Bribes and Punishments
If this manifesto is ever widely read, there will be a large number of men who will be bewilderingly infuriated by it. Whenever masculinity is threatened, dark knights of chauvinism will immediately race to its aid. They will attack with the kind of fury normally reserved for traitors, murderers, terrorists and other enemies to the nation’s safety and security. Why? Because when masculinity and manhood are attacked, men who are insecure in their masculinity get scared. They are scared because that is not the deal that they got into when they agreed to go along with the whole thing. They thought the deal was that penis equals masculinity. To say that penis does not equal masculinity, that even heterosexuality and attraction to women does not equal masculinity, that masculinity is a farce, is a terrifying proposition. They’ve given up their connection with their families, healthy relationships with the men and women in their lives, physical contact with people other than their wives, and much of the time that they have on this earth in order to prove their masculinity. If I say that they can never prove their masculinity, because the whole thing is bullshit, they have wasted everything. That’s a lot to give up for a system of oppression. Why would they do it?
Schoolyard Bullying
In schoolyards around the nation, in backyards, and in living rooms, boys are teaching masculinity to other boys through physical violence. The inspiration for these malicious beatings are myriad, but the notion that a boy who doesn’t fight back is somehow derogatorily feminized (hereafter “feminized”) is practically universal. The notion that feminization is bad cannot be better emphasized than with physical violence. The notion that those who fail to repel their attackers are not masculanized enough immediately instills terror in those who are unsure of their own masculinity. Masculinity is the oppressed man’s only means of defense. The irony is that in attacking others (and thereby feminizing these third parties) they can prove their manhood for moment. Like using an air conditioner to combat global warming, they are making themselves more safe from masculinity, while aiding masculinity generally. The schoolyard bully is created from a constant fear of being feminized ourselves and is constantly reinforcing.
Eventually we become oppressed men and the haunting ghost of the schoolyard bully hangs over us for the rest of our lives. Eventually, the words, “pussy” “fag” and “bitch” become linked in our heads with the brutal beatings and tauntings we received at the hands of those who were not comfortable with their masculinity. Meanwhile, there are those who learn their lessons too well. Some literally beat men who are too feminized. Their victims, who are not manly enough, threaten their belief that penis equals masculinity, and leads these men to unspeakable violence and even murder. Tragically, even as they prove their own masculinity and relieve their fear at being feminized, they strengthen the link between feminization and violence by victimizing those who they fear they will become if the link between penis and masculinity is ever severed.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Manifesto To Eliminate Masculinization (Part One)
Men are caged by fear, suffering and unhappiness. Suicide rates, self-destructive behavior, and neurotic violent tendencies belie this fact. This group must consciously support the quiet and radical revolution already under way. We must free men!
The women’s liberation movement cannot succeed until men too are freed from traditional gender’s tyrannical grip. Only a concerted effort to liberate men will provide significant race and national origin equality. Anti-gay bigotry, above all other kinds of prejudice, is rooted in the maniacal maintenance of traditional masculinity (hereafter “masculinity”). Therefore, the next logical step in the continually progressing civil rights movement must be the liberation of males from masculinity.
The women’s equality movement has begun to liberate men, kicking and screaming, but only with a more concentrated effort on the destruction and reconstruction of masculinity can we advance the freedom of men. Likewise, without a full frontal assault on masculinity, women’s is ended, and will not be able to progress, because women and men are intimately connected. Many women share their most intimate relationships with men, and so long as a man is suffering, so too will any person of empathy who loves that man. Suffering is the root of all fear, and fear is responsible for paralysis and retreat. When suffering does not bring about fear, it brings anger. Men should be angry that they are suffering at the whim of improbable oppression. However, all too often, that anger irrationally becomes violence against those who most desire to end their suffering. Too often, that same suffering is turned into violence that is used to make sure that other men suffer. This society can end the suffering of men. Society must direct its anger at masculinity itself and, finally, after millennia of the most insidious and malicious oppression, we must liberate ourselves.
