I know that the New York Times isn't particularly well-known as a publication of philosophical rigor, but this article in yesterday's issue just really irritated me with its pseudo-philosophical babble trying to tie together philosophical theories of mind, theological theories of soul, and evolutionary science in a neat little pop-science package:
The result is perhaps the strongest challenge yet to the worldview summed up by Descartes, the 17th-century philosopher who divided the creatures of the world between humanity and everything else. As biologists turn up evidence that animals can exhibit emotions and patterns of cognition once thought of as strictly human, Descartes's dictum, "I think, therefore I am," loses its force.
The big issue, of course, is that this completely misses Descartes' point.
Cogito ergo sum, I think therefore I am, is the same as: I think therefore I
exist. It simply means that if i were in a world where I couldn't believe a single thing that I perceived with any certainty (suppose I'm in
the Matrix), I could still have access to one bit of knowledge: by virtue of the fact that I can think
I must exist.
It's true enough that Descartes separated humans (as soul-owners) from other animals. But this particular quotation, apart from being sound bite–worthy, has nothing to do with Descartes' separation of humans from animals. Furthermore, the view that humans are unique has been universal in western thought since western thought has existed. I don't mean to sound pedantic, but the Times can surely do better than this fluff.
Labels: evolution, philosophy, religion, sham
So this sounds a little bit like a mock trial by ordeal to me. And people say history doesn't repeat itself!
The critique of Deltano's performance at Dominion High was conducted by the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States. It included criticism of his decision to demonstrate the ineffectiveness of condoms against HIV by dangling a cinderblock over a male student's genital area.
("Christian Sex-Ed Lesson Criticized"—via)
My favorite part of all this is that some sick self-righteous (I mean, "pious") bastard actually gets paid (from tax dollars) to threaten to crush teenagers' genitalia.
Labels: christianity, education, fud, history, religion, sham
There should have been some lame, effeminate and ineffectual
Transformers called the
Emoticons who kept getting beaten up by the
Autobots and the
Decepticons. They would have written and performed bad music. Also, they would have been misogynistic, perhaps because of their own gender confusion. If that had happened, I think there would be a church of Optimus Prime - just for his prescience: if he had known about the latest evil trends in underground rock years in advance, maybe he could bring world peace! Then again, Optimus Prime
is Jewish:
. . . and we all know what happened the last time people formed a church around a Jewish savior. I'll give you a hint: it wasn't world peace.
Labels: emoticons, family guy, joke, religion, transformers
This story about prison programs that are clearly (if not explicitly) designed to indoctrinate and convert inmates who - as the headline astutely points out - are a "captive audience" sickens me. If you want to know how Americans
should be reacting to this, just try this simple mental exercise. Read the article and make a few replacements:
- Replace "Christian" with "Muslim."
- Replace "Christianity" with "Islam."
- Replace "Christ" or "Jesus" with "Allah."
Now, tell me how the average American would react to such news. Imagine the outcry against the politicians who are lining up to support the current program if they supported the one in our mental exercise. That reaction (focus on it again) should be exactly the same as the reaction to the actual content of the article. Is it?
Labels: christianity, conservatism, islam, politics, religion, sham
Yesterday I was talking to an old friend - a thoughtful, intelligent, well-educated, successful, and religious man. I told him that I was concerned that my sister was growing up in an environment that was leading her to believe in a religious account of life and to reject evolution. Since, like my sister, he is also a Muslim, I asked him about his own stance on evolution. His response was interesting - if not disheartening. He said that it wasn't an issue he thought about much, but he accepted the general Islamic account that rejects evolution. We talked about it briefly, but it was clear that we weren't going to get anywhere. The interesting part, however, was his claim that those who argue for evolution are just as "fundamentalist" as those they claim to reject.
This claim underscores the very real danger of breaking every issue down into a dichotomy. It is similar to the "intelligent design" tactic of "teaching the controversy." And luckily, on this small point, I managed to convince my friend that passion does not equal fundamentalism. I tend to argue by example - and here is the example I drew: suppose two people are arguing. One of them believes that (1 + 1 = 10) whereas the other believes that (1 + 1 = 2). Even if we suppose that both of them are arguing just as loudly, the fact is that only one point of view is defensible. The sheer
volume of the right arguer does not make him a fundamentalist. And one can only hope that there is no "controversy" to teach in this case.
