The movie Gettysburg is centred around Colonel Chamberlain, considered by some to have changed the course of history. It is interesting to speculate on this "alternative" history.
Chamberlain defended the left Union flank at Little Round Top, exhausted of ammunition. His decision to charge the Confederates led to their surrender and forced Lee to consider a direct assault from the West on Day 3, something he despised doing since he had no intelligence on the exact strength of the Union forces. As it turned out, forces that came during Day 2 were available in Day 3 for the rout of the Confederates and the beginning of the end for the Northern campaign and the war.
But what if Chamberlain had faltered? What if he had opted to stand fast and weather another Confederate wave? There is a good chance that the left flank would have been compromised and that the Confederates would have poured around the end of the Union line. From here, Little Round Top would have fallen and intelligence back to Longstreet would have reinforced the resolve to take the Round Tops, both Little and Big.
It would have been a short job to dispatch the Union forces, short on ammunition all round. After the fall of Little and Big round top, Union forces parked on the ridge south of Gettysburg (Cemetery Ridge) would have been highly vulnerable, especially considering that the Confederates could have come out of the dense vegetation of Big Round Top in the kind 'guerrilla' style that Confederates were good at.
Without the high ground of Cemetery Ridge, Union forces would almost certainly have fallen, since reinforcements from the south would have been unable to reach them and Confederate forces would have been reinforced via Big Top. In all, the Union forces would effectively be surrounded.
Another decisive victory to Lee, this time in Pennsylvania (allowing replenishment of Southern forces) and close enough to Washington to worry its inhabitants, would force Lincoln's hand in giving in to a war becoming highly unpopular in the North because of the substantial casualties.
Almost certainly Lincoln would have lost a lot of face and would have entered into an uneasy truce with the CSA.
This would have resulted in many minor skirmishes for decades while the line between North and South was decided, creating a stronger bond between Britain and the CSA and alientating the North, possibly creating a bond with an emerging Germany.
Emboldened by the success of secession, California and Texas would have led a charge towards independence, both as Anglo-Latin countries, emerging in the modern era countries akin to middle and south American republics. Likewise, some northern states who had considered secession, such as Massachusetts, might have gone independent from a USA somewhat weakened. Thus, North America would emerge as a conglomerate of states equivalent to South America, with no strong USA 'giant'.
Without USA as we know it and possibly with a pact between the USA and Germany aligned with a pact between the CSA and Britain, imperial Germany would have presented a far more formidable opponent in WW1 and almost certainly have won the war at sea with U-Boats.
Additionally, the might of the industrial north would have been severely curtailed without access to cheap black labour and the inevitable industrialisation of the South would have led to the 'emancipation' of blacks in an apartheid state similar to South Africa. This would have balanced the North South power and extended the conflict to achieve supremacy.
Thence, imperial ambitions throughout the world would have been entirely different. Japan would have been unbridled in the Pacific, especially in China, eventually formed a Japanese empire, slowly making its way into Northern Australia and across into India by the 1930s and decaying rapidly later in the mid 1900s due to economic restraints of a feudal empire. Germany would have dominated Europe and its empire would eventually fail, once again because of a pre-modern industrial structure. The Nazis and Hitler would have been unknown. Oppenheimer would have developed nuclear capacity for Germany. The Middle East would have been annexed by Germany and Arab governors appointed in most Arab countries. Israel would never have existed.
An uncomfortable Federal Republic of Europe (Bundes Republik Europa) would have emerged, with an independence movement in Britain finally overthrowing the invaders by 1960. The profligate consumerism of the USA would never have emerged, as the economies of the CSA and USA economies were drained in conflict and refugees who injected the entrepreneurial spirit into USA would not have bothered to journey to the USA.
Also, by 1960, the arms race between the USSR and BRE would have escalated into a hot war, with nuclear elements and obliteration of large parts of both Europe and USSR, providing an opportunity for the CSA and USA to call a truce and form, along with most of North and South America, the American Economic Union with their first mission being the re-building of Europe.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Judgment and superficiality
I have recently given a reference for a colleague that led me to struggle with the imperative of saying what was true against what would be favourable. It made me ponder exactly what a judgement is and what it should do.