In the next couple of weeks, this blog will publish a manifesto of freedom for men and all persons who have ever had any relationship with men. Acknowledging that if men are freed, it is due to feminist and critical race thinkers, this writing is not a work of academics, but a work of punditry and passion at best. In the next entry, the nature of the Masculization process will be shown to be a cycle of violence filled with bribes and punishments. After that, different specific functions of masculinity will be highlighted for elimination, from capitalism (an inherently masculine and violent method of societal interaction) to the male eviction from the home.
The women’s liberation movement cannot succeed until men too are freed from traditional gender’s tyrannical grip. Only a concerted effort to liberate men will provide significant race and national origin equality. Anti-gay bigotry, above all other kinds of prejudice, is rooted in the maniacal maintenance of traditional masculinity (hereafter “masculinity”). Therefore, the next logical step in the continually progressing civil rights movement must be the liberation of males from masculinity.
The women’s equality movement has begun to liberate men, kicking and screaming, but only with a more concentrated effort on the destruction and reconstruction of masculinity can we advance the freedom of men. Likewise, without a full frontal assault on masculinity, women’s is ended, and will not be able to progress, because women and men are intimately connected. Many women share their most intimate relationships with men, and so long as a man is suffering, so too will any person of empathy who loves that man. Suffering is the root of all fear, and fear is responsible for paralysis and retreat. When suffering does not bring about fear, it brings anger. Men should be angry that they are suffering at the whim of improbable oppression. However, all too often, that anger irrationally becomes violence against those who most desire to end their suffering. Too often, that same suffering is turned into violence that is used to make sure that other men suffer. This society can end the suffering of men. Society must direct its anger at masculinity itself and, finally, after millennia of the most insidious and malicious oppression, we must liberate ourselves.
In the next couple of weeks, this blog will publish a manifesto of freedom for men and all persons who have ever had any relationship with men. Acknowledging that if men are freed, it is due to feminist and critical race thinkers, this writing is not a work of academics, but a work of punditry and passion at best. In the next entry, the nature of the Masculization process will be shown to be a cycle of violence filled with bribes and punishments. After that, different specific functions of masculinity will be highlighted for elimination, from capitalism (an inherently masculine and violent method of societal interaction) to the male eviction from the home.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Today's Ridiculous Thought
When I protested the war in Afghanistan, I was accused of being anti-American by the New York Post and Lynn Cheney because I had the dastardly opinion that war with Afghanistan would not lead to Osama Bin Laden's capture, and might just contribute to islamophobia and racism already running rampant throughout the country. Now, these same accusers are disrupting democratic meetings and shouting other people out of debates merely because others disagree with them. What is anti-American? I wouldn't be able to say. Murder definately is anti-American. Beer drinking definately is American. Expressing an opinion (that turned out to be true)? Preventing others from expressing opinion by shouting them down in a meeting?
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Corporations Are Incompetent
What is being left out of this health care debate (if you can call the vitriol coming out of the right a debate) is the utter incompetence of most corporations. It is not an accident that corporations are incompetent, in fact the entire legal entity of a corporation is designed to encourage incompetence. It is tantamount to national suicide to continue to permit corporations to have anything whatsoever to do with health care, a fact which is being debated between the moderates and the left, but which the right wing ignores in their adulation for everything corporate. Yet we all know that corporations are horrible at what they do.
Corporations are Unsustainable
We see everyday that corporations are unsustainable. Just this year, the U.S. Government, and the many other governments throughout the world, have had to swoop in and bail out thousands of corporations which were failing. The U.S. Government, in substantially the same form that it stands today, has outlasted almost every corporation in the world, and has done so with such amazing success that even today there is no threat (despite what Glen Beck may desire) that the U.S. will not be a beacon of hope and freedom for huddled masses throughout the world. Meanwhile, corporations are constantly going into bankruptcy and folding into one another, or merely liquidating and disappearing. If we rely on corporations for necessities like health care, we will are relying on some of the most fragile organizations on earth. The moment that a corporation stops making enough profit (that means more than just profit, but profit mixed with greed), the corporation will raise its prices or merely leave the market. That is the job of a corporation; maximizing profit at the expense of its customers, its government, and all moral and ethical considerations.