The underlying assumption of my analogy was that the defender of (1 + 1 = 2) had arrived at his conclusion by reason. So if circumstances had been different - suppose they had been talking about a
binary numeral system - he would have been perfectly willing to accept that in such a system (1 + 1) does indeed equal 10. In other words, when he is confronted with a
good reason to change his views, he will. The fundamentalist, on the other hand, is committed to his belief regardless of evidence. By a funny coincidence, I happened to read
Richard Dawkins' take on being called a fundamentalist because of his passionate defense of evolution today. (This is my second Dawkins link this week. Go figure.)
Labels: evolution, intelligent design, islam, religion
Scott Adams argues that atheism is becoming more acceptable to the American public, but I think he's misreading the significance of a few bestselling books.
I think the hidden benefit of Islamic extremism is that it freed the atheists from their closets. The old mindset in the United States was that almost any religion was good, and atheism was bad. But since 9/11, atheism has moved above Islam in the rankings, at least in the minds of Christians and Jews in the United States.
(Scott Adams - The Dilbert Blog: Atheists: The New Gays)
I think if there has been a trend, it has been one of polarization. The religious in this country (and
others) have become a much more concerted voice than they used to be. To a
much lesser extent, atheists, too, have been asserting themselves in public discourse. This isn't one of those cases - like general politics - where I can claim to be a centrist. "Faith" is ruining the modern world. Perhaps it has always existed, but
why should it always have to?
Labels: atheism, christianity, islam, judaism, politics, religion
Science cannot explain how the universe came to be, it can only endeavor to explain how the universe came to be the way it is from the way it was. Science can do something for us in this matter, however: it can tell us that the universe as we know it had a beginning. As far as physics goes, in fact, there is no coherent concept of "before" that beginning. Time itself began at the Big Bang. So using the faculty of mathematical reason, it can trace the course of history back to a time where there was a singularity (of course, that is not to say we have anywhere approaching a complete understanding of the universe back to that point). So, we are left with a single glaring instance for which science, whose mission it is to trace causation, cannot provide a cause: what caused the singularity? A subset of this question is: what caused the singularity to begin expanding (the Big Bang)?
Unfortunately, the only real conclusion this line of thought can reach is that there is either a supernatural uncaused cause (god[s]) that created the singularity or the singularity is itself a supernatural uncaused cause. So which is it? Are we all "gods" (or part of an omni-god: the uncaused existent we call "universe") or were we created by god(s)? Here, again, science might be able to suggest a solution. Our universe operates the way it does thanks to certain physical constants, which, if they were even modestly different than they are, could have resulted in a universe devoid of life as we know it. So if we assume that these constants had an equal probability of being any value, we can see that the odds would be infinitely against them being exactly what they are now. The "fine tuning" of these constants can been taken as a teleological explanation for the existence of a supernatural entity. That would make us, or something even better than us that can also exist as a result of the physical conditions of the universe, special. But, even though this may be true, it is an unsatisfying proof for the existence of a god.
In fact, if both a supernatural entity (or several, as we have not yet addressed the possibility of many gods) and the singularity exist outside of time, neither one can be assumed to require a cause in the temporal sense. So, if we are to list what we know, perhaps an explanation will manifest:
- While the universe was a singularity, there existed no time. [uncaused existent: universe]
- Time began when the singularity started to expand [uncaused existent: Big Bang] and from this point forward, scientific inquiry into normal causation became possible.
If there is no supernatural "first cause," then we neither have any real explanation for why the universe exists nor why the singularity began to expand 13.7 billion years ago. We would then need to posit two uncaused existents: the singularity itself and the Big Bang. If we posit the existence of a supernatural entity who caused both the singularity to exist and then caused it to expand, we need only posit one uncaused existent, namely that supernatural entity. But there is an important consideration that needs to be clarified, here:
If time did not begin until the Big Bang, then it does not make sense to call the supernatural entity the "cause" of a singularity existing outside of time since causation implies the existence of time. To this, I have two replies. First, we do not understand what it means to be outside of time: we simply cannot comprehend it. It may very well be the case that causation can make sense. This response is, however, clearly unsatisfying. My second response would be that perhaps it is the case that no singularity existed outside of time at all, but rather it was created at the moment it began to expand, i.e. the first moment of the expansion was not only the birth of time but also of the universe itself.