We should not be swayed by pithy proverbs such as "Judge not lest you be judged". If the only motive not to judge is empathy with those who are judged, then this is feeble grounds indeed for our actions. I suggest a stronger, more resilient ground for judging. Put simply it is "Judge only on the facts."
The problem with our judgements is objectivity and fairness. If, in a moment of rage, I yell at someone and say things I later regret, does this characterise me as an angry person? On any objective measure, it does not. In purely mathematical terms, if an event represents less than 0.0001% of the all events, it is insignificant and does not characterise the subject being examined. The other 99.9999% does. Therefore, if 99.99% of the time I am calm and collected, I MUST be judged, objectively, as a calm person, no matter how dramatic the anger, nor its consequence (for example, it leads to someones death). In fact, to be objective, if that dramatic anger occurs, I must, applying science, look for factors that create the anomaly.
Narrow judgements, therefore, are not bad because they may give offence. They are bad because they are arrived at stupidly, without applying good sense and science.
How many times do we glibly judge people presented in the press because of an horrific outcome? That man who drowns his children by driving into a lake is clearly a monster. We build a mental profile of someone who we find almost inconceivably evil. Yet what do we actually know?
Even we we have reports from the press, we know that the press will often selectively choose details to either position a person as hero or villain. Without having lived inside a person's skin for their life, we cannot know what they usually are. We cannot know whether the man driving his children into the lake is in a stupor or completely lucid and vindictive. It is simply unscientific and irrational to judge him as either.
Where does this lead us then? Must we never judge? Does this leave us crippled, unable to detect real danger?
I assert that, in every judgement, we must necessarily count our judgement as provisional. We must be prepared, when judging others, to be completely open, at any moment, to discovering a completely different person. We must remind ourselves, at the moment of judgment, that we may be, profoundly and scientifically, wrong.
Do not avoid judging, as it may be what stops you acting on suspicions someone is preying on our daughter. But in all judgments consider all the facts, especially those you do not yet know.
We should not be swayed by pithy proverbs such as "Judge not lest you be judged". If the only motive not to judge is empathy with those who are judged, then this is feeble grounds indeed for our actions. I suggest a stronger, more resilient ground for judging. Put simply it is "Judge only on the facts."
The problem with our judgements is objectivity and fairness. If, in a moment of rage, I yell at someone and say things I later regret, does this characterise me as an angry person? On any objective measure, it does not. In purely mathematical terms, if an event represents less than 0.0001% of the all events, it is insignificant and does not characterise the subject being examined. The other 99.9999% does. Therefore, if 99.99% of the time I am calm and collected, I MUST be judged, objectively, as a calm person, no matter how dramatic the anger, nor its consequence (for example, it leads to someones death). In fact, to be objective, if that dramatic anger occurs, I must, applying science, look for factors that create the anomaly.
Narrow judgements, therefore, are not bad because they may give offence. They are bad because they are arrived at stupidly, without applying good sense and science.
How many times do we glibly judge people presented in the press because of an horrific outcome? That man who drowns his children by driving into a lake is clearly a monster. We build a mental profile of someone who we find almost inconceivably evil. Yet what do we actually know?
Even we we have reports from the press, we know that the press will often selectively choose details to either position a person as hero or villain. Without having lived inside a person's skin for their life, we cannot know what they usually are. We cannot know whether the man driving his children into the lake is in a stupor or completely lucid and vindictive. It is simply unscientific and irrational to judge him as either.
Where does this lead us then? Must we never judge? Does this leave us crippled, unable to detect real danger?
I assert that, in every judgement, we must necessarily count our judgement as provisional. We must be prepared, when judging others, to be completely open, at any moment, to discovering a completely different person. We must remind ourselves, at the moment of judgment, that we may be, profoundly and scientifically, wrong.
Do not avoid judging, as it may be what stops you acting on suspicions someone is preying on our daughter. But in all judgments consider all the facts, especially those you do not yet know.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
The Evolutionary Function of Feeling Like Shit
I have a bad memory at the best of times. It gets worse when I engage in many activities at once. Its as if, in order to release processing capacity to engage in complex activities, my brain chooses to jettison memory.
