JR'S Free Thought Pages
No Gods ~ No Masters
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JR'S Free Thought Pages |
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Introduction: Most of what follows are a few selected short essays on religion and philosophy I have written over the years and represent a lifetime of reflection and thought. I have always had an insatiable curiosity, particularly about philosophical issues and religion, and as a child must have driven my mother to the brink of insanity with my incessant "why" questions. I have been an inquiring skeptic as long as I can remember. I even hated Sunday School and was never attracted to the dogmatism of religious belief and after being exposed to the writings of Bertrand Russell as a junior high school student, there was no turning back. These short pieces are in no particular order and some are clearly dated. On some issues I have somewhat altered my views since they were originally written. Several are letters to newspapers, most of which were not published because of what I call the "sacred cow gag law". This is essentially a rule that eliminates anything anathema to the corporate media - especially criticism of religion, capitalism or anything that might offend their advertisers. The Canadian newspaper The National Post is one of the most shameless and flagrant representatives of this sort of censorship and bias. The content of the National Post is essentially useless predictable pabulum dished out by corporate pimps with rose tinted spectacles - and its only value for me at least has been kitty litter liner. My cat, who has more intellectual discernment than the editorial staff the National Post, has not complained yet. But sacred cows make the best hamburger, do they not?
On
the Existence of God or Gods "That which is incapable of proof itself is no proof of anything else" - Percy Byshee Shelley The dispute about whether god exists, like so many in philosophy, depends on the mistaken assumption that there is a clearly defined concept (in this case “God”) that can be used to formulate a question with a definite answer. Arguing whether certain things do or do not exist is pointless when the relevant notion of existence in question is so ill defined. I submit that the question concerning the truth or falsity of the assertion “God exists” is just one of those essentially empty questions that has an aura of profundity like “Why is there anything at all?” or “What is the speed of time?”. Moreover, assuming that a coherent definition can be formulated, anyone who asserts "But you can't prove that God does NOT exist" is simply demonstrating their ignorance of a fundamental point of logic. One cannot prove the non-existence of anything. I cannot, for example, prove that Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy do not exist. The burden of proof for any extraordinary claim always rests with the claimant.
Religious Arguments
Why Religion Still Exists Four reasons are commonly given to explain why religion exists and continues to thrive. One is that it provides facile answers to fundamental questions about the origin of the universe, the way it works, the currently mysterious or inexplicable things that happen in it - and why it includes evil and suffering. Another is that religion provides comfort and solace, giving hope of life after death, providing reassurance in a hostile world, and a means by prayer, sacrifice and conformity to one or another form of prescribed behavior, either ritualistic or moral to live more secure and successful life. A third is that it makes for social order and a mechanism for control by those holding political power, thus promoting morality and social cohesion. And a fourth, and in my opinion the most important, is that it rests on the natural ignorance, stupidity, superstition, credulity and intellectual sloth of mankind.
That something is wrong with the ontological argument is indicated by the fact that, if it were successful, it could be used to prove the existence of a variety of things other than God. For example, I have an idea “that than nothing nastier or more evil can be conceived.” This, it would seem would be a proof for the existence of the devil. Or perhaps I have an idea “that there is nothing worse than the worst music that can be conceived.” This would prove the existence of Rap Music.
Gratuitous Evil and the mysterious behaviour of the Christian God One of the most convincing arguments for the refutation of religions that posit an omnipotent, omniscient omni-benevolent God is based on a simple inductive inference. The British philosopher John L. Mackie in his book The Miracle of Theism” presents a convincing case for atheism based on the huge volume of gratuitous evil in the world. In the book he cites several examples of such evil but his primary example is the Spanish Influenza outbreak of 1919. This virus killed 20 million people over the short period of three months – twice as many as were killed in World War I. But just as quickly as it appeared, the virus mysteriously disappeared and its virulence has never reappeared. How could a perfectly good all-powerful God allow this to happen? Is God not really omnipotent or is he merely an ominous evil alien or devil incarnate? Over the years Christian apologists have gone to great lengths to refute arguments such as these but have failed miserably. Their best response has been “it’s just a mystery” and “God has his reasons and we must just have faith in Him”. Now if I were to attempt to argue that the mole problem in my back yard is the work of evil invisible purple goblins and present as evidence “it’s just a mystery” and “just accept my word on faith” I would likely be denounced as the village idiot. Similar examples can be cited from everyday experience such as verdicts on jury trials where no empirical evidence is presented - only faith based explanations. The theist might argue that God’s failure to prevent gratuitous evil is based on creating some greater good. For example, the pain of a vaccination and chemotherapy are a means to some potential greater good. Hence if God exists we surely must have substantive evidence that all the evils in the world are a means to some greater good. The theist may continue with the same line of reasoning by declaring “there may be some greater good that we have no way of knowing about”. Well of course many things are logically possible, but are they even remotely probable. It’s possible that Elvis is dancing the Disco to “Don’t Be Cruel” on the far side of Neptune. But to ask someone to accept such a proposition based on faith or the fact that Elvis works in mysterious ways simply will not do.
Forty Skeptical Issues Concerning Theism 1) How would you define "God," and why are
you convinced such a thing exists?
Omniscience, Humor, Surprise and God God is that being who cannot both inquire and laugh. A sense of humor and a sense of wanting to know (i.e., having an inquiring mind and perhaps being surprised) is contingent upon not being omniscient. Critical thought and the process of inquiry entail moving from one state of knowing to, hopefully, a better or more truthful state. Since God has perfect knowledge, He has already arrived at that ideal epistemic condition. Thinking and inquiry are therefore reduced to a superfluity and redundancy. Nor can God have a sense of humor since humor involves the possibility of being surprised and God, in his omniscience, knows all punch lines and the resolution of all paradoxes.. It is only through not knowing (i.e., doubting, lacking information or knowledge) that motivates thinking. Perfection and a state of complete omniscience would be horrific since free will and the necessity for thought would be redundant. Is it no wonder that the Bible is void of humor and says nothing in favor of the intellect. God is a bore - he’s a “know it all”.
The Concept of Sin Sin is a distinctively religious notion and, not unlike many other Christian doctrines, is a vehicle of control. Sin, in particular, is a convenient construct designed to induce guilt and shame in the believer thereby creating a problem that demands a solution. The solution is of course well known. It involves relinquishing one's intellectual autonomy and self-esteem to a palliative called "accepting Christ as your personal savior" and subsequently joining the Church in order to escape eternal damnation. Eric Hoffer described this phenomenon aptly in his fascinating book The True Believer: Self-surrender, which is...the source of a mass movement’s unity and vigor, is a sacrifice, an act of atonement, and clearly no atonement is called for unless there is a poignant sense of sin. Here as elsewhere, the technique of a mass movement aims to infect people with a malady and then offer the movement as a cure. (1951, p. 42) Cosmic Religion What would happen to the Christian faith if finally we did discover sentient beings like ourselves on other planets within solar systems far removed from ours? How could such a faith be maintained? Was there a similar crucifixion on this other planet or was Christ (the proclaimed son of God) only interested in redeeming the souls of the inhabitants on our own planet? If so, then Christ is reduced to a somewhat parochial role in the cosmos. Multiple crucifixions and resurrections would not, however, seem strange to many eastern religions such as Hinduism which postulates multiple realities.
Free Enterprise As G. K. Chesterton once said, “Free enterprise is great but it’s never been tried.” The free part is important because the so-called risk taker or entrepreneur gets a free ride on the backs of the taxpayer in the form of tax breaks and write-offs. And when he pollutes the environment or when he goes bankrupt, the taxpayer picks up the tab as well. If state capitalism was shorn of its welfare handouts from government in the form of incentives and bailouts, the whole edifice could collapse like a house of cards.
Power Corrupts To the best of my knowledge, all known dictators and tyrants have been strong believers in God and absolute authority. I don’t find this at all paradoxical, but consistent with their authoritarian mind-set. “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely" as the old adage claims - what does this say about God? All advances in genuine knowledge and moral progress have been the result of skepticism of power and the rejection of illegitimate authority. This is the true philosophical meaning of anarchism. Humanity has made more progress in the advancement in knowledge and civilized society since the Scientific Revolutions and Humanist Enlightenment of the Sixteenth Century than all of human history up to that point. And human history up to that point had been nothing other than the chronicle of the twin sisters of tyranny - religion and monarchy. To say that our present culture and socio-political system is based on Christian principles is ludicrous. In any event the founding fathers of the American constitution such as Thomas Jefferson were atheists and deists. And if my reading of the gospels is correct, Christ would be a liberal and a socialist and not resemble anything like the neo-conservative fundamentalists that hold political power these days in the United States. "That the world is in bad shape is undeniable, but there is not the faintest reason in history to suppose that Christianity offers a way out." - Bertrand Russell
On Authority & Individualism …All authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and degrades those over whom it is exercised. When it is violently, grossly, and cruelly used, it produces a good effect by creating, or at any rate bringing out, the spirit of revolt and individualism that is to kill it. When it is used with a certain amount of kindness, and accompanied by prizes and rewards, it is dreadfully demoralizing. People, in that case, are less conscious of the horrible pressure that is being put on them, and so go through their lives in a sort of coarse comfort, like petted animals, without ever realizing that they are probably thinking other people's thoughts, living by other people's standards, wearing practically what one may call other people's second-hand clothes, and never being themselves for a single moment. "He who would be free," says a fine thinker, "must not conform." And authority, by bribing people to conform, produces a very gross kind of overfed barbarism amongst us. – Oscar Wilde Freedom of the press, freedom of association, the inviolability of the domicile and all the rest of the rights of man are respected only so long as no one tries to use them against the privileged classes. On the day they are launched against privilege they are thrown overboard. – Peter Kropotkin
Prayer Obviously, if prayer worked, its professional advocates (priests, ministers, mullahs, rabbis, and other practitioners of the magic arts) would be the healthiest people on earth. But they are not. They drop dead with the same frequency as everyone else. On the television news recently there was a shameless item featuring a group of Baptists who were holding prayer sessions to fight crime in their community. After several weeks it was reported that crime in the community had diminished slightly. These simpletons of course attributed this phenomenon to the efficacy of their prayers. Obviously if praying to your favorite God is effective in fighting crime we don’t need the police force. If we assume God’s omnipotence - and that he really gives a shit - then there are a lot of things in the world that would immediately become redundant like medicine, technology and all the rest of science. If these deluded people really wanted to fight crime surely they could find more productive ways of going about it like venturing out in the streets to help fight poverty and drug addiction which are the major contributors to crime. This is something Jesus would actually do! But their real purpose is not to genuinely help oppressed people in need are satisfying their need to feel self-righteous about “saving the souls” of sinners. Of course it would be a whole lot more efficient if God in the very least, in granting us free will, forced us “sinners” into making the correct ethical decision on really important matters such as whether or not to bomb a third world country like Iraq or Afghanistan. The other mundane decisions like whether to have a coffee or tea for breakfast, pay golf or tennis or to retire or continue working at our mind numbing jobs he could leave up to us. Moreover, I have always been puzzled by football players, in particular, who pray before games and subsequently thank the Lord for touchdowns and inspired play. Now while watching some of the World Series playoffs I have noticed many players wearing ornate pretentious gold chains with large crucifixes dangling from them. Several of them kiss the cross and point the “heavens” after hitting a ball out of the park. However, for some mysterious reason there is no solicitation to the “heavens” for incidents such as fumbling the ball at the line of scrimmage or striking out at the plate.
Free Will The free will versus determinism conundrum, a perennial hot topic debated in philosophical circles, is far from being resolved. Although free will is a notion most of us accept intuitively and is consistent with our common sense experiences, the arguments for determinism by notable intellectuals such as the late B.F. Skinner are not easily dismissed. If we accept the dubious premise that an omnipotent, omniscient God exists, then free will is merely an illusion. God knows beforehand what our choices will be including those choices which may not only be imprudent, but pernicious and insidious. Indeed, an omnipotent, omniscient God must be an accomplice before and during the fact to every human miscue and transgression, as well as being responsible for every non-moral defect and deficiency in the Universe. Christian apologists who claim that free will is a gift from God, necessary to understand God or that evil exists in the world in order that we may come to understand the “Good”, should not only check their premises, but re-evaluate their circuitous, inconsistent arguments and refrain from doublethink. In short, the free will defense to explain the existence of evil in the world will not do. The free will argument is flawed in several ways, not the least of which is that it fails to explain why God does not permit humans to make morally incorrect decisions and then prevent these decisions from having serious harmful consequences.
Wealthy Psychics? It’s curious that psychics are not extremely wealthy individuals. It seems most would be very, very rich if they only made a few strategic predictions on the right stocks or picked the winning number on an impending lottery. Some, of course argue, that psychics don’t use their powers for personal profit. Why, then do they charge $40 or more per hour for their services? This is laughable and insulting. Moreover, if a person had powers of prediction, why would that person advertise the fact?
Causation and God Every event has a cause and God exists are inconsistent propositions. God is an event and hence must be caused. This is an obvious fact conspicuously absent from the arguments of Christian apologists.
The "Back Door God" On rare occasions when a prominent corporate newspaper decides to run a major piece on Science they invariably insist on bringing God in through the back door. This ostensibly is done so as not to offend overly sensitive pious readers. Science shares with religion the claim that it attempts to answer profound questions about origins, the nature of life and the cosmos. But the resemblance ends there. As Richard Dawkins, the celebrated Oxford biologist, has stated, “Scientific beliefs are supported by evidence, and they get results. Myths and faiths are not and do not.” In fact the incompatibility of Religion and Science has been the source of an intellectual battleground for the past four hundred years with Religion continually on the defensive and in retreat. Although the existence of a Creator is a logical possibility there is no reason to believe He has any of the attributes claimed by Christianity or any other religion. Conceptual considerations notwithstanding, one of the fundamental commonsensical objections to positing God is the logical contradiction between the general acceptance of universal causation and an uncaused Deity. Humanists often point to science as a model of the benefits of an agnostic viewpoint but religionists have a point when they characterize science as "godless." However, Science has not always been agnostic. Aristotle’s cosmology presented an argument for an "Unmoved Mover," and his argument was still accepted by seventeenth-century scientists like Descartes, Leibniz, and Newton. It was not until the early nineteenth century when Pierre Laplace, responding to Napolean’s queries about why God was missing from his cosmology, informed him, "I have no need for that hypothesis," that scientists began to omit God altogether from their theories. The hypothesis of God offers no worthwhile explanation for anything within the scientific project for it simply adds another mystery to a pre-existing one, namely the Universe itself. The claim that God created the Universe ex nihilo still leaves the original question of what caused God and the Universe essentially unanswered. This I think is the intellectually responsible stance – even in light of Stephen Hawking’s Wave Function Theory of the Universe that implies it is highly probable that our Universe came into existence uncaused. In spite of the Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution the human propensity for irrationality, credulity, self-deception and wishful thinking continue as though we were still stranded in the Dark Ages. The irresponsibility of the mass media contributes to this sad state of affairs as does the failure to teach critical thinking in the schools.
On the Soul If what really counts about us is our souls and not our bodies, why did the god of Christendom wait so many billions of years for our inessential bodies to evolve by the bumbling, painful, and wasteful process of natural selection? Why didn’t he just zap our souls into existence at the dawn of the Precambrian Era (right after he allegedly separated light from darkness) and forget about our bodies? Why did God wait so long to bring the spiritual dimension into the physical framework of space and time? For his amusement?
On Bernard Lonergan Apart from secondary sources I am not familiar with the works of Bernard Lonergan, but he reminds me of a host of other religiously inclined philosophers starting with Plato, continuing with Descartes, Kant and Hegel who insist on finding ways of "sneaking God in the back door" of their philosophical systems. Aside from their emotional appeal most religious beliefs appear to be either reasonable inferences from dubious, implausible or false premises or bad inferences from reasonable or true premises. Also, the philosophical underpinnings of these beliefs are plagued by allusions to vague abstractions and the beliefs themselves are often inconsistent with other beliefs that we know to be true. Kant, in his Critique of Pure Reason, found it necessary to "abolish knowledge in order to make room for faith" and Pascal, who refused to accept the seemingly unavoidable conclusion of an indifferent uncongenial Universe, found it consolatory and prudent to take the "leap of faith" with his notorious Wager and believe in a caring God. Not unlike Pascal, Lonergan, who is described as "open-minded", cannot escape from his a priori acceptance of the tenets of Catholicism and would surely never entertain challenging any of its basic premises. Poetic statements by Lonergan such as "the more scientific you are, the more holy you are" and God is the "unrestricted act of understanding" or the "Aha experience" are, at best, serious abuses of language and, to me at least, unintelligible. Also, Lonergan’s attempt to lend credibility to his abstruse ideas by conflating the scientific temperament with "holiness" reminds me of a similar ploy of some fundamentalist Christians who insist on referring to the Genesis account in the Old Testament as "Scientific Creationism". Moreover, redefining God by employing opaque metaphors such as "God is the unrestricted act of understanding" can only be described as the desperate striving of a Christian apologist to mitigate an intellectually repellent anthropomorphic conception of God. Rhetorical devices such as these display a flagrant lack of intellectual integrity and are reminiscent of the obscurantism of the popular Protestant theologian Paul Tillich who defined God as "Ultimate Concern".
God Works in Mysterious Ways Anytime something good happens, it’s God’s will and a reward for good behavior; anytime something bad happens, it’s part of God’s larger plan, and even though you may not understand the longer term benefits, these will become evident in due time. Either way it’s a neat and tidy theistic world-view – everything has its place and its purpose according to God’s grand design. It’s so annoying when a natural disaster strikes and those who survive thank the Lord for their survival on national television. But what of those who were not so fortunate? Many professional athletes, particularly football players, are notorious in thanking Jesus for their victories. I wonder what this says about the losers? More recently we see professional baseball players, particularly those Latin Americans brought up on a steady diet of Catholicism from the time they pop out of the womb, who point to the Sky Daddy every time they hit a home run. Oddly, they don't perform this ceremony when the strike out, go 0 for 5 at the plate, fumble a fly ball or screw up a routine double play?
On Miracles The great Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776) ranks among the most influential philosophers in the field of the philosophy of religion. He criticized the standard proofs for God's existence, traditional notions of God's nature and divine governance, the connection between morality and religion, and the rationality of belief in miracles. Hume argued that miracles, by definition, involve the violation of the laws of nature, and are therefore less likely to occur than any other event. Any attestation to a miracle is therefore more likely to be errant than accurate; misleading evidence is more probable than the miraculous. If anyone reports to us the occurrence of a miracle, therefore, then we should should reject that report as either dishonest or mistaken, and if it appears to us that a miracle has occurred in our presence, then we do better to doubt our senses than to believe them. On claims of the miraculous, Hume had this to say: The plain consequence is (and it is a general maxim worthy of our attention), "That no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavours to establish; and even in that case there is a mutual destruction of arguments, and the superior only gives us an assurance suitable to that degree of force, which remains, after deducting the inferior." When any one tells me, that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself, whether it be more probable, that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact, which he relates, should really have happened. I weigh the one miracle against the other; and according to the superiority, which I discover, I pronounce my decision, and always reject the greater miracle. If the falsehood of his testimony would be more miraculous, than the event which he relates; then, and not till then, can he pretend to command my belief or opinion. David Hume , Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Pt. 1
When anyone tells me, that she saw a dead man
restored to life or that she has been abducted and sexually assaulted by green
zombies from Neptune, I immediately consider with myself, whether it be more
probable, that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the
fact, which he relates, should really have happened. I weigh the one miracle
against the other; and according to the superiority, which I discover, I
pronounce my decision, and always reject the greater miracle. If the falsehood
of his testimony would be more miraculous, than the event which he relates;
then, and not till then, can he pretend to command my belief or opinion.
