A-Unicornist

Posted on Monday 20 January 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

There are dozens or hundreds of blogs on the web to reflect any interest, and there is only so much time in the day to keep up on any set of them. So my bookmarked list of sites to check each day or every few days is constantly in flux. There are bloggers whom I endorse 100% — their opinions reflect my own — but for that very reason I don’t necessarily need to keep on on them. I am not looking merely for validation; I am looking for sites that are not hostile to my philosophical stance and that at the same time provide thoughts and inputs I may not have already considered.

So, among the ‘atheist’ sites and bloggers I follow is one I’ve just come across in the past few days, called The A-Unicornist, whose title indicates my interest; ‘atheism’ is a bothersome word because it’s a negative, much like (a notion captured in some other site and blog titles) being a non-stamp collector. Not believing in ‘god’ is precisely the same as not believing in unicorns. Or faeries.

Anyway, my gateway into this guy’s site was this post: Eight totally non-polemic books you should read to be a better atheist (or to learn about atheism). Note that these are not books about atheism (Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris). I’ve read several of the titles on his list, have heard of several others, but have not heard of two or three. I’ve been browsing a book on basic philosophy recently, and I’m most notably interested in Lakoff title, because it addresses the obvious observations about the ancient Greek philosophers that most of their ideas have been demonstrated wrong (by science), as the description here notes.

…while the great philosophers often correctly identified important conundrums, they lacked the means to properly test their theses. The Cartesian person of dualistic natures, the Kantian autonomous person, the utilitarian and phenomenological persons, the Chomskyan syntactic person – are all non-existent. The mind is inherently embodied, abstractions are metaphorical constructs arising from the mind (contra Platonic realism), and much of reasoning is unconscious – rendering a priori introspection a futile model for understanding the self and reality.

The blogger, Mike D, points to Neil Degrasse Tyson’s list of 8 Books Every Intelligent Person Should Read.

Lots of good stuff on this blog; he’s been at it for five years or so, and seems very well-read (especially as an amateur; he’s a personal trainer by trade).

Posted in Atheism, Culture, Religion | Comments Off on A-Unicornist

Deciding What Is True

Posted on Monday 20 January 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

First [reposted from my Facebook page], a fascinating article in The Atlantic (via Andrew Sullivan) about how Rush Limbaugh decides what is true.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/01/how-rush-limbaugh-decides-what-is-true/283078/

Essentially, if someone is a conservative (the example is Clarence Thomas), Limbaugh *knows* they are innocent of any charges; if they are not (the example is Chris Christie), there’s no way to tell.

Perhaps this is a clue as to why ideologues on the one side vs rational people on the other seem to keep speaking past each other – they have such different methods of deciding what to believe. For ideologues (of any stripe), ideology trumps evidence and reason.

Second, via Jerry Coyne, a 2007 article about The religious recalcitrance of Americans. Coyne is quoting a commentator about that survey, whom I will in turn quote:

When asked what they would do if scientists were to disprove a particular religious belief, nearly two-thirds (64%) of people say they would continue to hold to what their religion teaches rather than accept the contrary scientific finding, according to the results of an October 2006 Time magazine poll.

This isn’t really a surprise, since many things religions have taught over the past millennia have been proven to be untrue, notably the six-day creation story. How much more evidence would anyone need for evolution? And yet millions reject it in favor of religious myths.

But both of these examples show that many people simply are not rational; they are not guided by evidence and reason, but by ideology, tradition, and faith. Which is sad; they are apparently unable to engage with the real world.

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Review of Dallas Buyers Clubs

Posted on Monday 20 January 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

[Reposted from Facebook]

OK, so we finally saw Dallas Buyers Club, now that two of its actors, Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto, are not only nominated for Oscars but are favored to win. We saw the preview for this film a number of times last Fall (when we were seeing Captain Phillips and 12 Years a Slave et al), but I think I was put off seeing it by the impression that the lead character was just a very unpleasant fellow.