Inevitably, my memory disability gets me into trouble. The other evening, a teaching colleague whom I respect greatly, phoned to say that she would be absent the next day. Could I pass a message on to my wife, who handles teacher absences in my school.
I thanked her for the notice and promised to pass it on. Of course, no sooner had the phone been returned to its cradle, I had forgotten. Next morning, in a moment of great panic, I realised I had forgotten and passed the message on, only just in time for a substitute teacher to be arranged.
My emotional reaction was extraordinary. I burst into tears. Of all the people I would never want to let down, this teacher was one. And the late notice put pressure on everyone in the process. But my mind went to the "what if" of having forgotten completely. A class without a teacher, the teacher panicking when called about their absence. The whole scenario overwhelmed me.
In a contemplative moment I reflected on how shitty I felt. Not discomfort, tiredness or pain - just plain shitty. And it didn't leave quickly.
Which led me to think what was going on, biologically. Loyalty to others is vital to maintain a community of humans. We would not be able to maintain large complex societies if it were not so. We develop, over our life, the capacity and framework for loyalty - and the main driver is pain and feeling shitty. Thus, the "silver lining" on this inherited behaviour is that it keeps is together.
This is not "Pollyanna" thinking. The good feeling we get is when we are valued and we value others. It would not be possible to have this without the shitty side, not because without contrast there is no definition, but by the mechanism that uses "feeling bad" to ensure that we have an opportunity to "feel good".
I can see natural extrapolations of this thesis. Without disgust, we would be happy to live in our own shit and hence lose the opportunity of ever "smelling the roses". Without pain, we would not be warned of life-threatening consequences of certain behaviour. Without despair, we would never value any system of thinking or moral position.
To say it another way - but for the mechanism of our minds that gives us pain, despair and disgust, we would never, as a species, arrive at a point where the beauty we see in our world would be physically possible. We would only be rats.
The next time you feel shitty, down, despairing or disgusted, don't turn to God and ask to be delivered from it - take out your Beethoven and play it and realise that, without what you feel now, none of the glory of what you hear would have been possible.
Inevitably, my memory disability gets me into trouble. The other evening, a teaching colleague whom I respect greatly, phoned to say that she would be absent the next day. Could I pass a message on to my wife, who handles teacher absences in my school.
I thanked her for the notice and promised to pass it on. Of course, no sooner had the phone been returned to its cradle, I had forgotten. Next morning, in a moment of great panic, I realised I had forgotten and passed the message on, only just in time for a substitute teacher to be arranged.
My emotional reaction was extraordinary. I burst into tears. Of all the people I would never want to let down, this teacher was one. And the late notice put pressure on everyone in the process. But my mind went to the "what if" of having forgotten completely. A class without a teacher, the teacher panicking when called about their absence. The whole scenario overwhelmed me.
In a contemplative moment I reflected on how shitty I felt. Not discomfort, tiredness or pain - just plain shitty. And it didn't leave quickly.
Which led me to think what was going on, biologically. Loyalty to others is vital to maintain a community of humans. We would not be able to maintain large complex societies if it were not so. We develop, over our life, the capacity and framework for loyalty - and the main driver is pain and feeling shitty. Thus, the "silver lining" on this inherited behaviour is that it keeps is together.
This is not "Pollyanna" thinking. The good feeling we get is when we are valued and we value others. It would not be possible to have this without the shitty side, not because without contrast there is no definition, but by the mechanism that uses "feeling bad" to ensure that we have an opportunity to "feel good".
I can see natural extrapolations of this thesis. Without disgust, we would be happy to live in our own shit and hence lose the opportunity of ever "smelling the roses". Without pain, we would not be warned of life-threatening consequences of certain behaviour. Without despair, we would never value any system of thinking or moral position.
To say it another way - but for the mechanism of our minds that gives us pain, despair and disgust, we would never, as a species, arrive at a point where the beauty we see in our world would be physically possible. We would only be rats.
