Religion and Science

As simply as possible:

Personally I believe religion is about what happens outside/around empirical science. 

The creation of the universe? You can maunder on well into pure mathematics of pre-bang cosmology or poly-dimensionality (which, let's be honest, aren't giant steps from religion themselves) all you want, but ultimately the question becomes "how did it start?"...and there sits God. 

Philosophically, it's almost a Zeno's Paradox - every time science explains a little more (which, personally, I applaud as a triumph of rationality), it doesn't diminish God in the universe, far from it.

Global Warming IRREVERSIBLE and CATASTROPHIC...(well, except for all the previous times)

I'm just going to post this here, so I can link to it easily in conversations.

For 7-8 years now, every time new dire information about the catastrophic state of the world's climate comes out in the general media, I post essentially the SAME question.

Referencing the following data from the EPA:*

That we are in a warming period, there is no doubt.
However, about every 100-120k years for nearly the last million years, there has been an almost-identical spike in temperature.  And they sort of seem to be increasing in amplitude.
The question for those proposing an anthropogenic (human-created) source for the warming is this: "What makes THIS temperature spike unique compared to the repeated examples in the record?"

This question remains unanswered to this day.

Because if this current spike is unique, you're actually making TWO assertions:
- the previous cyclic behavior has stopped (why? how?)
- a novel element (human activity) has replaced it coincidentally both to the exact same degreeand at the right time chronologically.

Some have tried to argue it away, but their response has been essentially "We should have already been declining, but human activity has prevented it."  This is specious on multiple levels:
1) the inherent sketchiness of drawing century-scale conclusions from annual data make it impossible to say that this is true.  One can cherry-pick the years, the averaging spans, etc to draw almost ANY conclusion.
2) the record itself shows double-bump and extended warm eras far in excess of the span we've currently experienced.
3) the 'public argument' is that humans are CAUSING the warming.  To misstate this is either naive or disingenuous.  The headline "Humans making natural warming last longer" is far less histrionic, and likewise far less likely to make anyone care.

I'm not a scientist, but I believe I'm reasonably clear about the scientific method.
Extraordinary conclusions require extraordinary proof.
The simplest explanation for the current warming spike is that it's more or less the same as what's happened several times before.  It's entirely possible, in fact plausible, that 7 billion humans' industrial activities *have* had some impact, certainly.  But the overall general effect?  I remain unpersuaded that it's human-caused.

*I used to always reference Wiki data below but that graph was both harder to explain given its changing scale (inflating the importance of recent data, which a cynic might view as usefully misleading if one wanted to convince someone of Global Warming...) and more-easily doubted as it's from Wiki (regardless of how well-referenced and factually correct it is):

Bitcoin and you

I had an older friend ask me to 'explain' bitcoin to him.
No doubt (knowing this friend) he'd gotten some rightwing crapmail about how US CITIES ARE DUMPING THE DOLLAR! (which is patently nonsense).

Yet...
Maybe this isn't news to any of you, but in my explanation to him, it occurred to me Bitcoin is pretty clearly a symptom, not the disease.

World Governments (including the US, certainly) have made it abundantly clear over the last 10-20 years that they DO NOT have the ‘best interest’ of their people at heart; they are only about creating wealth and opportunity for their leaders.

To me, Bitcoin shows that even a system as notionally “objective” as the medium of exchange is subject to a ‘black market’ of sorts when people no longer trust it.

Personally, I still won't dabble in Bitcoins.  I can't see replacing one weak, fiat currency (the USD or Euro) with an EVEN WEAKER, EVEN MORE VIRTUAL currency.
Far better to invest in durable goods of value (and yes, if one is that nervous/desperate, precious metals*) than in ANY intermediary fiat currency.
*one would have to recognize that much of the value of these is equally fiat.  What good - precisely - is gold, except insofar as it's "universally" valued?

In short, if you're nervous about your liquid cash, I'd say better to turn it into a good rifle and practice to be good with it, than into bitcoins or gold bars.

My recipe for the GOP:

To win in our modern voter demographic, the Sane Conservatives HAVE to seize the middle.  

