All posts by j'bug

I teach philosophy and build web pages.

it’s about human rights! it’s about being a good person!

(I put this on Tumblr.com so I thought I would also put it here)

When we talk about Feminism it is not about domination, sex, or being in charge, it is about creating the situation where the rights of women as stated in the constitution are distributed as they are for men as stated in the constitution.

It’s easy to see why some men get enraged by any talk of feminism. In their minds (mistakenly) they are losing property. Under a feminist rubric, they would no longer get to treat women either as property, or as individuals with rights that are subservient to theirs. They would not be able to think of owning their women any more, or possessing their women, or as having a right to do whatever they want with or to their women. If women are individuals with their own rights, equal under the law then instinctual dominating male behavior would be marked as wrong, their violence as a violation, and their property as stolen, misused, and misappropriated.

When we talk about Gay Rights, it is not about being able to sue employers who don’t hire you, but about not being fired just for being gay. It is about having the same civil rights as those who generally conform to the CIS norm. Gay marriage is not about demeaning hetero marriage, (heretos do enough of that themselves,) but about having the same civil rights as a hetero couple: the right to raise children, visit their families in hospitals, the right to inherit from their spouse without any special codicil to their will, family health care, and dozens of other rights married heterosexual couples enjoy as citizens of this great nation. It is the right not to be imprisoned, harassed, mistreated, or relegated to second-class citizenship just because of the person they love.

For the uninformed among you: genetic and phenotypical evidence is in! Both genetic and formative processes are partially responsible for a person being gay or lesbian. On top of that, training and experience is partially responsible. Is this a fault of people or just a normal variation?

The numbers are in. We have conclusive evidence that gay and lesbian people have been around as long as we have been collecting history. It is a normal variation.

It would be easier to live in a society where all people are respected for being people, not for some secondary trait like maleness or femaleness, gay or straight, tall or short. However we should make a distinction between good and evil, right and wrong, There are good and right ways to treat people, and evil and wrong ways. Start with the universally accepted Golden rule. Treat others as you would be treated and the world will be a better place. Be one of those who adds to the goodness instead of taking it away.

#gay #lesbian #heterosexual #human rights #civil rights #normal #abnormal #gamergate #being polite #golden rule #decency #kindness #feminism

the creative power of words

We have almost but not quite forgotten that words themselves have a creative power reflective of their creator. This is the fascination we have with the best literature, our dearest loved ones, the humor of the incautious or well-crafted turn of phrase, and it is what we depend upon implicitly when we pore over the best books. The intuitive leaps made possible by an intelligence like our own when we encounter another intelligence like or unlike our own that stimulates us to make connections building knowledge in ways we didn’t imagine.…

We attribute happily a spiritual being to language that we can hardly admit as Westerners so enamored with a closed and perfected story; whether it is logic, mathematics, or theology we favor tying all the loose ends and making a consistent dead lump of a thing. We grind the soul of the poet and the artist for their extravagance and treat their work as a receptacle for our dusty commentary when all the while our brains feed on the creative heat we take from their genius. And yet their work is not diminished by our critique nor exhausted by the gift it gives. The unimaginative soul closes the book with never a glance back while the virus implanted by the words courses through the mind bringing it to a fever. Those who have woken to the power of words greedily seek out their effect and find even in the most obscure and disabused notions a very real transformation. The birth of an idea is the making of a universe. Man truly does not live by bread alone.

Language is in this sense a life of its own that partners with its auditors, listening to very sound of the universe as it expands, the keening of the earth as it bears the weight of its inhabitants.

a couple issues

My life is marked by persistent phase shifts.

One day, I can write, the next I can not, then at another time I can read, or not. I have many books left unfinished because I couldn’t tolerate the work required to finish them, they offended my sense of truth, or research, or said nothing new, or I was just too tired to sustain or feign interest. I cannot just will to do what I want without a price being exacted from me. And, I don’t want to leave behind the traces of, and carefully configured annunciated truths that have sustained me since before I can remember, you know, the innate sensibilities that I have always relied on. I know that some of them are not worth retaining. They need an overhaul, but I can only sustain so much change at one time. But then I can’t will to change some of this either without breaking much that I value.

There is a certain gracefulness in life bought with patience, paid by me or others, God, or the universe. I can’t live well without that, and I can’t trace any freedom to its source. That’s frustrating. The quandary I am in forces a certain disappointment I can’t overcome merely by willing its resolution, or striking out in a promising direction. Complicating that are the promises I have made to people I respect in full expectation of fulfilling those promises, yet I am subject to a world where I cannot will to accomplish those same promises by willing their completion.

