Life is such a fragile thing, which is why it can so easily be lost. The candle beside my desk is a perfect balance of wax and oxygen at high energy, from which carbon atoms release painful light. A puff of breath disrupts the flame. The wick, instead of spreading the wax thin to the embrace of the oxygen, now smolders. How slight is the difference between a burning candle and a candle that has just gone out; how slight is the difference between a person moments before, and moments after, a gradual death.
Yet the network of life on Earth is very strong, and will outlast not just each human but all humans. The network of human relationships is also very strong, and outlasts the shifting winds of fortune. This is what we will learn from the final entry in this series, which is coming soon.
Friday, October 29, 2010
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi (11). Luck and the Future
Both the medieval minstrels and the writer of Ecclesiastes, then, are in agreement that what happens in life, whether an individual’s life or the life of the world, has nothing to do with whatever people may deserve. But it is time to ask the question: Does the randomness of luck, with regard to individual people, mean that we cannot predict the future?
We are constantly trying to predict the future. And we are not very good about it. There are two reasons. First, our minds work in a linear fashion, while many of the important processes of the world are nonlinear. Some of these nonlinear processes are exponential. Populations are an example: they grow by doubling, not by accumulating. Human population has increased as a curve, not as a line. Debt is exponential also, because the more debt you have, the more interest you pay. The federal government will figure this out sometime, when (even if other nations keep loaning us money at current interest rates) in a few decades the government will be paying more money in interest to other countries than on anything else. Some of these nonlinear processes involve a tipping point. Adding just a little more carbon dioxide to the air does not necessarily mean that we will have just a little more global warming. If enough ice melts, reducing the amount of sunlight that is reflected back into outer space, we may begin a process by which more ice melt leads to more warming, regardless of what we do about carbon emissions. James Lovelock (in his book Gaia’s Revenge) criticizes the scientists who merely extrapolate climate change from the present into the future without considering how life itself, the plants and the bacteria, may alter climate processes.
We cannot predict the future but we can calculate overall average risks. The person who does this best is Vaclav Smil, who is a genius (speaking many languages) and who can grasp the concepts of many different fields such as science, economics, and sociology. He has calculated (in his book Global Catastrophes and Trends) the risks that humankind will face over the next few decades. For example, he calculated that the risk (from 1995 through the 9-11 attacks of 2001) of an American dying from a terrorist attack was one in ten billion per person per hour. This is a much lower risk than being killed in a car accident, which is about four in a million per person per hour. He calculated the risks of hang gliding, being killed by an asteroid collision (which is about the same as being a victim of a terrorist), etc. His point is that cumulative risks do not change rapidly; despite sensational headlines, the risks have remained about the same over recent years. Therefore, we may ask, is luck really the empress of the world?
Yes, because, as Ecclesiastes and Carmina Burana both point out, from any individual’s standpoint, fate is almost entirely unpredictable. You can reduce certain risks—by driving safely, by not smoking, by exercising—but beyond these few things, you are really not in control of your fate, and there does not appear to be any heavenly help for you. Modern science allows us to calculate risks, and the error ranges associated with them, but not to predict individual fate.
We are constantly trying to predict the future. And we are not very good about it. There are two reasons. First, our minds work in a linear fashion, while many of the important processes of the world are nonlinear. Some of these nonlinear processes are exponential. Populations are an example: they grow by doubling, not by accumulating. Human population has increased as a curve, not as a line. Debt is exponential also, because the more debt you have, the more interest you pay. The federal government will figure this out sometime, when (even if other nations keep loaning us money at current interest rates) in a few decades the government will be paying more money in interest to other countries than on anything else. Some of these nonlinear processes involve a tipping point. Adding just a little more carbon dioxide to the air does not necessarily mean that we will have just a little more global warming. If enough ice melts, reducing the amount of sunlight that is reflected back into outer space, we may begin a process by which more ice melt leads to more warming, regardless of what we do about carbon emissions. James Lovelock (in his book Gaia’s Revenge) criticizes the scientists who merely extrapolate climate change from the present into the future without considering how life itself, the plants and the bacteria, may alter climate processes.
We cannot predict the future but we can calculate overall average risks. The person who does this best is Vaclav Smil, who is a genius (speaking many languages) and who can grasp the concepts of many different fields such as science, economics, and sociology. He has calculated (in his book Global Catastrophes and Trends) the risks that humankind will face over the next few decades. For example, he calculated that the risk (from 1995 through the 9-11 attacks of 2001) of an American dying from a terrorist attack was one in ten billion per person per hour. This is a much lower risk than being killed in a car accident, which is about four in a million per person per hour. He calculated the risks of hang gliding, being killed by an asteroid collision (which is about the same as being a victim of a terrorist), etc. His point is that cumulative risks do not change rapidly; despite sensational headlines, the risks have remained about the same over recent years. Therefore, we may ask, is luck really the empress of the world?