Well, he is, an unpleasant fellow — a Texas cowboy who, presumably via unprotected sex with a variety of hookers and rodeo groupies, contracts HIV, back in 1986, and reacts furiously when questioned by medical staff about possible sex with other men. The arc of the film’s plot follows his independent (remarkably thorough) research into potential drugs that might keep him alive past his 30-day diagnosis, leading him to Mexico and other countries, and eventually his setting up of a ‘buyers club’ to provide medications to those who need them via a ‘membership’ scheme, and his gradual softening to his fellow victims, including a transsexual, Rayon (played by Jared Leto), who eventually becomes his business partner. (There were apparently other such ‘buyers clubs’ in other cities, to circumvent FDA regulations; especially San Francisco.)

Both McConaughey’s and Leto’s performances are amazing and excruciating, in the sense they are pushing limits of playing unpleasant characters and in the sense that both actors lost lots of weight; for their art, they convincingly look gaunt and unhealthy. Since Oscars often go to actors/actresses who push physical limits and/or who play unconventional characters, yes, I would agree that they are the matter-of-fact front-runners.

The social theme in the film is the evil of structured medical procedures and the FDA, which (at least at the time) held off approval of drugs like AZT until year-long double-blind studies could be done…while victims were dying within weeks. Ron Woodroof, McConaughey’s character, had a point, and though as history played out, he lost his lawsuit against the FDA, the FDA did in fact change its policies to fast-track certain drugs for those who were terminally ill and had no other options. And he lived 7 years, 6 more than his original diagnosis.

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I Visit You in Another Dream

Posted on Thursday 16 January 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Today’s favorite song, from Bruce Springsteen’s The Rising

“I break above the waves, I feel the sun upon my face.”

It’s a beautiful song, even though it’s about a terrorist suicide bomber… see here

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Vast Universe

Posted on Thursday 16 January 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

A Huffington Post by MIT physicist Max Tegmark — promoting his new book, in part — discusses the implications of recent physics that implies our universe is just one in a multiverse.

That our universe is approximately described by mathematics means that some but not all of its properties are mathematical, and is a venerable idea dating back to the ancient Greeks. That it is mathematical means that all of its properties are mathematical, i.e., that it has no properties at all except mathematical ones.

…it also implies that our reality is vastly larger than we thought, containing a diverse collection of universes obeying all mathematically possible laws of physics. An advanced computer program could in principle start generating an atlas of all such mathematically possible universes. The discovery of other solar systems has taught us that 8, the number of planets in ours, doesn’t tell us anything fundamental about reality, merely something about which particular solar system we inhabit — the number 8 is essentially part of our cosmic ZIP code. Similarly, this mathematical atlas tells us that if we one day discover the equations of quantum gravity and print them on a T-shirt, we should not hübristically view these equations as the “Theory of Everything,” but as information about our location in the mathematical atlas of the ultimate multiverse.

Posted in Philosophy, Science | Comments Off on Vast Universe

Homosexuality and Morality

Posted on Thursday 16 January 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Slate’s Nathaniel Frank explores the reasoning of the Oklahoma judge who, for now, struck down the state’s gay marriage ban. Last para:

What courts really mean — or should mean — in barring “moral disapproval” as the basis for laws is that arbitrary moral disapproval is improper, not all moral disapproval. The taboo against homosexuality is an arbitrary moral disapproval. Homosexuality harms no one. It’s not, it turns out, a morally bad thing at all. It’s just that lots of people and lots of big religions have subscribed to this taboo for so long that it became acceptable to simply deem gayness immoral. What people really mean when they call homosexuality immoral, for the most part, is either that they find it icky or that their religion forbids it—and for no discernable reason, or at least not one that has any capacity to help make life better or worse for people in today’s world, the true basis of morality. Indeed, despite huge recent advancements in tolerance of gay people, homosexuality stands virtually alone as the one thing Americans are comfortable calling “immoral” without ever having to explain why.