The next time you feel shitty, down, despairing or disgusted, don't turn to God and ask to be delivered from it - take out your Beethoven and play it and realise that, without what you feel now, none of the glory of what you hear would have been possible.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Just one big flea
Back in June, my fellow bloggist, Jon Eastgate, (Painting Fakes) challenged me to read a book that he reviewed called "The Selfish Genius" by Fern Elsdon-Baker. In my normal temperate manner, I fairly laid into Baker, accusing her of fleaism - that tendency to feed off the fame of others to promote your work or cause.
Naturally, Jon reminded me that one ought not criticise what one has not read. In a more contemplative moment, I saw his point. I decided to read it. I must add a few caveats. Although I am a flea, feasting on the blood of the great for my own sustenance, I count myself as a comfortable flea, giving no irritation. I am also, I think, a flea who will always be tiny in proportion to the host and have no desire otherwise.
I suspected that Baker was not one of these fleas, but a flea who hoped it might one day evolve into the dog and be famous itself. I do not support these fleas financially. So I borrowed the book from the library - no mean feat in a country area.
What is absolutely clear from her book is that Baker is very clever, very learned, very lucid and very flea. Not for a long time have I read a book which spends so much time name dropping. Certainly, if you are a historian it is important to mention a lot of people. But frankly, Baker's book could not possibly do justice to those theories it visits because there are so many. It appears that the mention of many names is about proving that she supposedly knows what she's talking about.
But in the end she just sounds whiny. "Oh, poor Lamarck - so misunderstood. Poor Gould, so berated. Poor Christians - so mercilessly badgered by Dawkins. Poor social scientists - so badly treated".
By the end of Part 1 I was beginning to see what this was. As a post graduate student, Baker was unimpressed with one of Dawkin's pronouncements on Darwin. As an eager little beaver, she felt it necessary to "put him right" - even wrote a thesis about it. Perhaps jealous that it did not get enough recognition, she was driven to find Dawkin's foibles at any cost and thence her little number.
The Selfish Genius is tedious. Where I hoped to get a real challenge to Darwinian theory, natural selection in particular, what I got was a very long history lesson with not much that I had not either read elsewhere or could not predict would have been the case.
My original thesis that perhaps Baker had not read Dawkins widely was flawed. The real problem is that the straw man she sets up as Dawkins just isn't the one I see. Dawkins is at times as clumsy as he is confident; he is often left speechless and one can see him struggling to form his thoughts. He is equally magnanimous as he is vitriolic. In fact, most of his opponents are far more socially inept in the way they handle his atheism than he is of their Christianity.
As far as I can see, this book poses no threat to the notion of natural selection as the primary mechanism driving evolution. Even if there is change in the understanding of this concept as scientific knowledge progresses it will continue to have explanatory power.
Putting aside the "red herring" of atheism, Dawkin's latest and fattest tome "The Greatest Show on Earth" finally puts paid to Baker's criticisms, expanding on all the areas she mentions as weaknesses.
Baker's call for us all to be nice to one another does not add anything to the debate about the role of science or religion in our society. In the end I hope she's one flea that falls off.
Just to go to a few points that Baker seems to have missed.
Darwin was not aware of the genetic basis for passing on characteristics - so much more the genius of his work. Dawkins' focus on genes or genotypes does not render Darwinian natural selection invalid - it simply makes it more credible. Even if genetics is found to be simply a tool of a more fundamental physical process of information transfer, this will not make genetics wrong.
Dawkin's maintains a position, most often articulated in his interviews, that science without atheism is essentially dishonest or bad science. Much of his criticism of religion sounds like incredulity, not invective. If the Almighty can skew experimental data, then the science is, at best, broken or, at worst, futile. We do science so we know the bogey man doesn't exist and so we can safely go out in the dark. This is its historical purpose - it enlighten.
Fruitless, then, to admit God just so you won't be seen as acerbic.
Atheism isn't an argument about whether religion is open to empirical or logical methods because by definition it admits neither. Its actually about whether religion adds to understanding or obfuscates. Its whether religion has explanatory relevance and thus is useful in guiding our actions.