The Inverse Pascal’s Wager : Disbelieving in God is a good bet If God does not exist then I can feel no loss and I have been right all along (moreover, I have maintained my intellectual integrity - even if it turns out that God does exist). To have doubted His existence is the proper epistemic stance and this is clearly what God would have us do. His gift of rationality surely implies that we use it. And if God in fact does want us to have faith in him, since he is a forgiving God, he will not punish us for doubting him. In fact he may reward those skeptics for their attention to logic and rationality. In opposition to Pascal's utilitarian pleas for belief in the Christian God, it seems just as likely that the options can be laid out thus: There is indeed a very powerful, very benevolent deity. He (or she or they or it) has determined as follows. The good human beings are those who follow the natural light of reason, which is given to them to control their beliefs. These good humans follow the arguments, and hence avoid religious convictions. These ones with the strength of mind not to believe in such things go to Heaven. The rest go to Hell. [Jr's Wager]
The Evils of Secular Humanism The “collective forces of secular humanism and atheism” referred to by Christian zealots are mere voices in the wilderness. Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson nor any other fundamentalist Christian has much to fear from secular humanism and atheism. American televangelists like the aforementioned are always proselytizing about the evils of the encroaching secularization of society. The facts, however, tell a much different story. In the most recent U.S. Gallup Poll(1996), 94% of Americans say they believe in a “personal God”. That leaves 6% who are atheists, agnostics or deists. The enemy of Christianity is not Humanism, but competing belief systems, including other mainstream religions, New Age cults and other paranormal, supernatural belief structures. In the same Gallup Poll it was found that more people believe in astrology than believe in evolution, 90% believe in heaven, 79% believe in miracles, 73% believe in hell, 72% believe in angels and 65% believe the devil is real. These figures are significantly higher than the previous poll on the beliefs of Americans. I can only assume the U.S. statistics are not unlike those in Canada. The renowned socio-biologist E.O. Wilson supplies us with this reality check: Skeptics continue to nourish the belief that science will banish religion, which they consider to be no more than a tissue of illusions. Today, scientists and other scholars, organized into learned groups such as the American Humanist Society and Institute on Religion in an Age of Science support little magazines distributed by subscription and organize campaigns to discredit Christian fundamentalism, astrology, and Immanuel Velikovsky. Their crisply logical salvos, endorsed by whole arrogances of Nobel Laureates, pass like steel jacketed bullets through fog. (E.O. Wilson, On Human Nature, Harvard University Press, pp. 169-171)
Skeptic magazine, for example, with its circulation of 40,000, would probably fit into this category. When compared to various religious publications whose circulation numbers run well into the hundreds of thousands or even millions, the voice of secular humanism is but a mere whisper. Moreover, these groups rarely if ever have a platform on the corporate media to espouse their views. In conclusion, I am always perplexed by the suggestion from people of various religious persuasions that there is some necessary logical connection between religious faith and belief in a deity on the one hand and morality on the other. Sadly, the history of religion suggests a much different conclusion vis-à-vis this dubious connection.
Thoughts on Solipsism Solipsists Anonymous: The only group which has, by necessity, only one member. “I’m a solipsist and I cannot understand why others are not also.” Anti-solipsist: Everyone exists except me. Solipsist: “Clyde, you do not exist.” Clyde: “Just who is it that you claim does not exist?”
Omnipotence If God is omnipotent, why did he feel it necessary to rest after the sixth day? Can God construct a puzzle that he cannot solve or violate the laws of logic such as the law of non-contradiction?
Religion, Power and Control Religions, in particular Christianity, are the vehicles those in power have always used to add an aura of determinism to the status quo. In embracing an economic system that mandates an acquiescent working class, those in positions of power, the corporate elite and management class, have crated a continuum of social stratification from extremely poor to extremely rich that not only allows immorality and injustice (business is business) - but encourage it.
On
War Many of our past wars have been fought for some “holy cause” or some other inane expression. But if God is omnipotent and omniscient, why does he need an army of puny humans, rattling their swords and using Him as an excuse to persecute or slaughter one another?
On the Kyoto Protocol Over the past several weeks we have been bombarded by negative rhetoric and corporate orthodoxy from the media concerning the viability of the Kyoto Protocol. Consequently, the recent poll signifying diminished public support for Kyoto is not surprising – particularly considering that most people actually believe what they read in the newspapers and are evidently not aware of the huge volume of information that is filtered out and skewed or simply ignored to serve special commercial interests. The news media, far from being a guardian of truth and the people’s bastion against oppression, has over time become an instrument for protecting the privileged and wealthy from the threat of public understanding and participation in the democratic process by marginalizing alternative political views. And they are doing this by using public property – the airwaves. From a historical perspective this phenomenon is not new. Indoctrination and propaganda has been for decades a major instrument of the corporate media for the preservation of the unjust status quo. Moreover this dogmatic model continues to permeate much of the rest of our social and political institutions, including the education system from kindergarten through university. Universities and colleges for example were once institutions whereby one’s mind was exposed to critical thought by introduction to the great thinkers in the humanities and sciences – and places where some of our most valued societal premises were challenged. Now, for the most part, they are nothing more than glorified trade schools or vehicles for churning out intellectual automatons for the world of business and commerce. One can now even earn university degrees in demanding intellectual pursuits such as “marketing” and "business administration". If the Kyoto Protocol is accepted, we are told several hundred thousand jobs are at stake. There are at least two major problems with this claim. (1) It is highly speculative and not backed by statistical evidence (2) it has nothing to do with jobs and everything to do with corporate profits. It is difficult at this point to find a direct causal connection between our putrid air and global warming but surely from the perspective of vigilance we should act as though there was one. Otherwise polemics over jobs and profits are purely academic exercises. In a world in which the quality of the environment has diminished to such an extent to have made the planet unlivable, debates over jobs and profits will soon become vacuous.
God and Infinite Regress Those who argue that God is a “necessary being” - the ultimate end to all questioning is just a way of avoiding an inevitable infinite regress of questioning. When theologians are asked “what or who created God?”, their response is generally something like “some things are simply a mystery”. But why not invoke Ockham’s razor before making such a statement and simply say “creation” or “the existence of the universe” is a pre-existing mystery and let it go at that? What use is a hypothesis for explaining a mystery when the very hypothesis raises another mystery just as baffling as the one it attempts to explain?
My Proof for the non-existence of an omni-benevolent loving God Moles, tapeworms, mosquitoes, deadly viruses, genetic diseases and rap music.
On the non-existence of God or Gods Problems with defining god notwithstanding, proofs for the existence of god over the past two millennia have been abysmal failures. Philosophers have soundly refuted all attempts. Others have tried to take it a step further and prove the non-existence of god - but anyone who has taken a course in Logic 101 knows the impossibility of proving a universal negative. One cannot prove the non-existence of anything and that includes Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy or the Invisible Flying Pink Unicorn. There are however moral arguments and arguments of incoherence that make the likelihood of the existence of certain kinds of gods extremely unlikely – for example, the sort of personal god posited by Islam and Christianity – a god who is omnipotent, omniscient and who loves us in the way I love my children and my cat. It is more difficult, however, to disprove the kind of god who closely resembles a malevolent government bureaucrat with a bad attitude. Over 2000 years ago Epicurus pointed out the inconsistencies inherent in a God who has the power to repair the ills of the world but fails to do so. Subsequently, many other philosophers have exposed the inconsistencies of the attributes of such a god depicted in the Koran and Bible in conjunction with the evil and suffering in the world. The Epicurean analysis does show, along with the evidence of our own senses and intellect, that there is no evidence for a powerful, knowing and benevolent god. Instead, the evidence is totally consistent with the lack of such a being. That does not disprove such a god’s existence, but it comes close enough for many of us. The Bible, in particular, is plagued by internal inconsistencies that are compelling evidence it was not written by a perfect being. More interesting than whether religion is true is whether it is useful. Has it been, on the whole, a force for Good or Evil in the world? In my view religion’s utility is far more amenable to investigation than it is to its truth. When I confront religious people, particularly those who lean toward fundamentalism, I try to point out how their religious leaders emphasis on obedience to God rather than ethical behavior leads only to an attitude of prudence, not morality. I think Bertrand Russell was correct when he argued that religion was based on fear and not the desire to do good works. In the final analysis, it really makes no difference to anyone whether people believe in god or the invisible flying pink unicorn. We only care about how they behave as a result of such beliefs. Although we may be appalled at a person’s lack of intellectual integrity in accepting propositions based on faith, when we argue against religious belief it ought to be because we feel that, on balance, it is destructive. On that basis I think our case is extremely compelling. It benefits no one to stretch arguments for the non-existence of god beyond their breaking point. The total lack of evidence for the existence for such entities should be sufficient for an agnostic stance at the very least.
Converting Religionists I don’t really have any interest in getting religionists to modify their irrational belief systems. I just don’t want them to impose them on me or infringe on my rights. If they really want their personal Sky Daddy, they can have it. I just don’t want them messing up the schools any more than they are, let alone shooting abortion doctors and flying airplanes into skyscrapers. What they do in the privacy of their own homes or places of worship is really none of my concern.
What is religion? “Religion is a socio-political institution for the control of People’s thoughts, lives, and actions; based on ancient myths and superstitions perpetrated through generations of subtle yet pervasive brainwashing.”
Religious Origins Sci-Fi author, Stephen Baxter (author of the Manifold Trilogy) in his latest novel Evolution, puts forth the idea that religion was first conceived by a schizoid woman, who was plagued with migraines, some 60,000 years ago. In my opinion, this hypothesis is as good as any other of which I am aware.
Atheists in jail? W.T. Root, Professor of Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh, examined 1,916 prisoners and said, “Indifference to religion, due to thought, strengthens character,” adding that Unitarians, Agnostics, Atheists and Freethinkers were visibly absent from penitentiaries, particularly those holding hard core offenders. This fact proves very little but is interesting nevertheless. But throughout recorded human history no one has ever been killed in the name of atheism.
Anthropomorphisms? Can you give me an example of a religion where God is not given human attributes? There are philosophical concepts of God which amount to little more than “it’s a mysterious thing behind everything,” but such concepts don’t inspire the devotion that leads to a religion. The attribution of human qualities to and reification of gods is almost universal and certainly applies to the gods of the major religions. Except to those unwilling to see the obvious it is the clearest possible evidence that man invents his gods in his image rather than the other way around. Combine that with the fact that there is no credible evidence for the existence of any god and the entirely fictional nature of gods becomes clear to all those who want to see.
Another man’s God Most Christians, Jews, Muslims and Hindus today can see the problems with literally hundreds of deities like Thor, Zeus, Odin, Aphrodite, Ahura-Mazda, most of which no longer are believed in because their cultures have died. I think it is sometimes possible to get them to apply their critical thinking to the currently popular concepts. From there you can make generalizations about the nature of religious belief, and perhaps get back to the root question—where’s the evidence for ANY deity?
Ugly Mood Rant on Religion As for the gutless minions who hide behind the servile, bleating masses, oblivious to or dismissive of the fact that they're believing, condoning, and espousing the very beliefs that have plagued mankind since the birth of consciousness and caused more death and misery to human individuals than any thing else ever to infect our species, well, I drag them into the open away from the sanctuary of their bibles and their facades of piety and I shine a pinpoint spotlight of critical derision on them, their beliefs and their so called morality.
Religion as Mafioso Organized Religion is like Organized Crime; it preys on peoples' weakness, generates huge profits for its operators, and is almost impossible to eradicate. Structurally all religions are "top-down" authoritarian hierarchies antithetical to the concept of democracy and freedom. If one were to select a political system that most closely resembles a religion, it would be fascism. The Catholic Church is is a perfect model for such an institution.
Enlightenment From all we can tell from historians and anthropologists, every ancient society worshipped some god or other. Superstition ran rampant. Human Beings denied their own freedom and autonomy by praising or blaming the Gods for their fates. Not until some bold minds like David Hume, Voltaire, Ludwig Feuerbach, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Bertrand Russell and Sigmund Freud did it become thinkable, much less fashionable, to preach atheism. These were inventors of a new order, one that allowed human beings to make up our game as we go along, unfettered by superstitions about the will of the Gods or fear of their punishment. For my part I am appalled at how slowly this invention has been accepted. Over 60 percent of Americans still agree (somewhat, mostly, or strongly) that, “The world was literally created in six days, as the Bible says,” (confirmed on three successive national probability sample surveys by the Values and Lifestyles Program at SRI International). Islam claims over a billion devotees. And I find it remarkable the number of highly educated, intelligent adults who still embrace a childlike, neurotic, wish-fulfilling belief in God. Without kneeling down to positivism, or overestimating what is knowable, or underestimating the mysteries that remain lurking in the individual and social unconscious, let us nevertheless celebrate our liberation from superstition, remain humble before forces that transcend our individual egos, but accept the collective responsibilities of human freedom. “We are as gods so we might as well get good at it.”
Religious Fundamentalism The doctrine that there is an omnipotent, omniscient, omni benevolent supernatural entity that is deeply and personally concerned with JR’s sex life. In fact His concern is such that he sacrificed His only son for JR’s benefit.
Arguing With Fundamentalists Don't waste your time arguing with the fundamentalist anthropomorphic conception of god. Life's too short. Moreover, don't waste your time engaging mystical metaphor such as God is the “ground of all being” “God is infinite” or “God is love”. Language without content is rubbish.
Fuzzy Logic Has fuzzy logic and relativism given rise to: almost winning = winning and almost passing = passing. Bivalence is out and multivalence is in. “A and not A” is now acceptable. Hot can mean cold, true can mean false. The fact that many ideas, concepts and things are matters of degree it does not follow that all things are matters of degree. In our ordinary language when we say “Universal gravitation is true” or “The sun will rise tomorrow” we do not imply that these are absolute truths. When we say that a statement is true, we mean based on the best available evidence, our experiences, inference to the best explanation, most cogent arguments, most plausible, etc. For instance, one might say that the probability that the sun will rise tomorrow is .9999999999. In any event, how do fuzzy logicians handle statements such as "The Law of the Excluded Middle is either true or it is not true." Kierkegaard and the Limits of Rationality Kierkegaard’s emphasis on gratuitous faith has fostered a whole family of existentialisms, whose common quality is the advocacy of the making of dramatic choices in life unsupported by reasons. It is fun to take risks, and there is the thrill of making an indefensible and apparently non-rational choice. But his can hardly be recommended as a general plan of life.
Like Pascal in his wager, and like James with his experimental faith,
Kierkegaard makes belief a matter of the will. What Kierkegaard does is present
to his reader’s acceptance of a picture of a purely voluntary faith which
relies on no intellectual support and spurns skeptical inquiry and criticism.
Pascal’s infamous wager is only one of many enchanted attempts to transform
ignorance into knowledge.
On Nietzsche and Moral Absolutes (from a letter to the Vancouver Sun) I very much enjoyed Douglas Todd’s essay “Philosophical Combat in the 90’s: Ego has the Edge” in the May 25 Saturday Review. For the most part, I agree with Todd’s diagnosis of contemporary social/ethical problems but I believe he may have oversimplified both the cause and subsequent solution of these problems. First, Nietzsche’s writings have been grossly misconstrued and distorted by people who likely never read any of his works. If my memory is correct, the only philosopher Ayn Rand claimed to have read was Aristotle. Hence it is unlikely that her philosophy of ethical egoism can be attributed to Nietzsche. Among many other things, Nietzsche argued against the subjection of individuals to closed systems of thought and mindless dogmas. He would surely endorse courage, cultivation of a critical intellect, moral reasoning and wisdom. Nietzsche was without doubt a champion of individual freedom and excellence but he was not a moral relativist - Aristotle, it should be pointed out, in spite of his remarkable writings on Metaphysics, Politics and Ethics, did not argue against slavery, which was accepted in Greek culture at the time. In fact he was likely a slaveholder himself. Second, I would argue that one of the main reasons epistemological and moral relativism are pervasive today is the total inability of the average person to distinguish a sound argument from a fallacious one. Clearly, all opinions are not equal. In our schools we maker no real effort to teach either critical thinking or moral reasoning and wonder why we turn out students who equate opinion with reasoned argument, preferences with moral principles, marketable skills with wisdom and wants with rights. Moral consensus, for example, is inconceivable within our pluralistic society unless moral reasoning is allowed to supersede cultural biases and absolutist approaches to ethics. If we were to spend more time in school teaching logic, critical thinking and how to make sound judgments on ethical dilemmas, we may make some progress toward turning out rational, responsible citizens with a sense of community. Instead, teachers are more or less compelled to be ambivalent about student’s cultural biases and beliefs however irrational they may be and spend valuable time on self-deceptive efforts at embellishing student’s precious self-esteem. We seem to be more interested in promoting comfortable myths rather than truth, self-esteem and vacuous platitudes rather than self-criticism and intellectual humility, and absolutist moral imperatives rather than moral reasoning.
On the Compatibility of Science and Religion (from 3 letters to the Vancouver Sun) (#1) Douglas Todd’s attempt to find some common ground between Science and Religion is delusive. One may admit that the two world views lay claim to the same intellectual territory in their efforts to explain the Universe, its machinations and our place in it, but the similarity between the two enterprises stops right there. There are fundamental irreconcilable differences that make rapprochement between Science and Religion neither probable nor desirable. I will attempt to deal with a few. First, theology has its conclusions dogmatically worked out a priori according to divinely inspired scriptural authority and inquiry entails searching for evidence and arguments which support those ready-made conclusions. Roughly a hundred years ago, C.S. Peirce, a working scientist and arguably the greatest of American philosophers, distinguished genuine inquiry from “sham reasoning”, pseudo-inquiry aimed not at finding the truth but at making a case for some conclusion immutably believed in advance; and predicted that, when sham reasoning becomes commonplace, people will come “to look on reasoning as merely decorative’ and will “lose their conceptions of truth and of reason.” Science, unlike sham reasoning, is a process of discovery, following the lead of evidence and argument, and drawing an inference to the best explanation. Second, Religion makes claims to certainty, to immutable truths whereas Science is tentative, prepared to modify or reject any theory in light of new evidence or superior explanatory value. Third, un-testable, un-measurable non-random occurrences and the postulation of immaterial entities are commonplace in all supernatural religions and the paranormal but have no place in science. Fourth, the fact that people have religious experiences is interesting from a psychological point of view, but it does not in any way imply that there is such a thing as religious knowledge. Finally, faith has no place in science. Faith is belief without evidence or, in some cases, belief in the face of contradictory evidence. Where there is evidence one has no need for faith. It should be pointed out that Todd’s claim that “most adherents of organized religion” accept the theory of evolution is very likely false. In a 1996 Gallup poll only 46% of all respondents agreed with the statement “Evolution is the best possible explanation of human existence”. The figure for Protestants was less than 30% and only 19% for people who consider themselves “very religious”. Moreover, the majority of those Christians who did accept evolutionary theory did so with the provision that God was the instigator and overseer of the process. The hypothesis of God offers no worthwhile explanation for anything within the scientific project for it simply adds another mystery to a pre-existing one, namely the Universe itself. The claim that God created the Universe ex nihilo still leaves the original question of what caused the Universe and how it was accomplished unanswered. To baldly state that God created the Universe without any accompanying description of the attributes of God that motivate and facilitate this creation is vacuous. One could just as easily replace “God” with “Moe of the Stooge Trinity” without altering the content of the claim one iota.
(#2) Douglas Todd has once again attempted to lend scientific credibility to the Christian world view by way of an appeal to theologically inclined philosophers and scientists encumbered by anthropocentric bias and superfluous metaphysical baggage. His suggested reading list, I might add, is extremely one-sided. Hence, in addition to my comments on Mr. Todd’s article, I have provided my own reading list at the end of this letter in order to provide some balance. First, it cannot be denied that some scientists do believe in both God and Darwinism, but no scientist of any merit allows his religious views to get in the way of his professional and intellectual obligations. But some, in their effort to combine incongruous ideas, which generally includes the postulation of a God of the gaps, succumb to enormously muddled, obscurantist thinking. In their desire to satisfy their own metaphysical longings and, perhaps their mercenary impulse to sell books that appeal to the human need for comfortable myths, they not only compromise their own intellectual integrity, but they undermine the integrity of science as well. The writings of Rupert Sheldrake and Paul Davies are a case in point. Second, I would like to point out that the theory of evolution is an explanation of how life evolved on earth and is not a cosmological theory. It has nothing to say about the origins of the universe as a whole and Darwin’s own alleged metaphysical musings and existential angst about a universe of “pure chance” and “design” had no impact on his theory. In fact, Darwin was a paragon of intellectual virtue, unceasingly searching for flaws in his theory. Third, dictionary definitions and high school textbook explanations of evolution are often grossly misconstrued and hence it is perhaps no surprise that many people are remarkably ignorant about evolutionary theory. A recent Gallup poll (1993) stated that 48% of Americans believe in the literal interpretation of Genesis, 70% believe Creationism should be taught in the science class and more believe in astrology than evolution. A working definition of evolution that might suffice is as follows: Evolution is a process that results in heritable changes in a population via the genetic material from one generation to the next. Moreover, natural selection talks only about adaptation to changing environments and presents no case for a progression leading to human preeminence and dominion. Daniel Dennett refers to Darwin’s theory as “universal acid”, eating through “just about every traditional concept, and leaves in its wake a revolutionary world view.” As Stephen Jay Gould has pointed out, all major revolutions in the history of science, from Copernicus and Galileo to Darwin and Freud have as their common theme the “successive dethronement of human arrogance from one pillar after another of our previous cosmic assurance” and the knowledge that “human existence only fills the last micro moment of planetary time.” Gould argues that if the tapes of evolution were rewound and played back again, given the same initial conditions, the probability of once again producing Homo Sapiens would be infinitesimal. Gould’s principle can be equally applied to Cosmology and the constants of Physics. Humans are here by the luck of the draw and not some pre-determined teleological program or impetus toward perfectibility. “We are”, says Gould, “glorious accidents of an unpredictable progression with no drive to complexity.” Many Christians are troubled by the vision of reality that they see reflected in Darwinism which holds the world to be in flux - guided not by divine intention, but by random variation. Implicit in this denial of divine authority is the assumption that man is the measure of all things, i.e., that ethical, practical, civil and intellectual standards are socially determined and that man can resolve his problems if he approaches them with an open mind and an appeal to rationality and the rules of logic. Fourth, the evidence for evolution continues unabated, not only from geology, paleontology and anatomy, but from molecular biology, genetics and every other branch of the life sciences. Unless he undergoes a suspension of his rational and critical faculties, no intelligent thinking person today can doubt the process of evolution Finally, science shares with religion the claim that it answers profound questions about origins, the nature of life and the cosmos. But the resemblance ends there. As Richard Dawkins has stated, “Scientific beliefs are supported by evidence, and they get results. Myths and faiths are not and do not.” Contra-Todd Reading list: Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism (1982) - Philip Kitcher Evolution and the Myth of Creationism (1990) - Tim M. Berra The Transcendental Temptation (1991) - Paul Kurtz Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (1995) - Daniel C. Dennett Full House (1996) - Stephen Jay Gould The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (1995) - Carl Sagan The Selfish Gene (1976) - Richard Dawkins The Blind Watchmaker (1986) - Richard Dawkins River Out of Eden(1996) - Richard Dawkins The Case Against Christianity (1989) - Michael Martin Atheism: A Philosophical Justification (1993) - Michael Martin (#3) Reverend James Roberts’ attempted rebuttal of my arguments against any meaningful reconciliation between Science and Religion exemplifies what I would refer to as post-modernist obscurantism. Roberts does, however, agree with my assertions concerning human fallibility and the attendant need for intellectual humility, the provisional nature of scientific theories and the need to modify or even reject those same theories in light of new evidence or superior explanatory value. Moreover, no one is likely to disagree with Roberts’ statement that there is agreement among scientists that all concepts and theories are “limited and approximate descriptions of reality”. But in addition to his lack of conceptual clarity and his failure to address many of the points in my argument, Roberts’ reply is deficient on several other counts. First, when Roberts claims that I am “out of touch with contemporary science” he seems to be suggesting that I am not familiar with Thomas Kuhn’s controversial book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and the subsequent volume of contentious literature among philosophers of science concerning the radical views espoused in that book. The verdict is still out on Kuhn’s post-modernist stance and it should be further noted that Kuhn has been grossly misinterpreted and has personally retracted much of what he said about the scientific project in that work. Second, when Roberts states that “every structure is the manifestation of an underlying process proceeding from a web of relationships which is intrinsically dynamic”, I am agonizingly reminded of some of the more abstruse, incomprehensible passages from the writings of G.W.F Hegel and Paul Tillich. I admit I am still attempting to decipher that sentence. Third, when Roberts places “truths” in quotation marks and refers to “reverencing the multiple dimensions of reality”, my post-modernist, new age sensors are immediately triggered. Roberts is flirting with idealism or, at best, epistemological relativism if he is suggesting that truth is in the eye of the beholder and that reality is mind-dependent. I think it was Philip K. Dick who once said “reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, won’t go away.” To maintain that truth is subjective or socially constructed and to deny the existence of an objective reality independent of our perceptions is to relegate both science and religion to the intellectual scrap-heap.
Who "Created" the Big Bang? (From two letters to the National Post) A facile answer to the question “Who Created the Big Bang” is, of course, scientists. This theory still is, in my humble opinion, a speculative hypothesis and has not achieved the status of a bona fide scientific theory such as Universal Gravitation or Evolution. Conceptual considerations of “God” notwithstanding, the answer to the question “Who Created God” is, of course, theologians. This metaphysical construct is designed to replace the Big Bang or serve as a causal precursor to the Big Bang thus putting an end to an infinite regress of causes – a problem that any six year old will recognize by asking “who made God?”. Replacing a pre-existing mystery – namely the Universe – with another mystery called “God” has no genuine explanatory value whatsoever. This was precisely Pierre Laplace’s point concerning his cosmology when he invoked Ockham’s razor (the principle of parsimony) and thus told Napoleon he had no need of God in his system. If you are going to introduce an abstruse metaphysical concept such as a deity to explain everything it may as well be Thor or The Invisible Flying Pink Unicorn. Intellectual honesty and humility often demand that we respond with “I do not know” to questions such as the origins of the Universe – “but we’re working on it.” Science has been able to explain many previous mysterious natural phenomena such as the cause of illnesses and dramatic changes in the weather. But reasonable people no longer appeal to the Gods to alleviate problems such as these. The value of science over other purported paths to knowledge is its tentative dynamic nature, its reliance on skepticism, logic, mathematics and rational inquiry and, most important of all, its willingness to admit to error. And Hey! - it actually works and produces results. The important thing about Mathematics in this debate is not its origins or philosophical basis – although they are extremely interesting questions (i.e., Platonism v Constructionism) - but its value as a tool of science and its explication of the notion of infinity. The latter allowed for the discovery and development of the Calculus and allows us to conceive of a Universe that is infinite in time and consequently needs no “Creator.” It simply has always existed and may continue to do so. Follow Up Letter... It would seem that Mr. Marshall has over reacted to my assertion that both “God” and the “Big Bang” are nothing more than human constructs. He also appears to be somewhat confused regarding my construal of the word “created” in the context of “Who created God” as opposed to “Who created the Big Bang”. We do however both seem to agree on the superiority of Science in its explanatory power and ability to produce meaningful results. One of the major obstacles in these forums is the difficulty in making ones point clearly in the space allotted. Mr. Campbell, on the other hand, demonstrates what would appear to be a serious lack of understanding of the distinction between inductive and deductive logic. Moreover, one needs more than just a “working brain” to know how to construct and assess arguments whether they are mathematical proofs (deductive) or scientific theories (inductive). In any event, the credibility of any argument depends not only on the correct reasoning process, but the plausibility and integrity of its evidence and premises. Surely a “working brain” and a certain modicum of intelligence are necessary antecedents for the ability to think clearly, employ logic properly and to ultimately assess the soundness of arguments but we are not born with those skills. These skills need to be learned and unfortunately our schools are sorely lacking in teaching them. Quite often the first exposure to critical thinking skills take place in introductory philosophy courses at university. Critical thinking is an invaluable skill in today's world in which we are continually bombarded by useless data, bias and seriously flawed logic. We are constantly inundated by arguments by politicians, preachers, corporate advertisers and others designed to convince us of some conclusion that we would otherwise find unacceptable. Aristotle believed that the purpose of education is to enable us to make noble use of our leisure and he truly believed that the ultimate criterion of the quality of a culture is what its citizens do with that leisure time. He believed this entailed the cultivation of an enlightened autonomous thinker who will develop a lifelong active intellectual life beyond formal schooling. One only needs to turn on the television for five minutes to realize that in this endeavor our education system has been an abysmal failure.
Has Religion "Evolved"? (from a letter to the Vancouver Sun) Nothing I have read recently has advanced the dialogue between theists and secularists. Your column on Oct. 25th, (Charles Darwin: Troublemaker of the Millennium) was no exception. There are many assumptions and statements in the column that ought not to go unchallenged, but I'll respond to just one: "Not only has science evolved since Darwin. So has religion." Indeed. The fundamental tenets of Roman Catholicism, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism have not changed since Darwin's time. That some religions modernise their rituals or, usually grudgingly, have allowed the findings of science to infringe on their territory no more proves their evolution than changing styles drive the evolution of hair. Religions look to gods; science looks to proof. In a world without religion science would still be science - theories would be proven or disproven and we'd move on. A world without science is a world of hunters and gatherers, infused with gods and demons. It's not possible to 'evolve' from that, except through science, just as it’s not possible to conclude a theory proven that relies on metaphysical speculation. There is no breaching of the void, no kind of science secured by faith, as there is no mystery in the worship of mundane gods. Has science evolved? Not considerably since Darwin's time. Its tools have, of course, but the principles of modern scientific attitude and methodology were in place in the mid-19th century. What modern science has done is press the gods and their philosophers into ever more arcane territory. If there are no gods of photosynthesis, gravitation or indigestion then gods can only be more venerable. So we’re presented with gods of the limits: in at the beginning and gone, or in absolutely everything from quarks - or is it superstrings? The former, the “Here’s a universe; good luck and goodbye” god, begs the question, what’s to worship? The latter, the god of/is everything, is yet another iteration of teleology, that only the supernatural can account for the designs of the natural world. As such it's the inevitable counterpoint to evolution which holds that “designs” evolve through purely natural means. Evolution states that given the right ingredients and conditions nature can make life from the lifeless, and life evolves of its own accord. Those who find such a view untenable or discomforting have every right to believe something else; but they have no business infusing the supernatural into natural inquiry. It is analogous to worshippers demanding proof of their god's efficacy before venturing a prayer. They are opposite ways of looking at the world and they are irreconcilable. It is creationists who do all they can to muddy the waters dividing science and religion. They claim either that their beliefs are scientifically defensible or, failing that, that science (and especially evolutionary theory) is actually a religion because it, like religion, involves “belief”. The ambiguous use of the word “belief” makes it sound as though it means the same thing as “faith” in the religious sense. This tactic is typical creationist sophistry.
Religion or Philosophy? (from a letter to the Vancouver Sun) In examining deep existential questions such as “Who am I?”, “Why am I Here?”, and “What Happens after I Die?”, Douglas Todd should recommend that young people pursue Science and Philosophy, not Religion. As one philosopher once put it, “philosophy is questions that may never be answered whereas religion is answers that may never be questioned.” In my own personal experience I have found theological explanations overly facile and often incoherent. They are generally futile attempts to explain the unknown in terms of the incomprehensible or, at best, an exercise in drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient or implausible premises. If critical thinking is valued, young people should develop a skeptical eye and a judicious sense of what not to believe. What should be encouraged is intellectual humility, the scientific temper and the realization of the limitations of our cognitive equipment. This should lead them to perceive how difficult it is to obtain genuine knowledge about anything, particularly in the realm of metaphysics. In my view, faith is clearly an intellectual vice and ignorance about something does not provide any justification for belief. Mysticism, comfortable myths and appeals to supernatural entities add nothing to our knowledge and are, for the most part, exercises in self-deception and wishful thinking. The fact that many people resort to these mechanisms says something about the psychological make-up those people but little more. Finally, in spite of Todd’s unnamed poll, there is no necessary logical or causal connection between religiosity and ethics. In fact it could be argued that one who follows absolute ethical imperatives grounded in authority is merely being prudent. Obedience might be prudent, but prudence is not ethics.
The X-Files and Religion (from a letter to the Vancouver Sun) Douglas Todd is right when he asserts “the truth is not out there” in his references to the paranormal and other pseudo-science promoted on the frivolous television program “The X-Files”. [Bill Nye the Science Guy, one of the more intelligent programs on television for young people did a spoof on this silly program and referred to it as the "Why Files"] But neither is “the truth” likely to be found in any of the closed systems of thought within mainstream religion. It seems to me that belief in alien abductions and psychic phenomena require no more gullibility on the part of the believer than, for example, belief in the virgin birth or the resurrection. In spite of the Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution the human propensity for irrationality, credulity, self-deception and wishful thinking continue as though we were still stranded in the Dark Ages. The irresponsibility of the mass media contributes to this sad state of affairs as does the failure to teach critical thinking in the schools. The media, particularly television, is plagued by a preponderance of programs encouraging belief in ESP, psychic phenomena, angels, bible prophecy, faith healing and host of other absurdities. The media should heed the late Carl Sagan’s adage “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” and some of the producers of these inane programs would be well-advised to read his most recent book on superstition and pseudo-science, “The Demon Haunted World”. Michael de Montaigne once declared that ”nothing is so firmly believed as that which is least known” and, in this century, Bertrand Russell stated that “the opinions which are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists. “Man is a credulous animal”, says Russell, “and must believe something. In the absence of good ground for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.” Over 2000 years ago Euripedes wisely asserted that “man’s most valuable trait is a sense of what not to believe”. Perhaps this maxim might serve as a useful vision for our education system in the 21st century.
Design Arguments Rehashed (from a letter to the Vancouver Sun) In spite of an American Supreme Court decision ruling that creationism is not science (Edwards vs. Aguillard – 1987) the creationists are at it again. This time its proponents, financially supported by the Templeton Foundation, have masked their intentions by granting themselves the innocuous title “Canadian Centre for Cultural Renewal”. The Templeton Foundation, it should be noted, is best known for its financial support of metaphysically oriented science writers such as Frank Tipler and Paul Davies who openly discuss God. It appears this new breed of creationist is attempting to redefine science and dramatically modify its rigorous standards in order to accommodate the transcendental. The Christian God will now enter through the backdoor under the guise of a highly speculative hypothesis referred to as Intelligent Design (ID). But design arguments for the existence of God are not new. The Argument from Design is essentially a feeble attempt to draw a post hoc analogy between human design and our propensity to see design in the natural world. It was effectively refuted and dismissed by the philosopher David Hume in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1776), posthumously published by his good friend Adam Smith. The origins of the universe, however, remain a mystery and may be forever beyond our meager cognitive apparatus to grasp. In any event it is a logical possibility that the universe has always existed. Positing metaphysical entities as causes for the universe merely introduce another mystery on top of a preexisting one and subsequently set up a vicious infinite regress of causes. When Pierre Laplace, the famous mathematician and scientist was queried by Napoleon as to why God was missing from his cosmology, he responded with “Sire, I have no need of that hypothesis”. I do however fully support the introduction of Comparative Religion and Philosophy courses in the public schools but not within the confines of science. Religion deals with immutable truths, the supernatural and divine revelation whereas science deals with the natural world and hence is empirical, contingent and provisional – continually subject to criticism and possible revision. I have yet to see a successful prediction about the physical world that was inferred or extrapolated from the content of any religious document. Religious claims should be exposed to the same rigid criticisms as science but this is rarely if ever expressed by the corporate media. In any event, as history has taught us, critiques of religion can be detrimental to one’s health – as Salman Rushdie’s fatwah so graphically demonstrates. Creationists and their sympathizers, it seems, are in a state of existential angst over an uncaring indifferent universe which they feel diminishes our humanity and dignity. Personally I would rather forge my own meaning and life’s projects rather than have it imposed from some external force whether it is the universe, God or some human authority. What is so troublesome in the United States in particular (which befuddles those elsewhere) is creationists and their disciples attempting to expunge from our schools even any mention of evolution – the central unifying theory of the biological sciences and one of the most beautiful and most powerfully explanatory concepts in the history of science.
On Godless British Columbia (from a letter to the Vancouver Sun) I was somewhat troubled by some of Douglas Todd’s conclusions regarding the recent Angus Reid Poll on religious belief in British Columbia. First, Todd draws some curious inferences from the crude data of this poll. Even overlooking the dubious premise that responses to polls are reasoned responses, Todd ignores a host of other possible relevant variables when, for example, he attempts to formulate a causal connection between a secular (or humanist) world view and one’s propensity to not support charitable organizations and one’s support of the NDP party (although he also claims that “secular people focus more on building the economy”). There are no grounds for this conclusion and surely the important issue, which polls fail to address, is why one leans toward one political persuasion, why one does not support gay rights, why one supports abortion and so on. Second, Todd seems to imply that there is some necessary logical connection between belief in a supreme deity and ethics. Todd, who seems frequently to write on issues philosophical, might re-read his introductory text on ethics from Philosophy 101 in addition to a text on the misuse of statistics. His penchant for all things religious is perhaps responsible for his efforts to depict humanists as moral relativists. The moral point of view of most humanists is not unlike most Christians - they simply arrive at their ethical principles rationally rather than accepting them as dictates of God’s will. With regard to W.A.C. Bennett’s epithet “godless socialists”, it simply displays his preference for defamatory slogans rather than reasoned argument. Bennett might have asked himself what end of the political spectrum Jesus would have supported were he alive today. It seems to me he would support many socialist causes and perhaps be appalled at the move in recent years to unfettered global capitalism that is supported by many adherents of the Religious Reich. Third, the fact according to this poll that more religionists than secularists “feel a personal responsibility to help people in poor countries” does not necessarily mean that the former are more inclined to actually contribute to charities. Also, if the donations are funneled through a church, the main purpose of which is not to contribute to charities, how much of that money actually gets to the people who truly need it?
On the atheism of Francis Crick (from a letter to the National Post) Mr. Horvath’s depiction of Francis Crick as a “devout atheist” and one who harbors feelings of “visceral disdain for religion” is, to say the least, a bit overstated. An atheist is simply one who lacks belief in God and not one who denies the existence of God. I’m sure Mr. Crick, as a distinguished member of the National Academy of Sciences, could care less what people choose to believe as an article of faith. Scientists are only interested in plausible hypotheses involving clearly defined concepts that can be empirically tested and replicated under strict laboratory conditions. Consequently under these criteria, “God” and “love” are disqualified. Like all other efforts to prove God’s existence, Mr. Horvath’s mention of the argument from design is almost laughable. It is no more than a curious anachronism – a fallacious argument from analogy that was dismissed by the philosopher David Hume and others over two centuries ago. Moreover, Crick’s position has nothing to do with bias; he is simply taking the intellectually honest position of disbelief because absence of evidence is evidence against the hypothesis. One must be open minded of course - but not so open that your brains fall out. Something Mr. Horvath may not have considered is the fact that monotheism is one step removed from the atheism. It seems to me that if Christians applied the same standards of rationality in rejecting all the gods of other religions and applied those very same standards to their own god, they must reject their own as well. More interesting than whether religion is true is whether it is useful. Has it been, on the whole, a force for Good or Evil in the world? In my view religion’s utility is far more amenable to investigation than it is to its truth. I think Bertrand Russell was correct when he argued that religion was based on fear and not the desire to do good works. In the final analysis, it really makes no difference to anyone whether people believe in god or the invisible flying pink unicorn. We only care about how they behave as a result of such beliefs. Although we may be appalled at a person’s lack of intellectual integrity in accepting propositions based on faith, when we argue against religious belief it ought to be because we feel that, on balance, it is destructive. Web Sites of interest on Francis Crick: http://www.nobel.se/medicine/laureates/1962/crick-bio.html http://www.positiveatheism.org/india/s1990a01.htm This site includes an essay by Crick called “How I got inclined toward Atheism” and may shed some light on the above debate.
Denying God's Existence (from a letter to the Surrey Now - this was in response to one the worst cases of nauseating drivel I have ever seen published. It was so pathetic it hardly warranted a response.) Frank Hoeft’s letter is so plagued by inaccuracies, scientific misunderstandings, philosophical fallacies and non sequiturs it hardly warrants a response, but here we go!. First, Hoeft’s assertion that evidence for the existence of the Christian God is “overwhelming” solely on the basis that many are “convinced” is a classic non sequitur. Many people are convinced by fallacious arguments and the mere fact that many believe in a proposition is not an argument for the truth of that proposition. Belief in X is warranted if there are compelling arguments and solid evidence in favour of X. So far, attempts at proving God’s existence have been abysmal failures and their blatant logical flaws have been exposed by philosophers. Most of the arguments are circuitous or are based on false analogies. Also, arguing whether certain things do or do not exist is pointless when the relevant notion of existence in question is so ill-defined. Christianity is simply one of a multitude of different versions of theism, all claiming exclusivity and promising some ultimate reward of eternal bliss provided one simply has faith in a metaphysical abstraction called God. Moreover, when a claim asserts the existence of something that is greatly at odds with our prior experience and best scientific knowledge, we must consider this claim, at the very least, probably false until we are presented with truly strong evidence and argument in its favour. One can at best only provide motives or psychological reasons for belief in comfortable myths such as God, the afterlife and eternal salvation. As Bertand Russell has pointed out, “the opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists” and “the passion is the measure of the holder’s lack of rational conviction.” Hoeft shoud heed the late Carl Sagan’s maxim, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” and be cognizant of the fact that the burden of proof for such claims rests with the claimant. When there is a lack of evidence or argument for the existence of some entity, the proper epistemic position is either suspension of belief or disbelief. To quote Russell again, “If your belief is based upon reason, you will support it by argument, rather than by persecution, and will abandon it if the argument goes against you. But if your belief is based on faith, you will realize that argument is useless, and will therefore resort to violence in the form of persecution or by stunting and distorting the minds of the young in what is called “education”.” Belief in God , whether it be Jehovah, Allah, Zeus, Aphrodite, Odin or hundreds of other gods who are no longer with us because their cultures have passed away, is no more justifiable than belief in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy. People believe in these myths either because they have been culturally inculcated or because they entail emotional payoffs or serve as coping mechanisms. Many people believe exactly what they want to believe and the beliefs that they hold most strongly are those that seemingly have the most salutary emotional appeal and often the least evidential support. Self-deception, gullibility and wishful thinking are clearly intellectual vices but seem to be a predisposition or peculiarity of the human condition. People should perhaps heed Nietzsche’s dictum: “The worst lies are those we tell to ourselves.” Second, assuming there does exist an omnipotent, omniscient, omni-benevolent god, it does not follow that a person has any moral sense merely because he follows god’s commands. Submission to authority with the threat of punishment or promise of reward is prudence, not ethics. And belief in God is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for ethics, as Plato so convincingly argued in the Euthyphro . Ethical systems are human social constructs with numerous cross-cultural similarities although there are some aberrant values that are held by some cultures because of superstition or for purposes of basic survival. Morality must be grounded in rationality, taking into account human needs, values and concerns and the consequences of our acts within different contexts as they affect all other creatures and living organisms within the natural environment. The answer to Dostoevsky’s infamous question “If God is dead, is everything permitted?” is clearly in the negative. If God commands that we ought to do something then he must surely have a good reason for his imperative that we humans can conceivably come to understand by appealing to rational principles. If he does not have a good reason then his will is simply arbitrary. Third, Hoeft’s ignorance of the theory of evolution and the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche is appalling. His espousal of Social Darwinism is a nineteenth century perversion of Darwin’s theory and his contention that Nietzsche’s writings provided the philosophical underpinnings for both Stalinism and the Third Reich, two political dogmas at opposite poles of the political spectrum, is ludicrous. Neither Stalin nor Hitler ever read Nietzsche and it is quite obvious that neither has Hoeft. Further, it should be mentioned that Hitler was an avowed Christian and believed in God and the veracity of the Bible. Stalin, on the other hand, had a similar Christian upbringing but later replaced his religious faith with faith in the God Karl Marx and in the veracity of Marx’s sacred texts Das Capital and the Communist Manifesto. Finally, Mr Hoeft should make an effort to understand the crucial difference between open-mindedness and credulity as well as the difference between beliefs based on an epistemology firmly grounded in universal standards of rationality and beliefs based on blind faith. Appealing to the incomprehensible will never increase our comprehension.
Homosexuality, Ethics and Religious Taboo (from a letter to the Vancouver Sun) The homophobia of Alliance MP Larry Spencer Because in our culture we value freedom Mr. Larry Spencer has the right to spew out hostile pronouncements about gays. But those same freedoms that permit him to make such venomous statements he would deny to others simply because of their innocuous sexual proclivities. Experience has shown there is no correlation between homosexuality and character. In addition, Science tells us that homosexual behavior has been recorded in every known human culture that has kept detailed records. Finally, the preponderance of scientific evidence on the subject indicates that homosexuality is not a freely chosen characteristic but is instead, like race and gender, a product of genetics. As a former Baptist preacher he should be fully cognizant of the fact that in the New Testament Jesus never actually addresses the issue of homosexuality. If religious fundamentalists like Larry Spencer choose to base their homophobic doctrines on the taboos of the Old Testament, then it logically follows that they must assent to the more extreme punishments as well - such as death by stoning. Moreover, if their moral foundations rest on Paul’s pronouncements against gays, then they must also agree with him that slaves should always obey their masters and that women should unconditionally submit to their husbands. For centuries, because of the influence of biblical teachings during the Dark Ages, homosexuals in Europe and elsewhere were subjected to various forms of persecution and brutality and even the death penalty. This attitude was a major reversal from the outlook that had prevailed in ancient Greece and Rome. Moral progress on this issue and many others evolved primarily because of the secular influences of the Enlightenment. Throughout history, Biblical literalism has been applied to deny fundamental human rights and persecute dissenting groups and individuals. Gays just happen to be one of the more popular contemporary victims of this persecution and intolerance. The pattern has been repeated so often that the distinguished British philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) felt compelled to sate that "the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world." His hope for the world was articulated in these words: "Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines." Incidentally, Russell was himself a victim of religious persecution when he was prevented from accepting a position as professor of logic at the College of the City of New York in the early 1940s. Intellectually and ethically, organized religion has been on the defensive ever since the Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution but they have still not put an end to the insidious practice of promoting ignorance and persecution. As Martin Luther King Jr. once said, "Science keeps religion from sinking into the valley of crippling irrationalism and paralyzing obscurantism."
Jesus Saves (from a letter to the National Post) The survivor of the 9-11 World Trade Centre disaster who claimed that after summoning God in the name of Jesus “God’s hand spared him from steel and mortar that crushed everyone around him” might want to rethink his assertion. If God was responsible for his survival one can only infer He was equally responsible for the demise of the others. This scenario seems to fly in the face of the Christian conception of an omni-benevolent dispassionate God. It mystifies me as to why so many religiously inclined people cannot accept the contingencies and vicissitudes of life without invoking the supernatural. Follow up letter... There are some serious problems with Mr. Andrew Lunau Smith’s endeavour to counter my argument. In addition to his apparent confusion regarding the meaning of the word “dispassionate” Mr. A. L. Smith appeals to dubious implicit premises, biblical scripture and the capricious mysterious ways of God. This strategy is illustrative of Christian apologetics that, for the past 2000 years, have been designed to explain away gratuitous evil and suffering in a world ostensibly managed by an omnipotent loving deity. To my mind this is no better that appealing to the text of Little Red Riding Hood and the mysterious ways of the Big Bad Wolf to explain quantum physics. In short, it carries no weight at all. The brute fact of terrorism and the subsequent contingencies of falling debris are the only rational explanations for who survived the World Trade Centre disaster and who did not. Moreover, his attempt to set up an analogy between the efforts of firefighters and those of an omnipotent God who ostensibly could have prevented the disaster is blatantly fallacious. There can be no doubt that if there is in fact a God of the Christian variety; he does indeed work in mysterious ways.
The New Pope’s War on Relativism [From a letter to the Vancouver Sun] For most of human history there was no distinction drawn between moral and empirical statements; "One ought not to steal” and "Crows are black" were considered to be the same kind of proposition. The celebrated Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776) was probably the first to point out that these are two completely different types of assertions and that there is no way to root a moral assertion in an empirical one. As Hume put it, one cannot deduce an “ought” from an “is”. But both relativism and realism present problems for religion since the literally hundreds of religions and multifarious denominations within religions make mutually exclusive and conflicting claims. Those claims are either all relative to context and interpretation or they can be deemed true or false. If we assume that there is such a thing as empirical truth as we do in science then if one religion is true, the others must be false. The most plausible outcome is that they are all false. If relativism holds sway however, then truth is culturally contingent and basically anything passes for truth. It seems clear to me that both of these options are not encouraging for the claims of religion. Pope Ratzinger refuses to accept the fact, contrary to Hume, that within the ethical realm there cannot possibly be any immutable moral laws handed down from some absolute source. Whether the source is a mysterious metaphysical entity such as God or a self-proclaimed dictator, moral assertions do not have the same truth value as empirical ones. And if moral absolutes did exist, even an intelligent curious six year old would question not only the source, but the legitimacy and rationality of those chosen rules. These are basic questions of ethical inquiry that go back as far as Plato’s dialogues. Those who cannot accept the human basis of morality and ethics are generally religious zealots and others in positions of power who want rigid standards of conduct that can be used as a mechanism of control. As Bertrand Russell succinctly put it, “A good man is one whose opinions and actions are pleasing to the holders of power”.
Political Apologetics (from a letter to the Vancouver Sun) It’s interesting when the economy is sluggish politicians such as our current premier blame global economic forces over which he claims to have no control. On the other hand, when the economy miraculously improves, he attributes this phenomenon to his astute economic salvation plan. It’s the same sort of sophistry and convoluted reasoning employed by George W Bush in his attempt to justify the immoral and illegal attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq. If we believe the latest testimonial by Osama Bin Laden released by the media on Friday, it was he and he alone who was responsible for 9-11. One thing the American military has been very good at over the years is surreptitiously removing tyrants they do not like and replacing them with ones more amenable to US economic interests. It seems to me that bombing two third world countries that were already in a state of chaos and economic decline and killing thousands of innocent people in the process is not a very efficient way of eliminating a single adversary.
Gordon Campbell – Political Fundamentalist (from a letter to the Vancouver Sun) Today there seem to be no values other than those of the marketplace. Ethics has been reduced to prudence and profit. Our premier Gordon Campbell has a salvation plan for BC and the human race that fits in with this model. Privatize everything on the planet and, in accordance with holy writ of unfettered capitalism, ordain profit and greed as the primary motivating forces underlying all human endeavor. The privatization of BC Hydro has been set in motion, Medicare is being seriously compromised and we are now informed that our most prized highway system is to be sold to the private sector. The airwaves are now almost entirely within the grips of corporate realm- so why not the entire Universe? Perhaps his most holy eminence Gordon Campbell will arrange for the installation of God as CEO of Heaven Inc. complete with stock options for St. Peter and the Angels, miraculous insider trading and voodoo accounting practices. Gordon Campbell and his neo-conservative journalist brother Michael seem to believe that the market is a universalizing force that motivates and absorbs every human endeavor, thus putting an unrelenting pressure on every human activity to adapt to its own conditions. Everything must become a business enterprise, pay its own way and to relentlessly serve the bottom line at all costs, thus turning news and basic education into entertainment, scholarship and higher education into career preparation, religion and spirituality into get rich schemes, sports into business enterprises, philosophical reflection into facile self-help seminars and political parties that represent only the interests of financial elites. Everything in the world becomes transmorgified in its own image.
Bear Gonads (from a letter to the National Post) The use of bear parts by certain oriental cultures to treat disease and sexual dysfunction is not representative of cultural clash as much as it is a clash between science and superstition. The belief that certain animal parts can treat disease has no more or less evidential support than does believing in the efficacy of prayer or faith healing. There is no scientific basis for these or hundreds of other examples of irrationality that could be easily cited if space permitted. The only difference is the source of the superstition and degree of collateral damage caused by such beliefs. Unfortunately many people continue to embrace a pre-Enlightenment, pre-Scientific world view and there does not seem to be any cure for this disease anytime soon. “As long as people believe in absurdities, they will continue to commit atrocities” - Voltaire
Darwin Day (from a letter to the National Post) The letter you posted from the “creationist” scarcely warrants a serious response since it is generally unwise to engage a fool in debate. My only comment is this: if you insist on publishing letters from fundamentalists touting creationism why not post letters from members of the Flat Earth Society, proponents of an earth centered Universe and other medieval simpletons?
Schools as Work Camps [Vancouver Sun Letters - Dec 16, 2004] Re: Educator blasts BC schools as “work camps” (p. A1) The writer of the above article is not as far off the mark as many would claim. Thoreau once said, "Education makes a straight ditch of a free meandering brook." So let’s be honest. Our public schools are essentially an instrument of the state and, increasingly in recent years, corporate power. Our students are not taught the intellectual virtues of curiosity, skepticism or the skills of logic and critical thinking that would promote a life-long love of learning and serve them well as responsible citizens in a democratic society. Instead, mass education focuses upon didactic teaching methods, rote memorization and scoring well on exams. Our schools do not promote independence of thought or action - they instead inculcate conformity and acquiescence to power and the status quo. Each student is taught virtually the same thing in essentially the same way - much of it distortion and outright propaganda - particularly within the realms of history and economics. Our students are not educated to become reflective and creative members of society; rather they are programmed to be unquestioning conformists and mindless consumers. Our universities, rather than sanctuaries of intellectual contemplation, free thought and reflection that they once were, have become factories for churning out technocrats with degrees in marketing, accounting and business administration. Thus we are creating a society of automatons and docile sheep that will never challenge authority, who will behave predictably and will be staunch defenders of the power elites.
Mormon Polygamists (Vancouver Sun Letter April 2005) Re: Polygamous Bishop of Bountiful There are at least three key aspects of this sordid state of affairs that need to be pointed out that may explain why it continues. First, paternalistic monotheistic religions have always subjugated and exploited women. Second, its sacred cow status in our culture has effectively protected religion from any serious rational criticism in the media. Third, if an activity can be classified under the sacrosanct umbrella of religion, anything goes.
Chuck and Camilla – Who Cares (Vancouver Sun letter - March 2005) The issue of whether or not Camilla Parker Bowles becomes Queen of Canada is irrelevant to any enlightened person who values freedom and democracy. The present monarchy is a medieval residue of elitism and oppression from the Dark Ages and in my view should have been legally abolished decades ago as were racism and slavery. As an institution, even in symbolic form, it has absolutely no redeeming value. Moreover, why the frivolous shallow lives of the Royal Family would interest anyone with a morsel of intelligence is mystifying.
Focus on Your Own Damn Family (Vancouver Sun letter - July 2005) The invocation of “Conservative” to describe certain politically active right wing Christian organizations such as Focus on the Family is essentially a euphemistic expression to describe fundamentalists. In the United States groups such as these have been serious threats to civil liberties, the teaching of science in public schools and other areas of enlightened secular society. In short, they are attempting to break down the barriers between church and state in the US guaranteed by the constitution. They are now imposing themselves as perilous threats to do the same thing here in Canada. Focus on the Family, in particular, is an especially powerful political force with massive financial backing that now has a large presence in Canada. My knee jerk reaction to such a group is “Focus on Your Own Damn Family!” and if religious groups such as these want to get political, they can pay taxes like the rest of us. Family” is a word that can mean different things to different people. Even fascist groups, drug cartels and ordinary street gangs refer to themselves as a “Family” - so there is nothing intrinsically endearing about family. John Ralston Saul in his recent best seller, The Collapse of Globalism, in addition to his convincing polemic against the economic dogmatisms of Globalism, had a few words for religious fundamentalism as well. In making reference to groups like Focus on the Family, he states: “Speaker after speaker at the 2004 Republican Convention in the United States invoked the family because, they said, family comes first and is the measure of a society. Of course, family is central to human life and to our emotional life in all its complexity. But family as a measure or structure of society is a mafia argument or an argument of the extreme right, for whom there are only two possible choices: either the sacred family or the sacred nation. In either case, loyalty is measured according to how successfully it represents a closed situation. Thus, the democratic and humanist ideas of civilization, society and community, which are all dependent on our ability to imagine the other – the one who is not close – are expelled to the margins.” (p. 247)
My thoughts on the Montreal shooting spree (Vancouver Sun letter - September 2006) Rather than citing extrinsic circumstances such as ineffective gun control and the need for tougher laws and punishments on which to blame this incident, Canadians should focus their attention on the genuine root causes for such tragedies. One of Canada’s major newspapers, Globe and Mail, expressed the conventional corporate media wisdom on this event. They published three columns, all of which stated the inexplicable, intractable and unpredictable nature of Wednesday’s shootings and not one mentioned that it could be explained by or in any way related to the socio-economic environment. One writer made the obvious point that mass-killers are alienated tortured individuals. But he declared it futile to attempt to answer the question as to why people could become so alienated and so incensed to commit such horrific acts of random violence. Are they born this way? I think not. Stephen Harpers typically conservative reactionary response in asserting that our laws need to be tougher is simplistic and evades the issue by addressing symptoms rather than causes. The mere fact that mass shootings, particularly at schools and colleges, have not always been regular occurrences should be sufficient cause for critical thought on this matter. What causes a person to seek vindication and validation from such a pernicious act as mass murder is quite obviously the fallout from a combination of personal torment and extreme social dysfunction, a combination that emerges from and is reinforced by a very specific socio-economic culture. In Canada, as in all the advanced capitalist countries, recent decades have seen a steady deterioration of a sense of community and participation in democratic social life and a concomitant erosion of basic civilities and compassion for others as the most privileged sections of society have pursued an agenda aimed at defending and enhancing their social and economic status. They have done this through the systematic dismantling of checks and balance in the financial markets, decent paying jobs, working conditions, and public services to those in need. The subordination of all qualities of civilized social life and community are increasingly compromised by the promotion of militarism, individual wealth, greed, acquisitiveness and self aggrandizement stemming from an unfettered form of capitalism, a vile form of “me first” society that the moral philosopher Adam Smith, the generally accepted “father of capitalism”, would surely not have endorsed.
The Pope is a jerk! The Vatican’s dictum that homosexuality is “intrinsically disordered” and “immoral” is both ludicrous and pernicious. It displays not only a flagrant insensitivity to gay people, but more importantly, a serious lack of any genuine understanding of the nature of ethics and moral conduct. Moral rules are not similar to laws of Physics or laws handed down from the Universe like “pie in the sky” but human constructs representative of a culture’s desire for social cohesion and human dignity. Homosexuality is a natural phenomenon that has been with us since recorded history and the intolerance for it seems to be closely associated with monotheistic religions such as Christianity and Islam. In any event, why would anyone want to take seriously advice on sexual mores from the Pope? If he is an expert in such matters, he shouldn’t be.
The Dalai Lama is a cool dude! It was a refreshing respite from all the news about the violence in Iraq to have the Dalai Lama in town. It was truly inspirational to listen to his insightful prophetic words of wisdom about our wasteful acquisitiveness and greed, the subsequent rape of the world’s resources and the gratuitous violence fomented by ALL religions today and in the past. His message was one of humility, tolerance, compassion and peace and how we need to revolutionize the way we think about our world and our place in it. If we do not, he warns, we will be unable to save the planet from either environmental degradation or outright annihilation. His total lack of dogmatism or ideology, his stoicism, sense of humor, style and calm rational demeanor are such a refreshing diversion from the rigid relentless frothy diatribes we get from most Christian, Jewish and Moslem religious leaders. To the best of my knowledge Buddhism is the ONLY mainstream religion that does not have a history of continual violence and persecution. Most people it seems need some external mechanism to give their lives "meaning" and when they decide to reject oppressive, hypocritical religions like Christianity they often find a need to replace it with something else. Unfortunately its often some other equally irrational kooky world view such as New Age nonsensical mumbo jumbo, Scientology, a charlatan self-help guru such as Deepak Chopra or Anthony Robbins or a selection from the hundreds of other salvation plans that are promoted in the marketplace of religion. The Dalai Lama, I believe, offers an appealing option for those people who still find a need for external spiritual guidance. This mornings Vancouver Sun had some interesting segments on his visit and people's reaction to it. But as usual many who went to see him did so for all the wrong reasons. According to the Vancouver Sun article, one shallow simpleton went to see the Dalai Lama for divine inspiration to assist the Canucks in the final and deciding game seven tonight with the Calgary Flames. Arggghhh!! He must be one of these shallow idiotic primates one sees with their Canuck flags waving from the car roof who are attempting to live vicariously through the team. For many dullards such as this, it constitutes their religion and "meaning" in life.
Education and Responsibility The
person who reflects on the probable effects of his decisions on those who are
likely to be affected, who relies on reason and evidence, if only to eliminate
some choices, acts responsibly even if he later finds that he has done the wrong
thing. One
cannot teach one’s students, not even oneself, always to do what is best; but
one can try to teach oneself to become a little less impulsive and irrational
and more conscientious and responsible. Nobody favours always acting with an
utter disregard for evidence and reason; but some people admonish us to throw
both to the wind when it comes to the most important choices - which is rather
like being very careful when walking, but shutting both eyes firmly when running
at high speeds or like picking one’s dinner guests carefully while picking
one’s spouse out of a hat. Today’s students have been conditioned by an overly nurturing, handholding educational system not to take responsibility for their own actions. The prime responsibility surely rests with the devotees of customer and consumer driven education and enrolment maximizing educational administrators who foster an atmosphere in which teachers must exert near Herculean effort to make the necessary adaptations to ensure that all students are successful and happy. ”Failure” has now become anathema to the education system and the responsibility for success of a student has been placed squarely on the shoulders of the classroom teacher. Whom We Love In Spite of Ourselves The apologetics on Martha Stewart ostensibly endorsed by the “Sun Staff” is one of the most depraved pieces of journalism I have read in years. Is this woman someone we should revere as an ethical model for our young people? Doesn’t the staff at the Sun realize this woman was convicted of a serious criminal offense and should have also been tried for insider trading? Quite obviously this latter offense is difficult to prosecute as we discovered in the case of our former premier Bill Bennett who several years ago was acquitted of insider trading in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. If Queen Martha had stolen a car, broken in to a home or robbed a bank, would you be singing the same tune? I would have been appalled if she had received a sentence of less than five years – but five months? There is something insidious about unmitigated greed and the paltry sentence given to Martha Stewart is just another example of a continuing message from the justice system that tells us: “white collar crime pays”. Postmodern Education (Open letter to BC Department of Education) November 1996 Project Manager, Ministry of Education, Skills and Training Policy Branch To Whom it may concern: My comments are not necessarily directed at yourself or your department since my concerns with the education system in B.C are varied and numerous. I can only deal with a few here. I have been a mathematics teacher in the B.C. school system for the past 28 years and have become both deeply concerned and quite mystified by some of the recent changes in education and the direction for the future. I and many others I talk to on a daily basis often wonder what planet the policy makers are from and whether teachers are ever consulted before these decisions are made. It would seem that many people in charge of policy changes in education have assumed a philosophical position not unlike that of postmodernism which abandons the notion of any universal standards of rationality. The postmodernists have ostensibly hailed a new era in which truth and reality are social constructs (or mind dependent), objectivity is a utopian dream and all knowledge is reduced to advancing the interests of those in power. Of course this position is self-refuting since, if we accept their claims, there is no more reason to accept their arguments than there would be to accept the arguments of anyone else. Furthermore, the proliferation of Orwellian newspeak seems to be a logical consequence of this postmodernist stance. Is the enlightenment now coming to an end? Are we now in the process of regressing back to the irrationality and mysticism of the pre-enlightenment era? A flagrant example of such “newspeak” is the recently instituted employment of “in progress” on a student’s report card rather than “fail”. Taking the word “failure” out of the education dictionary and replacing it with a politically correct obscurity is a clear example of this postmodern view. Since objectivity and external standards of judgment are impossible we cannot really draw a line and say “you have not met a minimal standard of achievement and hence you fail”. I can only hope that if I ever need coronary bypass surgery that the surgeon will NOT have received an “in progress” on his report card. The whole idea of “in progress” is ridiculous and impractical. Teachers are expected to give “in progress” to a student who is not passing their course and then write a dissertation on that student indicating what he must do to succeed. With a teaching load of 210 students I find this ludicrous. Moreover, someone who denies that a person can fail at any endeavor should also realize that they now must deny the possibility of success. After all, if objectivity is a cultural myth and we cannot measure with any degree of certainty when a student has failed, surely we cannot determine when he has succeeded. It would now seem that the responsibility for a students “failure” is placed squarely in the lap of the teacher - if a kid can’t pass it must surely be the teacher’s problem. The teacher in his assessment has not been sensitive enough to “individual differences” or has not modified his course sufficiently to account for individual cognitive abilities. Also, I now see that the policy makers have seen in their wisdom to throw Math9A, Math10A and Math11A into the tank. I can only assume that the basic premise behind this decision is the quixotic allegation that anyone can succeed at anything if they try hard enough. I suppose this is part of this self-esteem crusade which is the major buzz word in education these days (self-esteem - another one of many concepts misconstrued and misunderstood by many educators). Educators in positions of power to make changes always talk about quality and excellence. How this is possible in a system which demands that everyone must succeed and clients must be kept regardless of their achievement or behavior I can only speculate. I could go on but I won’t - I have report cards to complete this long weekend. Note: I retired from teaching senior mathematics in 1999 more out of frustration with the steady deterioration of a dysfunctional system than from anything else. Ah but freedom is sweet !! And I get to spend endless hours at the YMCA as well as play all the tennis my old body will allow.
On Naive Optimism (The Pollyanna Virus) I don’t see “optimism” as necessarily value laden or in any way logically connected to the ethical realm. It’s more or less a dispositional state that may or may not entail “value” for others or the person who happens to be so inclined. Persistent optimism can very often be an exercise in self-deception and a precursor to a series of devastating disappointments. We as teachers should encourage students to give their best effort but not to fear mistakes and be prepared for them and yes, even failure. Let’s face it: human history is littered with “screw ups” and as Alexander Pope has asserted, “to err is human”. Making mistakes is our most salient feature as humans and learning from them is what makes science so superior to other avenues to knowledge. Rather than “optimism” perhaps “positive attitude” or "self-confidence" might be a better term to use. Although "bright and shiny" optimistic people can be inspiring to be with, there can be dire consequences to those who wear their rose tinted glasses all the time. I have serious reservations about the sort of blind optimism that endorses a belief that "everything is ordered for the best.” This mind set clearly precludes any possibility of constructive skepticism or criticism and might be described as a form of “radical optimism”. As Bertrand Russell has pointed out, the penchant for believing that “everything is for the best” has always been valued highly by those in positions of power and authority. By encouraging this predisposition among their subordinates, those in their charge can be rendered cognitively inert. Russell asserted that administrators and others in positions of authority shun critical thinkers because they “cause administrative difficulties.” I would argue with Russell that faith or blind trust in anything is, for the most part, an intellectual vice. Moreover, one has to be acutely aware that simply because one is in authority, it does not follow that the person is an authority. Mussolini, for example, eschewed the notion of critical thought for the masses, preferring instead that they simply have faith in their leaders. He proclaimed: “The crowd doesn’t have to know”, it must believe…If only we can give them faith that mountains can be moved, then they will accept the illusion that mountains are moveable, and thus an illusion may become reality.” Always, he said, be “electric and explosive.” Belief over knowledge. Emotion over thought.” Noam Chomsky has maintained that in constitutional democracies indoctrination is more important than in dictatorships because people do have the right to free thought . He argues that totalitarian states don't really care what people think, because they always have a club to beat them over the head if they espouse the wrong thoughts or do the wrong thing. Democratic states can't use these techniques and since you can't force people, you have to use more subtle mechanisms and control what they think. In any event, the mind-numbing effects of commercial television inevitably reduce most people to a state of intellectual sloth. Many of you are probably familiar with Voltaire’s Candide, an insightful parody on Liebnitz’s “best of all possible worlds” argument. In this work Voltaire uses the character of Dr. Pangloss to depict Liebnitz and refutes his efforts to explain away the contradiction and incongruency of a world burdened by gratuitous evil and suffering contemporaneous with an omnipotent, omniscient and omni-benevolent God. Liebnitz’s argument fails on several counts, including his highly dubious premise of the existence of a deity, particularly one having the attributes he claims the Christian God to posses. These arguments are not unlike the convoluted rhetoric, proselytizing and apologetics of contemporary theologians. If one looks at the balance sheet of Optimism v Pessimism I think some mild form of pessimism is generally preferred. Personally, I like to be in touch with reality and a form of pessimism, skepticism and even cynicism is required in a democratic society in order to keep our elected politicians in check. We surely do not live in “the best of all possible worlds” and if a person is to have any moral sensibilities at all he must be aware of that truism. Moreover, in order to truly judge the ethical implications of any act we must be fully aware of the motives behind it - a most difficult task. Book recommendation on defensive pessimism (this is a rarity amoung all the mushy New Age pabulum in the book stores): The Positive Power of Negative Thinking by Julie K Norem On a related topic, see my essay on Self-Esteem "We judge others by their actions, but we judge ourselves by our motives." - Adlai Stevenson
The Day the Earth Stood Still [1951 Movie] Oct 2006 Or…Bush Needs to Meet Klaatu The Day the Earth Stood Still was made during the early years of the Cold War, an era of fear, uncertainty and paranoia over the perceived threat of Communism and nuclear weapons build up. Many of us should see this thought provoking five-star movie again because its relevance is timeless. It would be instructive for our young people who have never seen it because when we look at the conflict in the world today, little has changed. This great SF movie was on last night and again I was mesmerized by its sombre messages about the ignorance, irrationality and violent behaviour of human beings. For the first time last night, after not seeing the movie for about thirty years, I realized it was not only an anti-war movie but quite clearly anti-American. But those two “antis” have now become synonymous. Klaatau, a super intelligent alien, played brilliantly by the British actor Michael Rennie, arrives on our planet with his protective robot Gort. He emerges from the flying saucer that lands on the lawn in front of the White House and, with Christ like demeanor, declares: "We have come to visit you in peace and with goodwill." Within a matter of seconds, in an act symbolic of American foreign policy of “shoot and inquire later”, a trigger happy marine opens fire, wounding the emissary Klaatu. Gort promptly vaporizes all the weapons of the US marines including their tanks and artillery. After recovering from his wounds with the help of Gort who employs advanced medical technology far beyond anything on earth, Klaatu delivers his message to the our planet: find a civilized solution to your moral failings of aggressive selfish behaviour and perpetual war or face the consequence of a well-deserved total annihilation. If you have never seen the movie I won’t delve into the story line any further. The movie has many important messages. The relationship between the curious unassuming boy Bobby and Klaatu is a real delight. What struck me last night was the scathing critique of the unmitigated hypocrisy and intolerance of our culture and societal norms. The vast majority of people are not interested in facing harsh realities and truth is generally sacrificed for self-deceptive comfort, especially by politicians and the mass media. The only people who are depicted in the movie as valuing the truth and having any intellectual and moral integrity are scientists and mathematicians. This movie has been released in DVD and I think I’ll purchase it. Watch the movie again and then settle down to Mars Attacks [1996] as an antidote. BTW, I just discovered you can watch the movie on Google at: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3232643887050775784 “Klaatu barada nikto”
Is Richard Dawkins a Fundamntalist? Vancouver Sun Letters (August 20, 2007) Re: Margaret Somerville on Richard Dawkins, “Attackers of religion display own fundamentalist zeal”. It would seem from her analysis of Dawkins that Margaret Somerville has neither studied nor taken a course in conceptual analysis or elementary logic. As a professor of law & ethics at McGill she ought to know better. Her notions about belief in God are plagued by at least two epistemological difficulties. First, the word “atheism” is derived from the Greek prefix 'a', meaning without, and 'theism', meaning having a belief in a supernatural deity. Atheism, therefore, literally means "without theistic belief". Atheism does not emphatically assert anything; rather, it is a statement of withheld belief. Atheists, therefore, do not positively assert that gods do not exist. Conceptual considerations of god notwithstanding, a fundamental tenet of logic asserts that one cannot prove a universal negative. You cannot prove that “god does not exist” in the same sense that you cannot prove that “the tooth fairy does not exist.” But that is not the most significant problem. The burden for proof of extraordinary claims must always fall upon the one making the claim – this is true in a court of law as it is in the science lab. Atheists I have met consider themselves realists, embracing naturalism, a scientific world view that rejects supernatural claims and comforting fictions about such things as an afterlife and moral absolutes with a benevolent deity that will care for us. To the rational atheist, all knowledge is fallible and subject to new evidence and argument and if he were confronted with compelling evidence for the existence of a deity, he would willingly change his mind. Second, Somerville claims that “faith and reason are not incompatible.” But faith is the very antithesis of reason. Faith is defined as the holding of a belief for which there is no evidence. So how can faith be intellectually virtuous or a productive approach for anyone genuinely interested in truth or understanding the real world? In consideration of the aforementioned, one wonders why in Christianity faith has been elevated to such a lofty position since it seems to violate one of the seven cardinal sins. As the story of “Doubting Thomas” shows, Christianity prefers faith to evidence, proof and justified belief. But if one steps outside the realm of religion briefly, this notion becomes highly problematic. Does this mean for example that in matters of our health, the law or in purchasing a home or used car, we should appeal to faith? This is common wisdom to any intellectually aware junior high school student. As the brilliant philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell once said, “When there is evidence, no one speaks of faith. We do not speak of faith that two plus two is four or that the earth is round. We only speak of faith when we wish to substitute emotion for evidence.” Somerville wonders why there has been an upsurge in anti-religious sentiment in recent years. In spite of a 400 year interval since the scientific revolution and enlightenment, God and religious faith continue to permeate every aspect of our culture from the mindless patriotism and tedium of national anthems at sporting events to political demagogues throughout the world invoking the appropriate deity at every opportunity. For our neighbours to the south it has reached the stage of national obsession and the USA under the Bush administration seems to be transmogrifying that country into a theocracy. In the United States since the 1950s God has mysteriously appeared on the currency and not a day passes without some pandering politician or born again athlete uttering a prayer or blurting out “God Bless America”. George W Bush unwisely admitted that God instructed him to invade Iraq and even referred to the illegal and immoral faith based invasion as a “crusade”. Voltaire once stated that “those who believe in absurdities will commit atrocities.” The lies and deceptions by the Bush administration that led to the war in Iraq are a testament to that assertion. Something to Believe In Re: Peter McKnight in Vancouver Sun, Weekend Review (September 29, 2007)- We’re still looking for something to believe in. Although I strongly disagree with McKnight’s depiction of Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens as “frivolous atheists,” his analysis of Friedrich Nietzsche is outstanding. After about four hundred years since the dawn of the Scientific Revolution and Humanist Enlightenment people still seem uncomfortable and even incapable of coping with its notions of liberty, freedom of thought and responsibility to self. In spite of these liberating notions however, many require something external to them to provide meaning, often appealing to the comforting myths and palliatives of religion. Religion appeals to many of our worst fears, including of course our inevitable death, but also to the dread of having to accept Jean Paul Sartre’s maxim that we are “condemned to be free” - that we are totally responsible for who we are and for creating meaning in our lives. For Christians and others this means playing the high risk game of faith – to believe in the implausible hypothesis of a deity who promises an eternal afterlife where that meaning will apparently be revealed. I find this perplexing, perhaps as Bertrand Russell argued, even contemptible. Perhaps there’s an evolutionary explanation for this inclination. Sartre considered this tendency demeaning, inauthentic and de-humanizing, referring to it as “bad faith”. In the 1964 movie Zorba the Greek when Zorba (brilliantly played by Anthony Quinn) asked his book worm writer friend (played by Alan Bates) if all his books explained why we must all eventually die, he couldn’t give Zorba a satisfactory answer. If someone is looking for “meaning” in life, appealing to sources such as sacred texts or subjective religious experiences is not helpful. They must rather appeal to reasons, evidence and sound argument that can be understood by all whether they have faith or not. This is because even for many believers, the authority of established religions cannot be taken as absolute. As we understand the great diversity of faiths in the world, the historical events and forces that shaped their doctrines and sacred texts, and the fallibility of many of their leaders, the idea that they provide direct access to absolute truth loses its credibility. Divinely inspired or not, the human influence is all too clearly present in them all. This means that even if we do believe, we cannot accept religious teachings uncritically. We must use our own knowledge, critical faculties, accumulated wisdom and intellect to determine for ourselves whether or not the answers they provide are credible, even plausible. And because at some stage most of us can't help but wonder “what it's all about,” we can't for ever postpone this kind of philosophizing. When Douglas Adams was asked why he chose the number 42 as the answer to the meaning of life in his book Life, the Universe and Everything, he replied, "It was a joke. It had to be a number, an ordinary, smallish number, and I chose that one. Binary representations, base thirteen, Tibetan monks are all complete nonsense. I sat at my desk, stared into the garden and thought '42 will do' I typed it out. End of story." ** I’m personally partial to the number 1729. The British mathematician G. H. Hardy once mentioned to the brilliant young Indian mathematician Ramanujan (who had no formal