This is why I don’t like organized religion August 18, 2006
Posted by Evil Bender in Religion.add a comment
Because it makes people assume they know the mind of God well enough to speak for him, and because this “conversation” could be made by any fundamentalist member of almost any religious group, simply by modifying the wait the deity is addressed.
Once you’re absolutely sure you have the answers to life’s big questions, once faith has overcome your reason to this extent, you’re incapable of having a serious conversation about religion, because you’ll immediately hit an impasse: you have nothing to say to anyone who doesn’t accept your faith-based assumptions. And when fundamentalists of two different stripes argue it’s particularly fun, because they tend to accuse each other of the same thing (being wicked sinners who are going to hell) and defend themselves on the same terms.
A helpful note: if your religion teaches you that you, thanks to your God, have the answers, that you’re going to heaven, that everyone else is going to hell, and that there’s no way you could be wrong, there is a very good chance you are dangerous, and an even better chance you’re wrong. After all, if any fundamentalist is correct, the majority of fundamentalists–those of other faiths and often other sects of the same faith–are wrong.
More poetry August 18, 2006
Posted by Evil Bender in Poetry.2 comments
Stranger Fruit has a poem I’ve not seen in several years.
“Epic”
Patrick Kavanaugh
I have lived in important places, times
When great events were decided, who owned
That half a rood of rock, a no-man’s land
Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims.
I heard the Duffys shouting “Damn your soul!”
And old McCabe stripped to the waist, seen
Step the plot defying blue cast-steel -
“Here is the march along these iron stones.”
That was the year of the Munich bother. Which
Was more important? I inclined
To lose my faith in Ballyrush and Gortin
Till Homer’s ghost came whispering to my mind.
He said: I made the Iliad from such
A local row. Gods make their own importance.
Judge rules warrantless wiretaps illegal August 17, 2006
Posted by Evil Bender in Dubya, News and politics, constiutional issues.4 comments
It is no surprise that the program Bush is fighting so hard to conceal from the jurisdiction of the courts has been ruled illegal. Of course, the Administration isn’t pleased:
White House press secretary Tony Snow said the Bush administration “couldn’t disagree more with this ruling.” He said the program carefully targets communications of suspected terrorists and “has helped stop terrorist attacks and saved American lives.”
Of course, the administration can’t give any examples of how a program that lets them skirt the jurisdiction of courts that could already grant retroactive warrants has made anyone safer. How does avoiding Constitutional and other legal safeguards make the country safer? Maybe it just makes their job easier. But here’s the catch: according to the Administration, there’s no way we could ever know why we need this program:
The government argued that the NSA program is well within the president’s authority but said proving that would require revealing state secrets.
Say what? “We can prove this program is legal, but to do it, we’d have to reveal our secrets. We won’t do that, so just take our word for it.” What makes this strategy particularly difficult is that, for a court to rule against the program, someone has to have standing, to prove that they have been harmed by the program. But to prove that, someone would have to know who the program has targeted, what it’s scope is, etc. So as Ed Brayton explains,
But here’s the problem: [the issue of standing] makes the administration’s unconstitutional actions immune from judicial review completely. It’s a perfect mobius strip of logic: we can’t tell you who is surveilled under the law because of the state secrets privilege, and if you don’t know who is surveilled you can’t prove you have standing.
It is quite possible that this ruling will be reversed, and a near certainty that it will come before SCOTUS eventually. While there may be precedent that makes this a tough case to win for those who still care about civil liberties, we must hope the judges see the danger of allowing a secret program to continue to exist simply because the President says “trust me, it’s cool.”
Even if Bush were right, even if this program was consitutional, legal, and necessary for our safety (and there is no reason to believe it is any of those things), then allowing it to continue sans proof of its legality will guarantee abuses in the future. No less is at stake than our system of checks and balances (“checks and balances” copyright every middleschool civics textbook). If a President may make decisions without the approval of congress and hide those decisions from the oversight of the court, then he may do whatever he wishes. I hope the courts uphold this decision: if they are doing otherwise, they are effectively conceding their power to review the legality of the Executive Branch’s policies.
Morality pt 2: subjectivity and relativism August 17, 2006
Posted by Evil Bender in Morality.9 comments
I’ve been doing my best to ignore further comments from Josephnadir, since the debate has increasingly become about distortions of my points. But one issue from that conversation seems relevant to the overall discussion here. Nadir believes that my claim that everyone’s view of reality is subjective makes me a moral relativist:
You said: “I would like to begin by pointing out that what I’ve been asked for is ‘objective morality,’ but of course this no-one can provide. ”. Hence, you have taken the leap of faith to believe there is no such thing as an objective morality; this is moral relativism. By your own admission you are a moral relativist despite your hesitation to accept it.
Aside from noting nadir’s obsession with the strong tag, we can see that he thinks that subjectivity is a death-knell for morality. But admitting that we are subjective takes no “leap of faith”; whether there is an objective morality is irrelevant. What is relevant is that, even if there was an objective morality, we could not have complete confidence that we a) knew what it was and b) understood it correctly.
What should be clear is that we’re imperfect, and our understanding of things is imperfect. Yes, we can posit a being that has perfect knowledge of “the good,” but what would this get us? How could we be sure we knew that being and that our understanding of the being let us in to the moral secret? If anything, this assumption creates a moral quandary, for we have no position to tell which understanding of supreme being(s) we ought to follow.
On the other hand, subjectivity does not equal relativism, pure and simple. Relativism’s claim is that we don’t have a framework for evaluating other cultures’ morality, and, more generally, that no moral claim is any more right than any other. Subjectivity says that our own experiences and biases affect the way we view the world, and that we must take this into account when making choices.