Naturally, Jon reminded me that one ought not criticise what one has not read. In a more contemplative moment, I saw his point. I decided to read it. I must add a few caveats. Although I am a flea, feasting on the blood of the great for my own sustenance, I count myself as a comfortable flea, giving no irritation. I am also, I think, a flea who will always be tiny in proportion to the host and have no desire otherwise.
I suspected that Baker was not one of these fleas, but a flea who hoped it might one day evolve into the dog and be famous itself. I do not support these fleas financially. So I borrowed the book from the library - no mean feat in a country area.
What is absolutely clear from her book is that Baker is very clever, very learned, very lucid and very flea. Not for a long time have I read a book which spends so much time name dropping. Certainly, if you are a historian it is important to mention a lot of people. But frankly, Baker's book could not possibly do justice to those theories it visits because there are so many. It appears that the mention of many names is about proving that she supposedly knows what she's talking about.
But in the end she just sounds whiny. "Oh, poor Lamarck - so misunderstood. Poor Gould, so berated. Poor Christians - so mercilessly badgered by Dawkins. Poor social scientists - so badly treated".
By the end of Part 1 I was beginning to see what this was. As a post graduate student, Baker was unimpressed with one of Dawkin's pronouncements on Darwin. As an eager little beaver, she felt it necessary to "put him right" - even wrote a thesis about it. Perhaps jealous that it did not get enough recognition, she was driven to find Dawkin's foibles at any cost and thence her little number.
The Selfish Genius is tedious. Where I hoped to get a real challenge to Darwinian theory, natural selection in particular, what I got was a very long history lesson with not much that I had not either read elsewhere or could not predict would have been the case.
My original thesis that perhaps Baker had not read Dawkins widely was flawed. The real problem is that the straw man she sets up as Dawkins just isn't the one I see. Dawkins is at times as clumsy as he is confident; he is often left speechless and one can see him struggling to form his thoughts. He is equally magnanimous as he is vitriolic. In fact, most of his opponents are far more socially inept in the way they handle his atheism than he is of their Christianity.
As far as I can see, this book poses no threat to the notion of natural selection as the primary mechanism driving evolution. Even if there is change in the understanding of this concept as scientific knowledge progresses it will continue to have explanatory power.
Putting aside the "red herring" of atheism, Dawkin's latest and fattest tome "The Greatest Show on Earth" finally puts paid to Baker's criticisms, expanding on all the areas she mentions as weaknesses.
Baker's call for us all to be nice to one another does not add anything to the debate about the role of science or religion in our society. In the end I hope she's one flea that falls off.
Just to go to a few points that Baker seems to have missed.
Darwin was not aware of the genetic basis for passing on characteristics - so much more the genius of his work. Dawkins' focus on genes or genotypes does not render Darwinian natural selection invalid - it simply makes it more credible. Even if genetics is found to be simply a tool of a more fundamental physical process of information transfer, this will not make genetics wrong.
Dawkin's maintains a position, most often articulated in his interviews, that science without atheism is essentially dishonest or bad science. Much of his criticism of religion sounds like incredulity, not invective. If the Almighty can skew experimental data, then the science is, at best, broken or, at worst, futile. We do science so we know the bogey man doesn't exist and so we can safely go out in the dark. This is its historical purpose - it enlighten.
Fruitless, then, to admit God just so you won't be seen as acerbic.
Atheism isn't an argument about whether religion is open to empirical or logical methods because by definition it admits neither. Its actually about whether religion adds to understanding or obfuscates. Its whether religion has explanatory relevance and thus is useful in guiding our actions.
Friday, May 7, 2010
The evolutionary function of blindness
Catalyst on ABC ran a story on study of illusionists by neuro-scientists. It appears that there is more to illusions than just misdirection - the art of attracting attention to something else while you engage in trickery. What the story "Magic Lab" revealed was how an illusionist can exploit a saccade - that time when, during movement of the eye, sight is deliberately suppressed. In this period (about 20% of the period in which your eyes are moving), you are effectively blind.
Saccades have been known about for at least a century and can be tested by looking in a mirror and moving your attention from one eye to another - you cannot see your eyes moving but others can. During scan of the horizon or the landscape outside a moving car, saccades provide stability in the image.