Corporations are Unaccountable
We all know that corporations don't want to listen to their customers. Although corporations make it out to seem as though their customers are their friends, in fact corporations and customers are necessarily opposed. As competing entities entering into one contract, each party necessarily attempts to get as much out of the contract as it can. Verizon and Comcast cable seem like they are on your side when they lobby congress to implement fewer controls on internet distribution, but they have ultimately charged more in the United States for broadband internet than in any other country in the world, including island nations with limited resources. That is because the position of customer to corporation is naturally hostile. The fact that they have to woo you in order to ensure that you buy from their corporation is meaningless because advertising does the wooing and advertising is purposefully misleading.
Of course, corporations are supposed to be unaccountable. It's impossible to make any serious money unless the corporation treats the customer as though they are used, spent and discarded goods. If the corporation sells a service, then it will attempt to cultivate the customer, like a neglected house plant that you hope doesn't die. Occasionally, and for a short amount of time only, a corporation will make a good faith effort to hire enough customer service staff and offer the best product at the best possible price. The corporation gets some word of mouth, and attains incredible loyalty for merely making the least bit of good faith effort, for merely showing up at the party. But eventually, the economy must contract and the corporation has to do something to cut costs. Maybe the first two or three economic down turns the corporation rides the wave, maybe eventually it cuts services or stops taking as many risks. But at some point, the shareholders (who are lean and anxious for profits) vote in a new board of directors, who vote in a new president (often in a hostile takeover situation) and the new president is desperate to keep his (usually male) job. In order to keep his job, he must appease the board immediately, and the board must appease the shareholders, so the new president must make cuts and raise profits and pull dividends immediately. The fastest way to do that is to cut from the customer service budget. With each computerized telephone answering service, and redirection to India, and separating out of phone rooms between offices, cities, states, countries, and continents, the service gets cheaper, slower, and less responsive and OH SO PROFITABLE that Donald Trump gets turned on just thinking about it!!!!!!!
The Beginning of Corporations: The End of Competence
We all know intuitively that corporations are incompetent. We have all been on hold for hours attempting to fix a typo made by a data entry professional in India that the corporation refuses to accept was a typo. This is how profits are made. Hopefully, the customer will eventually give up and pay instead of risking having their credit ruined after months of playing three hour long phone tag with the behemoth on the other end.
The corporation is designed to be incompetent. The corporation is a legal construct that does one thing. It makes it (very nearly) impossible to hold shareholders responsible for the losses of the corporation, and if shareholders aren't responsible (and they are the only ones with any power) than no one is responsible. It means that shareholders can invest $500 and the only thing that they may lose is that same $500, while potentially earning much much more. The shareholders hire the board of directors and the board hires everyone else. In the modern world, the shareholders are usually corporations themselves who are equally unaccountable and incompetent. The shareholders are large banks that vote on behalf of their own customers. The banks have a DUTY to make as much profit as they can for their customers. In order to do that, they have an OBLIGATION to find board members that ruthlessly chase after profits. That is a legal obligation. If they don't do that, they can actually be sued. The board is REQUIRED to hire a president and staff who all are interested in only one thing... net profits.
Nobody is accountable to anything except for profits, regardless of how they make profits. The only thing that is standing in the way of all that money is the customer. Thus, a corporation that knows that asbestos or the Pinto is killing people is legally obligated to decide whether or not it should continue to kill people based solely on the cost of litigating the wrongful death suits versus the cost of changing the design of the Pinto or recalling asbestos. Thus are corporations murderers, murdering solely for profit. In America, we would execute a person that killed hundreds of people motivated solely by profits, but yet Ford continues to exist because it is a corporation and thus all the shareholders, the bosses of the bosses of the bosses, are entirely protected for their homicides.
