Russellings

SF&F Movie Rankings for 2007

2008-05-15T23:34:03Z

I haven't posted much to my blogs lately because I've been getting ready for WisCon, the world's leading feminist science-fiction convention. However, it occurred to me that I could make some of that preparation do double duty by posting it here. So below is my list of the SF and fantasy films of 2007, which I'll be presenting at 2 different WisCon panels.

I use a 9-point rating scale, based on what I'd recommend to adult SF&F fans:
-All of you should see these:
• 9 superlative
• 8 dandy
• 7 good
-This stuff is up to you:
• 6 fair
• 5 average
• 4 poor
-Avoid these with increasing degrees of revulsion:
• 3 bad
• 2 awful
• 1 execrable

9 Blade Runner: The Final Cut R 1:57 Science Fiction rerelease Biggie cynics
9 Bridge to Terabithia PG 1:35 Fantasy Fairy Tales original 3rd String romantics feminists
9 Stardust 13 2:08 Fantasy Fairy Tales original Biggie romantics
8 The Golden Compass PG 1:54 Other Talking Animals original Biggie feminists
8 Next 13 1:36 Science Fiction original 3rd String
8 Pirates of the Caribbean [3]: At World’s End 13 2:48 Other Adventure sequel Biggie
8 Ratatouille G 1:51 Other Talking Animals original Biggie
8 Spider-Man 3 13 2:19 Fantasy Comics & Pulps sequel Biggie
7 Enchanted PG 1:47 Fantasy Fairy Tales original 2nd String
7 Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix [5] 13 2:16 Fantasy Supernatural sequel Biggie
7 Meet the Robinsons G 1:34 Science Fiction original 2nd String romantics
7 Shrek the 3rd PG 1:33 Fantasy Fairy Tales sequel Biggie romantics
7 The Simpsons Movie 13 1:27 Other Comedy original Biggie
7 Surf’s Up PG 1:25 Other Talking Animals original 3rd String
6 Fido R 1:31 Other Comedy original 3rd String
6 I Am Legend 13 1:40 Science Fiction remake Biggie
6 The Invisible 13 1:42 Fantasy Supernatural original 3rd String
6 Planet Terror [1st feature in Grindhouse] R 1:31 Science Fiction formula 3rd String
5 Bee Movie PG 1:30 Other Talking Animals original 2nd String
5 Beowulf 13 1:53 Fantasy Sword & Sorcery original 2nd String
5 Blood and Chocolate 13 1:38 Fantasy Supernatural formula 3rd String
5 The Condemned R 1:53 Borderline original Barg Bsmt cynics
5 Fantastic 4 [2]: Rise of the Silver Surfer PG 1:32 Fantasy Comics & Pulps sequel Biggie
5 Ghost Rider 13 1:50 Fantasy Comics & Pulps crossover 3rd String
5 The Mist R 2:06 Fantasy Supernatural formula 3rd String
5 Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium G 1:33 Other Adventure original 2nd String
5 Premonition 13 1:36 Science Fiction original 3rd String
5 Transformers 13 2:23 Other Adventure crossover Biggie
4 1408 13 1:44 Fantasy Supernatural original 3rd String
4 30 Days of Night R 1:53 Fantasy Supernatural formula Barg Bsmt
4 Angel-A R 1:28 Fantasy Supernatural original 3rd String
4 Black Sheep 13 1:25 Science Fiction formula Barg Bsmt
4 Fred Claus PG 1:56 Other Comedy formula 3rd String
4 Hitman R 1:32 Borderline crossover 3rd String chauvinists
4 The Invasion 13 1:39 Science Fiction remake 2nd String
4 The Last Mimzy PG 1:36 Science Fiction original Barg Bsmt
4 The Reaping R 1:39 Fantasy Supernatural formula 3rd String
4 Resident Evil [3]: Extinction R 1:35 Science Fiction sequel 3rd String cynics feminists
4 Underdog PG 1:22 Other Talking Animals crossover 3rd String
4 The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep PG 1:52 Other Adventure original 3rd String
3 28 Weeks Later R 1:40 Science Fiction sequel 3rd String cynics
3 Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem R 1:34 Science Fiction sequel 3rd String
3 Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters R 1:25 Other Talking Animals original Barg Bsmt
3 Good Luck Chuck R 1:36 Borderline original 3rd String chauvinists
3 The Host R 2:00 Science Fiction formula 3rd String
3 I Know Who Killed Me R 1:45 Other Drama original 3rd String
3 The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising [1] PG 1:34 Fantasy Supernatural original 3rd String
3 Sunshine R 1:47 Science Fiction original 3rd String
3 TMNT PG 1:27 Fantasy Comics & Pulps sequel 3rd String
2 Alvin and the Chipmunks PG 1:31 Other Talking Animals crossover 3rd String
2 D-War [Dragon Wars] 13 1:30 Fantasy Supernatural original 3rd String
2 Evan Almighty PG 1:35 Fantasy Supernatural sequel 2nd String
2 Paprika R 1:30 Science Fiction original 3rd String
2 Skin Walkers 13 1:32 Fantasy Supernatural formula Barg Bsmt
1 The Abandoned R 1:40 Fantasy Supernatural formula Barg Bsmt
1 The Hills Have Eyes 2 R 1:29 Science Fiction sequel Barg Bsmt
1 Southland Tales R 2:25 Science Fiction original Barg Bsmt
– The Last Winter R 1:39 Science Fiction original Barg Bsmt

Religious Exemption for Child Neglect

2008-04-30T17:33:52Z

Rep. Spencer Black
Wisconsin Legislature
Rep.Black@legis.wisconsin.gov

Dear Rep. Black:

I’m sure you’ve heard of the awful situation in Weston, where a 12-year-old girl died a horrible, lingering death of an eminently treatable form of diabetes while her parents stood by praying, thinking that this was somehow better than professional medical care. Even after she died, her mother said it would be only temporary, that she’d be coming back from the dead in a day or 2. All this while friends and relatives were desperately urging them to get the girl to a doctor or hospital.

Now it comes out that the parents may be able to get away completely without consequence for this appalling act of child neglect, because the Wisconsin state statutes contain an exemption for religious “treatment” of medical conditions.

This is the 21st Century. Would we write into the law exemptions for bleeding with leeches? Would we excuse such behavior if the proper number of pins had been stuck into voodoo dolls? Would it be OK if the parents said they were due to win the lottery? Suppose they claimed that healing gamma rays from Ganymede were already on their way? How is this any different?

We as a society know better than this. Why do we let parents walk away scot free from the dead bodies of their neglected children because of ignorant superstitions?

I hope you will do everything in your power to repeal this insane (literally not sane) exemption as soon as possible before the death toll mounts any higher.

With outrage,

Richard S. Russell

Plant a Tree Today

2008-04-27T01:20:55Z

2008 April 26

Voice of the People
The Capital Times
PO Box 8060
Madison WI 53708-8060

tctvoice@madison.com

To the Editor:

In the time it takes to read this letter, another species will have gone extinct somewhere on the planet. That’s knocking them off 500 times faster than the rate before the rise of human “civilization”. Some of those species would still be alive if there were more trees generating oxygen, dropping needles to mulchify on the forest floor, providing root systems to aerate the soil and minimize mudslides, and so on.

But, about 7-8 months from now, many Wisconsin families will celebrate the season of rebirth and renewal by finding a beautiful, healthy exemplar of eternal life — an evergreen tree — and killing it. They will then drag its corpse home and set it up in a corner where they can watch it dessicate into a fire hazard. After a few months, they’ll drag its body to the curb to be dismembered, discarded, and forgotten. And year after year, decade after decade, they’ll do it again.

If this annual rite of wanton arboricide in the name of “eternal life” strikes you as going beyond the ironic into the hypocritical, now’s the time you’ve been waiting for. Hie thyself to a garden nursery and get yourself a tender young LIVING tree, plant it in your yard, and enjoy it for generations to come.

Forbidden Words

2008-04-16T18:46:31Z

Recently one of my Yahoo groups bounced an e-mail from me because its subject line consisted of the forbidden word "Photos". Yahoo had identified this horrifying word as a likely subject line on a message containing a virus, even tho my own message had 2 short text paragraphs and no attachments and came from a Mac.

Curious to see just how extensively Yahoo is checking for subject lines even more suspicious than "Photos", I ran a little experiment to see what else might set them off. FYI, messages with the following subject lines all went thru just fine:
• This Is Spam
• Pornography Attached
• Biggus Dickus [apologies to Monty Python]
• Nigerian Money Laundering Scam
• PEN IS mightier than sword
• Malicious Virus Enclosed

But at least we're safe from "Photos".

We're All Doomed!

2008-04-12T19:47:27Z

We’re All Doomed!

= = = = = =

Grim Reaper: Silence!!! I have come for you.
Angela: ... You mean to ...
Grim Reaper: ... Take you away. That is my purpose. I am Death.
Geoffrey: Well, that's cast rather a gloom over the evening, hasn't it?

— Monty Python, The Meaning of Life

= = = = = =

Most Americans are appalled at the forced imposition of the burka and chador — or even the hijab — on women in Islamic countries. Yet if a woman were to walk down State Street without a shirt (or a man without pants), we would soon realize that we have our own body taboos and hang-ups that we’re usually oblivious to.

I think the same situation is true with regard to global warming. Those of us on the left can ridicule the troglodytes like Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Inhofe, who has called the threat of catastrophic global warming the "greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people", thereby firmly aligning himself with the flat Earthers, creationists, and Holocaust deniers. But even people who are fully on board about climate change (damage to the atmosphere) are blissfully oblivious to the rest of the picture.

The American Farmland Preservation Coalition decries the loss of good Iowa topsoil to erosion down the Missouri and Mississippi valleys. Environmental Action bemoans the decapitation of mountaintops in West Virginia. Mining slag pours into rivers in the Rockies. The Fertile Crescent is now desert. The Sahara encroaches on farmland in Sudan, producing the flood of Darfurian refugees. The lithosphere (soil and rocks) is taking it in the neck.

Mayors and governors along the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence Seaway try to rebrand their part of the world as the Fresh Coast (much more appealing than “Rust Belt”) and make the case that fresh water will be the oil of the 21st Century. It’s almost impossible to swim in many inland lakes, and the seacoasts are awash with sewage and medical waste. New Orleans wonders what happened to its buffer of wetlands. It’s an all-out assault on the hydrosphere.

And perhaps the biggest catastrophe is what’s happening to the biosphere (life forms) of our only planet.

