, you will never cease to make mistakes. But if you practice, you will catch your mistakes as you make them, and then correct them yourself, instead of needing someone else to correct them for you.”

I think it sometimes happens that way. But I also think very few -- if any -- of us ever get so good that we catch and correct every one of our own mistakes, whether in math or in any other field. We will always need the help of others. Indeed, it seems one reason the sciences have been so successful at establishing reliable facts and producing predictive theories is because they employ methods of inquiry that encourage people to correct each other's mistakes. That is, science is a profoundly cooperative endeavor.

Buckley once described some of the notions of the John Birch society as "paranoid and idiotic". To some extent, those two things go together. A "paranoid" person is typically unwilling to accept anyone correcting his ideas. Quite often, the result is his ideas drift into idiocy. That's to say, it seems one of the best ways to become stupid is to systematically reject or ignore the efforts of others to correct us when we are wrong.

But why are we humans so often wrong in the first place?

Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber have come up with a rather interesting theory that could go far to explain why our species of great ape seems prone to cognitive errors. It's called "The Argumentative Theory", and it is well worth reading up on.

The gist of it is that our ability to reason evolved -- not to figure out what is true or false -- but to win arguments, or to persuade others to do what we want them to do. Consequently, our ability to think logically and evidentially is imperfect -- one might even say, "somewhat remedial".

Part of the evidence for the Argumentative Theory is our species built in cognitive biases. By "built in", I mean that the biases seem hereditary. The fact our thinking is inherently biased is strong evidence our thinking evolved for some other function than to merely figure out what is true or false. Mercier and Sperber would say that function was to persuade people.

Regardless of whether the function of reason is to discern reality or to win arguments, the fact our species is so prone to cognitive error might go far in explaining how it happens that the same person can be smart in some ways and stupid in others. That is, perhaps we are smartest -- or at least, we tend to act smartest -- when we have some corrective feedback.

That feedback might come in the form of ourselves "checking our work" -- as when we check a mathematical solution. It might come in the form of whether we achieve our intended outcome -- as when we fix a car so that it runs again. Or the corrective feedback might come in the form of constructive criticism from others.

Perhaps the less corrective feedback we have, the more likely we are to adopt stupid opinions. Or, in other words, we should not expect our own reason alone to take us where we want to go. Rather, we should expect our reason plus some form of corrective feedback to take us there.

I think my high school math teacher, if he were alive to read this essay, would be appalled by my suggestion that -- no matter how good we get -- we are still wise to listen to the critiques of others. It seems to me Mr. B cared so little to hear the opinions of others that he might as well have been a space alien orbiting his own little planet and all but totally out of touch with earth. He seemed to think he was his own sufficient critic. And perhaps his lack of concern for the input of others explains why he found it so easy to harbor so many "paranoid and idiotic" notions. Notions that, in a sense, were more stupid than he was.

Jennfier Keeton: Playing the Christ Card

2011-12-20T17:03:00.000-07:00

Jennifer Keeton was until recently a graduate student in counseling at Augusta State University in Georgia. About 18 months ago, she sued the University, saying that it had violated her rights to free speech and the free exercise of her Christian faith.

Among other things, Keeton claimed University officials had told her that, in order to stay in the University's school counseling program, she would have to change her beliefs about homosexuality. According to Court documents (.pdf pp.5-6):

[Keeton] holds several beliefs about homosexuality that she views as arising from her Christian faith. She believes that “sexual behavior is the result of personal choice for which individuals are accountable, not inevitable deterministic forces; that gender is fixed and binary (i.e., male or female), not a social construct
or personal choice subject to individual change; and that homosexuality is a ‘lifestyle,’ not a ‘state of being.’” ASU’s officials became aware that Keeton held these beliefs when she expressed to professors in class and fellow classmates in and out of class that she believed that the GLBTQ population suffers from identity confusion, and that she intended to attempt to convert students from being homosexual to heterosexual. Keeton also said that it would be difficult for her to work with GLBTQ clients and to separate her views about homosexuality from her clients’ views. Further, in answering a hypothetical posed by a faculty member, Keeton responded that as a high school counselor confronted by a sophomore student in crisis, questioning his sexual orientation, she would tell the student that it was not okay to be gay. Similarly, Keeton told a fellow classmate that, if a client discloses that he is gay, it was her intention to tell the client that his behavior is morally wrong and then try to change the client’s behavior, and if she were unable to help the client change his behavior, she would refer him to someone practicing conversion therapy.

In Keeton's view, the University was asking her to change her beliefs, and thus violating both her right to free speech and her right to freely practice her religion.

As it happened, though, a three judge panel for the 11th Circuit Court of Appeal found Keeton was mistaken to claim the University had asked her to change her beliefs. Instead, the University had only asked her to adhere to a certain professional code of ethics.

The school counseling program at Augusta State University is accredited by an organization with the exciting name of, "The Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP)" As part of the accreditation deal, the University agreed to teach its counseling students to professionally conduct themselves according to the American Counseling Association’s (ACA) Code of Ethics. The Code includes ethical principles such as (.pdf pp. 6-7):

“Counselors are aware of their own values, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors and avoid imposing values that are inconsistent with counseling goals. Counselors respect the diversity of clients, trainees, and research participants”

and:

“Counselors do not condone or engage in discrimination based on age, culture, disability, ethnicity, race, religion/spirituality, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, marital status/partnership, language preference, socioeconomic status, or any basis proscribed by law.”

There are quite a few details to the case, but in effect, the University asked Jennifer Keeton to professionally conduct herself according to the ACA Code of Ethics and she refused to so.

Some years ago, I paid for my college room and board by working as a fire fighter. I do not now recall that we ever -- even once -- asked someone about their sexual orientation before knocking down their fire or extracting them from their wrecked car. More to the point: Had I decided back then that I would only provide my services to heterosexuals, I would have been (justifiably) fired. But the judges of the 11th Circuit said it best (.pdf pp. 30):

Every profession has its own ethical codes and dictates. When someone voluntarily chooses to enter a profession, he or she must comply with its rules and ethical requirements. Lawyers must present legal arguments on behalf of their clients, notwithstanding their personal views. Judges must apply the law, even when they disagree with it. So too counselors must refrain from imposing their moral and religious values on their clients.

Of course, what Keeton was attempting to do with her lawsuit should be transparent to anyone: She was trying to force the University to make her an exception to the rule that counseling students must be taught to professionally conduct themselves according to the ACA Code of Ethics. In short, she was looking for preferential treatment.

In order to secure preferential treatment, she cynically tried to play the Christ Card. That is, she deceitfully tried to fob herself off as -- not some jerk seeking preferential treatment -- but someone wrongfully oppressed because she is a Christian.

Of course, some folks are now tripping over themselves in their rush to buy into Jennifer Keeton's notion of herself as a martyr. Here is what they have been saying...

Ramona Hicks Willis thinks, "This is not a questions of ethics, it is a power play by the homosexuals. They want to destroy anyone that does not agree with their lifestyle. Plain and simple."