Get Corporations Out of Health Care
The only way to make health care accountable is to keep corporations as far away from it as possible, and this makes sense. Many of our ancestors died attempting to bring democracy to decision making in the United States, yet the right now wishes to have us remove all democratic decisions from our choices in health care. The truth is that democratic methods are dangerous and scary but they are the best method we have been able to determine to make any kind of good faith society wide decisions. If we admit that health care is a society wide problem then we must admit that health care requires a society wide solution. The only way to have a society wide solution is through democracy, that premise is the one on which America is founded.
Corporations are Unsustainable
We see everyday that corporations are unsustainable. Just this year, the U.S. Government, and the many other governments throughout the world, have had to swoop in and bail out thousands of corporations which were failing. The U.S. Government, in substantially the same form that it stands today, has outlasted almost every corporation in the world, and has done so with such amazing success that even today there is no threat (despite what Glen Beck may desire) that the U.S. will not be a beacon of hope and freedom for huddled masses throughout the world. Meanwhile, corporations are constantly going into bankruptcy and folding into one another, or merely liquidating and disappearing. If we rely on corporations for necessities like health care, we will are relying on some of the most fragile organizations on earth. The moment that a corporation stops making enough profit (that means more than just profit, but profit mixed with greed), the corporation will raise its prices or merely leave the market. That is the job of a corporation; maximizing profit at the expense of its customers, its government, and all moral and ethical considerations.
Corporations are Unaccountable
We all know that corporations don't want to listen to their customers. Although corporations make it out to seem as though their customers are their friends, in fact corporations and customers are necessarily opposed. As competing entities entering into one contract, each party necessarily attempts to get as much out of the contract as it can. Verizon and Comcast cable seem like they are on your side when they lobby congress to implement fewer controls on internet distribution, but they have ultimately charged more in the United States for broadband internet than in any other country in the world, including island nations with limited resources. That is because the position of customer to corporation is naturally hostile. The fact that they have to woo you in order to ensure that you buy from their corporation is meaningless because advertising does the wooing and advertising is purposefully misleading.
Of course, corporations are supposed to be unaccountable. It's impossible to make any serious money unless the corporation treats the customer as though they are used, spent and discarded goods. If the corporation sells a service, then it will attempt to cultivate the customer, like a neglected house plant that you hope doesn't die. Occasionally, and for a short amount of time only, a corporation will make a good faith effort to hire enough customer service staff and offer the best product at the best possible price. The corporation gets some word of mouth, and attains incredible loyalty for merely making the least bit of good faith effort, for merely showing up at the party. But eventually, the economy must contract and the corporation has to do something to cut costs. Maybe the first two or three economic down turns the corporation rides the wave, maybe eventually it cuts services or stops taking as many risks. But at some point, the shareholders (who are lean and anxious for profits) vote in a new board of directors, who vote in a new president (often in a hostile takeover situation) and the new president is desperate to keep his (usually male) job. In order to keep his job, he must appease the board immediately, and the board must appease the shareholders, so the new president must make cuts and raise profits and pull dividends immediately. The fastest way to do that is to cut from the customer service budget. With each computerized telephone answering service, and redirection to India, and separating out of phone rooms between offices, cities, states, countries, and continents, the service gets cheaper, slower, and less responsive and OH SO PROFITABLE that Donald Trump gets turned on just thinking about it!!!!!!!
The Beginning of Corporations: The End of Competence
We all know intuitively that corporations are incompetent. We have all been on hold for hours attempting to fix a typo made by a data entry professional in India that the corporation refuses to accept was a typo. This is how profits are made. Hopefully, the customer will eventually give up and pay instead of risking having their credit ruined after months of playing three hour long phone tag with the behemoth on the other end.