All of nature is engaged in a continual struggle for scarce resources. Big cats (pumas) compete against big dogs (wolves) to eat deer, sheep, and rodents. Every year wolverines and badgers compete for burrow space as well as on the gridiron. It’s trees vs. grasses for access to good soil and sunshine. (And, in that war, both sides have eagerly formed alliances with human beings, the former bribing us with fruits and the latter with grains.)

Who are our fiercest competitors for resources? Not surprisingly, it’s the species that are most nearly like us, the ones that require virtually identical kinds of food, water, shelter, temperature, habitat, etc. (We don’t spend a lot of time duking it out with shrimp over phytoplankton.)

And how have our nearest relatives fared in their competition with us? Let’s have a look:

Family Hominidae
  o Genus Pan (chimpanzee)
    – Species paniscus (bonobo) Status: endangered
    – Species troglodytes (common chimp) Status: endangered
  o Genus Pongo (orangutan)
    – Species abelii (Sumatran orangutan) Status: critically endangered
    – Species pygmaeus (Bornean orangutan) Status: endangered
  o Genus Gorilla
    – Species gorilla (Western gorilla) Status: critically endangered
    – Species beringei (Eastern gorilla) Status: endangered
  o Genus Homo
    – Species sapiens (human beings) Status: 6,600,000,000 and growing

Short story: We have outcompeted the hell out of everything in our environmental niche. We’ve completely wiped out all other species in our genus (most recently the neanderthals, about 25,000 years ago), and we’re on the verge of being the only remaining species in Family Hominidae. We are truly the meanest sunzabitches in the valley.

Nor does it stop there. We are decimating other species at a prodigious clip as well. In the time you take to read this essay, another couple of species have gone extinct (a rate of 1 every 4 minutes, or about 500 times the pre-human historical pace).

The following is a sig line I sometimes use at the bottom of my e-mails, where it’s easy to ignore. I think it’s time to pull it up into the main body of the message, to make it unavoidable and painfully clear:

= = = = = =

In Earth's history, there have been 5 previous massive die-offs of almost every species on the planet. We call these Mass Extinction Events. We don't know what caused the 1st 4, but we're pretty sure that the 5th — the one that got the dinosaurs — was caused by a huge meteor striking the Earth near the Yucatan Peninsula. And we're absolutely certain what's causing the 6th, the one we're in now, the Holocene Holocaust. It's us.

= = = = = =

It has been said that we do not inherit the world from our parents, we borrow it from our children. Regrettably, in the words of Martin Luther King Jr., “It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note .... Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the ... people a bad check, a check which has come back marked ‘insufficient funds’.”

So we are witnessing a historically unprecedented degradation of the atmosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere. All at once. And accelerating. And even people who are aware of part of the problem fail to connect the dots and place it in the context of the big picture. We are ruining the world.

The basic problem is obvious: too many people.

A lot of the pro-growth crowd (economists loosely aligned with the political neo-conservatives) have contended that Paul R. Ehrlich’s 1968 book The Population Bomb has been discredited, because the disasters he predicted didn’t come to pass on the timeline he had laid out. It’s true that human ingenuity and massive infusions of capital and science managed to stave off the worst of his predictions, but “postponed” is not the same as “avoided”. Today we are starting to see the death tolls mounting from the famines, droughts, and forced migrations Ehrlich predicted 4 decades ago. The chickens are coming home to roost.

But, adding to the problem, there is the simple fact that we ignored the warnings of Ehrlich (and Thomas Malthus before him), thinking we were somehow immune to the disasters they had predicted, and therefore just kept adding more and more people to the overburden we were already placing on the planet. So now, when a typhoon sweeps ashore in Bangladesh, say, it doesn’t just take out a few thousand people, the way it would have in Ehrlich’s day; it now claims victims by the hundreds of thousands.

But now let us introduce some nuance. Not every person has an equal effect on the environment. For example, we could add 99 Zimbabweans with less total impact than 1 incremental American. The clear-cut implication of considering consumption and waste instead of merely counting bodies is that migration becomes at least as significant a consideration as birth rate.

Now you might think, from a standing start, that it would be the richest countries — the ones that could most easily afford to support large families — where the population growth would be greatest. Not true. It turns out that it is these very countries that are most able to provide women with liberty, money, education, and access to birth control, and those factors combine to produce the lowest birth rates among the community of nations.

Indeed, most of the nations of Europe have long since achieved the goal of zero population growth and embarked on the even more enlightened and civilized path of negative population growth. The USA would be in the same boat if we counted only net natural growth (births minus deaths) and legal immigration, but illegal immigration continues to drive our population (the most ravenously consumptive in the history of the world) steadily higher.

No discussion of overpopulation can go for long without placing great gobs of blame at the feet of the world’s 2 largest religions, Catholicism and Islam, both of which hold to a grossly unrealistic “every sperm is sacred” view of the world. They are unapologetically conservative forces with a vested interest in denigrating their chief intellectual competitor, science. They deserve to be reviled and opposed at every turn. They are the chief architects of our coming ruin.

Yet, in keeping with my introductory theme about blindness to that which is familiar around us, it’s also true that forces at the opposite end of the political spectrum (my end, the liberals and progressives) are guilty of exacerbating the problem by denying that there’s anything wrong with large-scale migration, legal or illegal.

I myself am all too happy to glorify, in the abstract, diversity, compassion, and liberty (including the freedom to travel). But, in doing so, we on the left need to pay attention to the opposite pan on the balance scales. It’s not a pretty picture over there, my friends.

= = = = = =

A young couple was out in the country, not far from a grove of trees, when it started to rain. The guy said, “Quick, let’s run under that tree for shelter.”

“But what will we do when the leaves get all wet and start to drip thru on us?”, wondered the young woman.

“Simple,” said the guy, “we’ll just run under a different tree.”

= = = = = =

And, in fact, this tactic will work for a little while, if you can find a taller tree where the rain is still working its way down. However, if the rain keeps on coming, eventually it’ll saturate even the tallest tree, and you’ll end up sopping wet, with the additional fringe benefit of having cleverly positioned yourself in the place most likely to be hit by lightning.

All the immigrants in the world can’t run under the sheltering umbrella of the tree called the United States and expect to stay dry indefinitely. For one thing, there isn’t enuf room for all of them. For another, simply running from tree to tree does nothing whatsoever to stop the rain.

Migration is not the answer to the world’s population problems. All it does is relocate the problem temporarily, consuming irreplaceable resources in the process. And, make no mistake, it’s the population problem that’s driving most of the others, including the horrific Holocene Holocaust I mentioned above.

Try this as a mental exercise. When you hear a problem description, try reversing it.

Instead of “peak oil”, think of it as “too many people for the available petroleum”.

Instead of “famine”, think of it as “too many people for the available food”.

Instead of “drought”, think of it as “too many people for the available water”.

Instead of “slums”, think of it as “too many people for the available housing”.

Instead of “war”, think of it as “too many people for the available land”.

Instead of “poverty”, think of it as “too many people for the available money”.

Instead of “plague”, think of it as “too many people for the available health care”.

= = = = = =

So …

Sorry to have cast rather a gloom over your evening.

It’s traditional to try to end these depressing essays with some upbeat ray of hope, and I will comply with tradition:

= = = = = =

The dangers that face the world can, every one of them, be traced back to science. The salvations that may save the world will, every one of them, be traced back to science.

— Isaac Asimov

= = = = = =

We know what the problems are. We’ve got a handle on how to fix them. If we can hold off the religious fanatics long enuf to get a good start, we’ve still got a fighting chance.

But — and you may go right ahead and consider this chauvinistic of me — there’s gotta be a spot of dry land to stand on before it does you any good throwing out a lifebouy to the drowning victims. If we can’t maintain a high level of thriving, technological society here in the United States, there really isn’t any hope for the rest of the world. We’re all doomed.

Yup, upbeat to the end, that’s me.

What Democrats Want

2008-03-27T20:44:55Z

Well, it seems only fair that, since I just posted a survey from the Republican National Congressional Committee (RNCC) under the heading “What Republicans Want”, I should follow up with the one I got yesterday from the Democratic National Committee (DNC). These 2 organizations are not exactly counterparts of each other. The RNCC is focussed particularly on elected GOP candidates to the US House of Representatives, while the DNC’s remit is broader. It’s dedicated to electing Democrats at all levels, but particularly, in this year divisible by 4, to the US presidency.

I’ve gotta say (tho it’s possible I’m biased) that the Dems’ survey seems a lot more like what I’d expect from an independent polling organization, objectively devoted to finding out what people really think. It’s entirely possible that the DNC really DOES tally these results and use them for broad guidance.

At bottom, of course, it’s still mainly a fund-raising gimmick.

The RNCC survey gave me exactly 3 options for each question: “Yes”, “No”, and “Undecided”. The DNC survey wasn’t quite so simplistic, offering instead a range of choices tailored to the specifics of each question. Therefore, I show below not only the questions but the options under each one.

1. Age

[ ] 18-30 [ ] 31-40 [ ] 41-50 [ ] 51-64 [ ] 65 and over

2. How often do you vote for Democratic candidates?

[ ] Always [ ] Most of the time [ ] Rarely [ ] Never

3. How likely are you to vote in the 2008 elections?

[ ] Very likely [ ] Somewhat likely [ ] Not likely

4. Have you participated in any of the following campaign activities?

[ ] Volunteering time at a local campaign or party headquarters.
[ ] Making phone calls from a phone bank.
[ ] Organizing an event or fundraiser in my home or community.
[ ] Going door-to-door in my neighborhood.

5. How closely have you been following the 2008 presidential campaign?

[ ] Very closely [ ] Closely [ ] Somewhat closely [ ] Not at all

6. How optimistic are you that a Democrat will win the White House in 2008?

[ ] Very optimistic [ ] Optimistic [ ] Not very optimistic [ ] Not at all

7. Do you believe that John McCain’s pledge to keep troops in Iraq for another 100 years will be a liability in the General Election?

[ ] Yes [ ] No [ ] Unsure

8. Which issues would you like the Democratic presidential nominee to focus on in the campaign? Please rank the following issues from 1 to 14 based on their importance to you, with “1” being the most important.

___ Education
___ Environment
___ Health care
___ Civil rights/liberties
___ Immigration
___ Social Security
___ Ethics in governmenet
___ Reproductive rights
___ Homeland security
___ Stem-cell research
___ Iraq
___ Taxes
___ Energy policy
___ Jobs/economy

9. Thinking about our Party’s plan for the 2008 campaigns, which of the following strategies do you think is the key to electing more Democrats in November?