This means a judicious, rational PUBLIC jettisoning of certain 'conservative' positions that are too easily used as strawmen by the Left (and their tame media).

I genuinely feel that the Republic is more in danger than ever before.  The idea of the internal collapse of the US - inconceivable even in the worst of days 20-30 years ago - is now an actual likelihood over the next five decades.  Admittedly, it's still a small %, but the fact that it's extant is frankly horrifying.

And if the US passes, I fear one of the last, best hopes of humanity will disappear into a Sino-Asian future of collectivization and centralization.  This is not just a battle for the political control of this country; it's a battle for the soul of the future of humanity in general.  Will it be about enterprise, individualism, initiative, and humanism? Or will it be about teeming masses clinging desperately to a precarious existence, hopeless, and living off the beneficence of a powerful few in government who "know best how to run things"?

Taking this fight in absolute seriousness, we HAVE to be utterly pragmatic: win on the points where we HAVE to win.  Sacrifice the sort of ideological purity nonsense that has engendered fear and reluctance both in centrist voters AND centrist candidates - we've scared away good people who simply refuse to participate in the process because they don't want to be excoriated for not holding "proper" right-wing ideological positions.

Stop posturing.  Stop making the Left's job so damn easy.  Make the hard calls and accept it.  This would earn us more respect than the constant weaseling for votes.  Yes, it might be painful.  Yes, it might cost us votes.  But we're the abject minority NOW; now is the time to take those hits to position ourselves for success later.

If the GOP (for example) announced that it would henceforth ENTIRELY (and genuinely) dispense with any reference or position on abortion (as it is a moral and personal issue, and NOT one for government, particularly government in abject crisis), and focus purely on the running of the country in a fiscally reasonable manner - once people actually came to believe it, we'd *have* the huge majority of middle class voters in this country.

Yes, it would cost you the people for which this is their SOLE issue of import.  But you should perhaps trust them a little more too; the ability of this issue to determine elections only exists because Republicans let it be so.  Yes, some will refuse to vote for a party that 'abandoned' their focus.  Too bad.  The bulk of others will likely review their choices practically and say "hey, that candidate may refuse to even discuss abortion; but I agree with 80% of everything else.  It's better than the other guy, certainly."

Dump the dogmatic stuff that is DRIVING away the bulk of voters who fundamentally agree with the platform of fiscal common sense and minimalist government.  Stay "ideologically pure", and remain ever-more marginalized.

A defense of religion that even Dawkins might understand (albeit I expect he'd still object to it).

I think it's harder to understand the role of religion over the bulk of human history from the perspective of the 'enlightened' 21st century. PERSONALLY, I think the social 'sciences' broadly do a horseshat job of understanding just about ANYTHING contextually given contemporaneous beliefs, conditions, values, etc.

For example, while we all recognize there are many things we don't know, the bulk of what we see and do every day is explainable. We know why the sun moves across the sky, we know where infections come from, we understand why those people have different color skin than we do. Hell, kindergartners understand and accept germ theory, the big bang, atomic theory, gravity, etc. For people even a handful of centuries ago, all of this was systemically inexplicable. Some people got sick and died, we don't know why. Half of all children or more, dead, in many cases inexplicably. Some people started behaving crazily, again, no idea why, nothing to do but conk them on the head and chain them up in the barn until they died.

Some brave social anthropologists have done research that suggests strongly that:
a) religion simply made people behave better generally. With small children, the idea that there is an 'invisible grownup' in the room made them much less likely to cheat, much more likely to follow rules, much more likely to cooperate. Is this a 'control' mechanism, or was it observationally true that people who belonged to church (and in most places there WAS only one, so there was no confusion about which was 'right') cooperated better and were simply generally more successful
b) adherence to the visible tenets of a religion (going to temple regularly, observing the dictated trivial restrictions, etc.) was a strong correlative to people who could behave according to the accepted rules of a society. If they could discipline themselves enough to wear a little hat (for example), or so the theory goes, they could be expected to discipline themselves to follow other, more critically-important rules of a society.