So what can we conclude about the existence of a supernatural entity? If we rely on the idea of simplicity, or Occam's Razor, we would decide that there are fewer hard-to-support assumptions in positing the existence of a single uncaused existent as opposed to two. But for two reasons, our conclusions would be unsatisfying again: (1) we have already accepted that the Big Bang and the existence of the singularity may have been coterminous, even though that term is hard to apply in a time-free context; so perhaps we are not really considering the position of two uncaused existents, but just one; (2) the principle of simplicity is merely a guide, it does not provide a proof.
Labels: cosmology, philosophy, physics, religion
The recent case of Abdul Rahman, its development, its denouement and its epilogue made me think about a couple things:
How nominally strict laws cause very real suffering
Many laws are "on the books" even though they are known to be effectively unenforceable. The Texas sodomy laws were a perfect example of this phenomenon until they were struck down (PDF) by the Supreme Court. These laws often remain in effect for generations, unnoticed until they are enacted by sheer dumb luck. In most countries with a Muslim majority where apostasy laws exist, the laws are often in existence to meet with what is perceived to be adherence to strict Islamic law. However, most people do not have direct experience with the application of these often-harsh laws, nor do they expect to: when everyone you know is a Muslim, how often does apostasy occur?
Regardless of their inherent unfairness, which should be taken for granted, if apostasy laws are just posturing, where does the problem arise? In most cases, like in Abdul Rahman's case, these laws are enacted only after third parties with ulterior motives seek their application. Abdul Rahman's family reported him to the authorities years after his conversion, only when he sought custody of his children. In effect, the apostasy laws created a "nuclear option" that any aggrieved party could turn against a convert with no fear of comparable retaliation.
Conversion and Apostasy
Judaism, Christianity and Islam treat conversion and apostasy quite differently. And while making broad generalizations like this might be somewhat rash, the demographic trends in these three religions corresponds neatly with each one's treatment of converts and apostates.
Despite practicing the oldest of these three religions (by far), Jews are exponentially outnumbered by Christians and Muslims. The main reason for this is the active avoidance of proselytism and the extreme ease of apostasy. Compounding the problem, it is very difficult to
convert to Judaism: the requirements are both intellectually rigorous, and (for men) circumcision as an adult is physically daunting.
Because of a six-century head start, Christianity is the most widely practiced of these three religions. However, its rate of growth is slower than Islam's. While it is easy to become a Christian, it is equally easy to leave Christianity. It
wasn't always so easy.
Even though its adherents are
not as populous as Christianity's, Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world. It is both easy to convert to Islam and difficult to leave.
Labels: apostasy, christianity, conversion, islam, judaism, religion
(1) The bait:
Suppose you find a watch in a field.
(2) The hook:
Surely, it is too complex to have been created by natural processes.
(3a) The sinker?
Therefore, you assume it must have been created by a watchmaker (or, perhaps, by more than one watchmaker).
(3b) And just in case you missed "the sinker:"
How then, when we see the infinitely more complex processes of the universe, can we not come to the conclusion that the universe, too, must have been designed by an intelligent being (or perhaps by more than one)? So the universe must have been created by one or more designers.
(-1) Out of the frying pan, over the fire, and back into the lake:
Let's try this again. Suppose you find a watch in a field. It is too complex to have been created by natural processes. Therefore, you assume it must have been created by an intelligent designer. Right? Ok, sure. So you look closely, and sure enough the watch has an inscription, which reads: "I was made by Afshin. He is intelligent. He is a designer. And in case you were wondering, he is not God." So then you see Afshin. He's
much more complex than the watch. So you think, "Gee, Afshin sure is complex. He must have been designed by an intelligent designer or two." So even though you don't see Afshin's intelligent designer(s), you're pretty sure about the designer(s)' existence.
(0) Do you see the problem, yet?
So you've reasoned your way into believing that the complex watch was designed by more-complex Afshin. Then you've reasoned your way into believing that the more-complex Afshin was designed by an even-more-complex designer. Now, why isn't that even-more-complex designer (whose complexity
surely implies an intelligent designer - or a whole team of them) an indication of even-more-than-even-more-complex designer(s)? In other words: for all
x, with complexity
C(x),
x must have been designed by a designer,
y, with a complexity
C(y) greater than
C(x), which leads to an infinite regress.
Labels: evolution, intelligent design, logic, philosophy, religion
Apparently there's
a trial in London pitting the "historians" Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh against the "novelist" Dan Brown. These "historians" allege that Dan Brown "stole" parts of the "story" from their
non-fiction "book"
Holy Blood, Holy Grail. Now, I might be "wrong" about this, but I always thought that if yours was a work of "history," then you didn't really have any claims over "historical fiction" that may be written based on your "work." You can't both claim that you have written a work of "non-fiction" and demand the protections of "fictional" writing's plagiarism rubric.
