{"id":2350,"date":"2015-05-01T12:47:28","date_gmt":"2015-05-01T19:47:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/?p=2350"},"modified":"2020-10-18T11:53:34","modified_gmt":"2020-10-18T18:53:34","slug":"a-months-worth-of-links-and-comments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2015\/05\/01\/a-months-worth-of-links-and-comments\/","title":{"rendered":"A Month’s Worth of Links and Comments"},"content":{"rendered":"

New York Times, March 20: In the Age of Information, Specializing to Survive<\/a><\/p>\n

The Internet makes it easy to learn almost anything. And yet<\/p>\n

\nAnd yet, even as the highbrow holy grail \u2014 the acquisition of complete knowledge \u2014 seems tantalizingly close, almost nobody speaks about the rebirth of the Renaissance man or woman. The genius label may be applied with reckless abandon, even to chefs, basketball players and hair stylists, but the true polymaths such as Leonardo da Vinci and Benjamin Franklin seem like mythic figures of a bygone age.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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NY Times Magazine, March 29: Debunking the Myth of the Job-Stealing Immigrant<\/a><\/p>\n

\nImmigrants don\u2019t just increase the supply of labor, though; they simultaneously increase demand for it, using the wages they earn to rent apartments, eat food, get haircuts, buy cellphones. That means there are more jobs building apartments, selling food, giving haircuts and dispatching the trucks that move those phones. Immigrants increase the size of the overall population, which means they increase the size of the economy. Logically, if immigrants were \u201cstealing\u201d jobs, so would every young person leaving school and entering the job market; countries should become poorer as they get larger. In reality, of course, the opposite happens.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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NY Times Op-Ed, T.M. Luhrmann: Faith vs. Facts<\/a><\/p>\n

\nMOST of us find it mind-boggling that some people seem willing to ignore the facts \u2014 on climate change, on vaccines, on health care \u2014 if the facts conflict with their sense of what someone like them believes. \u201cBut those are the facts,\u201d you want to say. \u201cIt seems weird to deny them.\u201d<\/p>\n

And yet a broad group of scholars is beginning to demonstrate that religious belief and factual belief are indeed different kinds of mental creatures. People process evidence differently when they think with a factual mind-set rather than with a religious mind-set. Even what they count as evidence is different. And they are motivated differently, based on what they conclude. On what grounds do scholars make such claims?\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This then, would be a problem with religion.<\/p>\n

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Jerry Coyne, Two readers testify that evolution helped them give up religion<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s very rare for anyone to leave religion on the basis of being exposed to facts religion denies, but it does happen. The two examples here also illustrate how some religions — in these cases, Jehovah’s Witnesses — simply lie about the evidence for, say, evolution…<\/p>\n

\nI found out (in part thanks to your book) that the people who lead the religion, whom I had trusted implicitly, had been shockingly dishonest about the evidence surrounding evolution. I was absolutely appalled at the quotes taken out of context, logical fallacies (I had to learn what a logical fallacy was), and thoroughly biased presentation of the subject. None of this was apparent to me when I was a believer because of the information control that the religion imposes (including not trusting \u2018worldly\u2019 sources of information, and completely shunning apostates \u2013 refusing to even look at anything they have to say).\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

… and how they shun you once you wake up and leave. (Scientology, notoriously, does this too.)<\/p>\n

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Wall Street Journal, Daniel Dennett: Why the Future of Religion Is Bleak<\/a><\/p>\n

This dovetails with the previous item, that religions survive by controling what their adherents know. But this is getting more difficult in the modern internet world. Dennett notes the growing proportion of “Nones” in America.<\/p>\n

\nIf this trend continues, religion largely will evaporate, at least in the West. Pockets of intense religious activity may continue, made up of people who will be more sharply differentiated from most of society in attitudes and customs, a likely source of growing tension and conflict.<\/p>\n

Could anything turn this decline around? Yes, unfortunately. A global plague, a world war fought over water or oil, the collapse of the Internet (and thereby almost all electronic communication) or some as-yet unimagined catastrophe could throw the remaining population into misery and fear, the soil in which religion flourishes best.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Dennett goes on,<\/p>\n

\nWith hardly any significant exceptions, religion recedes whenever human security and well-being rises, a fact that has recently been shown in numerous studies, but was suspected by John Calvin in the 16th century.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And concludes, <\/p>\n

\nIf we are lucky\u2014if human health and security continue to rise and spread around the globe\u2014churches might evolve into humanist communities and social clubs, dedicated to good works, with distinctive ceremonies and disappearing doctrine, except for a scattering of reclusive sects marked by something like institutional paranoia.<\/p>\n

If we are unlucky and calamity strikes, our anxiety and misery will provide plenty of fuel for revivals and inventions of religions we have happily learned to live without.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Business Insider cheerfully shows 5 ways the world could really end<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Resources:
\nThe history of the world in one chart<\/a> (I have a copy of this)
\nRelated: The Histomap of Evolution<\/a><\/p>\n

And on the topic of the supposed abnormality of homosexuality, this book: Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity<\/a>. 450 species!<\/p>\n

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Salon: The GOP\u2019s demonic alliance: How the religious right & big business are dumbing down America<\/a><\/p>\n

Anti-intellectualism in America goes way back.<\/p>\n

\nToday, the Republican party still supports these basic social and economic ideals. But the social issues are what truly gain votes, and they inevitably result in a hostility towards intellectualism and science. Many of Republicans seemingly vote against their economic self-interest in support of the conservative social values, which results in a vicious cycle of ignorance and poverty. Social conservative views, whether it be abortion or homosexuality, all sprout from the Christian faith, and the Christian faith inevitably clashes with modernity and science.<\/p>\n

We see it around the country, with schools teaching creationism and politicians denying man-made climate change. In states like Texas, Louisiana, and Tennessee, public school teachers are allowed to teach \u201calternatives\u201d to evolution<\/a>, while in the states Florida, Indiana, Arizona, Ohio, Washington, and elsewhere, taxpayer money goes to funding private creationist schools. Evolution is quite incompatible with biblical stories, and the lack of scientific education in many states shows itself in polls \u2013 according to Gallup<\/a>, 42 percent of Americans believe that God created humans in the present form.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Specifics about Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker.<\/p>\n

\nAnti-intellectualism is an American tradition, and these new contenders denying scientific facts and calling Harvard a communist institution are simply embracing a populace that individuals like Billy Sunday and Joseph McCarthy once embraced. The alliance of religion and big business has fully incorporated America\u2019s unfortunate anti-intellectualist culture, which has resulted in millions of people voting against their interest because of their own ignorant hostility towards anything that could be deemed elitist. It is a cycle of ignorance and poverty, and it is exactly what the real elites, like billionaire oil men, aim for.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And a quote from Isaac Asimov.<\/p>\n

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The latest from Jeffrey Tayler, Bill Maher, American hero: Laughing at religion is exactly what the world needs<\/a>, also quotes Isaac Asimov (who wrote two big books about the Bible).<\/p>\n

\n\u201cProperly read,\u201d declared the science-fiction author and biochemistry professor Isaac Asimov, \u201cthe Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.\u201d He was right. The same may be said of the Quran, the holy book of Islam, which the late, dearly missed Christopher Hitchens called \u201cnot much more than a rather obvious and ill-arranged set of plagiarisms, helping itself from earlier books and traditions as occasion appeared to require.\u201d\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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I’ll paste this and see if it works:<\/p>\n

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