By observation and practice, illusionists have learnt to move their hands in paths that are less "predictable". Movement in a straight line from one point of interest to another affords the suggestion to the eye of returning to the original point. A less predictable path, such as a curve, does not provide the same affordance (the suggestion to the mind of the next place to look), causing the mind to have to guess where the next point of interest will be, slowing tracking. If the illusonist speaks, appropiate social behaviour suggests the speaker's eyes as the next point of interest.
In this way, saccades, misdirection, "poor tracking" and social expectations of where to look conspire to provide lengthy periods when the eye is either blind or resolving elsewhere - plenty of time for practiced movements to go unnoticed.
Which leads to the question. What can possibly be the evolutionary function of blindness? A clue may lie in animals which do not experience saccades - notably some frogs. They cannot see still objects. Movement, however, triggers a reaction that appears out of proportion to both their demeanor and size. Their prey never see them coming, so fast is their attack.
We can speculate that unnecessary response to stimulus is wasteful. If the frog sees everything, the movement of prey may be less noticeable and thus their attack less effective. So why do we see everything by using saccades, but have this 20% blindness?
Anticipation may be the answer. Humans seem to have the best ability of all species to guess the future. Experiments show that, even at a young age, we can anticipate where something will end up if it is moving. We automatically create a trajectory. It is possible, that once we have this trajectory, we do not need frequent visual updates to know where something is going. The sheer waste of processing images to know where a fast moving object will be could be a basis for simply shutting it off, thus allowing selective updates only.
So, maybe there is a good evolutionary reason for blindness.
Saccades have been known about for at least a century and can be tested by looking in a mirror and moving your attention from one eye to another - you cannot see your eyes moving but others can. During scan of the horizon or the landscape outside a moving car, saccades provide stability in the image.
By observation and practice, illusionists have learnt to move their hands in paths that are less "predictable". Movement in a straight line from one point of interest to another affords the suggestion to the eye of returning to the original point. A less predictable path, such as a curve, does not provide the same affordance (the suggestion to the mind of the next place to look), causing the mind to have to guess where the next point of interest will be, slowing tracking. If the illusonist speaks, appropiate social behaviour suggests the speaker's eyes as the next point of interest.
In this way, saccades, misdirection, "poor tracking" and social expectations of where to look conspire to provide lengthy periods when the eye is either blind or resolving elsewhere - plenty of time for practiced movements to go unnoticed.
Which leads to the question. What can possibly be the evolutionary function of blindness? A clue may lie in animals which do not experience saccades - notably some frogs. They cannot see still objects. Movement, however, triggers a reaction that appears out of proportion to both their demeanor and size. Their prey never see them coming, so fast is their attack.
We can speculate that unnecessary response to stimulus is wasteful. If the frog sees everything, the movement of prey may be less noticeable and thus their attack less effective. So why do we see everything by using saccades, but have this 20% blindness?
Anticipation may be the answer. Humans seem to have the best ability of all species to guess the future. Experiments show that, even at a young age, we can anticipate where something will end up if it is moving. We automatically create a trajectory. It is possible, that once we have this trajectory, we do not need frequent visual updates to know where something is going. The sheer waste of processing images to know where a fast moving object will be could be a basis for simply shutting it off, thus allowing selective updates only.
So, maybe there is a good evolutionary reason for blindness.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Stuff and Nonsense?
The ABC News reported that Sydney Anglican Archbishop Peter Jensen told his congregation atheism is not the rational philosophy that it claims to be.
Apparently, Dr Jensen told the congregation that atheism is as much of a religion as Christianity.
They quote him as saying, "It's about our determination as human beings to have our own way, to make our own rules, to live our own lives, unfettered by the rule of God and the right of God to rule over us," he said.
Elegantly put, indeed. Not extraordinary, in the least, that rational humans should reject the concept of supernatural supervision.
However, Jensen's first claim is extraordinary. If religion is premised on belief (ie. you believe something and this then manifests itself in a moral position, a practice or a spirituality), then the belief is central.