[ ] Investing in grassroots efforts like canvassing and get-out-the-vote drives.
[ ] Devoting more resources to radio and television ads that reach the most voters.
[ ] Ensuring a fair election process so that every vote counts.
[ ] Democrats need to invest in all of the above strategies to win in November.

10. With our 50 State Strategy, the DNC has been strengthening our Party in states that have traditionally been GOP strongholds. What is your opinion of this strategy?

[ ] I support it. Our Party needs to compete in eveyr part of the country and make the Republicans spend campaign money in states they have taken for granted.
[ ] I oppose it. Our Party should focus its resources in those states where we have the best chance to win, and not waste money in solidly Republican states.

11. How likely do you think it is that John McCain and his Republican allies will launch a “Swift Boat” style smear campaign against our presidential nominee?

[ ] Very likely [ ] Somewhat likely [ ] Not likely

12. How concerned are you that Republican voter suppression schemes will disenfranchise Democrats and impact the outcome of the presidential race?

[ ] Very concerned [ ] Somewhat concerned [ ] Not concerned

13. What is your main source of news and information about the presidential campaign and the 2008 elections?

[ ] Television [ ] Newspapers [ ] Talk radio [ ] Internet/blogs [ ] Newsmagazines [ ] Other _______

[Aside from Richard: I half expected to see a separate category for “The Daily Show”.]

14. Do you think mainstream news organizations are biased in favor of Democrats, biased in favor of Republicans, or do you think news organizations have been fair in the way they have covered the presidential election?

[ ] Biased in favor of Democrats
[ ] Biased in favor of Republicans
[ ] No bias in favor of either party
[ ] No opinion/not sure

15. If you could offer one piece of advice to the Democratic presidential nominee, what would it be? Please use the space below to write your comments.

16. To help our Party win the White Housse and score victories up and down the ballot in 2008, will you join the DNC as a contributing member today?

[ ] Yes — go to next question [ ] No

17. If you answered “Yes” to question 16, please indicate the membership level at which you will join the DNC today.

[ ] $25 [ ] $35 [ ] $50 [ ] $100 [ ] Other $____

Partial Veto Power

2008-03-26T04:18:30Z

2008 Mar. 25

Voice of the People
The Capital Times
PO Box 8060
Madison WI 53708-8060

tctvoice@madison.com

Suppose you’ve recently acquired an old clunker of a car. It runs, but it needs work on the brakes, steering, alignment, and lights. You dealt with the brakes first, then a couple of months later you could afford to take care of the steering. Now you’re in a position to fix the alignment. But your usually reliable brother says “Hey, man, don’t work on the alignment until you can take care of the lights at the same time. Put the whole thing off until you can do it ALL and do it right.”

That’s the advice we’re getting from Fred Wade and John Nichols on the governor’s partial-veto power. I contend that they’re right strategically but dead wrong tactically.

A misguided decision of the Wisconsin Supreme Court gave our state’s governor the most powerful veto pen in the nation. He can effectively create new laws — never intended by the Legislature — thru creative editing.

Already we have passed 2 Constitutional amendments to rein in the worst abuses of this power. This April 1 we’ll have a chance to adopt yet another amendment to fix still a 3rd aspect of the problem. Fred and John would have you vote “no” on this because it doesn’t finish the job.

And they’re right about one thing: this year’s vote WON’T finish the job. More work remains to be done. The deciding factor for me is “What system will we be living under until we get the NEXT amendment passed, one that’s only 1/2 fixed, or one that’s 3/4 fixed?”.

Remember that this year’s amendment had to pass both houses of the Legislature in 2 consecutive biennnial sessions to get to you, the voters. Do you really want to start the clock all over again, with no guarantees as to how some future, supposedly “perfect” amendment will turn out? Or will you settle, here and now, for an incremental gain?

I recommend a “yes” vote this April, followed promptly by the introduction of an even better, 4th amendment for another vote in 2012.

What Republicans Want

2008-03-25T19:26:14Z

As a lot of my political friends are aware, I’m a member of 5 different political parties:
• Democrats
• Greens
• Libertarians
• Progressive Dane (a local party, in Dane County)
• Republicans

There are a couple of reasons why I send my money to all these different groups. The deep, philosophical reason is that I believe in party politics as an abstract concept. Political parties are, practically by definition, multi-issue organizations, because it is their purpose in life to appeal to a majority of the population, and you can’t do that with just a single issue. Furthermore, they don’t have their very existence tied up with a particular issue, the way the special-interest groups do.

Consider, for example, a case now before the US Supreme Court, in which the District of Columbia’s strict “gun-control” law has been challenged as unconstitutional under the 2nd Amendment (which grants the “right to keep and bear arms” or RKBA). Now, if you’re a top executive at the National Rifle Association, the best thing that could happen is that the Supremes would throw out the “gun-control” law. And the SECOND best thing that could happen is that they’d uphold it. If you work for Handgun Control Inc., the reverse is true.

Now why is it, do you suppose, that being on the LOSING side in a court case is a good thing for a special-interest organization? It’s because it gives them something alarming that they can point to when they send out their next fund-raising letter (probably the very next day after the decision) to try to rally the faithful (and, not at all incidentally, persuade them to send in even bigger checks in light of this new threat to all that is good and true and holy).

In a perverse sort of way, the NRA and HCI really need each other, because then each of them has an opposite number to fulfill the role of demon.

Not so much the political parties. It used to be that the Republicans (and especially the Libertarians) were gung-ho on the RKBA, while the leftish parties were much more sympathetic to “gun control”. (I always put “gun control” in quotation marks, to emphasize the fact that it won’t control the guns of criminals, police, or the military, only of ordinary, law-abiding citizens.) But, thru the years, the Democrats at least have come to recognize that “gun control” is a loser as a political issue. It pisses off way more people way more intensely than it attracts. So they’ve just gradually let it die.

As a multi-issue organization (especially one that wants a broad range of support), the Dems can not only AFFORD to do this, they practically HAVE to in order to keep winning elections. But would Handgun Control Inc. ever adopt the same “Oh, well, we gave it a good try.” attitude? Of course not, because its very EXISTENCE is tied up in keeping that issue hot and highly visible. And by “existence”, I mean “paychecks for the HCI officers”.

There are only a very few instances of an organization having utterly lost its raison d’etre and dealing with it successfully. One is in a place you’d least expect it: the federal bureaucracy. The Rural Electrification Administration completed its work, polished off its final reports, turned them in, turned off the lights, and went out of business in an orderly way.

The only other one that comes readily to mind is the March of Dimes, which was originally set up to find a cure for polio. When the Salk and Sabin vaccines came along, and they had actually achieved what they set out to do, the March of Dimes could have followed the REA’s example and closed up shop. Instead, they reasoned that they had a good infrastructure in place and a lot of terrific good will to go with their name (ESPECIALLY after having met their primary goal), so they chose to reinvent themselves as a charity devoted to preventing and curing birth defects (something that’s gonna take a lot longer than finding a cure for polio).

Political “cause” organizations, like religions, don’t seem amenable to these 2 avenues.

But political parties, as I said, can just walk away when they feel the need. That’s one reason why I want to send my money to parties rather than pressure groups. They don’t have to be fanatics to be effective.

The other reason is a lot simpler and more mundane: It gets me on their mailing lists, so I can see what they’re up to.

Which brings me to the main point of today’s essay, “What Republicans Want”. I recently received a fund-raising letter from the Republican National Congressional Committee. Now, you have to understand that what these guys really want is your money. They don’t give 2 hoots in hell about your opinion. Nonetheless, long experience has shown them that they get MORE money if they pretend that they ARE interested in what you think, so these pitches almost invariably come with a “survey” that pretends to solicit your advice in formulating national policy.

The survey is, of course, strictly a propaganda gimmick. I doubt that they even invest the time to record the results. They probably just separate the checks from the completed forms, deposit the former, and recycle the latter unread. The REAL point of the survey is to ask you questions in a manner designed to fire up your taste for red meat.

Note that, while this particular example quotes a pitch from the Republicans, the technique is equally available to the Democrats, and they use it just as enthusiastically and shamelessly. Both sides love to haul out some demon image from the other side to use as a horror story. The Republicans for years have cited Teddy Kennedy, while the Democrats have hopscotched from Jesse Helms to Strom Thurmond to Dick Cheney. This particular letter, since its from the “Congressional” (IE, House of Representatives) campaign committee, slots House Speaker Nancy Pelosi into the role of chief demon. The one thing the Republicans have that the Democrats don’t is the use of the adjective “Democrat” rather than “Democratic”, always a sure sign of burr-under-the-saddle partisanship, guaranteed to irk the Dems.

So, without further ado, here’s what the Republicans seem to think is on the minds of their party members in early 2008, half a year before the presidential elections. The 3 options I was given for each question are “Yes”, “No”, and “Undecided”.

1. Do you feel voters in Wisconsin’s 2nd District support making all of the Bush tax cuts permanent?

2. Do you support the Hosue Democrats’ “slow-bleed” strategy to “choke-off” funding for our troops in Iraq, leading to their withdrawal and a perception of American defeat?

3. Should Republicans continue fighting for full implementation of a ballistic missile defense system?

4. Do voters in Wisconsin’s 2nd District agree with the Nancy Pelosi Democrat Majority’s decision to impose massive tax hikes on the American people?

5. Do you think that House Republicans should continue to push for pro-growth policies that create jobs and oppose tax increases that would add a burden to working families and set back our economy?

6. Do you support Congressional Republicans’ efforts to decrease domeestic government spending in order to reduce the national deficit?

7. Do you support the Democrats’ efforts to give federal government bureaucrats complete control of your health care costs and choices?

8. Should Republicans in Congress make expansion of Veterans’ benefits a priority?

9. Do you support maintaining anti-terrorism laws that give law enforcement and intelligence agencies the far-reaching powers to track detain and prosecute terrorists and their accomplices?

10. Should Republicans in the House of Representatives make securing our nation’s borders and enforcing our nation’s immigration laws, including combating the hiring of illegal workers and ending the “catch and release” policy, a top priority?

11. Do you think House Republicans should continue fighting for comprehensive education reform to ensure that every child in America receives a first-rate education?

12. Do you agree that winning back a Republican Majority in the House of Representatives is essential to stopping the Nancy Pelosi Democrats from raising our taxes, destroying our economy and endangering our homeland?

13. Will you support our Party’s campaign to defeat the Pelosi Democrats and elect a Republican House Majority in 2008 by joining the NRCC with a generous financial contribution today?

This last question was followed not by the standard “Yes”, “No”, and “Undecided” options but rather with a big “YES” box followed by a much smaller one for “I cannot pledge my support for this year, but I would like to include a contribution of $11 to help the NRCC fund this survey and its tabulation.”.