Labels: christianity, history, holy grail, religion
Tom Standage, who is the technology editor for the
Economist, has written a holiday
op-ed contribution in the
New York Times today. He writes that elitism in wine drinking has a long history, but that we should largely ignore the ratings and just drink what we enjoy. That's fine. And then we find this paragraph:
The close association between wine and sophistication in the ancient world contributed to its rejection by Muslims. With the rise of Islam in the seventh century, Mohammed's followers expressed their disdain for the previous ruling elites by replacing wheeled vehicles with camels, chairs and tables with cushions and by banning the consumption of wine. Being devout, they signaled, was more important than seeming sophisticated.
This is the first time I've heard this interpretation of Islam's prohibition on alcohol. As far as I can tell, it's entirely wrong. In fact, the injunction against alcohol is one of the best attested traditions in Islam and it can be directly
linked to the Qur'an. The rest of the paragraph is inaccurate, too. Wheeled carts had been replaced
long before the rise of Islam for
economic reasons, and not class warfare. I'm not sure where Mr. Standage came to have this interpretation, but as the technology editor of a widely respected journal, I would expect him to understand the overwhelming technological benefit of using the camel in the Arabian climate. I don't know the social history of early Islam well enough to comment on his claim about the use of cushions instead of tables and chairs, but again, I would suggest that he is probably wrong and the lack of furniture may have more to do with the dearth of wood in the Arabian peninsula than it does with rejection of the imperial elites.
Labels: alcohol, history, islam, religion, technology
Bruce Reed is positively gleeful as he points out President Bush's low approval rating.
He's not alone. In fact, the
New York Times has been hammering the point home all month. The trouble with this assessment, of course, is that it's just
plain wrong. Don't get me wrong, I think Gilroy goes a bit nuts in his piece, but he's right that all of these rhetorical losses mean very little in terms of political power.
Ladies, do you really dig UNIX?
I ran into
this shirt on ThinkGeek and it made me wonder: how many of the girls in these action shots actually have a computer running some UNIX or *nix OS? I'm guessing the
Google employee probably does. The
cute girl holding the
O'Reilly book probably does, too. The
girl with the stuffed Tux (the penguin) is also a likely candidate. But I'm skeptical of
some of the more
teenybopper-looking photos. Maybe those girls dig
eunuchs. Touché, double-entendre'd shirt, touché.
Rock alert:
I just received an email saying that
Lifetime will be playing in San Francisco in January! I definitely don't listen to the same music I listened to in 1998, but you can bet I'll be at that show. Tickets go
on sale on the 20th.
Lightning rods are the Devil's work.
There is an interesting
op-ed contribution in the
New York Times today about how some Americans have always valued "faith" over reason.
Seasonal Colors
Now that I'm skinning my page (this refers to an earlier incarnation of this blog) according to the terror alert level, I'm hoping that the Department of Homeland Security plans to change the terror alert level according to the seasons (that is, the
natural seasons, not the
electoral ones - another
link), because this yellow/orange color suits the fall, but winter is fast approaching and I wouldn't want my page to go out of style.
Labels: fud, music, politics, religion, technology, terrorism
Since I found out about it, I have been duly disgusted by the "
Conservative Punk" website, not because I don't like conservatives, though I tend to reject a lot of what they stand for, and not because I don't like punks, though I can't help but recoil in embarrassment at my own punk rock youth. Rather, the whole "wolf in sheep's clothing" conceit is a powerful deterrent, and here is that motif played out as fully as anywhere. I am not a big fan of contradictions, and "conservative punk" sounds more like a bad joke than a real movement. Anyway, there is a funny segment of that site endorsing a
boycott of Chinese goods:
While some websites will encourage you to boycott companies based on the perceived political bend of their CEO (IE Buyblue.org), we at Conservativepunk feel that punishing workers because the suits might have made donations to political causes we might not like is not an intelligent use of the power of our dollar. Instead, we believe that our consumer power can be put to the best use through the boycott of Chinese goods.
So, basically, it's wrong to punish workers because "the suits" might have politics we don't like, but
it's perfectly fine to punish the Chinese because
their "suits" have politics we don't like. Good call. What was it I was saying about contradictions, earlier?
The punks go on to point out several reasons why we should boycott Chinese goods. Some of them are indeed valid, but the very first one is:
China's labor practices encourage outsourcing and drive down American wages. Aren't you tired of manufacturing jobs leaving the US?