The corporation is designed to be incompetent. The corporation is a legal construct that does one thing. It makes it (very nearly) impossible to hold shareholders responsible for the losses of the corporation, and if shareholders aren't responsible (and they are the only ones with any power) than no one is responsible. It means that shareholders can invest $500 and the only thing that they may lose is that same $500, while potentially earning much much more. The shareholders hire the board of directors and the board hires everyone else. In the modern world, the shareholders are usually corporations themselves who are equally unaccountable and incompetent. The shareholders are large banks that vote on behalf of their own customers. The banks have a DUTY to make as much profit as they can for their customers. In order to do that, they have an OBLIGATION to find board members that ruthlessly chase after profits. That is a legal obligation. If they don't do that, they can actually be sued. The board is REQUIRED to hire a president and staff who all are interested in only one thing... net profits.
Nobody is accountable to anything except for profits, regardless of how they make profits. The only thing that is standing in the way of all that money is the customer. Thus, a corporation that knows that asbestos or the Pinto is killing people is legally obligated to decide whether or not it should continue to kill people based solely on the cost of litigating the wrongful death suits versus the cost of changing the design of the Pinto or recalling asbestos. Thus are corporations murderers, murdering solely for profit. In America, we would execute a person that killed hundreds of people motivated solely by profits, but yet Ford continues to exist because it is a corporation and thus all the shareholders, the bosses of the bosses of the bosses, are entirely protected for their homicides.
Get Corporations Out of Health Care
The only way to make health care accountable is to keep corporations as far away from it as possible, and this makes sense. Many of our ancestors died attempting to bring democracy to decision making in the United States, yet the right now wishes to have us remove all democratic decisions from our choices in health care. The truth is that democratic methods are dangerous and scary but they are the best method we have been able to determine to make any kind of good faith society wide decisions. If we admit that health care is a society wide problem then we must admit that health care requires a society wide solution. The only way to have a society wide solution is through democracy, that premise is the one on which America is founded.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Science is Not Truth
On further analysis, I have decided that science fits better with hope than it does with history. History and Religion are more properly located in studies that explore what is and what was. These are explorations in big-T Truth, unlike science. Science cannot explore bit-T Truth because science is nothing more than a tool, like a crescent wrench, or a strong judicial system.
Tools- Science, Crescent wrenches, hope, and a strong judicial system are all tools that we use to get things done. They are beliefs, not truths. It is improper to say that science is true because science is necessarily founded on the premise that better science will eventually come. How can Truth be better or worse? It cannot. Truth is static and either is or is not. The kind of truth that science encompasses is not in fact Truth at all, but storytelling, a fiction of sorts, that enables human beings to do things. It's like a U.V. filter.
When we drop a scientific theory over the way that we see the world, the world is made simple enough that we can understand how it works. However, at the same time, we are necessarily filtering out a lot of what the world has to offer. When astronomy was still based on the theory that the Earth was the focal point of the universe, astronomers were able to make calculations that correctly predicted the movements of the stars, the planets, and even predict early eclipses. However, when we moved to a model of the solar system that placed the sun at the center, all of those calculations became better, more accurate, and more simple. If scientists believed that the earth was at the center of the solar system today, we would still be able to make sense of the solar system, but we would not have progressed to easily or quickly in astronomical science.
So it must be with science, that a good scientist can never believe in any kind of big-T truth, because the next fiction that comes along, perhaps that the solar system is actually centered around a point in space that is only very near the sun, could make the calculations to Mars and back more accurate. Right now, we are only able to calculate the movements of the planets to within a couple of dozen meters or so, but if we found another point to center our universe, perhaps we could start calculating to a couple of dozen centimeters, and then perhaps millimeters as our fictions and our stories change.