If belief is not central to religion, then the religious could simply abandon it, as, apparently, it sheds no light nor influence on their pracitces or moral codes. Is Jensen actually admitting what many suspect about Anglicans - that belief in God is optional?
If not believing something and believing something are equivalent (ie. belief = unbelief), then, of course, the Anglican Church must accept my application for a position in their church, as an atheist.
I applaud the Archbishop for articulating the new reformation within the Anglican church - abandonment of belief. Long live the cultural icon!
Apparently, Dr Jensen told the congregation that atheism is as much of a religion as Christianity.
They quote him as saying, "It's about our determination as human beings to have our own way, to make our own rules, to live our own lives, unfettered by the rule of God and the right of God to rule over us," he said.
Elegantly put, indeed. Not extraordinary, in the least, that rational humans should reject the concept of supernatural supervision.
However, Jensen's first claim is extraordinary. If religion is premised on belief (ie. you believe something and this then manifests itself in a moral position, a practice or a spirituality), then the belief is central.
If belief is not central to religion, then the religious could simply abandon it, as, apparently, it sheds no light nor influence on their pracitces or moral codes. Is Jensen actually admitting what many suspect about Anglicans - that belief in God is optional?
If not believing something and believing something are equivalent (ie. belief = unbelief), then, of course, the Anglican Church must accept my application for a position in their church, as an atheist.
I applaud the Archbishop for articulating the new reformation within the Anglican church - abandonment of belief. Long live the cultural icon!
Rowan disappoints again
The news is that the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has virtually retracted his statement that the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland is losing all credibility following the surfacing of child-sex-abuse allegations. This while Benedict remains silent.
The papal reaction is predictable. Why would the head of such a corrupt, soulless and evil institution be ready to draw attention to its "frailties" (quote from a catholic emerging from an Easter service).
But what of Rowan? His first reaction was bold, appropriate and moral. Stand by that morality, Rowan.
Or have you been sucked so surely into the vortex of ecumenicism that you can no longer criticise the obvious immorality of others? Do you feel so under siege from atheism that any enemy of my enemy is my ally?
At a moment when the Anglican Church could have differentiated its morality and faith from the mob, it has lost its nerve.
The papal reaction is predictable. Why would the head of such a corrupt, soulless and evil institution be ready to draw attention to its "frailties" (quote from a catholic emerging from an Easter service).
But what of Rowan? His first reaction was bold, appropriate and moral. Stand by that morality, Rowan.
Or have you been sucked so surely into the vortex of ecumenicism that you can no longer criticise the obvious immorality of others? Do you feel so under siege from atheism that any enemy of my enemy is my ally?
At a moment when the Anglican Church could have differentiated its morality and faith from the mob, it has lost its nerve.
Conversation on moral well-being
She: What makes you think that science will ever be able to say that forcing women to wear burqas is wrong?
Me: Because I think that right and wrong are a matter of increasing or decreasing well-being—and it is obvious that forcing half the population to live in cloth bags, and beating or killing them if they refuse, is not a good strategy for maximizing human well-being.
She: But that’s only your opinion.
Me: Okay… Let’s make it even simpler. What if we found a culture that ritually blinded every third child by literally plucking out her eyes at birth, would you then agree that we had found a culture that was needlessly diminishing human wellbeing?
She: It would depend on why they were doing it.
Me: Let’s say they were doing it on the basis of religious superstition. In their scripture, God says, “Every third must walk in darkness.”
She: Then you could never say that they were wrong.
(Sam Harris)
Me: Because I think that right and wrong are a matter of increasing or decreasing well-being—and it is obvious that forcing half the population to live in cloth bags, and beating or killing them if they refuse, is not a good strategy for maximizing human well-being.
She: But that’s only your opinion.
Me: Okay… Let’s make it even simpler. What if we found a culture that ritually blinded every third child by literally plucking out her eyes at birth, would you then agree that we had found a culture that was needlessly diminishing human wellbeing?
She: It would depend on why they were doing it.
Me: Let’s say they were doing it on the basis of religious superstition. In their scripture, God says, “Every third must walk in darkness.”
She: Then you could never say that they were wrong.
(Sam Harris)
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