A Computer Parable

2008-03-19T11:30:22Z

Most of my writing is of essay length and either didactic or expostulatory. However, every now and again I take off on a little flight of fancy and gin up something that might be called “creative writing”. Recently I was struck by just such a mood in responding to a question on a discussion list devoted to FileMaker Pro, a particular piece of computer software I use a lot. It was well received there, so I thot I’d share it here.

Before launching into my little parable, you should be aware that Claris was originally the application-software arm of Apple Computer. It was eventually spun off into a wholly owned subsidiary. At that time, it still published Claris Works, Claris Write, and Claris Draw, among others. But its principal cash cow was its database manager, FileMaker Pro.

After a few more years, Claris severed its links to Apple, dropped everything else in its product line, and concentrated on FileMaker. In recognition of this, it changed its corporate name to FileMaker Inc. (FMI).

And now, the story.

= = = = = =

Once upon a time didst the great god Claris smile upon his chosen people, and deliver up unto them a database manager. It was fair of mien, and easy of use, and flat of file.

And the people didst use it, and were content.

But there arose a voice from the scoffers (for the scornful are with us in every generation), saying, "But, Lord Claris, I have made me a house, and in the house are many cupboards, and in the cupboards are many shelves, and each shelf holds 1 thing of a particular kind, and 1 thing only. But I have several things of a particular kind which I wish to place upon this shelf, and I know not what to do. Canst thou not aid thy humble supplicant?"

And Claris didst frown and furrow and, after a time, spake thusly: "Thou raisest a good point. Let me ponder upon't som'at and we shall see what we shall see."

And a silence fell upon the land.

Bye and bye didst Claris return and summon the attention of his chosen people, and thus he spake: "Ahem. I have just returned from Cabo San Lucas, where I have been cavorting, ah, consorting with my fellow deities, and the consensus among them was this, that I should employ the type of miracle that is known among us, the gods of software, as a 'kludge'. And so it is, my loyal followers, that I grant thee the ability of the magic touch. Thou mayest touch any shelf in thy cupboards and utter the magical imprecation 'repeating field', and -- lo! -- that shelf will hold not merely 1, nor 2, nor 3 things of a particular kind, but literally hundreds, if thou so wishest."

And the people drew back in awe and went "Oooh", and "Aaaah", and "Wow", and "Way cool".

And the people didst use it, and were content.

And Claris looked down upon his work and saw that, if it was not precisely what you'd call "good", it faked it pretty well.

There passed, in the realm of the gods, an eon (which, to the limited mind of mortal man, was known as "a coupla years"). And during this eon, Claris didst grow in wisdom, and stature, and power, and functionality, and focus.

And when he spake again to his people he said, "Behold! I am thy god Claris, but I have grown in wisdom, stature, power, functionality, and focus, in token whereof I have taken unto myself a new name. Henceforth I shall be known as 'Fmi'. And in honor of this occasion, I have decided to grant thee, my loyal followers, a great new boon. Behold: RELATIONALITY!"

And the great god Fmi stretched forth his hand, and from his fingertips sprang forth a dazzlement of light, shining so brightly that all men averted their eyes from its glory and majesty. And when their vision had adjusted to the newborn eminence glowing in their midst, the people drew back in awe and went "Oooh", and "Aaaah", and "Wow", and "Way cool".

But there arose a voice from the scoffers (for the scornful are with us in every generation), saying, "But, Lord Claris, I mean Fmi, what about built-in E-R diagrams, and multiple tables in a single file, and ..."

"SILENCE!" thundered Fmi. "Ingrates! Showest thou me first that thou canst handle relationality in temperance and in wisdom, then we shall speak of further boons that I might bestow upon thee."

And a murmuring arose among the gathered faithful, along the lines of "Dude's got a point, man" and "Yeah, yeah, I suppose".

And the very wisest amongst the chosen didst soon discover that anything that could be done with repeating fields could be done even better with the new miracle of relationality, and, moreover, that with the magical implements newly provided by Fmi, they couldst convert all of the old repeating fields to shiny new relational files. And so they did, and never looked back, and thus were not turned into pillars of salt.

And Fmi looked down upon his work and saw that, if it was not precisely what you'd call "good", it wasn't half bad.

There passed, in the realm of the gods, several eons (which, to the limited mind of mortal man, was known as "about a decade"). And during these eons, Fmi didst continue to periodically bestow additional blessings upon the chosen ones, in return for which he asked only the annual sacrifice of a few hektobux, which all concerned agreed was meet and proper and not a bad price for what you got.

And it came to pass in those days that Fmi determined him to put forth a great compendium of all the boons he had bestowed upon his people, that they might be suitably impressed with how spiffy he was. And so he issued his compendium, which he called the Holy Book of Manuality, and gave of it freely to his people.

But there arose a voice from the scoffers (for the scornful are with us in every generation), saying, "Hey, what's this stuff about repeating fields? What are they good for?".

And Fmi, in his wisdom and patience, explained "Look there, right there on the next page in the Holy Book of Manuality, and thou shalt see examples of the utility of repeating fields, how they may be used of a thusness, and a suchness, and a soness."

And the scoffers didst indeed look, and determined they them that the principal organizing characteristic of the aforesaid examples was the halfness of their assedness, and they didst exclaim "Dude! Weak."

Whereupon Fmi drew himself up with righteous indignation and spake thus: "It is true that not all of the boons and benefits I have granted thee are of equal quality, value, and utility, but each has its place in the firmament. And besides, needst I remind thee of the great covenant which I entered into with thee, my chosen people, a covenant signified by my placing upon the skies the symbol of the rainbow labelled 'Backward Compatibility'? For I, Fmi, am a benign and generous god, and I wouldst fain not retract from thee any boon or benefit which I have previously granted, lest there be weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth at its absence."

But there arose a voice from the scoffers (for the scornful are with us in every generation), saying, "Oh, yeah? What about the 'Save' button in ScriptMaker dialogs?".

"Hmphf," quoth Fmi. "Let us speak of this anon." And he turned away to repair again to his cave, wherein he would ponder and frown and think Profound Thots.

And as he did so, another voice arose, saying "And what about that tab-numbering interface? We've been waiting on that for a couple of epochs now."

"La la la la la," quoth Fmi. "La la la la la. Not LIStening to you."

So concludeth today's reading.

Atheists Are Your Friends

2008-03-10T06:31:14Z

Yesterday I discussed Kurt Williamsen’s sign-off (blessings for the faithful, not so much for everyone else), so today I offer up my own last word — a summation of what I hope I’d been able to demonstrate over the course of a month’s worth of commentary:

I’ve been ragging on Kurt Williamsen pretty hard these last couple of weeks. I should state for the record that I’ve never met the man, have no idea what he’s like, and have never read a thing he’s written other than the essay that somebody pointed out to me that got me going on this forum.

My guess is that he’s probably a good guy. That’s based on the odds I’ve encountered in my own life, where the nice folx outnumber the jerks at least a thousand to one. And, as Will Rogers said, “I never met a man I didn’t like.”. (Actually, I think that probably tells us more about Will Rogers than about the men he met, but still ….)

Furthermore, I’d be willing to bet that Williamsen is probably pretty competent in his chosen line of work. I have no idea what that might be, but let’s say he’s a carpenter. He could undoubtedly tell at a glance which is a roofing nail and which a finishing nail, and he’d be able to say exactly where to get them and when and why to use them. And so forth.

But all the good will in the world, and all the competence in some specific areas, does not change the fact that he is almost ridiculously obtuse about atheism and science (particularly evolution and cosmology).

Now, sheer ignorance, in and of itself, is nothing to be particularly ashamed of. None of us can know everything, or even a tiny fraction of everything, let alone be an expert on a whole flock of different things. It’s an age of specialization. You may know one subject tremendously well and many other things at a kind of shallow level, and some things not at all — and that’s OK. We’re all in the same boat.

For example, I have essentially zero domestic skills. It’s a challenge for me to make instant oatmeal. Anything beyond that, and I’m hopeless. But my utter incompetence in the kitchen doesn’t make me a bad person. What would make me a bad person — or at least a foolish one — is if I tried to write a cookbook and sell it to people as if it contained anything of value.

And that’s what Williamsen did a month ago when he had the temerity and chutzpah to trot his ignorance out before the world as something to be admired and emulated.

Now, why exactly did this rouse my ire? It’s because he’s spreading lies about a minority group — atheists — that I happen to belong to. And we atheists are really pretty sick and tired of it.

We’ve seen where things like that lead. Turks lied about Armenians. The Spanish conquistadors lied about the original inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere. American whites lied about blacks. Straights lied about gays. Prohibitionists lied about drunks. And, most notoriously, European Christians lied about witches and Jews.

Start off with small lies, work your way up to big ones, move on to considering certain categories of people savage or stupid or smelly, eventually label them as subhuman, then dangerously subhuman, then ghettoize them, then persecute and torture them, and the final remaining step is genocide.

You may think I’m exaggerating, but that’s exactly the lesson of history. Let people get away with those original small lies, and you’re already on your way down the slippery slope.

If you ever want a real stomach-turning experience, read up on the Malleus Maleficorum. That’s Latin for Hammer of Witches. It’s essentially a how-to-do-it manual for slowly dismantling a human being, in the most excruciating manner possible. Officially published and approved by the medieval Catholic Church, it may well be the most loathsome and odious work ever penned by human hands. It was used to exterminate about a million people — predominantly women, particularly old women living alone — over the course of centuries.

And it was based on a lie (that there are such things as witches) and a Bible verse (“Suffer not a witch to live.” Exodus 22:18).

= = = = = =

“Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit atrocities.” — Voltaire

“With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things, and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.” — Steven Weinberg, Nobel-winning American physicist

= = = = = =

It’s easy to spot some minority groups, such as blacks, Latinos, Asians, women, and children. Many of them are color-coded for your convenience; the rest also have obvious physical symptoms of otherness. This makes it easy to discriminate against them. But, in a perverse kind of way, it also means that they all have an obvious vested interest in sticking together to fight against discriminatory treatment. That is, it’s just as easy for them to recognize each other as allies as it is for the powerful to recognize them as targets.

It’s harder in other cases. Light-skinned mulattos passing as white, non-observant Jews, closeted gays — all can fake it well enuf to get by in the larger world. But the same principle of self-recognizability applies here as well. It’s hard for a gay person to make common cause with another gay if they aren’t both out. Furthermore, since so few people in these traditionally oppressed groups feel comfortable openly proclaiming their minority status, the rest of the world gets the mistaken impression that there really are very few of them — and the ones who are obvious are flamboyantly so, which tends to exacerbate the impression of “otherness”.