The Court's ruling in the case seems to have traumatized Diana Shugar, who is suddenly ready to give up on life: "God is not the god of this world; Satan is. Satan is the invisible god of this world. He is the author of its organization, its basic philosophies, its systems of government, business, society—yes, AND RELIGIONS! It's best to just tell people of the new upcoming world ruled by our Lord and Savior. This one is beyond redemption."

Michael Galvin fully agrees with Diana that requiring Jennifer Keeton to live up to a professional code of ethics is so traumatizing the end of the world must be near: "You are right. We cannot save this world and the people in it. God desires that none would perish, but they have rejected Him and His Gospel. The date it set, the orchestra is in tune, the curtain is soon to be lifted."

Adrienne Elizabeth Crawford cannot believe Keeton did anything wrong. Apparently, she just doesn't get what the case was all about. Nevertheless, she's sure it has something to do with the way Christians are always being persecuted: "It’s just really sad that this woman is being reprimanded (so to speak) for her beliefs. We ALL have a right to our own beliefs. I don’t believe she did anything wrong. But we as Christians should not be surprised by this persecution. After all, we live in Satan’s world. He’s the Prince of this world but only temporarily."

Tolfe Lee Albert thinks working with gay kids is a lot like risking your life -- or at least your health (he's not sure which): "What if the student had AIDS, or a very bad cold...would she not have the right to refuse that student? Where are HER rights. Another victory for the ACLU and loss of our personal rights and dignity."

Last, Jack Oliver thinks he knows the sacred duty of a true Christian: "As a christan [sic] she is bound to speak up against queres [sic]."

Jennifer Keeton played the Christ Card by demanding special privileges for herself while shouting that she was being discriminated against. Naturally -- inevitably -- some folks bought her story. But it would be a mistake to assume -- simply because some Christians have uncritically bought Keeton's story -- that the majority of Christians in America agree with them, for there is no evidence that the majority do in fact agree with the poor fools among us.

(H/T: Chappie at An Apostate's Chapel)

If God is Incomprehensible...

2011-12-19T18:19:00.000-07:00

For the sake of discussion, let us assume there's a god. And let us further assume that god is incomprehensible.

If we were to now ask the question, "Does god exist", whose notion of god do you suppose would be closest to the truth:

The Theist who has an idea of god and thinks his idea represents something that exists?
The Atheist who has an idea of god and thinks his idea represents something that does not exist?
The Agnostic who has an idea of god and thinks his idea represents something that he is uncertain exists?
The young child who has as yet no idea of god and consequently cannot even understand the question?

Any opinion?

Women's Handwriting

2011-12-19T17:21:00.001-07:00

Why do you suppose women, by and large, have similar handwriting?

At least, it's my impression that a woman's handwriting usually resembles other women's handwriting to a greater degree than a man's handwriting is apt to resemble other men's handwriting. Put differently, it seems more difficult to tell women apart than it seems it is to tell men apart. If that is indeed the case, why is it the case?

What it Feels Like to be Someone Else

2011-12-18T13:19:00.002-07:00

I've heard people say we can never know for certain what it feels like to be someone else. But is that really true? Is it never possible to know for certain what it feels like to be someone else?

Yesterday, I was with my friend Don for lunch. Don and I go back a long ways and we know each other pretty well.

At one point during our lunch, he said something that was so profound it went completely over my head and I couldn't even begin to fathom what he meant. I felt lost and stupid.

Then I suddenly realized: "Surely, this is what it feels like to be a politician!"

A Couple Links Stolen From the Net December 18, 2011

2011-12-18T06:35:00.003-07:00

Surprise! Incomes in imperial Rome were slightly more equitable than incomes in the US today:

Over the last 30 years, wealth in the United States has been steadily concentrating in the upper economic echelons. Whereas the top 1 percent used to control a little over 30 percent of the wealth, they now control 40 percent. It’s a trend that was for decades brushed under the rug but is now on the tops of minds and at the tips of tongues.

Since too much inequality can foment revolt and instability, the CIA regularly updates statistics on income distribution for countries around the world, including the U.S. Between 1997 and 2007, inequality in the U.S. grew by almost 10 percent, making it more unequal than Russia, infamous for its powerful oligarchs. The U.S. is not faring well historically, either. Even the Roman Empire, a society built on conquest and slave labor, had a more equitable income distribution.

Read the rest here.

◄►

Over at Groping the Elephant, Doug B has been blasting away at current politics in a series of hard-hitting, fact-based posts to be found here, here, here, here, here, and here. His posts are beautiful to behold because Doug is -- so far as I can tell -- telling the truth.

Telling the truth. What a novel idea!

And these days, it seems increasingly up to bloggers to do that, because so few others are. I wish that was an exaggeration, but so far as I can see, it is not.

Moreover, as Doug points out, "...there is no substantial liberal voice in D.C. looking out for the interests of the poorest and most vulnerable Americans. There is no political left anymore, only a right and far-right." I don't think you will hear that said too often in the mainstream media, but it seems about right.

Carl Sagan on Understanding Science and Technology

2011-12-18T02:15:00.000-07:00

"We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces."

-- Carl Sagan

Three Off the Wall Responses to Christopher Hitchens' Death

2011-12-17T05:41:00.000-07:00

Christopher Hitchens was a controversial man. I suppose most prominent people are, but I think he was especially controversial. When he died the other day, not everyone observed the custom of refusing to speak ill of the dead.

Of course, it is not a matter of morality, but rather a matter of etiquette that we refrain for a brief period from speaking ill of those who have recently died. And etiquette commands no legion of bayonets: Nothing forces us to obey it unless we respond as cowards to our aunt's raised eyebrow.

Consequently, you can sometimes discover a lot about someone by observing how well and in what manner they follow the common etiquette. One man, named only "Keith", appears to be a whiner with a vicious streak. Soon after Hitchens' death, he felt it was necessary to tweet: "Atheists are disgusting human beings. They can't let us have our faith in peace. They need to shove their indoctrination down our throats."

Not all of the off the wall responses to Hitchens' death were vicious. Some were merely self-serving. The President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Albert Mohler, could not refrain even for a few hours from attempting to exploit Hitchens' death in order to sell his services as an ordained salvation-slinger.

He began a series of tweets by saying Hitchens' death "is an excruciating reminder of the consequences of unbelief. We can only pray others will believe.”

Mohler immediately added, “Few things are so valued in this life as brilliance & eloquence. Neither will matter in the world to come.”

“The point about Christopher Hitchens is not that he died of unbelief,” he concluded, “but that his unbelief is all that matters now. Unspeakably sad.”

Then there was Lane Bowman. Bowman, who appears to be a young man studying for the ministry, was smug in his declaration that, "Hitchens will be forgotten. The face of the Lord is against evildoers, to cut off the memory of them from the earth."

I think if Bowman ever flunks out of the seminary, he can always get a job as a stand up comic.

Why are We so Often Untrue to Ourselves?

2011-12-16T21:53:00.001-07:00

"Do exactly what you would do if you felt most secure."
-- Meister Eckhart

Bronnie Ware is an Australian author and songwriter who for many years worked as a caregiver with people who were dying. She was with them for the last three to twelve weeks of their lives.