There is some guidance brought by beauty, by truth, by the Spirit of God, by awe at the majesty of the created universe. Otherwise I’m left alone, and not willing to let others take over the job of getting me in gear for whatever purposes they think I am suitable for. I become frustrated when I have to fend off either the ghosts of my own expectations of myself or the real expectations of myself or others. I do not wish for others to experience with me the disappointment I have in my own predicament.

I have moments of fruitful productivity, but like moments of my genius, they are too few and far between. Like glimpses of heaven we all have in a dream or a vision of perfection, they ruin the hope of actually getting there from here. They perform the task of creating emptiness where a fog resided before; a tension and anxiety exist now where ignorance and the soporific laziness of summer once was. Revelation is a curse in that it promises then takes away, sucking me into the future, a phase change from a simple childhood to a complex and effortful project/process/praxis.

I would not trade what I now see for the ignorance of my predecessor self, and since I am a different person than what I was, I cannot return the greater galaxy of my thoughts into the smaller structure of its progenitor’s container. I therefore plod forward, hoping that my stupid mistakes (inevitable) do not stop the onrush of determinate action, action guided by, in cooperation with, all the realities I am associated with. I take some comfort in the Analects of Kongzi (Confucius) Book 2, Ch 4:

  1. The Master Said, ‘At fifteen, I had my mind bent on learning.
  2. ‘At thirty, I stood firm.
  3. ‘At forty, I had no doubts.
  4. ‘At fifty, I knew the decrees of Heaven.
  5. ‘At sixty, my ear was an obedient organ for the reception of truth.
  6. ‘At seventy, I could follow what my heart desired, without transgressing what was right.’

and the oft-(mis)quoted aphorism of Augustine, “Love God and do what you please.”

Some ideas are not yet ready to expose themselves.

In a discussion with my friend Mark McLean, we talked about the effect of reading on one’s thoughts, ideas, the creation of new possibilities where none existed before. We are both SF nerds with a voracious appetite for interesting new worlds and worlds that are different enough from our own to make us challenge and reconsider the world we live in. I like talking with Mark because he provides an interesting mix of experience and insight. He helps me to gel some nascent ideas.

One idea I had last night was that some ideas are so entrenched in human rationality that creating new scenarios for common ways of thinking is exceptionally difficult. Take the problem of the soul, or consciousness. Still, after thousands of years of mucking around with early science and religion, we have only begun to unearth anything like a useful metaphor for talking about this. For age upon age, we treat the problem like a flat file filled with information that is supposed to solve the riddle. But we are always surprised when the data is incomplete, either by bad theory, or bad science and religion. Since we only unhappily tolerate the tension of unresolved issues, and with our ordinary impulse to cap off a theory, it is difficult to keep exploring the issues. It’s almost like cutting oneself with the resulting shame and self loathing.

Theories are often multidimensional, and we like to reduce those theories to a single dimension because a single dimension can be encapsulated in logic. I am not the opponent of logic, but since Gödel, we must leave an object like that incomplete if we are to admit that it is larger than our system can comprehend. The systems are incomplete by nature of their proposers, either fixed in language or experience. Promoting the ethos of anxiety where resolution is not at hand seems like the promise of unhappiness to those who like a neat little package. Which of us can tolerate for long the promise of unhappiness in such a way?

Why is new knowledge so hard? Because it costs so much personally and socially, we spend most of our time figuring out whether we can pay the price or not, or whether the possible gain is worth launching out without the effort spent to know whether we can pay, living desperate lives at the edge of survival. But the trail of knowledge is strewn with the dead bodies of those whose dying breaths announced the next step, the minimalist clue to advance the discussion, a treasure map scrawled in their own blood. Not many of us can afford to live like that. Not many of us have the chutzpah to make that decision. I am one who mistrusts the engine of my rationality enough to hold back from that sacrifice. Anyway, I’m not sure it is required of me.

I will plod along.

a conversation with ken smith

This began with a birthday greeting Ken gave me on Facebook Monday, 5/5/14. I discovered that he was no longer teaching at Trinity Bible College, but that his vigorous mind was still active. I obtained his permission to include a few of his remarks. The flavor of these remarks is polemical, worrying the glib orthodoxies of the Scientific community and the Young Earth Creationist (YEC) community. I hope you enjoy these remarks as much as I do.

First I’ll post the thread from mucholderthen I found on Tumblr.com, then Ken’s remarks. My part of the conversation seems more like minimal encouragers than substantive so I will not expand on them unnecessarily.

tumblr_n4ib98p3sl1rhb9f5o1_r1_1280

mucholderthen:

NEW POLL shows that a Surprising Number of Americans Distrust Science
For a change, evolution squeaked by at 55% [including 24% at “sort of confident”]
CBS News

[Many] Americans still question some of the basic concepts of modern science, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll with a representative sample of 1,012 U.S. adults age 18 or older.

Overall, Americans show more skepticism than confidence in the scientific concept that a Big Bang created the universe 13.8 billion years ago.
There was also considerable doubt about the science behind global warming and the age of the Earth.
“It is enormously distressing that science, which is our most powerful means for gaining insight into the world, insight into truth, is so mistrusted by so many people,” Brian Greene, a professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia University, told CBS News.

Greene, who co-founded the World Science Festival and World Science U. to help educate and excite the public about science, says understanding scientific ideas is not just academic — it’s essential to a vital democracy. “Issues like climate change or nanoscience or genetically modified foods — I mean all of these issues, and a thousand others, are scientific at their core,” he said.

We chatted for a bit after that. Ken sent an article he wrote to Jim Bradford of the Assemblies of God (AG) about the problems posed by the YEC in the AG. In the article he said that he had seen the Nye/Ham debate and wasn’t impressed with either Nye or Ham. Nothing new there. I agreed with Smith, but suggested that Nye’s rational was not to argue for a proof from science that Ham was wrong, but rather to treat the debate as a conversation. So the substantive issues that the scientific community holds against the YECs were not exposed in a way that would make a slam dunk case against YEC. In response to my remarks, Ken sent the following rejoinder to the science poll from mucholderthen.

From Ken Smith:

I took a look at the confidence in science poll. Thanks for the link. My take on it might be different from yours. I hope you don’t mind a lengthy explanation. Having not been able to stand in front of a class and pontificate for a year or so, I will do so right here.

In one sense our problem with science in America (and maybe the West generally) is far far worse than is understood by the people who devised and conducted the poll and those who tweeted out laments concerning its results. That is because the nature of the poll itself—including every single question, measures nothing more than adherence to the pronouncements of authorities who claim to represent science, and has no real reference to what science actually is, which is a method and not a result. One way of saying it is that the poll reflects a naively fundamentalist conception of science that is not markedly different from the fundamentalist conception of religion. If you check the right boxes, say the right confessions, you’re considered saved.

Maybe this sounds radical but in fact it’s not radical at all. An elementary working understanding of philosophy (which is rare nowadays and alarmingly rare among people who actually work in scientific fields) would reveal deep problems with every single statement in the poll.

Take the first one, for example, “smoking causes cancer.” For anyone adequately familiar with Hume’s inquiry about cause and effect relationship, red flags go up immediately. If the statement read “there is a high correlation between smoking and various forms of cancer” or even “smoking creates physical conditions that are highly conducive to the initiation and growth of cancer” then the poller would be on safer ground. But the three word slogan “smoking causes cancer” is, I believe, quite misleading and unscientific. It may be a socially useful statement but that is not the same as being scientific.

The first five statements all have serious problems with causality and/or ontology and require clarification to be meaningful in any true scientific sense. The one about vaccines is too overbroad to be meaningful. The first red one, the one about rising temperatures, is just plain misleading. Before one can possibly answer it, one must know what time period one is talking about when one says “the average temperature of the world is rising.” If the question were delimited to, say, 1850 to 2014, the empirically accurate answer would be clearly yes, the global temperature did rise (leaving aside, for now, the vital question of whether the concept of “average global temperature” is a scientifically meaningful statement. If delimited to, say, 1930 to 2000, the empirically accurate question would be “not sure.” If one delimited the question to 1998 to 2014, the empirically true answer would be clearly, “no, it is not rising.” If one delimits the question to a period in the future, (say, 2014 to 2050, or even 2000 to 2100, one is then dealing in speculation informed by certain assumptions that may or may not be correct. One who either does not understand that this is speculation, or fails to inform his audience that this is speculation, is simply not dealing scientifically.

So the answer to the question depends first on the definition of the terms, and then one can move to the empirical evidence, which is sometimes fairly plain, sometimes quite complex, and sometimes contradictory. When people claim that the average global temperature “is” rising, but do not explain their terms, they are either deceiving themselves or trying to deceive other people.

This is not really hard to understand. Or it would not be, if people were only educated to think scientifically as opposed to trained to respond in a certain way to slogans that are backed by the force of allegedly scientific cultural authority. The trouble with Bill Nye and unfortunately with most science educators is I think that they lack the background to really go much beyond the level of parroting authorities that happen to be established at one particular time period (and they often they parrot the views established at a time period that has already slipped into the past).

When we get to the last three questions, I have no particular problem with the plausibility of any of the statements. I’m not the slightest bit phased by the reality of deep time or deep space, but the preciseness of these numbers seems to convey a sense of arrogance. But they are the “right” answers and that is apparently enough for the people who made this poll and who take it as a measure of whether people possess adequate respect for [allegedly] scientific authority. If I were examining a person for scientific literacy, I would want them to not tell me the “right” answer, but explain some of the evidence that has led to the understanding that this is, given the current state of knowledge, the most plausible answer available.

The last one, about the big bang, is deeply problematic. I have no particular problem with the big bang theory, and it may well be true as described, but I don’t think it deserves the slavish reverence that it usually gets. There are plenty of empirically solid thinkers (I prefer to use “empirically solid thinkers” instead of “scientists”) who reject it and prefer the “older” steady state theory that Thomas Gold advocated. That doesn’t mean they reject stellar expansion rates, etc., but that they interpret their significance in different ways. In relation to faith, I think it’s a mistake to marry theology with a particular theory like this, although I do think it’s fine for theology and such theories to go out on a casual date once in awhile. When I hear William Lane Craig (for example) rant on about how the big bang proves the creator of the Bible, I think “I like you, Will, I like you, but hey, you are taking this way too literally.”

Ultimately the problem with philosophy, and why it is dangerous, is that by its nature it simply can’t help but undercut the dominant assumptions of any given age or social space that it confronts. And philosophy that does not confront does not to me seem to be real philosophy. I entirely understand that there are many “scientific” circles in which a person who practices any sort of rigorous philosophical thinking–and does so out loud–will be unable to function easily within that circle. Much the same is true in religious circles.

I’m probably as disgusted as you are by the awful science and theology and philosophy that supports the YEC movement. So my criticisms aren’t the same ones that somebody like Ken Ham would launch. At the same time, I have a bit of sympathy for my YEC friends who get ragged on so much by people whose actual understandings are every bit as primitive as those of the YEC’ers themselves.

I take Ken’s point seriously. His critique of the poll is trenchant. His critique of YEC, not included here is also a well considered characterization along parallel lines with my critique. Though I have some acquaintance with the histories of the YEC position, Ken’s is more well developed. My critiques are with the poor rational skills displayed by the YECs. The Ark is too small, the flood’s probably local, literalism is unsupportable in Genesis 1-11 if the Scripture is to be considered true: logical contradictions in a literal interpretation come to the surface, etc. But Ken’s point about the poll is deeper than any supposed support of science or religion. He reminds me of the necessity for critique of the presuppositions of polls like that. His philosophical critique cuts to the issue. The poll assumes certain prejudices.

One prejudice I would like to needle a bit is the one about global warming. I think Ken made a good point with the temperature averages over time, but only obliquely. He attacks the fuzzy nature of the declaration, not the question about whether global warning is a danger.

First, it is obvious that humans are damaging the ecosystem. But to say on that account as the poll does, that “The average temperature of the world is rising, mostly because of man made heat-trapping greenhouse gasses,” goes beyond the evidence we have. Those who are convinced that humans are primarily responsible for this effect do not happily admit evidence of naturally-occurring cyclical temperature shifts. But to even suggest that temperature rising can also be natural, and that some of the rising temperature today is natural, has become the language of science deniers. Rubbish! We know we are damaging the environment and we also know that private citizens, small business, corporations, and government are all complicit in this. But to say that humans are either solely or mostly responsible for the current global rise in temperature (acknowledging Ken Smith’s critique) is irresponsible rhetorical politically correct crap. It is said in an alarmist way to generate anger against our bad behavior and get us to change. Should we change? Of course! Will we? Maybe not in time to save the planet for future generations. But if we kill ourselves off, the planet will perhaps restore itself. It might not either, but that is too fatalistic for my temper. I’m doing my part to comply with the 4 Rs and ride my bicycle, replace incandescent lights with LEDs and CFLs, maintain and drive my car as long as I can drive, etc.

More from Ken Smith:

I have been reading articles about what seems to be another change in scientific orthodoxy, as the fixation on saturated fats as causes of heart attacks is very rapidly going by the way side. But for decades informed people accepted the direct connection as an indisputable fact, and anyone who challenged the notion was regarded as a crank or a tool.