We atheists fall into the latter grouping. You can’t tell just by looking whether a person is an atheist. And, if the subject never comes up, you’ll never find out. Even if an atheist is hit with a direct question like “What church do you go to?”, most people will be satisfied with some vague response like “Oh, I don’t go very often any more.”.

But we’re everywhere. Reputable surveys show that about 1 American out of 7 doesn’t have a religion. Now, that’s obviously small in comparison to Christians, who dominate the US population, but it’s larger than the total number of Jews, Muslims, Mormons, Buddhists, Hindus, Unitarians, Wiccans, etc. combined! If the non-religious were a denomination of Christianity, we’d be the 3rd largest in America, behind only Catholics and Baptists. (You could look it up. Try adherents.com.)

But, in part because we don’t have buildings or rituals or holidays or vestments or funny jewelry or secret handshakes, we’re largely invisible.

Nonetheless, as I said, we’re everywhere. Think about the 200 people you know best. Odds are that somewhere between 2 and 3 dozen of them are godless heathens (unless you only hang out with a churchy crowd).

You’d probably be surprised to learn how many clergypeople are atheists. Part of the training in divinity school involves exposure to a variety of different beliefs and an examination of Biblical criticism. This is ostensibly to enable the novices and seminarians to learn how to refute those positions when they encounter them, but often it has the reverse effect and gets them to thinking. Then they get exposed to all the tribulations and occasional horrors of the real world, and they spend some more time thinking. Then they finally conclude that all the supernatural parts of the Bible are just fairy tales.

So then what? Well, it’s not easy to abandon a job you’ve been trained for and may be good at, especially if you’ve got a family to support and are convinced (not without good reason) that you’re really in a position to help people out. So you just keep chugging along, choosing to focus your sermons on the parts of your religion that speak of love and kindness and good deeds and leaving out the bad parts (a form of cherry picking that’s been going on since before the Council of Nicea).

So I leave you now (“Finally!” someone must be saying) with the thot that we atheists are indeed your friends, nabors, relatives, co-workers, teammates, fellow citizens, and co-signers of the lease on this wonderful planet of ours. We too are nice folx, just like virtually everybody else you know. We’ve got the same basic needs and desires that everyone else has: a roof overhead, 3 squares a day, love and companionship, good health, some good times, a little spare cash, a decent reputation, a chance to make the world a better place, some ambitious young kid to shovel the sidewalk, chocolate, and a Packer championship. That’s not so much to ask, is it? Give no grief, get no grief. Isn’t that what we’re all looking for?

So please don’t lie about us. Please don’t put words in our mouths about what we think and feel and believe. We’ve got brains and tongues as well as personalities and quirks. We’re capable of speaking for ourselves. You wanna know what an atheist thinks, just ask one. We don’t bite.

Atheists are your friends.

And that wraps up this series. Thanks for your patience if you’ve been following along.

Blessing the Faithful

2008-03-09T19:09:51Z

Ever notice how politicians seem to feel compelled to wrap up every public address with “God bless America”? Thomas Paine woulda puked.

But at least they cast a wide net and include everyone as the supposed recipients of the blessings. Not so our intrepid interlocutor of the Appleton Post-Crescent, who restricts himself to

Kurt Williamsen concludes his essay with this paragraph:

= = = = = =

On that note, to all the faithful, I extend wishes for a very merry and blessed Christmas.

= = = = = =

Left unsaid, but clearly implied: “And to all you unfaithful out there, burn in hell, you sinful heathens.”

Conversely, and FWIW, as an atheist, I wish all folx — faithful and faithless alike — the very best of health, happiness, prosperity, peace, joy, and love not just during the holiday season but all year long.

And, ya know what? Add all my good wishes together with all of Williamsen’s blessings and prayers and you still don’t have a booger in a bushel basket.

Wishing for things (just like praying for things) isn’t gonna do diddly to make them come true. In order to make things happen, ya gotta go out and work. You have to invest the time, energy, money, creativity, and enthusiasm to actually accomplish something.

Take the disgrace of our national health-care “system”, by far the most expensive in the world on a per-capita basis, despite the fact that 47 million Americans are effectively excluded from it by being uninsured. And kiss off that myth about all the rest of us getting the world’s best health care in return for the huge amount of money we’re shelling out. The USA ranks well below the middle of the pack in the industrialized world by virtually every measure of health care available, from life expectancy to immunization rates to deaths from preventable diseases.

My good wishes for health and Kurt Williamsen’s blessings (which may no longer apply now that we’re a month past Xmas) are of no help whatsoever to a single mom with a sick kid whose coughing just keeps getting worse and worse.

That’s one of the most pernicious things about religion, especially the unthinking kind espoused by Williamsen. It gives people the illusion that they know things when they don’t. Prayer gives them the illusion that they’re doing something when they’re not. Preaching gives them the illusion that they’re helping people when they aren’t.

Take all that time and money wasted in church and apply it to something that people really need, like truly universal health care — the kind that’s no harder to get than the services of the fire department — and the country would be far better off.

Instead, people like Williamsen, not content to simply squander their own time pursuing the chimera of religion, feel compelled by the brain viruses that have zombified them to lure others into their fantasy world — starring Jesus, the Santa Claus for adults — and to turn their backs on real-world problems and the real-world solutions to them.

Don’t just take my word for this, put it to the test for yourself. Pay conscious attention to the next dozen things you do, starting with reading this article on your computer, maybe going on to flipping a light switch, grabbing a cup of fine Colombian coffee, reading a book or magazine, watching TV, and so on. How many of those things were brot to you by religion? How many of them were brot to you by science?

But there’s an aspect of Williamsen’s essay that’s even more pernicious than his open invitation to waste your time, money, and brain on religion, and that’s his outrageous lies about atheists. Lying is bad enuf at the best of times, but demonizing a minority group by lying about them is dangerous and damnable.

I’ll get into this more tomoro.

Tomoro: Atheists Are Your Friends

How We Decide, Part 2

2008-03-08T17:14:43Z

Continuing my own, original work on the root of the problem with religion:

Yesterday I introduced the 2 ends of the decision-making process, the “idea factory”:

Inputs —> Process —> Outputs

Today we get to the meat of the matter, the processes in the middle. There are 8 of them. I’ll discuss them in order from most to least reliable.

PROCESSES

(1) Logic. Formal logic dates back to ancient Greece and is based on the concept of the syllogism. A syllogism has 2 explicitly stated premises (“if” statements) which are combined using rules of logic to produce a conclusion (a “then” statement).

Example #1: If all men are fallible, and if Aristotle is a man, then Aristotle is fallible.

Logic tells us absolutely nothing about the truth of the premises. For example, consider:

Example #2: If all squares are round, and if this triangle is a square, then this triangle is round.

Example #2 follows exactly the same structure as Example #1 and thus leads to a conclusion which is equally valid (that is, reliable according to the rules of logic). The conclusion is, of course, ludicrous, but that’s because the premises are ludicrous. However, logic will yield true conclusions from true premises. It does not and cannot, however, make any a priori statements about whether premises are true.

But, as processes go (and it’s processes we’re considering here — assumptions were covered yesterday when we looked at inputs), logic is absolutely cracker-jack — the most robust and reliable process of them all.

(2) Reason. This is the standard used in law: “Under the circumstances, what would a reasonable person do?”. It’s similar to logic but is heavily larded with considerations of the practical. You take a “reasonable” amount of time to gather evidence from “reasonable” sources, then use logic or a “reasonable” facsimile thereof to arrive at “reasonable” conclusions. You don’t spend an undue amount of effort on minutiae, because in real life there are always other demands on your time. A crucial element in reason is the acceptance of your own fallibility. You should admit to the possibility of error and keep an open mind toward new evidence. Having an open mind, however, does not mean you need a hole in your head. If something clearly makes no sense, you should say so and waste no more time on it.

(3) Confidence. You are confident of something on the basis of its track record or the history of similar situations, without taking the time to examine the particulars of the current situation. “My car started last winter when it was 15 degrees below 0, and I’m confident it will do so again this year.” We overtly recognize that there are degrees of confidence: “My car started easily enuf last winter when it was 15 degrees below 0, so I’m pretty sure it will do so now that it’s 30 below.”

(4) Trust. This is similar to confidence, except that the way the language has evolved, we usually express confidence in things and trust in people. (However, a good rule of thumb is never to trust anyone who says “Trust me.”.) Additionally, because we’re social creatures and want to like other people and have them like us, we sometimes trust people who don’t necessarily have a track record of good decisions. Little children usually given parents a free ride when it comes to trust, because they’re in no position to know any better. Adults tend to trust authority figures more than is warranted. And so on. Thus I rate it lower on the scale of reliability than confidence.

(5) Chance. The roll of the dice, the flip of the coin, the turn of the card. Seems like a hell of a way to make up your mind, doesn’t it? However, I advance the premise that, in real-world terms, it’s not so bad. You usually don’t resort to chance as a decision-making technique unless you’ve reduced your alternatives down to 2 or 3 options, no 1 of which is clearly better than any of the others. In short, your time might well be more efficiently spent making some sort of decision than in further dithering over exactly which 1 will give you that extra 1% of benefit. At least the concept of chance implies the choice between alternatives, which means you haven’t just blindly accepted the 1st idea that popped into your head. And, of course, chance has a real role to play in experimentation, where you want to be sure that the choices of, say, which patients get real drugs and which get placebos isn’t governed by hidden assumptions or prejudices.

(6) Obedience. This is like a corrupted form of trust. The implication here is that you are doing what someone else tells you to, but for reasons of pressure, coercion, immaturity, feelings of inadequacy, low self-esteem, threat, etc., rather than a free-will decision. If you choose not to obey, you may be opening yourself up to consequences worse than any bad decision which would result from obedience. In a perverse way, this means that obedience may actually produce decisions which are good from a holistic viewpoint, since giving up your lunch money (normally a bad decision) may mean that you won’t get the crap beaten out of you. Still, you may recall Lord Acton’s statement that “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”. Over the long haul, giving any other person this kind of power over you is likely to lead to decisions being made on your behalf which are progressively worse for you. If you can get away with it, question authority.

(7) Hope. We now start getting pretty tenuous in terms of whether these processes are at the level of conscious thought. If I were to say “My car started last winter when it was 15 degrees below 0, and I think it will do so now that it’s 60 below.”, I’ve passed out of the realm of confidence and into the domain of wishful thinking, or, in a word, hope. Pop psychology has a buzzword for it: “denial”. This is used in decision-making when the evidence points toward a conclusion that we really don’t want, so we base our decisions — for no particularly good reason — on the hope that what we do want will come true.