When she asked her patients whether they had any regrets about how they had lived their lives, she discovered the single most common regret dying people have is that they have not been true to themselves.

When people realize that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people have had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.

Instead of living true to themselves, they all too often felt they had tried to live up to the expectations of others. And that, to me, is Ware's most interesting observation. Of all the reasons one might fail to be true to oneself, why is that the reason Ware heard most often?

It seems human nature to want to live up to the expectations of others. Apparently, most of us do it every day in ways both great and small. A friend of mine -- someone I very much admire -- is a middle-aged woman who is now discovering that she has spent her life living for others. She was raised to put the wants and needs of everyone else before her own. And that message was both reinforced and justified by her family's fundamentalist religion.

For instance: The notion she was morally obligated to subvert herself in order to please others was so deeply instilled in her during her upbringing that she felt shock the first time someone stated to her that a woman is not required to have sex with her husband if she does not feel like it.

Today she is discovering -- one step at a time -- her own wants and needs. For the fact is, when you have been thoroughly taught to put the wants and needs of everyone else before your own, you most often suppress your own wants and needs to the point that you no longer clearly know what they are. It is easy to tell such a person, "Be true to yourself". But that person might have a long ways to go before she knows her real wants and needs, let alone is confident of her right to them.

Yet, we do not need to be first abused before we cast ourselves aside in order to live up the expectations of others. Abuse certainly helps us do that -- the very essence of abuse is that it unnecessarily alienates us from our true selves -- but abuse is not required for us to fail to be true to ourselves. We are social animals. Profoundly social animals. Almost anyone of us, if he or she really thought about it, could list a thousand ways in which our species manifests its social nature.

It is deeply ingrained in us to desire companionship, to want the acceptance of others, to value love and friendship. When scientists ask us what it takes to make us happy, we quite often tell them the single most important factor in our happiness is the quality of our relationships with our friends and family. Most of us at one time or another bargain for friendship by trading who we are for what someone expects of us.

Growing up, I gained a reputation for being among the most independent minded people in my cohort. It came to be expected of me that I would often go against the grain. And there probably was some truth to that. But I paid a psychological price for it in tens of thousands of hours of loneliness. However, I did not feel lonely because I was alone. I felt lonely because I was going against the expectations of others.

The loneliest people on earth are not those of us who are physically alone in life. Rather it is those of us who live with parents, siblings, roommates, lovers, or spouses who do not accept us as we are. Who want us to be fundamentally different than we are. If you know how, it is easy enough to live alone while rarely feeling lonely. Yet, it is all but impossible to live with someone who does not accept you without your feeling lonely.

If nearly anyone of us could list a thousand ways in which our species manifests its social nature, anyone of us could list a hundred thousand in which we are encouraged, cajoled, wheedled, browbeat, bullied, or forced to subvert ourselves in order to live up to someone else's expectations.

Allow me to give but one example: A friend once told me he felt he had not fulfilled his promise as a businessperson because he had spent too much of his career compensating for his weaknesses rather than building on his strengths. He then went on to tell me that, as a child, he had done well in math but poorly in English. However, his strength in math was all but ignored while his weakness in English became the focus of his parent's and teacher's efforts to get him to "improve" himself. In the way of a child, he took that to mean that what he was not (i.e. good at English) was more important to people than what he was (i.e. good at math). Although the experience was far from devastating, and he didn't want to make too much of it, he could see how it was one of many experiences that might have contributed to his life-long tendency to pay more attention to his weaknesses than to his strengths.

Of all the reasons we are so often untrue to ourselves, I think our attempts to live up the expectations of others must rank up there as among the foremost. But what do you think? Is there any truth to that? And what are the other reasons we fail to be true to ourselves?

Income and Poverty in America

2011-12-15T21:26:00.000-07:00

In 2010, executives at America's leading corporations enjoyed pay hikes of between 27 and 40%, according to the most extensive survey of executive pay in the US. At those rates, many American executives would see their pay double in a little under 3 years.

Meanwhile, for the same year, American workers in private companies enjoyed pay hikes averaging a little above 2%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. At that rate, the average American worker would see his or her pay double in somewhat less than 50 years.

"Go team!"

The news of executive pay comes on the tail of some even more cheerful holiday news. According to figures released by the Census Bureau today, 1 in 3 Americans (32%) are either low income or living in poverty.

Gee! Those "job creating" super-rich sure have put their tax cuts to good use.

On the upside, I came across a story in Mother Jones today about a small number of Wall Street professionals who have decided to join forces with the Occupy Movement in order to assist the 99% of us who are not super-rich. The Occupy Movement isn't winning yet, but it seems to be making progress -- if only an inch at a time.

Would a Loving God Send Us to Hell?

2011-12-15T01:40:00.001-07:00

For the sake of discussion, let us assume there's an able god. By "able", I mean that god is capable of doing anything that does not violate the rules of logic. For instance, it can create the universe, but it cannot create a square circle because a square circle is logically impossible.

Next, let us assume that god unconditionally loves all of creation, including each one of us.

Is that scenario logically possible?

Well, I think it is possible. I would not account it very probable. It's not something I'd bank on. But possible? Yes.

Now, let us assume the same two conditions -- an able god and that god's unconditional love -- plus a third condition.

The third condition is there exists a hell that is a part of creation and to which people are sent after their death if they disobey the god.

Is the new scenario logically possible?

I do not think so. Instead,. I think the new scenario involves a logical contradiction and consequently cannot exist. That is, it cannot be real. But what is that contradiction?

Well, how can you logically have an able god that loves you unconditionally and also causes you to go to hell if you disobey that god?

So far as I can see, you cannot. An unconditionally loving god would neither impose a condition upon it's love ( i.e. if you do not obey me, I will not love you) nor would an unconditionally loving god, if it were able to prevent it, allow it's beloved to come to harm (i.e. if you do not obey me, I will cause or allow you to go to hell).

But what do you think? Is it an amusing logic puzzle? Or have I just had too much caffeine again?

Two Cultures, Two Ways of Coping with Miscarriages

2011-12-14T17:03:00.003-07:00

"Culture is any learned behavior passed down from one generation to the next." At least, that was "culture" according to my beloved professor of anthropology. He was an older man with white hair who smiled and gave us subtle definitions to trip us up.

I'm not sure every anthropologist would accept his sneaky definition of culture. For one thing, it means that anything which is not a behavior is not culture. And that would exclude songs, books, films, and -- *gasp* -- blogs!

To be precise, the song itself is not culture. But if it ever becomes a tradition to sing the song, then the behavior of singing the song is culture. The tradition of caroling at this time of year is culture. This blog is not part of your culture. But if you encourage your children to read this blog, then the act of reading this blog becomes part of your culture.

Sneaky, sneaky, eh? Long time readers will not be surprised to learn I am so slow witted I failed to fully grasp that meaning of "culture" until well after the final exams were over.

My professor had a profound and trenchant reason for his definition. Unfortunately, I have long ago forgotten what that profound and trenchant reason was. Yet, I still remember discovering it was very difficult to pick up women in an anthropology class because very few people took anthropology in those days. That's how my mind works: I only remember the important things.

Using a language, such as speaking English, is "a learned behavior passed down from one generation to the next." And one thing some anthropologists did -- and some still do -- is study how languages influence thinking and behavior. The field is somewhat controversial, but there seems to be an agreement that languages do have an influence on both thinking and behavior. The question is now how much of an influence and on which kinds of thoughts and behaviors.

Last night, I was put in mind of the notion that languages influence thinking and behavior when I stumbled across a blog on which a pastor stated his belief that we are human beings from the moment of our conception. He mentioned that he and his wife had experienced several miscarriages. But he had faith he would "meet those children in heaven".

That reminded me of something I'd read while studying anthropology. If I recall, there is a language spoken in the South Pacific in which there is no word that matches our word, "pregnant". In our language -- and way of thinking -- a woman is pregnant from the moment of conception until birth. But in the language of at least one South Pacific people, there is no word that covers the whole period of gestation like "pregnancy" does.

Instead, those people speak a language that would require them to use at least three or four words to cover the period of gestation. There's a word for when a woman first begins to show signs of pregnancy. A word for a little later on in her pregnancy when her belly has swollen up a bit. And at least one or two other words for later periods.

The interesting thing is the whole language is like that. There is, for instance, no word for "palm tree". Instead, you have separate words for various stages in the growth of a palm tree. There is a word for "sprout". A word for a young tree. A word for a fruiting tree. But no word that has the scope of our word, "palm".

Now, the anthropologist who studied these people noticed that, whenever one of the women miscarried, she seldom if ever showed any signs of loss or remorse. Nor did anyone in her community. There were no efforts to console her. Yet, the same people would rally around anyone who was injured. It was not, he thought, that they were callous or indifferent to suffering. Instead, it seemed that neither a woman who miscarried, nor her friends and relatives, thought of a miscarriage as the loss of a child. Consequently, they showed no signs of suffering from it.

The anthropologist pointed out the often close relationship between suffering and expectations. As a rule, when we do not expect something, we do not suffer its loss. And he concluded the Islanders felt no remorse for a miscarriage because -- until rather late in a woman's pregnancy -- no one expected a child. After all, their language discouraged thinking of a fetus as a baby or child.

I think you see a tacit recognition of the Islander's psychology in the battles our society wages over whether to call a fetus a "child" or "baby". One side accuses the other of picking their terms in order to either heighten or lower people's emotional response to abortion. And if that is true -- if it actually works that calling a fetus a "baby" increases people's negative feelings towards abortion, while calling a fetus a "fetus" lowers people's negative feelings towards abortion -- then that should offer us an insight into the Islander's thinking and behavior.

I am not at all convinced that the Islander's language determines their feelings towards miscarriages. I don't think language is as powerful as that. But I imagine their language could influence their feelings.

In North America, the miscarriage rate among women who know they are pregnant is about 15% to 20%. But the real miscarriage rate is probably much higher than that:

Determining the prevalence of miscarriage is difficult. Many miscarriages happen very early in the pregnancy, before a woman may know she is pregnant. Treatment of women with miscarriage at home means medical statistics on miscarriage miss many cases. Prospective studies using very sensitive early pregnancy tests have found that 25% of pregnancies are miscarried by the sixth week LMP (since the woman's Last Menstrual Period). However, other sources reports suggest higher rates. One fact sheet from the University of Ottawa states, "The incidence of spontaneous abortion is estimated to be 50% of all pregnancies, based on the assumption that many pregnancies abort spontaneously with no clinical recognition."

The thought has occurred to me that, given the high rate of natural miscarriages, the Islanders are wise not to expect a pregnancy to result in a baby until rather late in the gestation period. It seems to provide them with a sort of psychological defense or buffer against the vicissitudes of life. Furthermore, we ourselves might by the same token be unintentionally cruel towards women, for we -- as a culture -- do almost everything in our power to build up and encourage a pregnant woman's expectations of a child. But I don't see our culture changing anytime soon.

Indeed, if "culture is any learned behavior passed down from one generation to the next", then our own culture seems to be changing in the direction of increasing a pregnant woman's expectations of a child. And if there is any truth to the notion that expectations can be closely associated with suffering, that trend might have unintended -- and cruel -- consequences.

In the end, it is hard to sort out how much suffering is associated with expectations and how much suffering would occur anyway. I find it difficult to believe the Island women felt no remorse when they miscarried. But then, I am not they. I have only one account of how they responded to such things. And I have no way of judging its accuracy.

There are so few things we know for certain.

Is America Still the Land of Opportunity?

2011-12-14T05:42:00.003-07:00

America is the land of opportunity. I once believed that. After all, I had an uncle when I was growing up -- a man who was much older than me, but who was living evidence that America was a land of opportunity.

My uncle was born around the turn of the last century. High school bored him, so he dropped out and instead went to work as an office boy. As an office boy, he made himself stand out by taking on extra chores beyond those required of him. Eventually his enthusiasm for work was noticed by his managers and, when he was a bit older, they offered him a job in sales.

My uncle approached sales the same way he had approached office work: He went the extra mile for his customers. They appreciated it and gave him so much business that he became the top salesman in his company. After that, he rose through the ranks to become sales manager, then district sales manager, then the vice president of sales. And he didn't stop there.

By the time he retired, my uncle was chairman of the board. A real life Horatio Alger story. Growing up, I didn't need to look further than my uncle to see proof America was the land of opportunity.

By most accounts, there was a time when it was true that people had a better chance of success in America than they did in other countries. Is that still the case today?

Not according to The Equality Trust -- which is a British organization that specializes in studying socioeconomic equality. After studying upward social mobility in many countries, The Equality Trust summarized their findings in this graph:

As you can see, the US ranks lowest out of the eight countries studied in terms of upward social mobility. And that means the best advice you could give anyone seeking to better their lot is "immigrate to one of those seven other countries".

You might also notice the chart shows that where income inequality is high, upward social mobility is low. I have nothing against people getting rich. But there seems to be something wrong when only a few get rich and the rest get poorer.

My uncle's generation is long gone now. And perhaps gone with it is America's leadership as the land of opportunity. I don't know if we will ever recapture that.

Jiddu Krishnamurti on Religion and Self-Reliance

2011-12-13T19:50:00.002-07:00

"Religion as we generally know it or acknowledge it, is a series of beliefs, of dogmas, of rituals, of superstitions, of worship of idols, of charms and gurus that will lead you to what you want as an ultimate goal. The ultimate truth is your projection, that is what you want, which will make you happy, which will give a certainty of the deathless state. So the mind caught in all this creates a religion, a religion of dogmas, of priest-craft, of superstitions and idol-worship and in that, you are caught, and the mind stagnates. Is that religion?"

"Is religion a matter of belief, a matter of knowledge of other people's experiences and assertions? Or is religion merely the following of morality? You know it is comparatively easy to be moral to do this and not to do that. Because it is easy, you can imitate a moral system. Behind that morality, lurks the self, growing, expanding, aggressive, dominating. But is that religion?"

"You have to find out what truth is because that is the only thing that matters, not whether you are rich or poor, not whether you are happily married and have children, because they all come to an end, there is always death. So, without any form of belief, you must find out; you must have the vigor, the self-reliance, the initiative, so that for yourself you know what truth is, what God is."

"Belief will not give you anything; belief only corrupts, binds, darkens. The mind can only be free through vigor, through self-reliance."

- J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life (Paragraph breaks added).

Bio-luminescent Cats and Other New-Fangled Pets

2011-12-13T17:46:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wondered whether someday your pussy will glow in the dark? No, not that pussy. I mean the pussy in your lap. Er...that didn't work either. Let me start over again...

By all accounts, genetic engineering is upon us. And while -- so far as I've heard -- it's commercial use is currently limited mostly to the agricultural and medical fields, it seems probable that it will expand into other fields. Thus it might be only a matter of time before companies are selling genetically engineered farm animals. For instance, cattle that are immune to the worse diseases and that grow faster on less food than today's breeds.

Yet, if you can genetically engineer a cow, you can genetically engineer a cat. Or a dog. Or any other pet. So I'm wondering today whether the future might hold for us "designer pets". Perhaps even bizarre designer pets.

For instance: You might -- might -- be able to engineer a cat whose skin or fur glows in the dark. After all, there are bio-luminescent organisms from which you could presumably take the genes for bio-luminescence and then insert those genes into a cat's genetic code. The result might give a whole new meaning to pets named, "Sparkles" and "Wildfire".

Of course, a crucial issue here is whether there would be much of a market for designer pets. Would people line up to buy cats that glowed in dark? Or if not precisely cats that glowed in the dark, other bizarre creations. Such as dogs that lived as long as their masters? Rabbits with pink fur? Talking chimpanzees?

I have no idea whether designer pets would ever take off. I assume if they became available, they would appeal to at least some people, if only for the sake of novelty. But would they appeal to enough people to fuel an industry?

Genetic engineering raises many questions and most of those questions are more important than the ones I've raised here. If the world ever creates cats that glow in the dark, the cats will surely be controversial, but in the grand scheme of things, they are unlikely to be all that important. However, given how crazy our species is, I would not entirely dismiss the possibility we will someday create such bizarre animals.

So what do you think? Will the future hold for us genetically engineered pets? And if so, what will those pets be like?

(Hat Tip for the idea to The Wise Fool who blogs here and here.)

Sexual Techniques 101: The New Austrian Sex School has Opened

2011-12-13T04:59:00.000-07:00

The world's first practical sex school is opening in Austria this month. The school offers five courses in both the theory and the practice of sex -- and yes, I do mean "the practice". As the school's website puts it, "we teach you hands on". Or, put differently, the school provides its students with free contraception -- and needs to.

Courses run from four to eight weeks. At the end of each course, students will be tested to determine how well they have mastered the subject. It is possible to flunk a course.

Who is behind the school? There isn't much public information about precisely who is capitalizing the school, but the headmistress is an artist, Ylva-Maria Thompson. She is well known in Sweden both for her art and for hosting adult TV shows. Apparently, she also has some administrative talent, but the school's website is not emphasizing that side of her.

The school is located on a secluded estate a half hour's drive from Vienna. In addition to teaching students both the theory and practice of sex, the school also has scientists on its staff who will be doing original research into sexuality.

The legal age of consent in Austria is 14, but you must be at least 16 to enroll in the school.

As you might imagine, not everyone is happy about this. One prudish website criticized the school for all sorts of stuff, some of them quite petty things. I suppose if the school succeeds and student enrollment climbs we will sooner or later see the professional fear mongers slink from beneath their rocks to declare the end of civilization.

As for me, I think this is one the best new things of the year. Sex is not everything, but it is a huge part of life. So far as I can tell, this school intends to treat it with an importance it deserves.

Why Do Horses Have Manes?

2011-12-12T21:14:00.000-07:00

"The mane is thought to keep the neck warm, and possibly to help water run off the neck if the animal cannot obtain shelter from the rain. It also provides some fly protection to the front of the horse, although the tail is usually the first defense against flies."

-- Wikipedia

I'm not buying it. I find it implausible that manes would evolve because horses with manes had warmer necks, and that their warmer necks proved to be significant to their reproductive success. There must be some other reason manes evolved.

But what would that be?

I was thinking sexual selection. That is, I was thinking manes are like the male peacock's tail. It provides no survival advantage, but the female peacock's like it. So the females pick the males with the best tails to mate with. That's what I was thinking.

But then I remembered that both male and female horses have manes. So now I'm thinking sexual selection probably isn't the reason horses evolved manes.

But what is the reason?

How to Interpret the Bible: Sunstone's Authoritative Guide to Biblical Interpretation

2011-12-12T15:54:00.000-07:00

As loyal, beloved readers of this blog might know, I am no authority on the Bible. That is, I know the Bible is the book everyone quotes and no one reads -- but that's about the extent of my knowledge.

So today's blog post might be a wee bit out of my league -- in much the same sense that my attempting to dog paddle across the Pacific Ocean might be a wee bit out of my league -- because I intend to discuss how the Bible should be interpreted.

Never mind that I don't know how the Bible should be interpreted. Never mind that I haven't even read the thing. And never mind that I only got it into my head a couple hours ago that I should have an opinion about how it should be interpreted. No, never mind any of that.

None of those things matter because I'm an American. And -- as even I know -- Americans, with a little help from the British, all but invented the custom of interpreting the Bible literally. At least, that's what my professors used to tell me. The notion the Bible should be interpreted literally was invented -- mostly by Americans -- during the 1800s. Before that, you have nearly 2000 years of Biblical scholarship in which almost no one with a brain seriously thought the Bible was to be taken literally.

But today, 3 in 10 Americans interpret the Bible literally, saying it is the actual word of God.

The above is proof Americans have da balls. No other people -- except for a few Brits (who probably don't count anyway, since they lost the Revolutionary War) -- have had the courage to tell their God that he simply cannot speak metaphorically or symbolically. Go us!

In other words, as an American, I come from a proud tradition of claiming I know all about how to interpret the Bible. And on the firm basis of that tradition, I feel confident that I have the sacred right to tell you and the world how the Bible is to be interpreted. How cool is that?

So, let's put the meat on the table: Should we or should we not interpret the Bible literally?

Well, you'll be relieved to know I have discovered -- after sheer minutes of research -- the one true answer to that question. As it happens, the one true answer is contained in Proverbs 12:19. Anyone who thinks through that passage will surely come to the same conclusion I have: Contra the American tradition, the Bible was not meant to always be taken literally.

The exciting passage reads: "Truthful lips endure forever, but a lying tongue lasts only a moment."

Ha! I say, "Ha!", because anyone with a lick of sense knows that passage is false if taken literally. It is only true -- if it is true at all -- if taken symbolically.

QED: I'm right. One hundred million Americans are wrong. The Bible is not always meant to be taken literally. The matter is settled.

Anyone who now wishes to show his or her appreciation for having an authoritative answer to the question, "Should we or should we not interpret the Bible literally?", may send a modest donation of $29.95 to Uncle Sunstone's Refuge for Wayward Dancing Girls. You can be confident your donation will help buy the g-strings those girls desperately need to stay warm at my place during the winter.

Two Quotes from Toynbee

2011-12-12T04:16:00.000-07:00

"Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder."

"The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play."

-- Arnold J. Toynbee

Rape and the Madness of Crowds

2011-12-11T10:38:00.000-07:00

About a year ago, a 14 year-old girl was raped in a small Swedish town. What came after the rape is simple to outline: The town not only rallied to the support of her rapist, but eventually drove the girl from the community.

The rape has been investigated both by representatives of the Swedish Government and by private journalists. None of them deny the rape happened. In fact, even the rapist himself does not deny the rape happened: His confession to the police is on record; he has been tried in court; he has been convicted. There seems no legitimate doubt the raped occurred.

Yet, despite those facts, most of the town folk have all but systematically denied the girl understanding, compassion, and even justice (by driving her from the community). For instance: When the girl reported her rape to her school's principal, her principal responded: "You file a police report if you want, although this is not a prioritized case as no serious crime has been committed."

The principal then went on to remark: "Guys do this kind of thing, you have to get used to it."

That "conversation" was not only witnessed -- and reported -- by the girl herself, but by a member of the school staff who had accompanied the girl to the principle.

The principal by no means stood alone in his bastard treatment of the girl. At one point, 2000 people from the town and its greater community had signed a petition to have the rapist's conviction overturned. The town's immediate population is about 1800.

I will not attempt to report all that happened to the girl following her rape. You can read a much fuller account of those events here. I recommend that you do.

The story of this poor girl came to my attention when it was reported last month on an internet forum. At first, many of the people on the forum questioned the report. They could not believe what they were reading was true. It was only after they had read several separate accounts that they accepted the accuracy of the reports.

I cannot prove it, but I suspect one reason the forum folk could not believe what they were reading is that the events happened in Sweden. Many of us have come to expect such things to happen in places like Afghanistan. But Sweden? Sweden is not only a progressive society, but it has the reputation of treating women better than almost any other place on earth. It seems improbable an entire Swedish town would almost to its last citizen ally itself with a rapist.

Of course, once someone gets his or her head around the concept that such events actually happened, and happened in of all places, Sweden, then the obvious question for him or her to ask is why did they happen? And this is where it gets dangerous.

It gets dangerous because most of us -- perhaps even all of us -- seem to have a tendency to bullshit ourselves about these things. That is, it seems human nature to at this point demonize the wrong-doers. Or -- if we do not go so far as to actually demonize them -- we usually still find some way to think of them as "not at all like us".

So, for instance, we decide the Swedish townsfolk must, unlike us, be provincial hicks to condone rape. Perhaps they are even inbred. Or maybe it's just that they are socialists. Everyone knows Swedes are socialists -- and some of us at least know what that does to your morals, right? Regardless of how we explain the town's behavior, our "explanations" have one thing in common: All of them insist the Swedish townsfolk are "not like us".

One of the problems with such theories -- besides the likelihood they are simply false -- is that they do nothing to prevent events such as happened in Sweden from happening again. And again.

If the Swedish townsfolk can be dismissed as "not like us", then there is no reason for us to be further concerned. Since they are not like us, and we are not like them, we need not worry that such events as happened in Sweden can happen here. Indeed, the more alien to us the Swedes are, the less we need do anything to prevent ourselves from ever condoning rape.

That attitude would be fine if it were realistic. But I don't think it is. What happened in that Swedish town could have happened nearly anywhere. It's not the Swedes who are to blame: It's human nature that is to blame.

I don't mean it is human nature to condone rape. I mean it is human nature to often enough go along with the crowd. One of the most obvious things about us as a species is that we are a cooperative social animal. I even once heard it said by a notable primatologist that humans are the single most cooperative species of mammal on earth with the possible exception of meerkats. She went onto explain that our ability to cooperate with each other was crucial in our evolutionary success. We didn't have the biggest fangs, we weren't the fastest species, we were by no means the strongest: But, in essence, we knew how to overcome "problems" by ganging up on them. The instinct to coordinate our behavior with those around us -- to go along with the crowd, if you wish -- is deeply bred into us. All of us.

I think that's what happened in Sweden. At least it seems to me a good chunk of what happened. There almost certainly were other factors at play, but one of the biggest factors was "the madness of crowds". Individuals joined together to turn a cruelly raped girl out of her own town because going along with the crowd is a human instinct.

I believe it is true that some of us -- a minority -- tend to be relatively less prone to join in with the crowd than most of us. But I see no evidence to strongly suggest that many of us are without any instinct to go along with the crowd. If any of us are, our immunity probably comes about as the result of some psychological disorder.

Yet, even if I am wrong to place such an emphasis on the role going along with the crowd might have played in all of this -- even if other factors were much more important -- I believe I am right to assert that what happened in Sweden could have happened mostly anywhere. That is, the townsfolk's behavior -- no matter how ugly it is -- is a product of universal human nature, rather than unique to them.

Hence, I think a lesson to take from all of this is that we would be foolish to believe we ourselves would necessarily behave any different than the majority of the townsfolk if we found ourselves in their circumstances. If we ever find ourselves in a similar situation, then let us actively be on guard to do what's right, rather than find ourselves passively carried along with the crowd.

Suing God

2011-12-10T21:41:00.000-07:00

Over the course of the past year, my hair has turned increasingly white. Since I'm pretty close to 55 years old, this seems to be the fault of aging. Consequently, I am now determined to sue God and name the Pope as a co-defendant.

What do you think my chances of an out-of-court settlement are?

Also, what should I do with the Vatican once that property is in my hands?

Raised Up Righteous

2011-12-09T23:28:00.001-07:00

Neil was a mountain kid. Raised by artists up in the San Luis Valley. There are about 500 artists (according to Wiki) who live up in that valley, and both Neil's parents were artists.

One day, Neil told me this story. When he was growing up, his parents made him attend church every Sunday from about age six on. His parents themselves would never go to church, though. They'd just make Neil get dressed up, then send him off to church.

When he'd come home, they'd ask him how it went, what the sermon was about, and things like that. But Neil could tell they were just checking up on him to make sure he went -- they themselves weren't really interested in it.

By the time Neil was 13, he was fed up with it. So one Sunday, instead of going to church, he approached his parents, who were sitting in their kitchen, having coffee.

"Mom, Dad! I'm fed up with church. I don't believe a thing they say about god and I don't share many of their values. I'm a stranger there." blah, blah, blah. Neil went on for several minutes, all the time on the verge of tears, while his parents just watched and listened to him in silence.

Finally, his mother spoke, "Neil, your father and I are both atheists. But we knew if we just told you church wasn't for you, you'd wouldn't have believed us. So we sent you to church all these years so you could find out for yourself. You've done that, and you no longer have to go to church if you don't want to."

Who Really Creates Jobs?

2011-12-09T02:21:00.001-07:00

"When businesspeople take credit for creating jobs, it is like squirrels taking credit for creating evolution. In fact, it’s the other way around."

"It is unquestionably true that without entrepreneurs and investors, you can’t have a dynamic and growing capitalist economy. But it’s equally true that without consumers, you can’t have entrepreneurs and investors. And the more we have happy customers with lots of disposable income, the better our businesses will do."

"That’s why our current policies are so upside down. When the American middle class defends a tax system in which the lion’s share of benefits accrues to the richest, all in the name of job creation, all that happens is that the rich get richer."

"And that’s what has been happening in the U.S. for the last 30 years."

-- Nick Hanauer

(H/T: To Try a New Sword on a Chance Wayfarer)

Sexual Modesty and Adolescence

2011-12-09T00:07:00.001-07:00


(H/T: Life as a Reader)

A while back, I was sitting in a coffee shop when I noticed -- just beyond the window -- a girl of about 14 or 16 dressed in a highly sexualized manner. That is, her clothing was flamboyantly sexual even for an adolescent. Moverover, she was flirting with a boy, who appeared a bit older than her, and she very soon straddled his lap in order to grind against him. I couldn't recall when I had last seen in public such an overt display of sexuality -- outside of an erotic dance club.

Now, the girl was not physically attractive by American conventions. For one thing, she was much too fat to be fashionable (but see this post by Dr. Klein to get a refreshing perspective on our American notions of what's fashionable). For another thing, she had a rather plain face thickly coated with cosmetics. And, though her clothing was notable for being revealing, it did not seem that she had put much thought into the combination she'd chosen.

So, it wasn't long before I began to wonder whether the poor girl might be suffering from low self-esteem. That is, it seemed possible that she thought of herself as not having much to offer the boys besides sex.

I was thinking along those sad lines when I heard a male voice at the table behind me say, "God! Look at that slut!"

Of course, I don't know whether he was talking about the girl, or about someone else. I didn't ask. Yet, I assumed he was indeed talking about the girl -- and that made me feel old. Old and tired.

You see, the one attractive thing I had noticed about the girl in the few minutes I'd been watching her was that she seemed so full of life. Even if her dress and mannerisms were motivated by low self-esteem -- and I didn't know that for certain -- she appeared at the moment happy. She was, if only for a while, the queen of her universe. It wearied me to think anyone would simply dismiss her as a slut.

As the above "poster" suggests, we need to decide as a society which gender bears the primary responsibility for controlling sexual desires. Are women responsible for men's desires? Or are men responsible for their own desires?

Put differently, was the girl within her rights to dress in an overtly sexual manner?

Now, I'm one of those insufferable people who is of the opinion that men should take full responsibility for their own desires. I see no reason why men cannot. That is, I simply do not buy into the notion that men are so weak they cannot control their sexual desires without the help of women. And I suspect many readers will agree with me.

Where some of my readers might not agree with me is that I also happen to think women should be largely free to dress any damn way they please -- including as sexy as they please. I would only specify that they dress appropriate to whatever venue they're in. For example, I don't think it's appropriate for a fire fighter to dress in nothing but a corset and fishnet stockings (Unless she's responding to a call at my house, that is).

It seems to me that freedom and liberty should be maximized when doing so harms no one. And I just don't get the notion that a provocatively dressed woman endangers me. In fact, she's more likely to make my day.

For those and other reasons, I think that girl was more or less within her rights to dress as she did. I say "more or less" because I think that, at 14 or 16, her parents should have the final decision. But if she had been a little older, then I believe the final decision should be hers.

At the very least, she should not have been condemned as a slut. That's just sick. She was only being a kid.

It's no secret that kids -- both boys and girls -- experiment with what makes them sexually attractive. Many girls, for instance, go through a phase when they paint their faces in enough colors to give a gaudy sunrise an identify crisis. And most of us, during our adolescence, have worn clothing intended to sexually arouse the gender of our choice. Maybe the effect of that clothing wasn't always what we intended (much to our embarrassment), but that doesn't change the fact we wore it. Yet, how well does anyone learn about these things without experimentation? And when is a better time for experimentation than during adolescence?

Our society comes down too hard on adolescents while at the same time emulating them. We should tolerate their foibles and blunders more than we do while refusing to follow in their footsteps as much as we do. But it is a strange thing: We have a cult of youth going on at the same time we grow less and less tolerant as a society of youth. Nevertheless, it is a fact that adolescents quite often overstate things, very much including their sexuality. Understatement -- and perhaps sexual modesty itself -- seems to be an adult taste.

Men and Women?

2011-12-08T19:51:00.000-07:00

Can Insects be Happy?

2011-12-08T15:26:00.001-07:00

Like most sensible folk, I occasionally spend my afternoons wondering whether life forms other than my own can experience feelings of happiness. After all, I have only to look out my window to notice that four or five dogs are currently playing in the yards neighboring mine. And those dogs appear to be happy.

Beyond the simple appearance of happiness, it would not at all surprise me if those dogs now and then actually felt happy. That's because dogs and humans are related to each other through evolution and, consequently, we share some of the same neurochemistry. It's certainly not hard to imagine the possibility that similar -- or even identical -- neurochemical processes occur in both humans and dogs.

Besides, if, as some scientists now suspect, the same neurochemical processes can produced feelings of happiness in both humans and politicians, then how much more likely is it that the same neurochemical processes can produce feelings of happiness in both humans and dogs?

It seems, though, that thinking about happiness in dogs naturally leads one to wonder what is the simplest animal that can feel happy? Can birds feel happy? What about frogs and salamanders? Spiders? Insects? Worms?

To me, the cool thing is that it seems we are able -- at least in theory -- to somewhat answer those questions. In theory, we could establish the precise neurological processes that are associated with feelings of happiness in us. We could then check if those exact processes were ever present in other animals. And if we discovered that they sometimes were, then we would have a clue suggesting other animals might sometimes feel happiness.

Of course, even then, it would be extremely problematic to assert that many other animals do in fact feel happiness in much the same way we do. There are simply too many variables for any conclusive answer.

All the same: Some might find it an interesting question if only because answering it might shed some light on human happiness. And, as for myself, I would love out of simple curiosity to better understand the evolution of feelings of happiness.

Three Quotes of John W. Gardner

2011-12-08T08:44:00.000-07:00

"One of the reasons people stop learning is that they become less and less willing to risk failure."

"Political extremism involves two prime ingredients: an excessively simple diagnosis of the world's ills, and a conviction that there are identifiable villains back of it all."

"When one may pay out over two million dollars to presidential and Congressional campaigns, the U.S. government is virtually up for sale."

-- John W. Gardner

The Transient Self

2011-12-07T06:14:00.000-07:00

Who am I?

If you ask most of us who we are, we will answer you by naming one or another relationship. We are, for instance, a husband. Or a golfer. Or a businessman. But to say we are a husband, or a golfer, or a businessman, is each case to define our self in terms of the relationship we have to something.

In contrast, we tend not to define our self in terms of what is happening with us at any given moment. I do not think of myself as someone whose shoulder is itching. Or as someone who happens to be looking at a computer monitor. Or as someone who is wishing it was dawn. All of those are transient things -- too transient for me to think of them as "me".

Yet, being a husband, a golfer, or a businessman are also transient. That is, if you really think about it, you are not simply "a husband". You are only sometimes a husband. Just as your shoulder only sometimes itches. And it is only a convention of thought that you imagine yourself to always -- or continuously -- be a husband.

Four Quotes of W. Somerset Maugham

2011-12-07T03:54:00.000-07:00

"It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering, for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive."

"American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers."

"Often the best way to overcome a desire is to satisfy it."

"There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are."

-- W. Somerset Maugham

What is the Function of Emotions?

2011-12-06T21:33:00.000-07:00

About 30 years ago, when I was at university, I had a good friend who was a teaching assistant in computer science, and who was quite interested in artificial intelligence.

Since both of us were night owls, we used to sit up into the wee hours speculating about thinking computers. I recall once asking him what role emotions might play in a thinking computer. He answered that emotions were "primitive" thoughts. That is, they were the half made up, vague, and fuzzy precursors to clear thinking. And it followed that a thinking computer would not need to have emotions anymore than it would need to have partial or incomplete thoughts.

Thirty years ago, his answer didn't sound quite so outlandish as it might sound to you today. There was quite a bit about emotions that just was not known back then. And his notion that emotions were "primitive thoughts" was a respectable guess.

Yet, if today we know better than to think of emotions as primitive thoughts, then what are they? Or, in other words, what is their function?

Well, one way to approach that question is to first ask what people would be like if they had absolutely no emotions at all. As it happens, we actually know a little bit about what people are like when they lack any ability at all to feel emotions.

However, if you think people who cannot feel emotions function like the famous (and fictional) Mr. Spock, you would be wrong. Mr. Spock functioned quite well without any emotions. Yet, real people do not function well without emotions.

The reason we know what real people are like when they lack any ability to feel emotions is because -- now and then -- someone has an accident that damages his or her brain in such a way that s/he no longer has any emotions.

One of the few scientific studies of such people that I've heard of discovered they are dysfunctional in a surprising way. Surprising, because many of us tend to think of emotions as things that typically get in the way of making good decisions. Yet, if that is true -- if emotions do indeed get in the way of making good decisions -- then we would expect to find that people who have no emotions routinely make better decisions than the rest of us.

In fact, we find they have great difficulty making any decisions at all.

In general, decision making requires us to prioritize things. That is, in order to make a decision, we must decide what is -- and what isn't -- important to us. It has been found, however, that people who cannot feel emotions cannot easily prioritize things in such a way that they can decide between one option and another.

Suppose, for instance, that you yourself had no emotions. One day you are sitting in your office when you hear the news that the stock market is crashing. You realize that your life savings are in danger. But it's about noon. Do you call your stockbroker or go to lunch?

If you have no emotions, it will be very difficult for you to decide which course of action is most important to you.

So, if the scientists are right -- if the above is true -- then at least one of the functions of emotions is to help us prioritize courses of action. My friend and I didn't know about that 30 years ago when we would sit up late discussing artificial intelligence. Which makes me wonder what new things will be known about emotions in another 30 years?

When Barbarism Ceases to Seem Barbaric

2011-12-06T03:31:00.000-07:00

By now, almost everyone knows about the Afghan woman who not too long ago was raped and then -- as punishment for reporting the rape -- imprisoned for adultery. It seems people around the world have been raising hell about her treatment. Especially after it came out that she is under pressure from the Afghan authorities and others in that country to marry her rapist!

Yet, Amanda Marcotte -- who is an excellent commentator on many issues -- pointed out in an article published the other day that many people here in America are actively working to force raped women to bear the child of their rapist. In both instances, women are being treated worse than some criminals. Moreover, I think Marcotte is right to say that the problem in both American and Afghanistan is fundamentalism:

Our fundamentalists at home wouldn’t force you to marry your rapist, of course. No, they just want to force you to have children with him. Same song, different note: fundies around the world working hard to make sure that once a rapists chooses you to rape, he owns you forever.

Of course, some folks will insist there's a vast difference between being forced to bear your rapist's child and being pressured to marry your rapist. And I suppose on some level they have a point. Nevertheless, both of those practices are barbaric.

We may be more inclined to see the barbarism of being pressured to marry your rapist than to see the barbarism of being forced to bear his child, but that's only because one barbarism is more familiar to us. And when a barbaric practice is familiar, it ceases to seem barbaric.

(H/T: Ahab at Republic of Gilead)

Violence and Religion

2011-12-05T05:49:00.000-07:00

"If we want to get rid of violence we have to get rid of human beings. It has nothing to do with religion, it has to do with us."

--Tariq Ramadan

It seems to me that Ramadan is largely right, but with this provision: Religion is a great enabler. In that respect, it is like dynamite. Dynamite is also an enabler.

Sometimes dynamite is used for good, such as when it enables a farmer to efficiently remove a tree stump from his field. And sometimes dynamite is used for evil, such as when it enables a terrorist to efficiently blow up a school bus. In either case, dynamite enables more to be done than might otherwise be the case.

Religion is much the same: It is a great enabler that sometimes enables good, and sometimes enables evil. So, while I agree with Ramadan that the roots of violence are predominantly in human nature, rather than in religion, I believe that religion can -- under certain circumstances -- enable much greater violence than might otherwise be the case.

(H/T: Eruesso at A God-Sized Puzzle.)

Henry Miller on Growth

2011-12-05T04:12:00.000-07:00

All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without benefit of experience.

--Henry Miller

Thank You!

2011-12-05T03:59:00.003-07:00

If you're reading this, the chances are good you've come here from my former blog, Café Philos. If so, please accept my thanks! I hope this new blog will be every bit as good as the old one -- and even better. I look forward to your comments and emails!

Finally, I would greatly appreciate it if you updated your bookmarks and blog rolls with the address of this new blog as soon as possible. Please enjoy this blog and tell your friends and foes about it!

About the Name of this Blog

2011-12-05T03:22:00.001-07:00

"The Cosmic Dancer, declares Nietzsche, does not rest heavily in a single spot, but gaily, lightly, turns and leaps from one position to another. It is possible to speak from only one point at a time, but that does not invalidate the insights of the rest." - Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1968, p. 229.

While it might be true Nietzsche never wrote what Campbell attributes to him, Campbell’s “paraphrase” of Nietzsche’s views ranks as a sharp insight in itself.

We humans sometimes wish to construct systems of thought — worldviews — that are consistent throughout and encompass everything. Yet, such “views” are simply beyond us, and might even be logically impossible.

So, perhaps the best we can do is to become Cosmic Dancers. That is, folks who are capable of looking at things from many angles and perspectives, who are capable of dancing between views, but who do not settle dogmatically on any one point of view.