Perhaps a metaphor will help with this: say a man is taking a walking survey of a huge mountain. His goal is to learn–to a minute level–as much as he can about the mountain. At no point does he have perfect knowledge of the mountain, for as soon as part of it is out of sight (as he explores another part) he cannot be sure the part he has already seen is as he remembers it: something may have changed. This man acknowledges that his view of the mountain is imperfect. But he does not need to reach the conclusion that all views of the mountain are equally valid. He knows he does not know everything, but if someone says “the mountain has no pine trees” and he sees pine trees, he knows that person is wrong.
The man has a subjective position, but not a relativist one. Aknowledging that we are imperfect does not mean that we must believe that all positions are equally valid. In fact, it should do the opposite: remind us to work very hard to verify the veracity of our positions, since there always exists the possibility we might be wrong, and therefore we should desire as much certitude as possible.
Nadir himself admits that perfect knowledge is not required for moral action. For someone who understands subjectivity, this has to be true, since if it were false, even those who claim to not be relativists would have to be. If subjectivity = relativism, all humans are relativist. But since they are not equivalent, we can note that understanding the tentative nature of human understanding should drive us to consider carefully the morality of our choices.
Those fools who do not aknowledge subjectivity tend to believe they have access–unfettered–to the Source of Morality. And for this reason they are far more dangerous than those who understand subjectivity, for they have no reason to question themselves, and therefore will have no logical basis for changing their mind. After all, they know the truth and cannot be wrong.
Stating the obvious August 16, 2006
Posted by Evil Bender in Israel, Lebanon, Middle East, Morality, News and politics, Uncategorized.7 comments
Today I want to mention something that, by any sane measure, should be perfectly obvious. I mention it only because what should be self-evident is too often forgotten or even ridiculed, so it seems like something we should say more often, even at the expense of sounding simple-minded: war is terrible.
Let us take the recently ended–or at least put off–conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. After more than a month of fighting, we have over a thousand dead, hundreds of thousands displaced, a country’s infrastructure crippled, another country dealt a serious of ugly blows. And for what? Israel is still strong, Hezbollah is still strong. No one has backed off, the kidnapped soldiers have not been returned. Meanwhile, Hezbollah’s position is stronger than ever, as the war has only consolidated anti-Israeli sentiment in Lebanon while seriously damaging the Lebanese government.
And now Israel looks likely to change leaders after an unsuccessful war, and Iran is giving Hezbollah money to help those whose homes have been destroyed.
The likely result is that both sides will have more support for more brutal tactics in the future; the next war, when it comes, will be even uglier–unless something changes.
Meanwhile, the Taliban is reasserting itself in the half-finished war in Afghanistan, and Iraq descends further into civil war.
Some of you will say that there have been good wars. As I write, I’m watching Band of Brothers, and will happily assert that yes, some conflicts are more necessary than others. But that does not make them good. Nothing about sending soldiers and civilians home in body-bags is good. None of the suffering and destruction is good. When we speak of war, we need to remember always that war is never better than a last resort. Even when we fight for the right reasons and even when all other options have been exhausted, war is at best one tragedy which may let us avoid an even greater one. The sooner we make that simple fact an aspect of all our discourse on the subject of war, the better off we wil all be.
Take a moment… August 15, 2006
Posted by Evil Bender in Uncategorized.2 comments
And check this out. It is apropos to recent topics here, and well worth the read.
I should create a spinoff blog… August 15, 2006
Posted by Evil Bender in Poetry, Religion, wingnuts.6 comments
called “Good Poetry, Bad Poetry.” Well, not really: I don’t post as much poetry as I should here (though if the numbers are any judge, there aren’t a lot of you who are missing it). What I haven’t ever done is make fun of bad poetry. This is for a couple reasons: first, I prefer to bring to light what I consider to be good writing, and second, because most writers of poetry are well-intentioned and are motivated by lots of perfectly reasonable goals, which may or may not include writing brilliant poetry. Beyond all that, it just seems petty: isn’t politics depressing enough without mentioning terrible verse as well?
But today I have to make my first exception to that rule, because WordPress Related Posts turned up this gem. I won’t repost the whole (it’s quite long), but an excerpt will suffice:
America, Return to God: the returnening August 15, 2006
Posted by Evil Bender in Religion, Science, wingnuts.add a comment
America, Return to God, that lovely collection of extreme right-wing stupidity, is back, this time in newsletter form. And this time their topic is “Science and Christian Faith: Are they Mutually Exclusive or Contradictory”? It might not surprise you that their answer is “no,” and it certainly won’t surprise you that their reasoning is non-existent.
The article in question is written by Chi-Yu King, who I believe to be a Seismologist, but I am not certain. His qualifications, according to the newsletter, are that he is “a long-time Christian and scientist.” Which is remarkable, given his shameful understanding of science. The essay starts off on a bad note, and gets worse. It’s first sentence reads “the Biblical idea of human origin by God’s creation is totally excluded today from the scientific curriculum in public schools across America on the ground of separation of science and religion.”
More right-wing argumentation: why pro-profiling arguments don’t hold water August 15, 2006
Posted by Evil Bender in bigotry, wingnuts.4 comments
I’ve been in a discussion with “Josephnadir” on this thread, and it seems like time to bring that discussion to the main page. He manages to combine a number of misinterpretations of my words, logical errors, and rhetorical dodges, so before I get to the specifics, I want to recap my most important points from that thread:
- Profiling singles out those who have been charged with no crime and treats them differently because of another factor–religion, race, gender, location, etc.
- Forcing Muslims to endure targeted searches because of their background singles out innocent Muslims unfairly.
- White Christian men woudln’t tolerate a similar set of rules, and so they should not inflict it upon others.
Nadir still hasn’t really addressed this point. He has made one argument on it that, as we shall see, does not truly relate. With that said, let’s move on to nadir’s specific arguments:
