Once Was Lost, Now Is Found

What Christianity once destroyed, modern technology is recovering.

Experts are “lost for words” to have found that a medieval prayer book has yielded yet another key ancient text buried within its parchment.

Works by mathematician Archimedes and the politician Hyperides had already been found buried within the book, known as the Archimedes Palimpsest.

But now advanced imaging technology has revealed a third text – a commentary on the philosopher Aristotle.

It’s rather poetic, I think.

Crawley, Dawkins, Me, and Heidegger

In the previous post, I linked to a video interview of Richard Dawkins by William Crawley. A portion of that interview reminded me of conversations I have had many times before, with people who tell me that the scientific method is founded on assumptions just like religion. Here is that portion, which I transcribed (thus, any errors are mine):

Crawley: This principle that good beliefs are beliefs that are based on evidence—isn’t it also the case that the very foundations of science, the philosophical assumptions that make science possible, are themselves simply that—assumptions? They are not evidence, they don’t have evidence, they’re assumed in order to create a scientific perspective that makes sense of evidence.

Dawkins: Well philosophers are fond of that kind of thing. they even take it to a point that it’s an assumption that two plus two equals four rather than five. I mean, logic is an assumption. I suppose the minimal thing I would say is that it works.

Crawley: It certainly works, but my point is that the foundations of science are open to the same challenge that you’re making of religion: that they are assumptions that do not afford evidence.

Dawkins: If we were to apply that measure of skepticism to everyday life, suppose we were in a court of law and prosecuting counsel sternly wagged his finger at you and said, “Were you or were you not in Belfast on the night of the 21st of November?” and you said, “Oh, well, philosophers differ on what it means to say that it’s true that any man is ‘in’ any place and you have to tell me what your philosophical foundations are.” I mean, the judge wouldn’t listen to you.

Crawley: No one is saying that science is bad as a consequence of that lack of evidence. I’m agreeing with you that science is a wonderful phenomenon that we should encourage, but I’m also saying that the very foundations of science are open to the same philosophical challenge you’re making about religion.

Dawkins: And I’m accepting that, but I’m also asking you to go further and say that everyday life is, too.

Crawley: Faith plays a role in everything.

Dawkins: Now let’s stop for the moment. Everyday life, the ordinary common sense view that you can’t walk through doors and that kind of thing. That sort of common sense is exactly subject to the same kind of limitations that you’re saying science is, and I accept that.

To summarize Dawkins’ argument, the philosophical foundation of any proposition is open to challenge; however, all propositions may be evaluated according to their correspondence with direct observation.

No matter how ardently I may believe that the MacBook on which I am writing these words does not exist, which belief may be stated as the proposition “The MacBook on which I am writing these words does not exist,” the proposition does not square with my direct and immediate observation that this MacBook does in fact exist.

To demand that no proposition be trusted if it cannot be philosophically supported is the same as saying “No proposition can be trusted unless there are other propositions that support it and none of those propositions can be questionable.” This is because all philosophical arguments are simply propositions intended to support other propositions. However, beyond the endless train of unsupportable supporting propositions, there remain phenomena, which are the subject of our direct and immediate observations.

Yes, that too is a proposition: “Phenomena are the subject of our direct and immediate observations.”

Even trickier, how does one evaluate that proposition in light of direct and immediate observations if the validity of those direct and intermediate observations are themselves the subject of the proposition? Thus, the phenomenological works of Martin Heidegger. (Will someone please pay me a lot of money so that I can have a year off of work to read Being and Time? Anyone is also welcome to simply buy the book for me.)

At any rate, Dawkins is right to bring the issue back to the everyday world. If I swing my fist (which I believe I have) at the desk (which I believe I am sitting at), even with my eyes closed, so that I cannot “cheat” and see the exact moment at which my fist makes contact with the surface of the desk, I will somehow “experience” that moment of contact. While all the propositions supporting that conclusion are open to challenge, why will the experience not go away?

In Favor of the Truth

Here is another Richard Dawkins video. He begins:

“I’m not so much opposed to religion as in favor of the truth, and I see organized religion as organized opposition to the disinterested, skeptical search for the truth. There are other reasons for being opposed to religion. It’s not the only motive for violence and war, but it’s a pretty potent one.”

Watch the video for more. Then you can read this excellent column by Matthew Parris:

Why should Hume, or Richard Dawkins, or lesser polemicists such as me, bang on about this? For heaven’s sake, wail many of my correspondents (and this is the third strand in my pile of letters), what are you getting so het up about? You don’t believe. Fine. Well why not shut up, then? Tell us about things you do believe in.

Then maybe you’ll find this not-so-excellent column by Jonathan Luxmoore worth reading:

[Dawkins'] atheist campaign, with its chilling eugenic undertones, appeals to many people raised with little knowledge or understanding of religious belief—people for whom the fear of Islam touched off by September 11 has metamorphosed into a public phobia about all religion. Such people may be tempted by Dawkins’s Darwinist notion of religious belief as a virus that infects inferior genes and needs “quarantining,” as well as by the summons to defend society against a rising tide of “religious fanaticism.”

I personally am always annoyed when people, even ones who ought to know better—ones who know me personally, sometimes—make this same ridiculous claim, that atheists must have “little knowledge or understanding of religious belief.” The implicit message is: “If you had knowledge and understanding of religious belief, then you would not be an atheist.”

Bullshit.

It’s difficult to convey online, because all I can do is make claims that are unsubstantiated by other proof, but if people who make that argument to me could look back on my life, see how tall is the stack of religious, theological, and devotional books that I have read, see how many hours I spent in organized religious practice, see all of the prayers I offered, see all of the things I did under the banner of my faith, and see my own period of religious zealotry, then maybe they would back off with their ridiculous idea that only someone who is ignorant of religious belief could say the things that I do.

My experience, to the contrary, has been that people “raised with little knowledge or understanding of religious belief” tend not to be the most vocal atheists. Rather, they are lukewarm to both religion and irreligion because they do not understand so clearly and immediately as those of us raised religiously what is gained by shedding religious belief explicitly, and what is lost by taking it up.

At any rate, I do need to go write a paper. The usual critics are welcome to reply with their usual responses.

False Allegations Ought to be Prosecuted

Jonna Spilbor has a column at Findlaw’s Writ calling for criminal charges against Crystal Magnum, the person who last year accused three Duke University lacrosse players of rape.

Crystal Gail Mangum, a 27-year-old woman, single-handedly changed the course of three young men’s lives, probably forever.

. . .

It’s not just about punishing one person for a very serious misdeed – though that is surely important, given the devastating impact on the three defendant’s lives. It’s also about the way her lies will wrongly be used by some to question the veracity of genuine victims of rape. Protecting Crystal Mangum isn’t protecting a victim; it’s making every future victim more vulnerable, in the prosecutor’s office and in the courtroom, to being wrongly disbelieved.

I have to agree. If you know a man whose life you would like to destroy, accuse him of rape. Even if the allegations are shown to be false, his life will never be the same. Why should you get off without punishment? Conversely, if we allow false allegations to go without criminal punishment, then there is little disincentive to those who would bring them; that calls into question every allegation of rape, including the valid ones.

Follow the link above and read the rest of the commentary.

Dawkins on Everything

Check out this excellent, twenty-two minute presentation from Richard Dawkins. It reminds me a little of something I recently wrote myself. (See Comment #22 here.) Particularly interesting, in my opinion, are his closing remarks, beginning at about 19:02. (Is there a way to link to a particular time index in a video on Google?)

Fight the Power

This is heartening:

A revolt is brewing among college presidents against the influential college rankings put out each year by U.S. News & World Report.

Dozens of schools have recently refused to fill out surveys used to calculate ranks, and efforts are now afoot for a collective boycott.

. . .

At the heart of the matter: A college degree is increasingly expensive, and students and parents want to make informed decisions. But educators worry that the rankings have made college a commodity, creating a false impression that schools can be easily compared and stressing out students who want only the “best” schools.

“This increasing interest in measuring everything – these so-called science-based measures of [educational] outcomes and the like – seems to me to be so misguided that it’s now captured the imagination of the leadership in higher education,” says Christopher Nelson, president of St. John’s College in Annapolis, Md., who heads an association of 124 prestigious liberal arts schools. “This is a bad way of talking about an education. [Students] aren’t consumers shopping for a product.”

Or at least, they shouldn’t be.

Then there is the record high rejection rate at Harvard, which I also find interesting. Maybe now that more students are attending universities than ever and knowledge is also more decentralized than ever, the quaint idea that only a few prestigious universities can “provide” the best education will finally bite the dust. One can certainly hope, with university presidents complaining that reputation surveys are mere hocus pocus and one of the highest-regarded universities in the world simply unable to accept all the qualified students who apply, people will figure out that being a well-educated, well-rounded person does not require attendance at a well-regarded, prestigious institution.

A Thought Experiment

Here’s an interesting situation:

[It] cannot breathe on [its] own and must have nutrition and water pumped into [it]. [It] cannot swallow or gag or move on [its] own[. Its] higher order brain functions are destroyed, and secretions must be vigorously suctioned from [its] lungs.

What is it? Is it alive? What do you think? Are you curious about the language that is behind those bracketed neutral pronouns? Should it matter?

Try this version:

[Your dog] cannot breathe on [its] own and must have nutrition and water pumped into [it]. [It] cannot swallow or gag or move on [its] own[. Its] higher order brain functions are destroyed, and secretions must be vigorously suctioned from [its] lungs.

What do you think about that one? How about this version:

[Your mother] cannot breathe on [her] own and must have nutrition and water pumped into [her]. [She] cannot swallow or gag or move on [her] own[. Her] higher order brain functions are destroyed, and secretions must be vigorously suctioned from [her] lungs.

Getting a little more difficult? Why? Because the pronoun changed? Because you attach more emotional connection to the idea behind this pronoun?

Go here to see the original source material.

Happy Easter

Let’s all take a moment today and remember that we here in the United States are surrounded by people who believe that all their sins were atoned when God, the Creator of the Universe (“GCU”), felt he needed our worship so badly that he became one of us, got himself nailed to a board, died, came back from the dead within 48 hours, ascended into the sky, promised to come back, and has never been seen since. (Maybe he’s just embarrassed to come back after pulling such a ridiculous, adolescent, self-mutilative stunt.)

Yes, it’s a little bizarre that GCU was so cynical as to know that humans—his own creations, allegedly—would kill him when he walked among them, but still wants those humans to love and worship him. Perhaps we ought to extend an olive branch to GCU and send him a psychotherapist, free of charge.

But if you, like me, are a little put off by the fact that we have this whole holiday season focused on the fetishization of a brutal execution, then perhaps you would enjoy this heartwarming story on NPR, about a missionary who could not convince his target audience that the Christian Easter story was true. Now he is just a regular person and a linguist.

(The story is not quite that simple, if you read the “personal biography” on his website. He was already a linguist and construes the missionary zeal of his youth as “misguided.” However, wwithout the difficulty of trying to bring the Bad News to people of a completely different culture, he might have ended up as another one of those bizarre intelligent design academics like William Dembski and Michael Behe, trying to tell us that language is evidence of design. Or something.)

Anyway, remember the pagan origins of Easter and have yourself a good one. Maybe you should celebrate life by going out and getting laid.

(Also, check out my Easter greeting from last year. It made me laugh; maybe you will get the same benefit.)

Idle Minds and Idol Foolishnes

I read this article about abusive online misconduct toward women and thought, “Huh? What planet are these people on? This can’t be my planet.”

But then, I also occasionally see images like this one, of Sanjaya Malakar on American Idol, and and have the exact same response.

Seriously, I cannot conceive of anyone who would criticize a woman for being attractive, intelligent, and outspoken. Is that some kind of a bad thing? On my home planet (which I thought was “Earth”), attractive, intelligent, and outspoken women are just about the greatest thing ever.

I can no more understand heaping abuse on female bloggers, simply because they are female, than I can understand people who watch American Idol. Yes, I know the comparison seems trite, but I’m trying to make a point about the idiocy of our culture here. The popularity of both misogyny and “reality” television is incomprehensible to me because these things are equally pointless. There is not the slightest chance that pop singers elected via television contests or a dearth of intelligent, outspoken women (the facial goals of American Idol and misogyny, respectively) would make the world a better place. Both suck up enormous amounts of resources for what is essentially equivalent to societal masturbation or worse.

There is so much better music in this world than the drivel that hemorrhages from the American Idol juggernaut; how can it be that people still eat that crap from Simon Cowell’s hand? And how could any man not want to surround himself with intelligent and outspoken women?

The only comfort I can take is from the fact that I manage to live my life in almost complete ignorance of these idiocies, to the extent that I can be surprised and outraged on the rare occasions that I do encounter them. The conclusion to draw, one hopes, is not that our society is filled to the brim with idiots, but we are so far along that the relatively few idiots we have left can still shock the conscience.