Key passage: “What people really mean when they call homosexuality immoral, for the most part, is either that they find it icky or that their religion forbids it — and for no discernible reason, or at least not one that has any capacity to help make life better or worse for people in today’s world, the true basis of morality.” Which is to say, what is morality, if not merely appeal to a rulebook of bronze-age sheepherders (whose ‘morality’ was apparently to maximize the size of the their tribe, thus proscripting any male sexual activity that would not lead to children — and approving of others we would not, like wedding one’s brother’s widow.)

For more along these lines, see the website of ‘gay moralist’ John Corvino, http://johncorvino.com/, and his numerous videos. I read his book a few months ago, but I’ve been negligent about blogging it, that and several other recent reads.

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Age of Ignorance

Posted on Tuesday 14 January 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Via Paul Fidalgo’s blog at CFI, an essay by Charles Simic, in The New York Review of Books, from about two years ago.

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/mar/20/age-of-ignorance/

In the past, if someone knew nothing and talked nonsense, no one paid any attention to him. No more. Now such people are courted and flattered by conservative politicians and ideologues as “Real Americans” defending their country against big government and educated liberal elites. The press interviews them and reports their opinions seriously without pointing out the imbecility of what they believe. The hucksters, who manipulate them for the powerful financial interests, know that they can be made to believe anything, because, to the ignorant and the bigoted, lies always sound better than truth:

  • Christians are persecuted in this country.
  • The government is coming to get your guns.
  • Obama is a Muslim.
  • Global Warming is a hoax.
  • The president is forcing open homosexuality on the military.
  • Schools push a left-wing agenda.
  • Social Security is an entitlement, no different from welfare.
  • Obama hates white people.
  • The life on earth is 10,000 years old and so is the universe.
  • The safety net contributes to poverty.
  • The government is taking money from you and giving it to sex-crazed college women to pay for their birth control.

One could easily list many more such commonplace delusions believed by Americans. They are kept in circulation by hundreds of right-wing political and religious media outlets whose function is to fabricate an alternate reality for their viewers and their listeners. “Stupidity is sometimes the greatest of historical forces,” Sidney Hook said once. No doubt. What we have in this country is the rebellion of dull minds against the intellect.

My bold emphasis.

Which in turn links to another article, by Garry Wills, about Rick Santorum and home schooling.

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/feb/29/rick-santorum-arrested-development/

Santorum seems to be thinking of colleges as resembling his own teaching experience. As a home schooler of his seven children, he had a monopoly on what they were taught at impressionable ages. He is thinking of himself when he says an educator “wants to remake you in his image.” Why else did he make it impossible for other minds, of elders or even of equals, to impinge on the minds of his children? (Perhaps he does not think of this as “remaking” the children’s minds but of “making” them, since they did not have anything to remake until he made them. In this case he is comparing himself not with a college teacher but with God.)

…

… I think it inevitable that questioning of childhood beliefs should take place at various stages of adolescence. This does not happen in junior year or senior year on campus. It is part of a long process called growing up.

At some point, late or early, children disengage themselves from the stories crafted for them. Their loss of belief in the tooth fairy is only slightly behind their loss of teeth. There is a slow motion race to disappear between Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. The Stork undergoes, for some, a lengthier demise—and “the birds and the bees” do not long outlast it. Others, I hope, soon disabuse themselves of belief in their parents’ infallibility. Certain religious myths are discarded without necessarily losing faith. That I do not believe in Noah’s Ark does not mean that I must stop believing in God—though certain home schooling parents force that connection on their kids.

Minds grow by questioning things, and adolescence is a great period of questions. Mark Twain and H. L. Mencken learned to cross-examine the Bible all on their own, without any help at all from college. An unquestioned faith is not faith but rote recitation. The opposite of such questioning is not deep belief but arrested development.