(8) Faith. Last and least we come to faith, the decision-making tool of last resort (and thus the one most favored by the priesthood). Faith is when you want to believe something but there’s not a shred of evidence for it and quite often lots of evidence against it. Whenever you have evidence to support a conclusion, you’d use one of the 7 previous decision-making methods and would have no hesitation in saying so. Faith gets hauled out only to support conclusions for which there is no reason to believe in their truth, validity, efficacy, or efficiency.

Indeed, faith is listed among these other processes only in a kind of honorary fashion, because arguably there’s no “process” involved at all: the assumptions at the input end (like “God exists”) essentially go straight thru, unmodified, and come out the other end looking not a whole lot different than when they went in (kind of like creamed corn when you’ve got the flu).

As I wrote yesterday, nobody ever uses faith for anything that actually matters — and certainly not for anything that can be measured. Really, it’s useless anywhere outside of religion. And maybe the stock market.

Frankly, you have to be an idiot to take anything on faith.

As it happens, billions qualify.

Tomoro: Blessing the Faithful

How We Decide, Part 1

2008-03-07T16:52:42Z

Heretofore, I’ve simply been reacting to Kurt Williamsen’s original article. But now I do some original work of my own as I lay out a systematic analysis of the basic problem that underlies Williamsen’s thot processes:

Everybody makes hundreds of decisions every day. Some of those are good decisions, some bad, but the great majority are simply routine. You walk into the bathroom early in the morning and, without spending any noticeable time on it, decide to flip on the light switch, something you’ve done so often it’s habitual.

But somewhere along the line, perhaps on the very 1st morning you woke up in that house, you had to make that light-switch decision for the 1st time ever. At that point, you invested a little bit of thot in it. This essay is about decisions like that, the kind where you consciously work thru the question before arriving at a conclusion.

THE FACTORY

Let’s think of decision-making as being akin to an industrial plant — an idea factory, if you will — where inputs go thru a process to get turned into outputs. We can sketch it like this:

Inputs —> Process —> Outputs

Because I’m mainly interested in the middle part, let’s quickly dispose of the 2 ends.

OUTPUTS

The results of decision-making are things we do, say, think, and believe. Outputs also include several things which occur below (or perhaps outside of) the level of conscious thought: emotions, esthetics, and habits. These are, of course, a vital part of human existence, but they don’t involve conscious thot, so I’m going to skip them.

INPUTS

There are several types of inputs into decisions, each with its own problems.

(A) Definitions. Words are labels for concepts. We use words to make it easier to comprehend and manipulate the concepts. That makes it essential that we know which word goes with which concept, and that’s sometimes harder than it sounds. For example, consider the word “light”. It’s perhaps the most versatile word in the English language, with over a hundred meanings, in every possible part of speech. Just in the sciences, it can mean:
• the opposite of heavy (adjective, mechanics),
• what a bird does on a limb (intransitive verb, ornithology),
• a visible form of electromagnetic radiation (noun, optics), or
• ignite, as with a Bunsen burner (transitive verb, chemistry).

Often the meaning of the word will be clear from context, but it’s always a good idea, when getting into complex, knotty issues with people you might disagree with, to be sure you’ve agreed on a common set of definitions right from the outset.

(B) Axioms. These are glorified assumptions. The glory comes from several different sources. Axioms are:
• universal — they apply everywhere, and everyone agrees on them
• reliable — no exceptions have ever been observed
• fundamental — can’t be explained in terms of anything simpler

Perhaps the best known set of axioms are the 5 axioms of Giuseppe Peano, from which the entire theory of natural numbers can be derived. Euclid’s axioms and postulates also form the basis for a complete understanding of plane geometry.

However, outside of abstract fields like mathematics and symbolic logic, axioms are very difficult to come by.

(C) Ordinary Assumptions. Into absolutely every decision goes at least 1 assumption (usually many more). Assumptions are notoriously unreliable. You may have heard the old joke about the word “assume”, which is derived from a process which makes an “ass” of “u” and “me”. Yet they are also unavoidable. For example, into every decision you personally make about what course of action you intend to pursue is the assumption that you will be alive to pursue it. In the discussion of processes which follows, we will see that formal logic tries diligently to state its assumptions explicitly, as premises. This is by far the exception; most assumptions are unstated or implicit.

(D) Genetics. You have no wings, so you can’t fly. You have no gills, so you can’t breathe underwater. It’s also likely that your brain is wired in such a way that there are some thots that you simply are unable to think. These probably vary from one individual to another, and they’re almost impossible to measure. To some extent, the limitations of genetics can be overcome by diligent training, but there are limits imposed on us by nature that we’ll never overcome.

(E) Sensations. Sensory input is extremely valuable but also fallible. As part of a demo I use in my database classes, I hold up 3 pieces of paper, stapled together with a plastic overlay, and ask the class what color each piece of paper is. The shortest piece, in front, appears to be yellow; the medium-length one, in the middle, looks orange; and the full-size sheet in back is green. At least, that’s the way it looks until I flip up the piece of yellow plastic in front of them, and they’re revealed to be white, pink, and blue.

This is just one of many ways in which you might be misled by your senses. Of course, there’s a “but wait” part to the story as well, which is that it was also our senses which gave us the true picture behind the misleading façade. So rigorous attention to detail can produce a substantial improvement on our original casual sensory input. Can we ever be sure it’s perfectly accurate? No.

(F) Memories. Your recollections of your own life experiences get hauled out when something trips the trigger of association in your brain that says “Hey, this new thing is like that old thing.”. Memories, too, are sometimes unreliable but provide an unavoidable context for your decisions.

(G) Testimony, also known as “other people’s memories”. I wrote about this a couple of weeks ago. Personal testimony is one of those curious things that has a great reputation which is completely unwarranted. Yet, despite its being colored by the testifier’s expectations and biases, it too serves as a form of input to the decision-making process — just one that we need to be cautious about.

All these things get fed into the hopper at one end of our factory. Then they pass thru 1 of 8 gates to undergo some kind of process that produces decisions at the other end. I’ll look at those 8 processes tomoro.

Tomoro: How We Decide, Part 2

What They Say about Faith

2008-03-06T06:28:02Z

When I entitle a posting “Faith Sucks”, you can pretty much tell where I’m coming from on the subject.

So, before we go any further, let’s see what some other people think:

Faith: 1. unquestioning belief
— Webster's New 20th Century Dictionary (unabridged)

Faith: A kind of intellectual lobotomy.
— anonymous

9/11 was the ultimate faith-based initiative.
— anonymous

The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason.
— Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1758

The Spanish Inquisition: The Original Faith-Based Initiative
— bumper sticker

There's a Reason Why Atheists Don't Fly Planes into Buildings
— bumper sticker

If faith is so great, why do Christians wait for the "walk" light?
— Richard S. Russell

Faith: A kind of betting or speculation [as in] "I bet that my Redeemer liveth."
— Samuel Butler (1835-1902) English author

Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the impossible.
— H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) US journalist, editor, critic

Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge of things without parallel.
— Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) American author, The Devil’s Dictionary

Faith is the quality that enables you to eat blackberry jam on a picnic without looking to see whether the seeds move.
— anonymous

The compulsive quest for certainty is not the expression of genuine faith but is rooted in the need to conquer the unbearable doubt.
— Erich Fromm

Without faith we might relapse into scientific or rational thinking, which leads by a slippery slope toward constitutional democracy.
— Robert Anton Wilson

It's not supposed to make sense! It's faith! Don't ya know what faith is? Faith is when you believe somethin' that nobody in their right mind would believe!
— Archie Bunker, responding to Meathead on All in the Family

As a source of objective morality, the Bible is one of the worst books we have. It might have been the very worst, in fact — if we didn't also happen to have the Koran.
— Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith

Faith: a firm belief in something for which there is no evidence. Where there is evidence, no one speaks of faith. ...we only speak of faith when we wish to substitute emotion for evidence.
— Bertrand Russell

We were convinced that the people need and require this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out.
— Adolf Hitler, 1933 October 24, speech in Berlin

... faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. ... Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.
— Hebrews 11:1, 3, Saint Paul's opinion

Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith ...we need believing people.
— Adolf Hitler, 1933 April 26, speech made during negotiations leading to the Nazi-Vatican Concordant

Faith is belief in something despite the absence of any evidence for it, and frequently despite evidence to the contrary. Given this, faith aut to be the decision-making tool of last resort. And indeed it is for most people most of the time; but (surprise!) it is the 1 most favored by the priesthood. If there were any evidence at all to support a conclusion, if there were any more reliable decision-making technique available, the priests would use it.
— Richard S. Russell, The Freethought Exchange (1996)

Tomoro: How We Decide, Part 1

Faith Sucks!

2008-03-05T12:42:03Z

Time after time, for one subject after another, Kurt Williamsen displayed the most astounding ignorance, error, faulty reasoning, and lack of proportion. And he did so proudly, as if he were sharing something of value with his fellow citizens, thereby improving their lives.

So, in wrapping up my analysis of his original article, I decided to stand back a step or 2 from the symptoms of his multiple egregious offenses and spend some time on the underlying causes of them. And the most fundamental problem with his entire misbegotten rant can be summed up in 2 words:

Faith is the world’s worst possible decision-making method.

Nobody ever uses faith to decide anything that really matters. You wouldn’t rely on faith to pick out a used car or your kid’s college or even what brand of soap to use.

For sure nobody — no, not the most ardent fundamentalist — would slap on a blindfold, put sealing wax in his ears, and rely on faith to decide when it’s safe to cross a busy highway.

No, the only time faith ever gets trotted out as a justification for anything is when there’s absolutely no other justification whatsoever. Nobody ever uses faith when there’s a better decision-making method available.

Not surprisingly, then, faith is the primary thing cited by preachers for why you autta mortgage your brain to buy the huge crock of, let us say, fertilizer that they’re peddling. What else can they point to? Reason? Evidence? Common sense? Hardly.

Centuries ago, Christian leaders must have realized that they had an uphill struggle to get people to believe the enormous whoppers they were trying to sell. So they decided to back the process up a step and, instead of touting the conclusions they were pushing, speak glowingly of the process by which you could arrive at those conclusions. That is, nobody in her or his right mind was likely to believe, from a standing start, that anyone would be able to change water into wine. But, soften them up ahead of time by conning them into thinking that faith is a wonderful thing, then the whole water-into-wine thing becomes an exercise in faith, “… and didn’t you already say you were one of the faithful?”.