training in Mathematics but nevertheless was invited to Oxford) that he had ridden in a taxi whose number he considered to be dull. Ramanujan immediately replied that the number was interesting, since it was the smallest (positive) integer that could be written as the sum of two cubes in two different ways, namely, 1729 = (13 + 123) or 1729 = (93 + 103). Perhaps as many of the Logical Positivists such as A J Ayer claimed asking whether life has any meaning is itself meaningless. If this is the case then choosing a number at random or for its aesthetic qualities is as good as anything else in explaining the meaning of life. Why shouldn’t we be satisfied with the notion that life has meaning for anyone who takes an interest in it? Bertrand Russell, in his The Conquest of Happiness said that boredom is the biggest obstacle to happiness. Russell of course considered it incomprehensible that anyone could possibly be bored with life so short – and I agree. Russell however lived a long rewarding and fruitful life (98 years) and was intellectually engaged to the very end. Nietzsche once said something to the effect: “Isn’t life far too short to be bored?” ** I think this story also appears in Adams's The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. In this story, a race of beings fed up with squabbling over the meaning of life decide to build a supercomputer to provide them with the answer. Deep Thought, as it is known, takes seven and a half million years to provide an answer to the question of 'life, the universe and everything'. On the day of reckoning, with 'infinite majesty and calm', Deep Thought finally gives its verdict: 'Forty-two.' God's Fraud Squad Re Section B, October 4th Edition, Vancouver Sun: Scam artists beware, God's Fraud Squad is in town The thought of sleuths within organized religion searching for fraud within their institutions is extremely ironic. They really don’t need to look any further than the entire enterprise of organized religion itself. One way in which religion is characterized is the holding to a belief or system of beliefs for which there is no evidence. It’s generally referred to as “faith” and deemed virtuous by pious adherents of both Christianity and Islam. But in the real world would any sensible person consider faith a means to assess the value of a used car, alternative medicine or investment proposal? Arguably, organized religion itself is the biggest swindle ever conceived. Religion makes highly dubious promises such as infinite bliss and contentment in heaven, paradoxically referred to as an “afterlife.” Does anyone have even the foggiest idea what such an afterlife entails? Can anyone explain the concept of a "soul" and how it is mysteriously reconstituted into a bodily form? - after all a life after death with no sex would suck. Does anyone with the intelligence of a speed bump believe this bedtime story? The cover charge for these enticements involves a complete rejection of one’s rational and critical faculties, which are replaced by the casino game called faith. It demands a childlike credulity and belief in an indefinable deity and the pre-scientific obscurantist ideology of a tax free institution called the Church. You only have to die to collect the payoff. On Colin Powell's Visit to Vancouver Vancouver Sun Letters, May 30, 2008 I read an advertisement this morning in the Sun announcing that Colin Powell is going to be in Vancouver June 12 on a speaking tour. Why would anyone want to listen to this prevaricating pretender, a man who was complicit in the conspiracy leading to the illegal and immoral invasion of Iraq in 2003 by lying to the United Nations about weapons mass destruction? He’s also the man who tried to cover up the Mai Lai massacre during the Vietnam War. Colin Powell has not a shred of credibility or integrity. Powell’s excuse is that he did not want to betray the ethic of the loyal soldier, precisely the same lame excuse used by the defendants at the Nuremberg Tribunals after the Second World War. One could argue that the analogy is overstated, that Colin Powell is no Rudolf Hess or Joseph Goebbels but a generally decent man—an A+ patriot, a team player, a faithful employee, a devoted soldier—I’ll agree, and say only this: God save us from men like him, for they will do almost anything in the name of “loyalty. On Native Residential Schools Vancouver Sun Letters, June 8, 2008 The Holocaust of Native Peoples The Jewish Holocaust of the Third Reich was a mere hiccup in the historical record both in terms of scale and duration when compared to the genocide and ethnic cleansing in the Americas by the Christian white man. St. Thomas Aquinas once wrote that, "Unbelievers deserve not only to be separated from the Church, but also... to be exterminated from the world by death." As the passage by Aquinas confirms, Christian civilization, by virtue of its exclusivist orthodoxy and oppressive monotheism, thus became the self-justifying destroyer of all non-Christian culture. This was to be the case not only in the Americas but wherever the white man imposed himself on native peoples, whether in the Americas, Africa, Asia or Australia. The carnage numbers in the hundreds of millions over a period of five centuries from the time of Columbus, a cruel avaricious man who, like the many Europeans who followed, gratuitously enslaved and slaughtered natives. The chronology of this sordid history is meticulously documented with extensive footnotes in two excellent scholarly books; one by, David E. Stannard in American Holocaust and the other by Ward Churchill in A Little Matter of Genocide. In the United States there were 400 treaties signed by the US government with Native Americans. Not one was honored. At the onset of the twentieth century, primarily because of public outrage and other socio-political factors, the Christian white man could no longer continue the systematic slaughter of indigenous peoples so then proceeded to remove all remnants of their culture, including language, religion and other sacred rituals and beliefs, proceeding with a harsh systematic indoctrination into the white Christian culture. Children were taken from parents and placed into bleak tyrannical residential Christian schools to be indoctrinated into Christian dogma. This vile policy of penance and propaganda persisted well into the 1970s. Like the Indian reservation system, these residential schools were not much better than concentration camps. My wife visited a Catholic residential school in the late 1950s when she was still in elementary school at Sechelt on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia where she grew up. Her experience on that school field trip visit over 50 years ago still haunts her to this day. Upon entering the school, she can still vividly recall the powerful odor of bleach and the vacant stares of the native Indian children. When she sympathetically attempted to engage in a friendly conversation with one of native girls the child was severely reprimanded by the attending Catholic nun for merely responding. For an exclusively Canadian account of the horrors of residential schools, I highly recommend the documentary by United Church minister Kevin Annett called Hidden from History: The Untold Story of the Genocide of Canadian Aboriginal People in Canada. Two good books on the issue are A National Crime: The Canadian Government and the Residential School System by John S. Milloy and Kill the Indian, Save the Man: The Genocidal Impact of American Indian Residential Schools by Ward Churchill. Stephen Harper betrayal with budget deficits January 2009 In spite of their incessant pontifications about fiscal responsibility for the past several decades Conservatives and budget deficits have been synonymous. The so-called Neo-conservative movement which has its genesis in the Reagan-Thatcher-Mulroney years has been a disaster for ordinary working people throughout the world. We are now finally paying the price for their salvation plan for the planet, ironically referred to as “voodoo economics” by George H W Bush, with a real estate implosion, stock market meltdown and subsequent global economic depression. Ronald Reagan for example, who continually preached about fiscal responsibility, tripled the national debt of the United States during his eight years tenure as president and George W Bush has at least doubled it to currently stand at well over $10 trillion after the Clinton years of balanced budgets. It’s been the direct result of massive military spending, imperialistic wars and huge tax concessions to corporations and the wealthy. According to the Government Accountability Office, two-thirds of corporations in America paid no federal income taxes at all between 1998 and 2005. The tax rate for capital gains (that’s the way most wealthy Americans “earn their keep”) is 12.5%. And wage earners wonder why their income taxes are so high. Hello? Even Warren Buffet expressed embarrassment over the fact that his maid paid a higher income tax rate than he does. W. A. C. Bennett, the conservative premier of British Columbia during the two decades of the 1950s and 60s believed strongly that certain sectors of the economy ought to be under government control. He created BC Hydro, BC Rail and BC Ferries and other public entities by taking over and transforming ineffective and inefficient private businesses into extraordinarily successful publically controlled corporations. Bennett would be deemed a Marxist by unfettered free market fanatics like George Bush and Stephen Harper. Gordon Campbell, another neo-conservative ideologue, has been on a crusade for the past eight years to privatize public corporations, services to citizens and everything else within the public realm. Included in the list is the scandal involving the sale of BC Rail to Canadian National Railway. Has anyone suggested to Campbell that perhaps we save some money in the provincial budget by having his job privatized or outsourced to some Third World sweat shop? To make things worse, the public treasuries are being pillaged to bail out financial institutions that are already insolvent or are on the brink of bankruptcy – the same larcenous de-regulated corporate rogues that contributed greatly to the global economic chaos we are now locked into. I would call it the “Inverse Robin Hood” program: Rob the working poor and middle classes and funnel it up to the rich. It’s been going on for decades in one form or another. The damage to the spirit of democracy and social destruction the neo-cons have fashioned has been thorough; it’s been a professional hatchet job. Assuming what residue of democracy can be salvaged, restoring it will require decades of political action. Pie in the Sky On rare occasions when a prominent corporate newspaper decides to run a major piece on Science they invariably insist on bringing God in through the back door. Science shares with religion the claim that it attempts to answer profound questions about origins, the nature of life and the cosmos. But the resemblance ends there. As Richard Dawkins, the celebrated Oxford biologist, has stated, “Scientific beliefs are supported by evidence, and they get results. Myths and faiths are not and do not.” In fact the incompatibility of Religion and Science has been the source of an intellectual battleground for the past four hundred years with Religion continually on the defensive and in retreat. Although the existence of a Creator is a logical possibility there is no reason to believe He has any of the attributes claimed by Christianity or any other religion. Conceptual considerations notwithstanding, one of the fundamental commonsensical objections to positing God is the logical contradiction between the general acceptance of universal causation and an uncaused Deity. Humanists often point to science as a model of the benefits of an agnostic viewpoint but religionists have a point when they characterize science as "godless." However, Science has not always been agnostic. Aristotle’s cosmology presented an argument for an "Unmoved Mover," and his argument was still accepted by seventeenth-century scientists like Descartes, Leibniz, and Newton. It was not until the early nineteenth century when Pierre Laplace, responding to Napolean’s queries about why God was missing from his cosmology, informed him, "I have no need for that hypothesis," that scientists began to omit God altogether from their theories. The hypothesis of God offers no worthwhile explanation for anything within the scientific project for it simply adds another mystery to a pre-existing one, namely the Universe itself. The claim that God created the Universe ex nihilo still leaves the original question of what caused God and the Universe essentially unanswered. This I think is the intellectually responsible stance – even in light of Stephen Hawking’s Wave Function Theory of the Universe that implies it is highly probable that our Universe came into existence uncaused. In spite of the Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution the human propensity for irrationality, credulity, self-deception and wishful thinking continue as though we were still stranded in the Dark Ages. The irresponsibility of the mass media contributes to this sad state of affairs as does the failure to teach critical thinking in the schools. Chuck and Camilla – Who Cares? The issue of whether or not Camilla Parker Bowles becomes Queen of Canada is irrelevant to any enlightened person who values freedom and democracy. The present monarchy is a medieval residue of elitism and oppression from the Dark Ages and in my view should have been legally abolished decades ago as were racism and slavery. As an institution, even in symbolic form, it has absolutely no redeeming value. Moreover, why the frivolous shallow lives of the Royal Family would interest anyone with a morsel of intelligence is mystifying. Educator blasts BC schools as “work camps” The writer of the above article is not as far off the mark as many would claim. Thoreau once said, "Education makes a straight ditch of a free meandering brook." So let’s be honest. Our public schools are essentially an instrument of the state and, increasingly in recent years, corporate power. Our students are not taught the intellectual virtues of curiosity, skepticism or the skills of logic and critical thinking that would promote a life-long love of learning and serve them well as responsible citizens in a democratic society. Instead, mass education focuses upon didactic teaching methods, rote memorization and scoring well on exams. Our schools do not promote independence of thought or action - they instead inculcate conformity and acquiescence to power and the status quo. Each student is taught virtually the same thing in essentially the same way - much of it distortion and outright propaganda - particularly within the realms of history and economics. Our students are not educated to become reflective and creative members of society; rather they are programmed to be unquestioning conformists and mindless consumers. Our universities, rather than sanctuaries of intellectual contemplation, free thought and reflection that they once were, have become factories for churning out technocrats with degrees in marketing, accounting and business administration. Thus we are creating a society of automatons and docile sheep who will never challenge authority, who will behave predictably and will be staunch defenders of the power elites. Bush commanded by God to Attack Iraq The piece in the Friday edition of Sun about George Bush’s claim that “God told him to attack Iraq” is really old news to me and perhaps many others as well, but it’s the first instance of this story that I have seen posted in the corporate media. Bush’s invocation of God to account for his decision to attack Iraq can only be described as idiotic and ludicrous. But I suppose that's why Bush appears to act with both unrelenting brutality and pious serenity. Nothing he does can be challenged on moral grounds, however evil it might appear to others, because all of his actions are directed by an omniscient God. He can twist the truth, oppress the poor, celebrate the rich, despoil the environment, ignore the law and launch preemptive attacks on defenseless Third World countries without the slightest compunction or the briefest moment of self-doubt or reflection. All this and more, because he sincerely believes that God takes up residence in his brain and provides him with the guidance of a morally perfect deity. If a religious fanatic kills an abortion doctor and claims “God commanded him to do it”, he is summarily arrested for murder and undergoes a psychological assessment for psychosis. But if you are president of the United States you can start an illegal and immoral war, demolish a country and kill tens of thousands of innocent people and calmly assert that “God commanded you to do it”, then you can act with impunity. You are off the ethical hook. Welcome to the Dark Ages. Iraqi Post Mortem It is highly likely the United States knew all along that they were not going to find “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq. Consequently they then resorted to hollow lofty idealism by referring to their pre-emptive attack as “Liberation of the Iraqi people”. American television news coverage of the war was especially shameless in promoting this myth. In the past they justified attacking Korea and Vietnam by proclaiming they were saving the world from the “spread of communism”. Similar promulgations were employed to justify their numerous intrusions into Central and South America. There is no doubt humans do not like violations of their freedom and being forced into bondage. If they did, those holding political power would not spend so much time, energy and money indoctrinating the masses into thinking they are free when in reality they are essentially slaves. All the enemies of freedom employ with nauseating frequency vacuous rhetoric and doctrines wrapped around the most pernicious tyranny. The logic of military interventions is that they produce tyrants although it is still considered a victory provided the tyrant is “friendly” and accommodating to the intervening power. If the desire to liberate Iraq is sincere then it would undoubtedly be the first time in recorded history one nation has attacked another with liberation as the objective. Moreover, it is a basic fact substantiated by the historical record that people can only liberate themselves. This can be accomplished by either lobbying for change within the confines of pre-existing political structures or, failing that, opting for civil disobedience or outright revolution. The inscription on the gravestone of notable American social and political activist Emma Goldman who died in Toronto in 1940 is: “Liberty will not descend on a people, a people must raise themselves to liberty.” History has established this as a truism. No one can predict how the aftermath of the attack on Iraq will ultimately play itself out but one thing is certain: massive violence cannot be justified by any end however noble, because the only outcome is chaos or, at best, uncertainty. Tony Blair in Surrey Celebrated and deified international war criminal Tony Blair is in Surrey, BC for a £100,000 fee for a 90 minute speech to the choir. You can also pay for a photo op with Saint Tony for a measly $700. This, in addition to his £5.8 million deal with Random House for his memoirs due this year, his taxpayer-funded pension of £64,000 a year and the millions he brings in by sitting on the boards of companies like J P Morgan, one of many recipients of trillions in taxpayer bailout money. The stench of shameless money-grubbing that surrounds Blair is made all the more pungent by the fact that JP Morgan has been selected to run the new Trade Bank of Iraq, which will make billions by mortgaging future oil production. Such are the spoils of war I suppose. It’s difficult to understand why anyone would pay to attend a lecture by a buffoon like George Bush who a few months ago spoke in Calgary or his partner in crime, Tony Blair. What’s Tony going to talk about – not likely his Christian fundamentalism or the rationale for his subservient sycophantic behavior toward the Bush administration and subsequent complicity in the immoral and illegal imperialistic debacle in Iraq? Blair and Bush are perhaps the only two deluded simpletons left on the planet who still believe that there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Like George W Bush, Tony Blair ought to be behind bars for crimes against humanity but instead he’s adding to his already massive bank account with millions of dollars from speaking tours around the world. He’s preaching to the choir of course, those same neo-conservative war mongering profiteers who, like himself and Bush, were complicit in orchestrating the conspiracy that led to the war in Iraq and whose economic ideologies have catapulted the world into an economic abyss from which there appears to be no escape. It’s perplexing trying to understand a man like Tony Blair, a seemingly intelligent urbane man who was the leader of an ultra-conservative political party with the Orwellian title of “Labour.” The Labour Party in Britain was for many decades a socialist working class party but has been mysteriously transmogrified into a regressive neo-conservatism. But political labels don’t seem to mean much anymore, such as our neo-conservative Campbell government in BC who call themselves “Liberal.” These gross moral deficiencies of course were not a problem for Bill Good and his guest Michael Levy on CNKW Thursday morning who couldn’t get down on their knees far enough or say enough about what an amazing human being and wonderful bloke is Tony Blair. Thanks for nothing Tony. The Holocaust of Native Peoples The Jewish Holocaust of the Third Reich was a mere hiccup in the historical record both in terms of scale and duration when compared to the genocide and ethnic cleansing in the Americas by the Christian white man. St. Thomas Aquinas once wrote that, "Unbelievers deserve not only to be separated from the Church, but also... to be exterminated from the world by death." As the passage by Aquinas confirms, Christian civilization, by virtue of its exclusivist orthodoxy and oppressive monotheism, thus became the self-justifying destroyer of all non-Christian culture. This was to be the case not only in the Americas but wherever the white man imposed himself on native peoples, whether in the Americas, Africa, Asia or Australia. The carnage numbers in the hundreds of millions over a period of five centuries from the time of Columbus, a cruel avaricious man who, like the many Europeans who followed, gratuitously enslaved and slaughtered natives. The chronology of this sordid history is meticulously documented with extensive footnotes in two excellent scholarly books; one by, David E. Stannard in American Holocaust and the other by Ward Churchill in A Little Matter of Genocide. In the United States there were 400 treaties signed by the US government with Native Americans. Not one was honored. At the onset of the twentieth century, primarily because of public outrage and other socio-political factors, the Christian white man could no longer continue the systematic slaughter of indigenous peoples so then proceeded to remove all remnants of their culture, including language, religion and other sacred rituals and beliefs, proceeding with a harsh systematic indoctrination into the white Christian culture. Children were taken from parents and placed into bleak tyrannical residential Christian schools to be indoctrinated into Christian dogma. This vile policy of penance and propaganda persisted well into the 1970s. Like the Indian reservation system, these residential schools were not much better than concentration camps. My wife visited a Catholic residential school in the late 1950s when she was still in elementary school at Sechelt on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia where she grew up. Her experience on that school field trip visit over 50 years ago still haunts her to this day. Upon entering the school, she can still vividly recall the powerful odor of bleach and the vacant stares of the native Indian children. When she sympathetically attempted to engage in a friendly conversation with one of native girls the child was severely reprimanded by the attending Catholic nun for merely responding. For an exclusively Canadian account of the horrors of residential schools, I highly recommend the documentary by United Church minister Kevin Annett called Hidden from History: The Untold Story of the Genocide of Canadian Aboriginal People in Canada. Two good books on the issue are A National Crime: The Canadian Government and the Residential School System by John S. Milloy and Kill the Indian, Save the Man: The Genocidal Impact of American Indian Residential Schools by Ward Churchill. Teachers face imposed settlement When CTV published teacher salaries a few weeks ago, the salary for a fully qualified teacher with a Masters degree was roughly what I earned when I retired from teaching in 1999. One of the major influences in my decision to retire at that time was the fact that we hadn't had at meaningful wage increment for several years but nevertheless every year were inundated with larger classes, more work, mindless administrative duties and responsibilities that should rest with parents. In spite of the fact I taught mathematics for thirty years in a good community and had highly motivated students in my Math 12 and Advanced Placement Calculus classes which comprised most of my teaching load, I decided to retire primarily due to frustration, a perennial diminishing paycheck and severe burn out. Teachers have no reason to trust this government which a few years back shredded the only negotiated contract with the teachers. All the pious empty rhetoric and platitudinous drivel by politicians and others, including our current education minister, about how important teachers are to the future of our children, how hard they work, their dedication, blah blah blah is the paragon of hypocrisy. Moreover, the government’s notion of "essential service" tends to suggest some life and death scenario but is in reality merely another Orwellian mechanism for denying teachers collective bargaining rights including their right to deny services. George Orwell would roll over in his grave if he could have seen the full page Liberal government propaganda leaflet that appeared in the Vancouver Sun today - courtesy of the taxpayers. But if in fact, as the Campbell government claims, teachers are “essential” in the sense that we cannot survive without them, then would not the obvious inference be that they should be well paid? When Hitler first gained power in Germany during the 1930s, one of his first acts was to destroy trade unions and workers rights. Zeig Heil! Don't let Jack [Layton] Near the Economy Harvey Enchin's Fraser Institute sermon rings hollow to anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the disastrous Liberal and Conservative economic policies we've suffered from for the past three decades which have now finally plunged the global economy into a bottomless pit. In fact to add to the pain, taxpayers throughout the world have been forced into debt for incalculable generations by the bailouts of rapacious banks and financial institutions throughout the world, much of their activity of which resulted in bilking those same taxpayers. But no one has been held accountable for any of this criminality and the failed economic model of casino capitalism that continues unabated. The genesis of this debacle can be traced to the neo-conservative economic policies of Ronald Reagan and George H W Bush whose combined profligacy resulted in a quadrupling of the US national debt. Then Bush II, using the same failed fiscal playbook managed to double the national debt and engage the country in two repulsive illegal and immoral imperialistic wars. So please Mr. Enchin, don't insult the intelligence of readers with your Fraser Institute holy writ, the same Bible used by the Gordon Campbell Liberals of BC and Stephen Harper Conservatives in Ottawa. Were Jack Layton elected Prime Minister, he'd have to really make a mess of things to fashion a worse economic debacle than what we've seen in the past few years. Vancouver Sun Endorsement of Stephen Harper The endorsement of Stephen Harper by the Vancouver Sun this morning ought to confirm in everyone’s mind what many of us already know; that the Sun, along with Canada’s Pravda, The National Post, is a biased right wing tabloid and a shameless platform for the Conservative Party of Canada. Has it not been Conservatives who have created this deregulated environment of unfettered laissez faire casino capitalism that have propelled us into the economic straight jacket we now find ourselves? Is it not Conservatives who pontificate about fiscal responsibility but continually run huge deficits while running up the national debt to astronomical levels? The genesis of this “Voodoo economics” can be traced back to Ronald Reagan who tripled the US national debt during his tenure. It has now ended with the disastrous debacle of Harper’s pal George W Bush and his incompetent wrecking crew that have effectively bankrupted their own country with two illegal immoral imperialistic wars, huge tax concessions and favors to the wealthy and bailouts for his cronies within the corporate world that has now plunged us into a global economic meltdown. Let’s give our heads a collective shake when we head to the polls on Tuesday and refuse to re-elect the proponents of the conservative corporate welfare state. The Corporate Welfare State The American taxpayer is being coerced into paying up to $1 trillion for the speculative greed and excesses of Wall Street investment banks and their fraudulent securities scams. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and President Bush announced a salvation plan to shore up collapsing financial markets and called on Congress to pass legislation next week to use, in Paulson’s words, “hundreds of billions” of taxpayer dollars to buy virtually worthless mortgage-backed assets that cannot be sold on the market from banks and other financial institutions. Like obsequious robots, the presidential candidates of both major parties, Republican Senator John McCain and Democratic Senator Barack Obama, quickly endorsed the wholesale bailout of the larcenous banksters. “There will be ample opportunity to debate the origins of this problem,” Ben Bernanke tells us. “Now is the time to solve it.” As with most white collar crime, there will, in fact, be no debate or discussion and nobody will be held accountable for the greatest financial disgrace in world history. There will be no penalties. No one who made tens and hundreds of millions from the looting of America will be forced to give back a penny. The immediate compliance of both parties and the media behind the bailout plan for Wall Street stands in glaring contrast to their indifference and inaction with regard to the plight of millions of American working people, who face a rising deluge of home foreclosures, layoffs and plummeting living standards. When it comes to the societal needs of the people, the collective cry from corporate America and the two right wing corporate controlled parties is, “There is no money,” but when the fortunes of the financial elite are threatened or billions needed to finance the latest imperialistic war such as the present horror show in Iraq, the full power of the government and unlimited resources are marshaled virtually at the drop of a hat. There was no suggestion in the statements of Bush and Paulson of any relief for the working classes—nothing to stop home foreclosures or help those who have already lost their homes. Rather, hundreds of billions, more likely trillions of dollars in public funds will be used to protect the offending financial institutions. All of those involved in pushing through this scheme to funnel the entire wealth of the country into the coffers of the financial elite have direct financial stakes in the outcome. Hank Paulson for example made hundreds of millions of dollars as chairman of Goldman Sachs. It’s called “free enterprise” but it’s neither free nor enterprising. It’s a smoke screen and sham for unmitigated greed and plutocracy whereby profits are privatized and losses socialized. Police seek ban on cell phones while driving Most people these days, having the attention span of a mosquito on cocaine, have enough difficulty focusing on a single task. Driving while talking on a cell phone is a form of impairment and distraction that poses no less risk than driving while under the influence of alcohol. Nobody who has simply ventured out on a short drive to the supermarket needs a scientific study to convince them of this. People on cell phones are a menace not only to other drivers and pedestrians, but they are likely the same insensitive rude louts who invade the tranquility of public places as though they are extensions of their office or living room. Restaurants, bookstores, libraries, museums and even churches, theatres and classrooms are violated by these boorish narcissistic self-absorbed dolts who think the world revolves around only them. I suspect one could expand on this theme of incivility and present a compelling argument that the entire culture of unfettered capitalism and greed radiates indifference. For the past 30 years we have seen the gradual political and economic marginalization of our secular ethos and culture whereby everything is up for sale and at the merciless contingency of the predatory profit system and global marketplace, a breakdown of our sense of altruism, sense of community and feeling for the common good and where basic civilities and the social decencies are being seriously eroded. It’s a regime and ethos that provides no heartfelt reason to care about our fellow human being other than what that other person can do to enhance or promote our own personal agenda. Moreover, it’s a morally bankrupt culture of competitive rude belligerent behavior that have become social norms and where greed, acquisitiveness and self-absorption have become virtues. Ben Bernanke is a fitting recipient of Person of the Year award So Ben Bernanke is Time Magazine’s Man of the Year eh? Is anyone surprised – or shocked? If Big Business Ben, why not Tiger Woods? One fraudster is as good as another I suppose. Ben Bernanke, as everyone ought to know, is the Wall Street pimp of the Bush administration who orchestrated the biggest heist of public money in the history of the world, a massive multi-trillion dollar swindle in which taxpayer money was plundered to bail out his bankster buddies on Wall Street - the same folks who produced the global economic abyss we find ourselves mired in. The purpose of the massive bailout by Ben and his masters in the Conservative Corporate Welfare State was ostensibly to save the façade called state capitalism and the global economy. Whatever happened to the capitalist maxim of “flourish or die”? There is of course nothing in the rescue packages for the working class victims and no accountability for the greedy financial elites who were responsible for the calamity. After decades of successive bubbles and busts, this time the Wall Street Casino wrecking crew has done a real hatchet job. Despite the bear market rally in the stock market, this time the economy is very likely not coming back anytime soon, if it comes back at all - unless, of course, you're a fat cat Wall Street investment banker cooking up a new bubble. Then you're doing just fine because the George W Obama administration took care of you quite nicely, thanks very much. The rest of the poor suckers out there in the reality based community who have lost their jobs (and they are not coming back either) or who are losing their homes, on the other hand, got instead dog and pony shows designed to re-invent themselves as entrepreneurs. The New Pope’s War on Relativism For most of human history there was no distinction drawn between moral and empirical statements; "One ought not to steal” and "Crows are black" were considered to be the same kind of proposition. The celebrated Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776) was probably the first to point out that these are two completely different types of assertions and that there is no way to root a moral assertion in an empirical one. As Hume put it, one cannot deduce an “ought” from an “is”. But both relativism and realism present problems for religion since the literally hundreds of religions and multifarious denominations within religions make mutually exclusive and conflicting claims. Those claims are either all relative to context and interpretation or they can be deemed true or false. If we assume that there is such a thing as empirical truth as we do in science then if one religion is true, the others must be false. The most plausible outcome is that they are all false. If relativism holds sway however, then truth is culturally contingent and basically anything passes for truth. It seems clear to me that both of these options are not encouraging for the claims of religion. Pope Ratzinger refuses to accept the fact, contrary to Hume, that within the ethical realm there cannot possibly be any immutable moral laws handed down from some absolute source. Whether the source is a mysterious metaphysical entity such as God or a self-proclaimed dictator, moral assertions do not have the same truth value as empirical ones. And if moral absolutes did exist, even an intelligent curious six year old would question not only the source, but the legitimacy and rationality of those chosen rules. These are basic questions of ethical inquiry that go back as far as Plato’s dialogues. Those who cannot accept the human basis of morality and ethics are generally religious zealots and others in positions of power who want rigid standards of conduct that can be used as a mechanism of control. As Bertrand Russell succinctly put it, “A good man is one whose opinions and actions are pleasing to the holders of power”. Sam Harris piece on Atheism In addition to inculcated cultural prejudices, there is undoubtedly much conceptual confusion regarding atheism. There is nothing esoteric or arcane about being an atheist. The word “atheism” comes from the Greek prefix 'a', meaning without, and 'theist', meaning having a belief in a supernatural deity. Atheism, therefore, literally means "without theistic belief". Atheism does not positively assert anything; rather, it is a statement of withheld belief. Atheists, therefore, do not positively assert that gods do not exist; they merely withhold belief in said gods because sound argument and evidence is insufficient to warrant the belief. This is not to say that there isn't sufficient reason to believe that certain gods do not exist. There is. But to categorically deny the existence of all gods would require a dogmatic leap of faith that is anathema to a true atheist. Atheism requires no such leap and holds to a world view called scientific naturalism. Confusing and opaque conceptual considerations concerning “God” notwithstanding there is another important issue that leaves non-believers and skeptics perplexed: We stand in open mouthed bewilderment when people choose one deity that lacks evidence over another that lacks evidence then believe wholeheartedly in one rather than the other. We may illustrate this with the references to fairies, goblins, zombies and unicorns. If I asked you to believe one of these mystical entities, which have no more or less evidence for their existence than the multiple deities that have been believed in throughout human history, and not the others, how would you react? My conclusion: faith does not deserve our respect and religion has been a sacred cow, protected from genuine criticism, for too long. I agree wholeheartedly with the British philosopher A C Grayling who, in a recent essay, stated, "To believe something in the face of evidence and against reason - to believe something by faith - is ignoble, irresponsible and ignorant, and merits the opposite of respect. It is time to say so." If a proposition seems outrageous and inconsistent with our prior experience and scientific knowledge, it is more reasonable to suppose it false, even if there is no direct evidence. It’s a fundamental point of logic that you cannot prove the non-existence of anything. But the fact that you can't disprove the existence of Santa Claus, The Tooth Fairy or The Invisible Flying Pink Unicorn is not a reason to believe that they exist. A successful intellectual mechanism called the scientific method has been pressed into service for about four centuries now to decide on whether a multitude of entities or processes exist. Gravity, magnetism, atomic and sub-atomic particles, evolution, the ether, ghosts, paranormal experiences, fairies, goblins and trolls - they've all been subjected to in depth studies of the evidence. And, from that, scientific investigations have informed our notions of what does and doesn't exist. Douglas Todd on The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins Douglas Todd seems to miss the point of Dawkins primary message in The God Delusion. Religion has been in a continuous state of retreat for the past 400 years primarily due to the impact of the Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution which have essentially relegated religion to the intellectual rubbish pile. In Corinthians we are told “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” This I think is the essence of Dawkins main message in The God Delusion. Put in another way, one might ask: “why be born again when you can just grow up?” Not unlike Sam Harris in The End of Faith, Dawkins rightly argues the faith is intellectually vacuous. Faith may be defined as the holding of a belief lacking evidence and therefore cannot be rationally justified. How can faith be intellectually virtuous or a productive approach for anyone genuinely interested in truth or understanding the real world? And surely if there is such a thing as “sin”, a distinctly religious conception entailing a violation of one of God’s commands, then is not religion itself a sin? A life stance that promotes the surrender of intellectual and moral responsibility to a celestial dictator and closed system of thought providing facile answers to all of life’s problems, vicissitudes and mysteries surely must be the greatest sin of all. In consideration of the aforementioned, one wonders why in Christianity faith has been elevated to such a lofty position since it seems to violate one of the seven cardinal sins. As the story of “Doubting Thomas” shows Christianity prefers faith to evidence, proof and justified belief. But if one steps outside the realm of religion briefly, this notion becomes highly problematic. Does this mean for example that in matters of our health, the law or in purchasing a home or used car, we should appeal to faith? We also know that 'trust me' is the plea most often uttered by those in positions of power who know that they should never be trusted at all. And while in common speech it is perhaps admirable to 'have faith' in someone who has proved themselves reliable or trustworthy in the past, it is just foolish to do so with strangers or those who have proved themselves to be unreliable. Todd attempts to salvage his invective against Dawkins by pointing to Hitler and Stalin as examples of the evils perpetrated by atheism. But Todd conveniently ignores some important facts. Adolph Hitler was raised a Catholic and quasi-religious ideas were central to the foundations of The Third Reich. Heinrich Himmler, also brought up Catholic, stated that “some higher Being is behind nature…I insist that members of the SS must believe in God.” The Vatican's support of Hitler is also a matter of historical record. The Vatican signed a treaty with Nazi Germany on July 20, 1933. Hitler repeatedly referred to himself as a Christian both in speeches and in his writings, and was never excommunicated by the church. Every Nazi soldier was required to wear a belt buckle with the inscription "Gott mit uns," (God is with us). The Vatican was also instrumental in enabling many Nazi War criminals to escape prosecution at the Nuremberg Tribunal by getting them off the European continent. I’m sure Todd is also aware that Joseph Stalin (1879-1953) was the product of a theological seminary where he aspired to the priesthood and learned well its lessons of manipulation and thought control. Scam artists beware, God's Fraud Squad is in town The thought of sleuths within organized religion searching for fraud within their institutions is extremely ironic. They really don’t need to look any further than the entire enterprise of organized religion itself. One way in which religion is characterized is the holding to a belief or system of beliefs for which there is no evidence. It’s generally referred to as “faith” and deemed virtuous by pious adherents of both Christianity and Islam. But in the real world would any sensible person consider faith a means to assess the value of a used car, alternative medicine or investment proposal? Arguably, organized religion itself is the biggest swindle ever conceived. Religion makes highly dubious promises such as infinite bliss and contentment in heaven, paradoxically referred to as an “afterlife.” Does anyone have even the foggiest idea what such an afterlife entails? The cover charge for these enticements involves a complete rejection of one’s rational and critical faculties, which are replaced by the casino game called faith. It demands a childlike credulity and belief in an indefinable deity and the pre-scientific obscurantist ideology of a tax free institution called the Church. You only have to die to collect the payoff. Harper betrayal with budget deficits January 27, 2009 In spite of their incessant pontifications about fiscal responsibility for the past several decades Conservatives and budget deficits have been synonymous. The so-called Neo-conservative movement which has its genesis in the Reagan-Thatcher-Mulroney years has been a disaster for ordinary working people throughout the world. We are now finally paying the price for their salvation plan for the planet, ironically referred to as “voodoo economics” by George H W Bush, with a real estate implosion, stock market meltdown and subsequent global economic depression. Ronald Reagan for example, who continually preached about fiscal responsibility, tripled the national debt of the United States during his eight years tenure as president and George W Bush has at least doubled it to currently stand at well over $10 trillion after the Clinton years of balanced budgets. It’s been the direct result of massive military spending, imperialistic wars and huge tax concessions to corporations and the wealthy. According to the Government Accountability Office, two-thirds of corporations in America paid no federal income taxes at all between 1998 and 2005. The tax rate for capital gains (that’s the way most wealthy Americans “earn their keep”) is 12.5%. And wage earners wonder why their income taxes are so high. Hello? Even Warren Buffet expressed embarrassment over the fact that his maid paid a higher income tax rate than he does. W. A. C. Bennett, the conservative premier of British Columbia during the two decades of the 1950s and 60s believed strongly that certain sectors of the economy ought to be under government control. He created BC Hydro, BC Rail and BC Ferries and other public entities by taking over and transforming ineffective and inefficient private businesses into extraordinarily successful publicly controlled corporations. Bennett would be deemed a Marxist by unfettered free market fanatics like George Bush and Stephen Harper. Gordon Campbell, another neo-conservative ideologue, has been on a crusade for the past eight years to privatize public corporations, services to citizens and everything else within the public realm. Included in the list is the scandal involving the sale of BC Rail to Canadian National Railway. Has anyone suggested to Campbell that perhaps we save some money in the provincial budget by having his job privatized or outsourced to some Third World sweat shop? To make things worse, the public treasuries are being pillaged to bail out financial institutions that are already insolvent or are on the brink of bankruptcy – the same larcenous de-regulated corporate rogues that contributed greatly to the global economic chaos we are now locked into. I would call it the “Inverse Robin Hood” program: Rob the working poor and middle classes and funnel it up to the rich. It’s been going on for decades in one form or another. The damage to the spirit of democracy and social destruction the neo-cons have fashioned has been thorough; it’s been a professional hatchet job. Assuming what residue of democracy can be salvaged, restoring it will require decades of political action. 1.7Million Canadians believe Da Vinci Code The fact that 32% of Canadians who have read Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code consider it factual is no surprise. In spite of the advancements in scientific knowledge over the past 400 years, the gullibility of humans and their need to believe in paranormal phenomena, pseudoscientific drivel and religious nonsense continues unfettered. In the United States, at least according to recent polls, more Americans believe in astrology than they do evolution, 63% believe that the Bible stories are literally true, 80% believe in miracles, and another 10% are open to the possibility. Almost half believe in the hell, the devil and ghosts and three quarters believe in angels. About a quarter believe in reincarnation and astrology, with another 20% open to the possibilities. Virtually all Americans (more than 95%) believe in God or some universal spirit.