Yes, because, as Ecclesiastes and Carmina Burana both point out, from any individual’s standpoint, fate is almost entirely unpredictable. You can reduce certain risks—by driving safely, by not smoking, by exercising—but beyond these few things, you are really not in control of your fate, and there does not appear to be any heavenly help for you. Modern science allows us to calculate risks, and the error ranges associated with them, but not to predict individual fate.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Religious Malpractice
Counselors are professionals. Before anyone can open up shop as a counselor, they must meet state-mandated standards of professional training, including supervised practice sessions. This is important because an unprofessional or sloppy counselor can put a client in danger. I heard of a case recently in which a student, practicing to be a counselor, advised her client to quit taking her meds. This brought about immediate reprimand. In fact, this student might have to look for another line of work.
But anyone can be a religious counselor. All they have to do is to be associated with a church. If it is a little rural independent church, the counselor (usually the pastor) may have no professional training whatever. The pastor can give amateur advice to people, advice that is often wrong and dangerous. Of course, they do not consider their advice to be amateur; they think they have a direct line of inerrant wisdom flowing directly from God. The most dangerous counselor in the world is one who considers himself or herself personally inerrant in dispensing “God’s” advice. Such action is respected by law enforcement and government and society as the free practice of religion.
One such pastor advised a young adult woman that because she was not what he considered to be a Christian, her life was worthless and she should kill herself. She tried to do so. Fortunately, she was as much an amateur at suicide as the pastor was at counseling, and she failed.
The pastor was apparently a shitty, abominable, satanic pastor. His statements were not even remotely Christian. But it is obvious that, were he a counselor, he would be liable for a whopping malpractice lawsuit.
But pastors of little independent churches can get away with anything. As a society, we let them dispense deadly advice and to stir up hatred. If anybody else—a teacher, a doctor, a counselor, a business executive, a writer like myself, a television personality—gave such advice, they would be thrown out on their butts (except, of course, for conservative talk show hosts). Pastors of church denominations have to meet professional standards and can be terminated by the denomination, but not so the little churches out in the sticks, where the Christians are much more dangerous than the wild hogs.
Freedom of religion does not mean that a pastor of an independent church can say whatever he or she wants, regardless of its effects. Pastors should be constrained by the same laws that the rest of us have to observe. Of course, the victim (were she not totally devastated by the incident) could sue the pastor, but this is unlikely to occur. In most aspects of life, we are protected by laws, and sometimes we have to sue; but in many churches, we have no protection at all unless we sue.
If only God would wring that pastor’s neck. But that won’t happen. God never brings any punishment on the evil. They take on God’s name as an adornment and sin boldly, while good people are struck with disease and disaster. God makes no visible difference in the world. This is what the writer of Ecclesiastes complained about, and the complaint is still valid.
Also, please remember to vote Democratic in the upcoming elections. The Republicans seek the support of dangerous religious people such as the ones described here. Also, remember to share this blog with your associates.
But anyone can be a religious counselor. All they have to do is to be associated with a church. If it is a little rural independent church, the counselor (usually the pastor) may have no professional training whatever. The pastor can give amateur advice to people, advice that is often wrong and dangerous. Of course, they do not consider their advice to be amateur; they think they have a direct line of inerrant wisdom flowing directly from God. The most dangerous counselor in the world is one who considers himself or herself personally inerrant in dispensing “God’s” advice. Such action is respected by law enforcement and government and society as the free practice of religion.
One such pastor advised a young adult woman that because she was not what he considered to be a Christian, her life was worthless and she should kill herself. She tried to do so. Fortunately, she was as much an amateur at suicide as the pastor was at counseling, and she failed.
The pastor was apparently a shitty, abominable, satanic pastor. His statements were not even remotely Christian. But it is obvious that, were he a counselor, he would be liable for a whopping malpractice lawsuit.
But pastors of little independent churches can get away with anything. As a society, we let them dispense deadly advice and to stir up hatred. If anybody else—a teacher, a doctor, a counselor, a business executive, a writer like myself, a television personality—gave such advice, they would be thrown out on their butts (except, of course, for conservative talk show hosts). Pastors of church denominations have to meet professional standards and can be terminated by the denomination, but not so the little churches out in the sticks, where the Christians are much more dangerous than the wild hogs.