To give credit where it’s due, Christian charlatans — with aid from the rack, the thumbscrew, and the stake — have been hugely successful in their efforts to create a wholly undeserved good reputation for faith. Lutherans name their churches after it. Musicians write hymns of praise to it. Proud parents name their baby girls* after it. It’s entered the popular lexicon in phrases like “Keep the faith, baby!” and “Ya gotta have faith.” (tho nobody ever explains exactly why).

Perhaps the most widely quoted such phrase is “Faith can move mountains.”. This cliche is always intoned with great solemnity, and everyone in the vicinity is expected, as a matter of social convention, to nod knowingly, as if some great and profound truth has just been uttered. It’s considered unutterably rude to do what I always do, namely ask “Oh yeah? Name one!”. Having hard reality intrude into the socially approved delusional circle jerk of mountain-moving faith is something that is Not Done In Polite Society.

Oh, please. Get over it. Look, let’s put it this way. If you and I were to sit down on opposite sides of a table, and I were to point out a speck of dust on that table, and you mustered all the faith at your disposal — maybe even called in old markers of faith that you’d lent out to your friends — do you think you could get that grain of dust to so much as twitch? Of course not. You know better. Faith can’t do squat. If it can’t move a speck of dust, whence cometh this grandiose claim about mountains?

Well, here’s my unresearched take on it. I think it’s a classic example of what stage magicians call “misdirection”, and what street hustlers call “the old switcheroo”. It’s akin to advertising puffery, which no thinking person takes seriously. “Cleaner than clean”? Say what? But mindless ideas like that are evidently effective on the unthinking, which is why they continue to get used.

Same deal with references to faith. Preachers bundle it together with truly admirable virtues, such as hope and charity, expecting their favorite scam to benefit from good associations. They also, as George Orwell warned, use “faith” where the proper term is “trust” or “confidence”, trying to trick the gullible into thinking of them as synonyms.

But war is not peace. Slavery is not freedom. Ignorance is not strength. Faith is not trust, nor confidence, nor even hope. Faith is the decision-making technique of last resort, the bottom of the barrel when it comes to reliability, the “F” on the report card of worldly wisdom.

————
*Incidentally, if you’re one of those girls, please accept my apologies for that 1st sentence. You know I wasn’t referring to you, right?

Tomoro: What they say about faith
Day after: The decision-making hierarchy

Atheism As Faith

2008-03-04T17:04:50Z

If you really want to insult an atheist, say that atheism is just another form of faith.

You guessed it! That’s exactly what came up next:

As Kurt Williamsen winds down, he treats us to this penultimate paragraph:

= = = = = =

There are many logical black holes that destroy strict evolutionary theory. One needs only add here that it takes far more "faith" to believe in atheism than it does to believe in God.

= = = = = =

If there really are “many” black holes that “destroy” evolutionary theory, why can’t he find just one of them? And why is it that the “logic” behind these black holes has totally escaped virtually every biologist on the planet?

Evolutionary theory is one of the most fantastically successful scientific paradigms ever. Its predictive powers are enormous and have been applied to fields as diverse as particle physics, linguistics, and sociology. It has hardly been “destroyed” by the minor mouse nibblings around its edges that fundamentalists like Michael Behe and William Dembski have come up with. It’s as if Brett Favre threw for 5 touchdowns, ran for another, piled up 600 yards of total offense, and took a knee 20 seconds before the end of the blowout, and the ID proponents focus on that last play to fault him for what is statistically a 1-yard loss. The criticism, in addition to being utterly unjustified, is out of all proportion to the overall accomplishments.

Before I get going on faith, let me point out that Williamsen’s phrase “believe in atheism” is an oxymoron. One does not “believe” in atheism. Quite the contrary. Atheism is not a belief at all. It’s the absence of a belief. Calling atheism a belief is like calling bald a hair color. It’s like calling health a disease. It’s like saying peace is a type of war.

Next let’s look at the logic behind Williamsen’s claim that it takes more faith to be an atheist than to be a Christian. Since his whole essay is an argument against atheism, what he’s really saying is that we shouldn’t trust atheism because (in his warped view) it’s founded on faith. Here we have the ultimate irony: a bombastic Christian bad-mouthing faith.

Well, I happen to agree that we shouldn’t swallow anything that’s based on faith (and tomoro I’ll get into lots more detail as to why, and what the alternatives are), but the fact of the matter is that atheism isn’t based on faith at all. It’s based on the plain, simple idea that “It is wrong — always, everywhere, and for everyone — to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.” (W. K. Clifford)

And that’s all atheism is saying: Show me. Show me the evidence. Where is this omnipresent god of yours? You claim he answers prayers, but clearly he doesn’t. (And don’t try to weasel out of that with the old con-man line that “Sometimes he says ‘no’.”. I can read John 14:13 as well as the next guy, and I don’t see any asterisks, fine print, limited warranties, or “void where prohibited by law” exceptions there.) You claim that he loves everybody, but according to the Bible all but 144,000 of us are gonna go to Hell, a place that he created to inflict eternal suffering. How loving is that? If he’s so wise, how do you explain the construction of the human knee, something that you or I or your 8-year-old kid could have designed better?

It doesn’t take faith at all to reject this entire cartload of horse dung. All it takes is a brain and the ability to detect a smoke-and-mirrors con game that’s riddled with errors, contradictions, and the most obvious lies. Oh, and periodic appeals for more hard currency, thank you very much.

Being open-minded isn’t the same as having holes in your head.

Tomoro: Faith, the ultimate hole in the head.

The Christian Anthropic Principle

2008-03-03T23:40:13Z

While I’ve often taken fully deserved cracks at the Bible’s bad science, I must admit that it’s chock full of dandy stories and metaphors. One of my faves involves the admonition to be less concerned about the mote in your brother’s eye than about the beam in your own.

Today I tackle a primo example of this willful blindness, as I look at

Yesterday we looked at how Kurt Williamsen, in his zeal to whack away at evolution and atheism, said they were in denial about the anthropic principle — the observation that the fundamental constants of the Universe seem to be “fine-tuned” to exactly the right values to permit the rise of intelligent life, notably us.

“How could this amazing state of affairs have come about?”, he wonders. “Must have been God. That’s the only possible explanation.”

As I’ve noted before, “God did it!” isn’t an explanation, it’s an excuse. It’s an excuse for ignorance. It’s an excuse for giving up the search for answers. It’s an excuse for being arrogant enuf to claim that you have the answer to a question when all you did was make one up.

Here’s a handy BS-buster that you should file away for future reference, because you’ll undoubtedly get lots of opportunity to exercise it: “God” is just a convenient nickname for a dude whose real name is “Nobody Knows”. Try it. Who made the Universe? What explains the speed of light having exactly the value it does? What causes lightning? (Oh, wait, that last one was Zeus, wasn’t it?)

So scientists forthrightly state that they don’t have any simpler, more fundamental explanation for why those various physical constants have the exact values we observe them to have. (Notice, once again, that it was scientists — not preachers or prophets, and certainly not the writers of the Bible — who discovered and measured these constants.)

But Christians come along and claim that they have the answer. “God made the Universe with these exact conditions because he was setting it up for wonderful us.”

Oh, really? The whole Universe was made just for our convenience, eh? Designed to give rise to intelligent life, specifically intelligent life made in God’s very own image, to wit, human beings. OK, so the idea that God looks like Helena Bonham Carter has a certain surface appeal, but really, let’s look at this a little more deeply, shall we?

There are about 400 billion stars in our Milky Way Galaxy. There are another 500 billion galaxies about like ours in the visible Universe. We can’t be sure, but it seems likely that most of those stars have planets revolving around them, so we’re easily up into the quintillions of planets. The whole shootin’ match got rolling 14.5 billion years ago with the Big Bang. Even if you grant that something arguably human was walking around on 2 legs as long as a million years ago, that’s still only 1/14500 of the total lifespan of the Universe. (By comparison, if you were the Universe and lived to be 80 years old, you’d have been plagued by those itchy little human beings for only the last 2 days of your life.)

So, if God did indeed make the Universe just for our convenience, he sure dawdled a lot and wasted a tremendous amount of stuff in the process. The “fine-tuning” that’s supposedly so exactly, precisely, carefully, intelligently designed to give rise to wonderful us turns out to be quite the botched hack job. Surely any creator who wasn’t the theological equivalent of a crippled mongoloid idiot could have done the job in jig time with a tiny fraction of the raw materials.

Only somebody whose brain has been softened by overlong exposure to Christianity could possibly be blind to the staggeringly obvious fact that it wasn’t human beings who were created in God’s image, it was the other way around.

Tomoro: Atheism As Faith

Odds against the Universe

2008-02-29T04:51:44Z

Carl Sagan once remarked “In order to truly create an apple pie from scratch, first you must create the Universe.” Well, how hard could that be?

According to the fundies, lots harder than you’d think. This is where they get to quoting the

As we move on to the next 3 paragraphs in Williamsen’s essay, here’s a preview of coming attractions:
  (1) He doesn’t know the difference between evolution (a subject in the field of biology) and cosmology (a subject in the field of astronomy).
  (2) He confuses abiogenesis (rise of life from non-living matter) with evolution (development of species from already existing living species).
  (3) He refers to examining things mathematically but never trots out a single number.
  (4) He can’t tell the difference between atheists (a philosophical position denying the existence of gods) and scientists (an occupation dedicated to discovering facts about nature).

And here he goes:

= = = = = =

... strict evolutionary theory fails utterly when it is examined mathematically. For life to exist in the universe, every condition must be just the way it is — from the speed of light to the mass of an electron.

The slightest change would disallow life. The odds against a life-allowing universe happening are uncomputedly high.

To explain this spectacular coincidence, science postulates that there are trillions of universes — multiverses — each operating in a different manner, meaning one was bound to allow life. Is this what atheists term "verifiable" and "logical"?

= = = = = =

It’s true that there seems to be a very narrow range of physical constants that would have permitted the existence of a large, expanding Universe at all, let alone one capable of supporting intelligent life (or at least what passes for it on this planet). The details of this are quite abstruse, but you can Google “anthropic principle” if you’d like to learn more.

Remember the “God of the Gaps” arguments I discussed a couple of days ago? That’s where science has discovered some interesting phenomenon — religion never discovers these phenomena, because it long ago stopped looking — and doesn’t yet have an explanation for it. This is a gap in our knowledge. Into that gap leap the ardent religionists, getting their jeans all creamy with excited exclamations of “Aha! Aha! We told you so! Science doesn’t have all the answers. Only God could have made things work just this way. That’s what we’ve been saying all along. Now do you believe us?”.