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Debate Consternation

Posted on Monday 13 January 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

There is some consternation in the science/atheist community that Bill Nye, the Science Guy, has agreed to debate Ken Ham, the Kentucky Creation Museum guy, about evolution vs. creationism. The attitude many others in the science community (names too numerous to mention) is that such debates only support the opposition, by making it seem there is a legitimate issue to debate, when in fact it’s no more legitimate to debate than whether the Earth is flat.

Greg Laden’s post on this matter makes a number of essential points, including several that relate to how current understanding of science supports not just evolution but other things we take for granted in contemporary technology.

The physics that help us understand evolutionary change over time is the same science that the United States military uses to develop and maintain our all-important Nuclear Navy. It is the same physics that underlies the development of an important part of our power grid, the nuclear power plants. It is the same physics that underlies the development of the not-so-pleasant nuclear arsenal. Before creationists complain to biologists that the science of nuclear physics is wrong, they should take their case to the Military and the nuclear power industry, because if nuclear physics is wrong, we are all in a great deal of trouble.

Similarly on geology and the search for petroleum, and comparative anatomy and the treatment of infectious diseases. (And somewhere in here is the irony of using the Internet to promote anti-science views when the technology of the Internet is, of course…) If you don’t “believe” [understand] evolution, why do you trust your doctor to treat you? –Of course, some don’t: the anti-vaxxers.

Posted in Culture, Evolution, Lunacy, Science | Comments Off on Debate Consternation

Atheism as Luxury?

Posted on Thursday 9 January 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Connor Wood, at Science on Religion:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/scienceonreligion/2014/01/does-atheism-arise-from-wealth/#more-1015

Because ritual and conformance are easy.

There’s good evidence that atheism and secularism are much more costly, in terms of sheer energy expenditure, than religious ways of organizing society.

Conclusion:

So is atheism a luxury of the wealthy? Yes. But this isn’t simply because the wealthy don’t need the comforts of a posited afterlife. It’s also because materially comfortable people have more energy to expend on negotiating their social worlds. Ritual and religion use intuition and demonstration; they prioritize efficiency and clarity of signals. Secularism uses logic and abstract reason; it’s comfortable with ambiguous social roles and signals. In part, this is because it can afford to be.

There’s also the idea that religion is easy, science is hard; I have a whole book on this theme I will read soon and blog upon. It’s easier to conform to your familial or social group, than to be independent and think for yourself.

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Why Religion Is Oppressive

Posted on Thursday 9 January 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

http://www.alternet.org/why-so-much-religion-oppressive

Subtitle: “The rules of the Abrahamic religions may have once helped societies survive and thrive. But in a modern context many are change-averse and oppressive.”

Another example of how I feel the morals of religions are based in the values of primitive societies, struggling to survive thousands of years ago, whose morals are not necessarily applicable in modern society. Can we not all grow up?

A close look at history suggests that moral and spiritual changes occur independent of religion, and then religion gives voice, organizational structure and moral authority to those changes—and often claims the credit.

Why do churches so often have to be forced to admit what has become obvious on the outside — that slavery is wrong, that no skin color or bloodline is spiritually superior, that love can grow between two people of any gender, that women and children are fully persons and not possessions of men, that the pleasure and pain of other species matter profoundly, or that bringing babies into the world with thoughtful intention helps families to flourish? [the linked post has several links to phrases in this paragraph]

Religion, by its very nature, is change-averse. Each religion explains and sanctifies a specific set of cultural agreements — a worldview that is a snapshot of human history. Most of today’s largest religions emerged during what is called the Axial Age — a time in which male superiority was assumed, the wheelbarrow had yet to be invented, and nobody knew that the other side of the planet existed. People at the time were doing the best they could to understand what was real and what was good, what caused what, and, especially, why there was so much suffering and death. They fused what they knew about the way things worked with their understanding of human power hierarchies, and they made gods in the image of men, both literally and psychologically. They turned rules into Rules.

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