Freedom of religion does not mean that a pastor of an independent church can say whatever he or she wants, regardless of its effects. Pastors should be constrained by the same laws that the rest of us have to observe. Of course, the victim (were she not totally devastated by the incident) could sue the pastor, but this is unlikely to occur. In most aspects of life, we are protected by laws, and sometimes we have to sue; but in many churches, we have no protection at all unless we sue.
If only God would wring that pastor’s neck. But that won’t happen. God never brings any punishment on the evil. They take on God’s name as an adornment and sin boldly, while good people are struck with disease and disaster. God makes no visible difference in the world. This is what the writer of Ecclesiastes complained about, and the complaint is still valid.
Also, please remember to vote Democratic in the upcoming elections. The Republicans seek the support of dangerous religious people such as the ones described here. Also, remember to share this blog with your associates.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi (10). Yet Even More Agnosticism from Ecclesiastes. The Ultimate Truth
Today’s Bible reading: Ecclesiastes 3:18-22, 12:2-7.
The truth to which Solomon keeps coming back is this. It is mentioned over and over, so I have chosen just one passage. A person is not a lump of clay animated by a spirit, a spirit that is liberated from the lump of clay upon death. No. Man is an animal, and dies just like an animal. Is there a spirit that goes to heaven? Solomon openly declares not just that he does not know, but “Who can know?” This is agnosticism in its most elegant form, straight from the Bible.
“I said in my heart with regard to the sons of men that God is testing them, to show them that they are merely beasts. For the fate of the sons of men and the fate of the beasts is the same; as dies one, so dies the other. All have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts…All go to one place, all are from the dust and return to the dust. Who knows whether the spirit of man flies upward and the spirit of the beast descends into the Earth?”
And this, he says, is the end of history: not a majestic conclusion, but the last whimper of extinction. “…in the day when the keepers of the house tremble, and strong men are bent over, sad people look through windows, the doors are shut, there is little sound of work being done, a man jumps in fright at the sound of a bird, grasshoppers drag their bellies along on the ground, people are mourning in the streets, the silver cord is snapped, the golden bowl broken, the pitcher is broken at the fountain, the wheel is broken at the cistern, and the dust returns to the earth, and breath back to God.”
Is there anything after death? Solomon hints at judgment, although he may be referring to the judgment of history. But he certainly describes no Heaven.
Reminder: Remember to vote Democratic, which is the milder and less dangerous choice.
Reminder: Send a link to this blog to your friends and professional associates.
The truth to which Solomon keeps coming back is this. It is mentioned over and over, so I have chosen just one passage. A person is not a lump of clay animated by a spirit, a spirit that is liberated from the lump of clay upon death. No. Man is an animal, and dies just like an animal. Is there a spirit that goes to heaven? Solomon openly declares not just that he does not know, but “Who can know?” This is agnosticism in its most elegant form, straight from the Bible.
“I said in my heart with regard to the sons of men that God is testing them, to show them that they are merely beasts. For the fate of the sons of men and the fate of the beasts is the same; as dies one, so dies the other. All have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts…All go to one place, all are from the dust and return to the dust. Who knows whether the spirit of man flies upward and the spirit of the beast descends into the Earth?”
And this, he says, is the end of history: not a majestic conclusion, but the last whimper of extinction. “…in the day when the keepers of the house tremble, and strong men are bent over, sad people look through windows, the doors are shut, there is little sound of work being done, a man jumps in fright at the sound of a bird, grasshoppers drag their bellies along on the ground, people are mourning in the streets, the silver cord is snapped, the golden bowl broken, the pitcher is broken at the fountain, the wheel is broken at the cistern, and the dust returns to the earth, and breath back to God.”
Is there anything after death? Solomon hints at judgment, although he may be referring to the judgment of history. But he certainly describes no Heaven.
Reminder: Remember to vote Democratic, which is the milder and less dangerous choice.
Reminder: Send a link to this blog to your friends and professional associates.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
At War with the Cosmos
The fundamental assumption of science is that the cosmos can be understood, and that it operates by consistent laws and principles. While this is an assumption that may be embraced by religion as well, I am not convinced that evangelical Christianity does so. Mainline denominations, and liberal groups such as the Quakers, appear to do so, but not the big, powerful, and loud fundamentalist groups that dominate the religious scene in America today.
Jesus told his disciples, “The world will hate you.” I always assumed, back in my fundamentalist days, that this meant that people who love to sin will hate those who tell them not to, or even imply by their moral lives that sinning is wrong. But this is not what the Biblical statement says. The “world” in that statement is kosmos. That is, the physical world that science studies. The implication (or so it was suggested by A. N. Wilson in his biography of Jesus) is that it is wrong, from the Christian viewpoint, to want to make sense of what happens in the world. The world, including the planets and plants, is the kosmos that is hostile to Christians. Jesus also said, to Doubting Thomas, blessed is he who does not see yet still believes. As Richard Dawkins points out, to evangelical Christians, the dissonance between facts and faith is itself accepted as confirmation of the faith.