And, as I pointed out at the time, every one of those historical gaps in our knowledge, the ones that supposedly only God could fill, has subsequently been filled with perfectly naturalistic explanations.

“But”, the fundie fanatics will claim, “this one is different. The odds against any one of those physical constants having a value that gives rise to intelligent life is very small. The chance that the entire collection has just exactly the right combination of values is so miniscule you can hardly find enuf decimal places to express it.”

OK, let’s explore the logical flaw in that statement. I’ll do so by analogy to the card game known as bridge. It involves 4 players, and the entire deck of 52 cards is dealt out so that each of the 4 players holds a hand comprising 13 cards. Each of these cards has a suit (spades, hearts, diamonds, or clubs) and a value (2 thru 10, jack, queen, king, or ace). There are many, many possible combinations of 13 cards. And, since we know exactly the conditions under which these hands are generated, we don’t have to be content with just saying “many, many combinations” — we can figure it out precisely. And we have. There are exactly 635,013,559,600 possible bridge hands. You can look it up if you’d like.

So you’re sitting at the bridge table, and they deal out all 4 hands, and you pick up your own hand and there it is: a freaking miracle! You’re holding a hand which consists of a combination of cards that has only 1 chance in 635,013,559,600 of happening by random chance.

Furthermore, after expressing your astonishment at this amazing coincidence, your 3 fellow players chime in with their own wonder stories. It turns out that each and every one of them also holds a hand that can only occur 1 time out of 635,013,559,600. That means the chance of all 4 of you holding these amazing hands simultaneously is 635,013,559,600 times 635,013,559,600 times 635,013,559,600 times 635,013,559,600 to 1 against, a number so large that I can’t run it on my computer’s calculator, so I’ll content myself with just counting decimal places and say that the odds against this astounding occurrence are 10 to the 50th power (that’s a 1 followed by 50 zeroes) to 1.

I can start boosting the amazement factor by having everybody lay down their hands and comparing them to each other, only to discover *gasp* that none of the hands includes even one card that shows up in somebody else’s hand. A little quick math will show that, in general, there’s only a 1.28% chance that any 2 bridge hands dealt at random will have no cards whatsoever in common. And yet here it’s happened not just once but 6 separate times. (Why 6 and not 4? Because there are 6 possible pairs of hands.) That’s 1.28% to the 6th power, or 0.0000000004%. Another tremendously unlikely coincidence, and one which increases the overall improbability of getting those 4 hands in the 1st place.

Shocked at this miracle, the 4 of you take pictures for posterity, then realize that you can’t very well play that hand of bridge now that you’ve all seen each other’s cards, so you reshuffle the deck, redeal, and look at your new hands only to discover — beyond all possible doubt that miracles do happen — that once again all 4 of you have triumphed over the staggeringly large odds against holding the particular unique hands that you’re now staring at.

I think you start to see how the game is played. And I don’t mean bridge. I mean what I will politely call the mind-diddling game.

Any idiot can come along after something’s happened and point out zillions of factors that had to line up just exactly so for that particular thing to have occurred in that particular way to that particular person at that particular time.

And yet, as you discover holding your hand of bridge, that sort of thing indeed happens so routinely that nobody pays a bit of attention to it at all. For there you sit, holding your miracle. And you’ll be doing it again in less than 5 minutes.

The real miracle would be if you were able to predict the exact cards you’d be holding before the hands were dealt.

So Williamsen is playing his little mind-diddling game of after-the-fact odds-making, but let’s just go along with him and say that the odds against this particular set of cosmological constants is indeed some spectacularly large number to 1. The fact remains that any spectacularly large number is effectively zero when compared to infinity. And, if there’s an infinite amount of time to work with, sooner or later every number will come up, including ours.

We just happen to live in a Universe that’s capable of supporting intelligent life. If it didn’t support intelligent life, we wouldn’t be here to wonder about it.

And, of course, Williamsen knows nothing whatever about the circumstances that give rise to these fundamental constants of nature in the 1st place. Remember how astonishing it was that none of those 4 bridge hands held a single card that appeared in any of the other 3 bridge hands? Well, it turns out that that situation is not at all unlikely. Quite the contrary, it’s guaranteed by the way in which the 4 hands were generated. They weren’t generated at random. As soon as any given card (say the ace of spades) was dealt to any given player, the odds of it going into any of the other 3 hands dropped right straight to zero.

Maybe it’s the case that all of these factors that so impress Williamsen (mass of the electron, speed of light, gravitational constant, etc.) work the same way. That is, they may not be independent of each other at all. It could be that, as soon as 1 of them is set, there remains only 1 possible value (or a narrow range of possible values) for a different one.

Since no human has ever built a Universe, how would we know? We can’t even get outside our own Universe to take a good look at it. (It’s been said that the reason the Universe is so hard to comprehend is because there’s nothing to compare it to.) This doesn’t stop people from speculating, of course, but hypothesizing is all we’re doing. We don’t know anything.

But let’s grant arguendo that Williamsen is 100% right, and that the odds are overwhelmingly against the Universe existing as we know it. That still tells us nothing whatsoever about God.

There’s one thing we can infer about God, tho, and it’s this: The odds against something as unlikely as God are so unbelievably huge that they make Universes like ours seem like everyday occurrences.

See, both sides can play the statistical mind-diddling game.

Next: What Christians would have you believe instead.

Note that I wrote “next” instead of “tomoro”. I’m not quite sure when my next posting in this series will be, since I’m headed into UW Hospital for a knee-replacement operation tomoro, and it’ll probably be awhile before I’m fully functional again.

Humans As Machines

2008-02-28T09:51:15Z

How to win an argument: You get to make up what the other side says!

Yup, guaranteed win, but hardly a fair fight.

And also not very good training for what to do when you encounter an opponent who actually punches back, as I did when Williamsen started to speak of

Kurt Williamsen starts with his bizarre understanding of evolution and, not surprisingly, uses it to draw some bizarre conclusions:

= = = = = =

According to strict evolutionary theory, humans are simply a collection of genes operating through chemical reactions. We're like chemically based computers that follow set programming.

Yet human behavior belies this claim. We make choices through free will; we have self-awareness to the extent that we realize our place in the cosmos; and we have a conscience.

And though we are said to be machines designed to selfishly propagate our genes, we often exhibit generosity and compassion toward strangers, even at the risk of own lives. We stand apart.

= = = = = =

Well, my, aren’t we special?

If Williamsen’s use of “set programming” meant nothing more than “humans, like everything else in nature, follow the laws of physics”, I’d have no objection to his characterization. But he’s clearly trying to imply something darker than that. He’s showing us a picture of human beings as mindless automatons — robots — and saying that this is the picture painted by evolution.

By presumed contrast, religion takes the view that we’re all just free, free, free — gloriously unbound by our genetics or environmental conditioning — free to romp thru the meadows of springtime without a care in the world, calloo, callay!

Carefully omitted from this upbeat depiction is the story available in many religious tracts and pamphlets about just how “free” you really are, according to the Christian worldview. “God has a plan for you!”, they trumpet. This is followed a few pages in by depictions of sinners shrieking in the flames of Hell, with the follow-up message “And this is what becomes of you if you don’t bow down and accept God’s plan for you.”. Yeah, good luck if you actually try to use that freedom thing, buddy.

So this pleasant little tale of how evolution forces you into a straitjacket of predeterminism while religion promises you the limitless benefits of free will is really just a snow job, a sales pitch that leaves out the painted-over rust spots and collision history of the lemon they’re trying to get you to buy.

What’s really going on is that the human brain is so complicated that we have no way of telling in advance what it’s going to come up with. It’s unpredictable. But why is it unpredictable? Is it because we have “free will”? Is it because it behaves randomly? Or is it simply because we don’t have deep enuf knowledge or sophisticated enuf techniques to make such predictions reliably?

To quote Arthur C. Clarke’s 3rd Law: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

And any sufficiently complicated decision-making engine — and there are none more complex than the human brain — is indistinguishable from free will.

Do human beings “stand apart”, as Williamsen contends? Well, yes, to borrow the old cliché, we’re unique, just like everybody else. The particular thing that makes us unique is the giant brain we possess. But cheetahs are also unique, in that they’re the fastest land animals known. The blue whale is unique because it’s the biggest animal on Earth. Dogs are unique because they’ve got the most highly developed sense of smell. Bats are unique because they’ve refined sonar to an unbelievable level of sophistication. Termites are unique because they’re the species with the largest total biomass on the planet. Certain strains of archaea are unique because they’re the oldest continuous species on Earth.

Despite the fact that humans have the most complex brains, we are far from alone in exhibiting complex behavior. Cheetahs, whales, and termites also demonstrate complex behavior, not the sort of thing that looks like a machine at all. They too are unpredictable at our current level of knowledge. We’re not as fast as a cheetah; cheetahs aren’t as smart as we are. But we humans can motor along pretty good when we need to, and cheetahs aren’t so stupid they’re going to chase tree stumps instead of gazelles. We’ve each got a lesser helping of what the other is tops at.

There’s nothing whatever about “free will”, self-awareness, a conscience, generosity, or compassion that’s even remotely incompatible with evolution as it really works. Of course, just about all of them are incompatible with the caricature of evolution that Williamsen draws, but that’s his problem; you shouldn’t make it yours as well.

There have been whole books written about why altruism is a survival characteristic, favored by evolution, but I won’t get into that depth here. Let me leave it with just an example.

A huge man-eating tiger is stalking the jungle. In this jungle live 2 tribes, the Droppos and the Grabbos. One day a Droppo comes running into his camp screaming “The tiger is coming. Drop the kids and run.” Everyone does. A week later a Grabbo comes running into his camp screaming “The tiger is coming. Grab the kids and run.” Everyone does.

The basic premise of evolution by natural selection is that certain traits will lead to the survival of more offspring, and over the long haul this will favor the species that exhibit those traits. Which trait do you suppose evolution favors in the tiger-infested jungle, the selfish behavior of the Droppos or the altruistic behavior of the Grabbos?

Evolutionary theory — real evolutionary theory, not Williamsen’s cartoon version — provides a perfectly understandable explanation for the rise and success of altruism among humans. Nothing at all supernatural about it.

Humans aren’t machines; we’re much more interesting than machines. But, in the truly wonderful world of nature, none of the other critters are machines, either. Science shows how we’re all interconnected and similar. It’s not so big on this “standing apart” business.

Tomoro: The Odds against the Universe