Of course I am well aware that promoting the idea of challenging orthodoxies has its own pitfalls, because it’s quite easy to challenge orthodoxies from an ignorant, knee-jerk sort of approach that doesn’t involve any real digging or critical thought. This has always bothered me about YEC’ers—sometimes they will make a valid criticism of the dominant paradigm, but it’s almost always opportunitist criticism, and not criticism that is tied to a real rational framework that could itself hold up against basic criticism. They are like a stopped clock that is bound to be right for a short time twice a day. On the other hand, sometimes their opponents come across as constantly adjusting their clocks but doing so in secret, so that nobody notices that their clocks aren’t really running quite as well as they like to claim.

This is probably enough fun for now. I need to go mow the lawn . . . I’m back and editing. I need to work. Bye.

all the reading i want to do

For a number of years, in the rush of the tides of my life, I stumbled across stories I would like to read but couldn’t imagine taking time for them at the moment.

So now I have this collection and in an effort to actually read these pieces, I place them here on my blog, earliest to latest. Unfortunately, some articles have disappeared. Here are the remainders. Some of these I have read in full, but left them because they were so good. I left them so I would read them again. So, for your perusal, my unread articles.

The folly of Scientism

How to fund an American Police State

Computing with Soup

A World Without People

TED Talk: Questions No One Knows the Answer To

Privatizing Marriage is Unjust To Children

Life Without Sex: The Third Phase of the Asexuality Movement

Grantland: Gambling and the Mob in Hot Springs AR

Peter Singer and Tyler Cowe transcript

What’s happened to A New Kind of Science?

Does moral theory create extremism?

The Satan of the Gaps (Pt. 1)

Dusting Off GOD

How Collecting Opium Antiques Turned Me Into an Opium Addict

The most interesting company in tech: Valve

TEN VIRTUES FOR THE MODERN AGE

Does Brain Science Disprove Freedom?

Head Like an Orange

ENCAPSULATED UNIVERSES

Edge and the Art Collector

Jesus healed using cannabis, study shows

Why It’s Good To Be Wrong

An Unwanted Guest

The Snowden files: why the British public should be worried about GCHQ

How traffic actually works

I tooke a bodkine

Embracing the void

What No One Tells You About Losing Lots of Weight (not for the faint of heart)

Famous Resolution Lists: Jonathan Swift, Susan Sontag, Marilyn Monroe, Woody Guthrie

Healthcare.gov and the Gulf Between Planning and Reality

What is reality?

Teleology Rises from the Grave

Life is a Braid in Spacetime

8 pronunciation errors that made the English language what it is today

The Volcano That Rewrote History

OK, that just about sums it up.

Sorry some of the full articles are behind a paywall. At least there’s a sample.

howling winds

The winds howl
The storm rages furious
Torrents of rain shatter
fragile windows

The two men look to each
other as one’s house falls and
the other’s stands.
The wise on the rock
the fool on the sands.

The old man howls
The old woman screams
To see their long life end
With shattered dreams.


Click for Water Statistics from Dripfina

miscellaneous verse

Quietly He speaks – to my heart
In the middle – of the day

—–

And I would kiss my desire goodbye
Only for His love.

—–

There’s a time when God will open your
Heart and give you your desire
He’ll fill your heart
with lasting desire to do His work.

—–

You will be a sweet fragrance of life for the living
Death for the dying
A garden filled with choice aromatic flowers
through the living Christ.

—–

To catch a butterfly
You must be perfectly still
and fragrantly full
Let him alight on your lovely petals and
drink God’s nectar to the full.

violet’s morning

on a cold winter’s morning
when the snow covers all we see
Like a holy blanket of white purity
So the word of God covers
All our earthly parts.

on a cold winter’s morning
when the sap freezes in the tree
the branches go to sleep, no responsibility
So the word of God freezes all
our wicked ways

on a cold winter’s morning
when the water freezes on the lake
all the anxious waves cease their endless quake
So the word of God calms our
fears and dries our tears

on a cold winter’s morning
when the sun rises in the sky
its only a symbol of the long summer fry
So the word of God promises
Life that we will soon grow

on a cold winter’s morning
there are still berries on the tree
a hungry animal will eat them gladly
So the word of God in us
will feed a hungry soul
with the hope of eternal life

Brian’s Morning

In the breaking of the day
The stars are put away
And the sun sends his rays through the clouds.

The flowers they bloom
And the earth makes room
For the shoots of grass rising to meet the dawn.

All the earth waits
And the sun anticipates
The meeting that is sure to come at dawn.

And I also wait
My life is an empty plate
For you to fill and feed my friends and I.

Once I understand
And find out who I am
I give my life determined on my cross.

You opened up my eyes
And made me realize
That in your death the sun begins to rise.