I suppose this also means that truly religious people should reject Occam’s Razor. A complex creationist explanation full of invented stories (e.g., God moved the fossils around during the Flood to make them get buried in an evolutionary order, and God stuck thousands of pseudogenes into noncoding DNA to make it look like organisms had evolutionary ancestors) are just as good as the simplest and most straightforward explanations: that the fossils have an evolutionary order because they evolved over time, and that pseudogenes were genes used by real, living, evolutionary ancestors.
Christian scientific organizations such as the American Scientific Affiliation and the John Templeton Foundation will strongly object to this interpretation. Good for them, and they deserve our admiration for it. But this observation might make it easier to understand why so many religious people seem to live in a world devoid of reality when it comes to scientific, political, and cultural ideas. Get rid of that kosmos; the truth consists of whatever ideas pop up in my brain, because God must have planted them there.
Reminder: Remember to vote Democratic, which is the milder and less dangerous choice. Democrats, however imperfect, are more likely to get their facts from the kosmos.
Reminder: Send a link to this blog to your friends and professional associates.
This essay also appeared on my evolution blog.
Jesus told his disciples, “The world will hate you.” I always assumed, back in my fundamentalist days, that this meant that people who love to sin will hate those who tell them not to, or even imply by their moral lives that sinning is wrong. But this is not what the Biblical statement says. The “world” in that statement is kosmos. That is, the physical world that science studies. The implication (or so it was suggested by A. N. Wilson in his biography of Jesus) is that it is wrong, from the Christian viewpoint, to want to make sense of what happens in the world. The world, including the planets and plants, is the kosmos that is hostile to Christians. Jesus also said, to Doubting Thomas, blessed is he who does not see yet still believes. As Richard Dawkins points out, to evangelical Christians, the dissonance between facts and faith is itself accepted as confirmation of the faith.
I suppose this also means that truly religious people should reject Occam’s Razor. A complex creationist explanation full of invented stories (e.g., God moved the fossils around during the Flood to make them get buried in an evolutionary order, and God stuck thousands of pseudogenes into noncoding DNA to make it look like organisms had evolutionary ancestors) are just as good as the simplest and most straightforward explanations: that the fossils have an evolutionary order because they evolved over time, and that pseudogenes were genes used by real, living, evolutionary ancestors.
Christian scientific organizations such as the American Scientific Affiliation and the John Templeton Foundation will strongly object to this interpretation. Good for them, and they deserve our admiration for it. But this observation might make it easier to understand why so many religious people seem to live in a world devoid of reality when it comes to scientific, political, and cultural ideas. Get rid of that kosmos; the truth consists of whatever ideas pop up in my brain, because God must have planted them there.
Reminder: Remember to vote Democratic, which is the milder and less dangerous choice. Democrats, however imperfect, are more likely to get their facts from the kosmos.
Reminder: Send a link to this blog to your friends and professional associates.
This essay also appeared on my evolution blog.
Monday, October 4, 2010
Please Spread the Word
This is just a brief message to ask you to share this blog with your friends and acquaintances, even (or perhaps especially) with those who may not agree with it. There are not very many visitors to my two blogs, and I truly believe that a lot of people would benefit from reading them. It is certainly healthier fare than much of the hate-filled bile that is found in many blogs devoted to religion or to evolution. (Interestingly, I have more visitors from the Netherlands, Russia, and Luxembourg than from the US.)
But for those of you from America, please remember also to vote in the elections. I urge you to vote Democratic, since the Republicans represent a real possibility of danger to science and to religious freedom. I find it difficult to get excited about Democrats, but they are at least less dangerous than Republicans.
I realize that it is unlikely that this gentle blog can compete with blogs that push the buttons of unthinking anger, any more than a little garden herb can compete with a weed, but you can help.
And please leave comments, to which I will try to respond. If you bring up an interesting point, I can post something about it so that it does not remain hidden in the comments section.
But for those of you from America, please remember also to vote in the elections. I urge you to vote Democratic, since the Republicans represent a real possibility of danger to science and to religious freedom. I find it difficult to get excited about Democrats, but they are at least less dangerous than Republicans.
I realize that it is unlikely that this gentle blog can compete with blogs that push the buttons of unthinking anger, any more than a little garden herb can compete with a weed, but you can help.
And please leave comments, to which I will try to respond. If you bring up an interesting point, I can post something about it so that it does not remain hidden in the comments section.
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