In effect, aren't you tired of allowing the Chinese to compete with us fairly? Wouldn't you prefer to tip the scale back in our favor? I guess they take the punk D.I.Y. ethic so seriously that they demand we "do it ourselves."
Heir Apparent apparently errs:
I'm a little mystified by
this report that Prince Charles plans to "explain the virtues of Islam" to President Bush. Apparently, he believes that the US has been too confrontational against Islam (as a religion, I take it). Believe me, I have plenty of objections to the Bush administration, and I have often complained about them here. But I do
not think Bush has misrepresented Islam as a religion, and I can think of many occasions where he has made it a point to stress that our enemy is
not Islam or Muslims. Frankly, I think too often our liberal (and honorable) tendency to try not to offend the sensibilities of others leads us to absurd situations where we are paralyzed to speak the truth. One group I particularly admire for taking a hard line against Islamist terrorism are the
Free Muslims. Perhaps if Prince Charles advocated a line more akin to the Free Muslims (which British Prime Minister Tony Blair is now beginning to do) than an unconditional appeal to multiculturalism and acceptance, then Britain might be a less hospitable place for
radical clerics who want to destroy the open governments that allow them to preach in the first place.
Sort of related to terrorism, I guess:
My friend Brandon asked to see the code for the terror alert function, so I thought others might be interested as well. Here it is:
function getTerrorAlert() 'Version 1.1
'*********************************************************************
'Do not modify the variables unless you know what you're doing. *
'(1) intTimeout is fair game, change it to whatever timeout length *
'you like, but don't exceed Server.ScriptTimeout. *
'(2) strErrorResponse is self-explanatory. *
' *
'Version 1.0: Got the alert *
'Version 1.1: Includes a timeout value. *
'Future versions aren't planned unless something is wrong with this. *
' *
'Afshin Darian - http://eighties-night.com/ *
' *
'AS USUAL, THIS IS UNDER A CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSE. CHECK MY SITE *
'FOR THE LINK TO THE MOST CURRENT VERSION OF THE LICENSE. *
'*********************************************************************
dim intTimeout : intTimeout = 10 'in seconds
dim strErrorResponse : strErrorResponse = "couldn't contact dhs"
'*********************************************************************
dim strTemp, xml, xmlhttp, timeStart, timeCurrent, LOADED, strURL
strTemp = ""
LOADED = 4 'This is the readyState value when xmlhttp has loaded
strURL = "http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/getAdvisoryCondition"
set xmlhttp = server.createObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP")
set xml = server.createObject("Microsoft.XMLDOM")
xml.async = false
call xmlhttp.open("GET", strURL, false)
call xmlhttp.send()
timeStart = now
do
timeCurrent = now
intTimeTaken = cint(datediff("s", timeStart, timeCurrent))
if (intTimeTaken > intTimeout) then
strTemp = strErrorResponse
call xmlhttp.abort()
exit do
end if
loop while xmlhttp.readyState <> LOADED
if (xmlhttp.readyState = LOADED) then
call xml.loadxml(xmlhttp.responsetext)
strTemp = xml.selectsinglenode("/THREAT_ADVISORY").getAttribute("CONDITION")
end if
set xmlhttp = nothing
set xml = nothing
getTerrorAlert = strTemp
end function
Labels: coding, conservatism, fud, islam, music, politics, religion, terrorism
Everybody agrees that intelligent technological life is a much greater leap, but it might be instructive to consider who is laying down bets on at least looking for it. Among the financial angels of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI, have been people like Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft; the late Barney Oliver, William Hewlett and David Packard, leaders of Hewlett-Packard; Gordon Moore, the founder of Intel; and the novelist Arthur C. Clarke, who invented the idea of the communications satellite.
The smart money isn't always right, but this is certainly smart money.
(nytimes.com...space/19essa.html)
Earlier in this article, the author mentions that an "Intelligent Design" film was shown at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. Let me say that again: the
Smithsonian Museum of Natural History! I'm glad the article ends on a promising note for those who are excited at the prospect of extraterrestrial intelligent life out there, but I wonder if evangelists (and
Catholics) are seeing this as a sign of "liberal bias" in the media. On a sidenote, it's too bad that Catholics can now be considered as part of the Conservative Crusade for Christ, I mean the Republican party.
Labels: christianity, extraterrestrial life, intelligent design, religion, sham