Did it mean that in some cases outsiders were treated harshly? Yep. But again, omlettes and eggs. Today, we have an extraordinarily resilient society, we can tolerate assholes. But if you're barely surviving in a lifeboat, you need to pitch the boat-rockers out to save the rest. And let's recall further that the definition of outsider - while fixed and generally unchangeable so seemingly harsh from our view - was rarely arbitrary. Generally the 'rules' were determined and understood for generations if not centuries.

Again, secularists LOOKING to call this 'control' miss the boat.
When a small group/clan/village/whatever is riding barely above the margin of sustainability over long spans of time, this sort of consensus (call it a consensual delusion if you need to salve your modern sensibilities) meant that some communities survived, where others didn't.

And really, isn't that pretty much the only yardstick we HAVE for "success" in the real world?

Miscellaneous points today as things seem to be spiralling downhill ever-more-quickly lately...

A question for the Left:

So, how's that 'living' interpretation of the US Constitution working for you, then?

Are you still with Thurgood Marshall's interpretation "...he argued that the Constitution must be interpreted in light of the moral, political, and cultural climate of the age of interpretation..." in which changing circumstances allow changing interpretations of inferred language?

I've always been a strict constructionist, for the inimitable (but apocryphal) lesson of Thomas Moore in "A Man for all Seasons":

Quote:

William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!

Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

William Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!

Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!

The Devil is turning, gentlemen. And you quite specifically have been the ones spending the last 30+ years shredding that very Document, that Creation of Man, that could have protected us.

_______

Re California's letter to Bitcoin demanding they cease operation or face aggressive prosecution for money-transmission without proper licensing/approval:

Dear Bitcoin:

We are uncomfortable that your fiat currency is a) starting to make our fiat currency look a little silly, and b) circumventing our ability to control the public. Please stop or we will have to get rough.

Signed,
California and the Fed

_________

Re Mr Obama's soon-to-be-formally-announced big plans to address Climate Change:

To my public, and in particular former supporters,

Since everything else seems to have gone in the shitter, I come back to you with a message that seemed to sell well in both campaigns: the environment.

I look forward to again gaining your broad support with a campaign of platitudes, anthemic one-word slogans, and statements that make me appear sympathetic to your issues, while actually resulting in policies that either ossify the current corporation-based lobbyist-driven structure, or expand the pervasive control of the Federal government ostensibly for good reasons but which will in fact be used to incrementally decrease your rights vis a vis that "Constitution" thingy, which I will continue to re-interpret as really not relevant to today's realities anyway.

Signed,
Your President.

Ends, means, and certainty.

Holy crud, 2 posts in ONE DAY?
The end DOES justify the means.  It's a foundational concept of LIFE, particularly social organization.
For example, for most people, work sucks.  But they do it, why?
Imprisoning people is fundamentally a mean thing to do, but if someone murders someone else, we put the murderer in jail.  Why?
We CONSTANTLY do unpleasant or unhappy things, because they will ultimately result in better things (or at least good things).

Now, we can argue about the relative merits of ends vs means, but I'm really fecking tired of people claiming that "justifying the method by the result" is somehow inherently morally flawed.

And yes, I understand that I'm invoking Godwin's Law here but also yes, I get it: Himmler no doubt felt he was doing the RIGHT thing as much as we feel we're doing the RIGHT thing fighting terrorism.  Does that make us morally equal?  Ultimately, I find the intellectually-simple shortcut of thereby equating us is intellectually laze and frankly reprehensible.  At some point an adult has to grow up and decide that some things are good and some things are bad, and stop excusing the bad because it might be unpleasant or uncomfortable to fight it.

Personally, I suspect that avoiding moral certainty is based in cowardice: Ultimately, since according to the relativists there is no actual God, there is no ACTUAL moral yardstick; what is "good" is determined by the simple will of the majority around us.  Those afraid to take a stand are afraid they might be wrong, and that the majority will turn on them, so they advocate tolerance of everything to ultimately protect their own ass.

So yes, taking a moral position is *risky*.  It takes some courage to say "THIS is what I believe, and f' you all if you disagree".  But that's being a grownup.