The 16th Century essayist Michel de Montaigne wrote that “Nothing is so firmly believed as that which is least known” and the great 20th century mathematician, philosopher and skeptic Bertrand Russell once stated that, “Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something. In the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.” Focus on the Family and Christian Conservatism in Canada Sat July 23, 2005 The invocation of “Conservative” to describe certain politically active right wing Christian organizations such as Focus on the Family is essentially a euphemistic expression to describe fundamentalists. In the United States groups such as these have been serious threats to civil liberties, the teaching of science in public schools and other areas of enlightened secular society. In short, they are attempting to break down the barriers between church and state in the US guaranteed by the constitution. They are now imposing themselves as perilous threats to do the same thing here in Canada. Focus on the Family, in particular, is an especially powerful political force with massive financial backing that now has a large presence in Canada. My knee jerk reaction to such a group is “Focus on Your Own Damn Family!” and if religious groups such as these want to get political, they can pay taxes like the rest of us. Family” is a word that can mean different things to different people. Even fascist groups, drug cartels and ordinary street gangs refer to themselves as a “Family” - so there is nothing intrinsically endearing about family. John Ralston Saul in his recent best seller, The Collapse of Globalism, in addition to his convincing polemic against the economic dogmatisms of Globalism, had a few words for religious fundamentalism as well. In making reference to groups like Focus on the Family, he states: “Speaker after speaker at the 2004 Republican Convention in the United States invoked the family because, they said, family comes first and is the measure of a society. Of course, family is central to human life and to our emotional life in all its complexity. But family as a measure or structure of society is a mafia argument or an argument of the extreme right, for whom there are only two possible choices: either the sacred family or the sacred nation. In either case, loyalty is measured according to how successfully it represents a closed situation. Thus, the democratic and humanist ideas of civilization, society and community, which are all dependent on our ability to imagine the other – the one who is not close – are expelled to the margins.” (p. 247) What is it with Football Players? The 2011 Grey Cup Game The Grey Cup yesterday was an enjoyable one with the home team winning. But when the BC Lions coach Wally Buono was interviewed following the contest it became anti-climactic - as if someone stuck a pin in the balloon of the post game celebrations. His terse, inane and childlike commentary on the reason for the Lion's victory was "I'd like to thank our saviour the Lord Jesus Christ." What the hell is this supposed to mean? "Our Saviour"? Huh? There are some highly dubious assumptions built in to this silly utterance, least of which are his ignorance about science, causation and human agency. (1) That there actually did exist a person called Jesus Christ with the supernatural/human qualities attributed to him in a 2000 year old book of fairy tales. (2) That, contrary to the scientific understanding of a 12 year old, the dead Christian god-man still desires, cares about and is capable of violating the laws of physics and intervening in human affairs. In this case, it's the trivial and inconsequential event of a football game. Jesus seems to think that sports are important, as is the case with so many professional athletes pointing to the sky thanking him for their home runs and completed touchdown passes. Mysteriously, this asinine behaviour is conspicuously absent on strike outs and fumbles behind the line of scrimmage. (3) That the allusion by the coach to the presumed veracity of "our" saviour implies that it's meaningful and axiomatic to everyone else who may be the owner of a functioning brain. (4) Granting coach Buono's puerile world view and dubious premises, where was JC during the first five games of the regular season? What did he have against the Winnipeg Blue Bombers? Why did he cause the fumble of a key interception that may have turned the game around for Winnipeg? (5) Why doesn't Jesus and his Deadbeat Dad perform a real miracle, one that might convince a sceptic or someone with a basic understanding of the fundamental laws of biology and physics? How about fixing the injustices of a corrupt, malfunctioning and disastrous global economy and the grinding poverty and misery of most people around the world? Why doesn't he restore a lost limb, repair or replace a diseased and failing heart? Why doesn't he stop the United States from exploiting and terrorizing the rest of the world with their imperialistic ventures and endless immoral wars? What about rap music? Etc, etc, etc.... I could continue on this thread for several more pages...but you get my drift. Join the reality based community Mr. Buono. Stop insulting the intelligence of yourself and thinking people; stick to something you know - like football strategy and evaluating the performance of your athletes. The 1960s Dream that Turned into a Nightmare October 2011 Turn back the clock to the 1960s and reflect on the inspirational words of Martin Luther King in his "I Have a Dream" speech or his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail". Or consider Tommy Douglas, Canada's most revered Canadian and political visionary in his famous "Mouse Land" speech. The social gospel was part of Douglas' Christian message, a message that's been lost in the prosperity gospel mantra that' dominates Christianity today. Douglas was optimistic that "the religion of tomorrow will be less concerned with the dogmas of theology and more concerned with the social welfare of humanity." If only this prediction were true. The 1960s was a rare brief period in history in which hope seemed reasonable. It was something to believe in beyond the delusionary faith-based rhetoric continually preached by our conservative elites and political masters. Can anyone cite even one instance whereby Conservatives conceded anything to the working classes without a fight? The endgame of three decades of neo-conservative corporatism has even prompted capitalist icon Warren Buffet to declare "it's been a class war - and our side won". Consequently, the future for our young people looks as bleak as it did in the 1930s. When MLK and RFK were assassinated it was a premonition that the "dream" of a better world, a world of sharing and caring, was over. And by the time the 1980s began when the world gave us the regressive triad of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Brian Mulroney and took away John Lennon, the neo-conservative nightmare was hatched. Try to think of the moral framework of that better world we thought possible back then - and then reflect on the insane reality of self-interest and greed that actually set in. It graphically demonstrates that hope is not a good wager. Experience and history have surely taught that hope and its partner in deception, faith, are for fools, suckers and losers. Faith and hope are delusional fantasies peddled by those in power who perpetuate the status quo - with themselves perched atop the social and economic order. So reflect back to the 1960s and ask yourself what criteria you would include in your grand plan for that better world... How about a nation riddled with gross inequality and economic insecurity at best - and widespread real suffering at worst? Rampant and unrelenting unemployment? The demonization of the working class and slow death of the middle class? A rapacious class of financial predators and wealthy plutocrats who have taken every penny of economic growth for themselves over the last three decades, leaving only stagnation for the rest of us? A distribution of wealth so skewed toward the rich that it would embarrass any Banana Republic or totalitarian Third World Dystopia? A conservative and liberal political class completely unresponsive to the needs of the people and devoted instead to serving the gluttonous business and investment class swine whose money puts them in office? A cynicism of voters so systemic that every four years we are given the option of selecting from two or more multi-millionaire pimps for Big Business and vote for the one who will inflict the least harm? An massively inefficient and broken American health care system devoted to profit instead of people? A neo-conservative Christian Prime Minister in Canada contemptuous of democracy who is devoted to the privatization of everything including our universal health care system? An vile sort of Nanny State corporate "inverted" socialism devoted to enriching the corporations and the already wealthy? A government and corporate world that are indistinguishable, endorsing the same profit before people game plan, a nefarious scheme that privatizes profit and socializes cost? Endless government spending of taxpayer money to bail out the disastrous wagers of gluttonous sociopathic Wall Street banks, investment houses and the self-interested nihilists who run them and their investments of mass destruction, combined with zero support for ordinary citizens struggling with slave wage jobs, ballooning debt, bloated underwater sub-prime mortgages and foreclosure? Hiring by government of those same-said nihilists from the corporate aristocracy to draft an economic plan out of the abyss they threw us into? A generation of downsized middle-aged workers who know they will never again be able to restore the basic economic stability they once enjoyed? The Freedom 95 Plan for retirement? A generation of young people looking ahead to lives of mind-numbing low paid service jobs, provided that one can be found, starvation wages, massive debt from student loans, the shift of tax burden from big business to consumers via boondoggles like the faux free trade agreements and HST, taxes to pay for previous deficits, excessive military expenditures, tax concessions to the rich, shocking environmental degradation and endless wars? Working multiple jobs just to survive and the embarrassment of living at home with your parents indefinitely? Discredited regressive far-right previous governments whose crony capitalist policies and fiscal profligacy made profound and direct contributions to all of the above? And, if none of those items seem alone sufficient to generate a meaningful progressive response, how about all of them and a whole lot more, all at once? Village idiots and Christian fundamentalist Neanderthals like George W Bush dominating conservative political parties who would not be even remotely recognizable by traditional conservatives in the past and who actually get elected to office with the predictable disastrous results? If the doltish George Bush was not enough, how about Larry, Moe and Curly Joe" Mitt Romney, Rick Perry or Michelle Bachman? This is just a small checklist of a lovely gluttonous house of quantum stupidity, ignorance, greed, theft, war, social pain and planetary destruction held in your honor. Or at least at your expense. They called it "family values." What, you tell me you don't want the bill for all these gifts to posterity!? Have a good day before I add to the list!
Genevieve Fox, A C Grayling, Secular and Biblical Ethics (Section A, Monday, April 25, 2011) Vancouver Sun Letters According to Genevieve Fox it's not possible to improve on the morality of a book which justifies slavery, death by stoning, the extermination of all life on Earth except for two of each kind and a host of other monstrosities? Only two of The Ten Commandments, for example, have anything remotely to do with ethics. Has this woman actually read the Bible, a 2000 year old book plagued by contradictions, absurdities, pseudoscientific nonsense and obvious falsehoods? Personally, reading that book of violence and moral atrocities depicting a tyrannical, vindictive jealous God turned me to atheism more convincingly than reading Bertrand Russell, A C Graying and the many other humanist philosophers who have convincingly demolished the specious arguments for the existence of God and the credibility of divine command ethics. The Bible is inundated with a seemingly endless supply of assertions that are patently immoral. Consider a small sample of God's moral character, as revealed in the Bible. He routinely punishes people for the sins of others. He punishes all mothers by condemning them to painful childbirth, for Eve's sin. He punishes all human beings by condemning them to labor, for Adam's sin (Gen. 3:16-18). He regrets His creation and in a fit of pique, commits genocide and ecocide by flooding the earth (Gen. 6:7). He hardens Pharaoh's heart against freeing the Israelites (Ex. 7:3), so as to provide the occasion for visiting plagues upon the Egyptians, who, as helpless subjects of a tyrant, had no part in Pharaoh's decision. (So much for respecting free will - the standard justification for the existence of evil in the world?) He kills all the firstborn sons, even of slave girls who had no part in oppressing the Israelites (Ex. 11:5). He punishes the children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great great-grandchildren of those who worship any other god (Ex. 20:3-5). He sets a plague upon the Israelites, killing 24,000, because some of them had sex with the Baal-worshiping Midianites (Num. 25:1-9). He lays a three-year famine on David's people for Saul's slaughter of the Gibeonites (2 Sam. 21:1). He orders David to take a census of his men, and then sends a plague on Israel, killing seventy thousand for David's sin in taking the census (2 Sam. 24:10-15). He sends two bears out of the woods to tear forty-two children to pieces, because they called the prophet Elisha a bald head (2 Kings 2:23-24). He condemns the Samarians, telling them that their children will be "dashed to the ground, their pregnant women ripped open" (Hosea 13:16). This is but a small sample of the evils of a psychopathic deity celebrated in the Bible. Yesterday Christians celebrated the suicide mission of a man called Jesus Christ, sent by his God Man father to "die for our sins". What sins and why? Ought we not be responsible for our own moral shortcomings, rather than embracing a fairy tale such as this? Has anyone actually asked for someone to die for our "sins" - I certainly did not and it would have been grossly immoral of me to do so. Theodicy is the attempt by Christian theologians to reconcile the huge swath of gratuitous suffering and evil in the world with an omnipotent, omniscient and all-loving God. In this project they have failed miserably. Notwithstanding remains the conceptual problem of God and the lack of even a shred of evidence or sound argument for the existence of such an entity which renders superfluous the whole discussion about the veracity and viability of moral absolutes based on divine command ethics. Don't let NDP Jack [Layton] Near the Economy, P B2 Vancouver Sun Letters Friday April 29, 2011 Harvey Enchin's Fraser Institute sermon rings hollow to anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the disastrous Liberal and Conservative economic policies we've suffered from for the past three decades which have now finally plunged the global economy into a bottomless pit. In fact to add to the pain, taxpayers throughout the world have been forced into debt for incalculable generations by the bailouts of rapacious banks and financial institutions throughout the world, much of their activity of which resulted in bilking those same taxpayers. But no one has been held accountable for any of this criminality and the failed economic model of casino capitalism that continues unabated. The genesis of this debacle can be traced to the neo-conservative economic policies of Ronald Reagan and George H W Bush whose combined profligacy resulted in a quadrupling of the US national debt. Then Bush II, using the same failed fiscal playbook managed to double the national debt and engage the country in two repulsive illegal and immoral imperialistic wars. So please Mr. Enchin, don't insult the intelligence of readers with your Fraser Institute holy writ, the same Bible used by the Gordon Campbell Liberals of BC and Stephen Harper Conservatives in Ottawa. Were Jack Layton elected Prime Minister, he'd have to really make a mess of things to fashion a worse economic debacle than what we've seen in the past few years. On the Monarchy (again) Letters, Vancouver Sun Tuesday February 7, 2012 It's depressing to read in today's Sun several articles promoting the magnificence and righteousness of the monarchy. We're told that the Queen has proclaimed she will "rule over us until she dies," How uplifting and inspirational! One would think that the Enlightenment had never occurred and I'm sure there are ossified conservatives in Canada who wish it hadn't. The monarchy is little more than a constant reminder of a draconian totalitarian theocratic system representative of an oppressive mediaeval era. We now appropriately refer to this historical period as the Dark Ages. If any member of the royal family still wishes to visit Canada let them pay their own way. I suspect they can afford it. Ditto for the Pope. It mystifies me why anyone would admire and revere such a nefarious decadent institution antithetical to the spirit of democracy.
Are Lotteries For Dummies? The organizers of lotteries give maximum publicity to past winners, and
of course say nothing about the vast majority who has won nothing. By
publicizing winners, they make winners foremost in the minds of potential buyers
of tickets and hence induce them believe that they are more likely to win than
is actually the case. Psychologists refer to this faulty reasoning as the availability
error; a distortion of reality based on what is made available to the
subject. What becomes available to a
subject is often a function of whatever produces an emotional response, dramatic effect or concrete image. For example, a murder committed by the Pope would receive far
more coverage by the media than Joe Six Pack? Why do stockbrokers advise their
client to buy when the market is up and sell when it is down? Why do more people
buy flight insurance when they hear of an air disaster? Any escape from the mundane seems to be a motivating factor
in beliefs such as these and often explain the appeal of the paranormal and the
supernatural. Returning to the subject of lotteries, there is a quite persuasive line
of reasoning that argues to the conclusion that anyone who ever buys a lottery
ticket or gambles is a casino is either crazy or stupid. This irrationality is a
distressing conclusion, given the large number of people we’re referring to.
When is a choice rational? Answering this question is difficult, but some
philosophers have argued that thinking in terms of expected utility of an action
can make progress towards an answer. The utility of something for you is simply a measure of how much you like
it. If you prefer X to Y, then X has more utility than Y. If you would trade two
Y’s for one X, then X has at least twice the utility of Y. In some cases we
might even be able to assign numbers to the utilities someone gives some things.
Now we can say that the rational choice among alternatives is the choice that
would give the person the greatest utility. If an action has multiple
consequences, its utility is the sum of the utilities of each of the
consequences. But many choices are made when we are not sure what the results will be.
Sometimes the outcomes of our action are a complete surprise, pleasant or
otherwise. However, sometimes we can at least judge the probabilities of outcomes of our choices. When we know the
probability of an outcome, we can calculate its expected utility by multiplying its utility by its probability.
Suppose, for example, that there is one chance in 1000 you will win a lottery,
and if you win you get $3000. The
expected utility of this outcome is .001 x $3000 m= $3. There is a probability
of .999 you will get nothing, the expected utility of which is .999 x $0 = $0.
So the expected utility of all outcomes is $3 + $0 = $3. But suppose it
costs $1 to buy a ticket. Then the
total expected utility of playing this lottery is $3 - $1 = $2. If you buy only
one lottery ticket once, you are likely to lose, of course. But if you play many
times, you can expect to come out ahead in the long run, by $2
per game played. Hence, it’s a good idea to play this lottery. But suppose that same lottery costs $5 per ticket. The total expected
utility of playing this lottery is now $3 - $5 = -$2, meaning that in the long
run you will lose $2 per game. This
is not a rational way to make money since each time you play it is equivalent to
throwing $2 down the toilet. The games run by lotteries and casinos all
work like this second lottery. They all offer players an average expected loss
on each game. The reason is simple: they are running their games to make money
and this means that the player must be put into a position of major
disadvantage. Now why would anyone play a sucker’s game such as this? Here are two
possible reasons: (a) they are suffering from a psychological problem that
forces them into such self-destructive behavior; (b) they do not understand the
logic behind expected utility. Putting the matter succinctly, they are either
crazy or stupid, or both. But before you sink into a major depression about the
mental health and intelligence a large portion of the human race, consider two
things people might say to explain why they play lotteries and gamble in
casinos. (1)
“I’m
having fun.” What this means in terms of our calculations is that we have not
calculated the overall utility of the second lottery correctly, because we have
not factored in the enjoyment of playing. Suppose that the fun is worth, in
monetary terms, $3 per game. Even though the average money loss will be $2, the
fun value gain is $3; so all considered, you will be ahead, on average, by the
equivalent of $1 each game. You will still lose money in the long run, but you
will have enough fun playing the game to make it worthwhile. (2)
“The
five dollars I spend on the ticket means next to nothing to me, but if I won the
prize it would be worth a great deal.” This again means that we have not
calculated the worth of each game correctly. The calculation multiplies the utility
- a measure of desirability - times its probability. Now we have merely stuck in
dollar figures here. Using these implies that $3000 has six hundred times the
value of $5, but this may not be the case. Here, in fact, what the person seems
to be saying is that the worth of $3000 to him or her is greater than
six-hundred times the worth of $5. Suppose, then that we assign (arbitrarily) a
utility of 5 units to $5 and a utility of 10,000 units to $3000. This makes the
calculation quite different: the average payoff is (001 x 10,000) + (.999 x 0) =
10 units. The cost of playing is 5 units, so we are ahead on average 10 - 5 =5
units per game. Many in Canada have played Lotto
6-49. Anyone with a freshman course in probability can determine the probability
of winning the “big one”. Roughly speaking, it’s the same probability as
an Elvis manned UFO striking the Loch Ness Monster as an alien
abduction of Wayne Gretzky is taking place. And as I have previously mentioned, in the press we
only hear of those who have won, not the thousands who did not.
And of course everyone has talked to someone who knew someone who won, a
fact that is irrelevant to the probabilities. As I understand it one must pick 6
different numbers between 1 and 49 with order if choice irrelevant. Using the language of
combinatorics we are dealing with a combination, rather than a permutation. The
probability would then be one chance in [49x48x47x46x45x44) /
(6x5x4x3x2x1)] = 13,983,816 or as a decimal approximately .000000071511 This analysis perhaps restores your faith in humanity’s sanity and intelligence. But then again there is the popularity of Wrestlemania, the X-Files, “Tractor Pulls”, 1-800 Psychics, Astrology and Country and Western Music. If you enjoyed these diatribes you may also enjoy Annoyances.
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