So too must it be with evolution. One of the problems of the scientific and secular communities who are attempting to defend evolution is that we present it as though it is some kind of big-T Truth, but this is a basic misunderstanding of science. Big-T Truth can never change. Big-T Truth can never be adjusted and is not malleable, and it either works entirely, or leads only to disaster. Evolution is, like all science, at best, a half truth, and perhaps it is only a very small amount of truth with a lot of guess work. Evolution is a means of understanding the world that makes every known living thing come into sharper focus than it ever has before. Science must necessarily only move incrementally, while big-T truth is all or nothing. Scientists who have made evolution into some kind of bit-T truth will be desperately disappointed every time we make a discovery that brings things into sharper focus (like homo floresiensis). In a misguided attempt to defend science, they will constantly alienate those who know that science will never be able to explain everything, because science is only a tool, not a paradigm.
It is improper to say that evolution is not a theory, because if it is not a theory, but some kind of scientific fact, than human beings have reached the end point of exploration for the origins of human beings, and we have ceased to progress. Science is a belief, just as is religion, but it is not truth. Science is a belief just like when we look at a soccer ball and a net and say, "I believe in kicking." We should not say that we believe that kicking exists, that somewhere on the planet, right now, even as we speak, some child is kicking a soccer ball into a net. What we mean is that the best way to get that soccer ball into that net is to kick. When we say, "I believe in evolution." we are saying that the best way to understand the way that things work and to have those things work for us, as far as we know, is through the code book written by Darwin and his progeny. It is needless, and anti-scientific, to say that we believe in the physical existence of australopithicines, homo erectus, and homo habilis. Not only does it not matter if they actually existed, worse than that, it is anti-scientific because it speaks about the thing rather than the evidence of the thing. Scientists are allowed to use shorthand for the evidence of a thing, by saying australopithicus afrensis (think Lucy) as though it exists as a fact, but they only do so in order to build on the theory behind evolution and attempt to challenge the theory until it is best able to conform with the world. It is only a bad scientist that does not understand that evolution is only a theory, a tool, which can, for example, help us to understand generational change, which is a tool for helping us understand DNA, which is a tool for saving lives.
Religion is a belief like when we say, "I believe we are in Delaware." as we drive up I-90. Believing that we are in Deleware is a belief about the existence and relation of things. When we say "I believe in God and that he created the world." we are speaking about the existence of a deity, and his relationship to the creation of the world. Because we believe that he told us how he created the world, we also believe that the world was created a certain way, and that way cannot be modified. When we believe in God as told through the Bible, we must believe in the Bible, because it is God's book. The words are literally true, as true as any words can literally be. We can take into consideration the possibility that our understanding of the Bible is flawed, and every Christian does at some point feel that her understanding of the Bibile is flawed (usually our spiritual guides help us through those moments), but we can never question the truth of the Bible. That does not mean, however, that we must turn down medication that was only available through understanding of the theory of evoltiuon. We are all still allowed to take antibiotics despite the fact that they wouldn't be possible without the theory of evolution. Our belief in the existence of things and their relationship to one another does not change when we take that pill in order to save our own lives.
So why, then, do we feel so threatened by seeing the tool in use? Because we are confused. We think that evolution is the same as the Bible in that it pruports to be big-T truth, and for many misguided scientists it does, but the fact remains that it cannot and does not. Learning about evolution and believing in it as a way to create powerful drugs, plants, and domesticated animals that we use and enjoy every day of our lives is like learning about and believing in democracy. For millenia, the leaders of nations believed that monarchy was the only Christian way to lead a country, that to believe in democracy was literally to denegrade God. That believe seems foolish that we understand the difference between a belief in democracy and a belief in God. They are two entirely seperate beliefs. In millenia, evolution or its progeny, will still be around because it is too powerful to ignore, and too successful a tool to simply disregard. The many millions who comfortably believe in evolution as a tool and in religion as big-T truth understand that science is a tool, while religion is a life. Those who do not understand the difference between belief in God and belief in science, may never be convinced, but there numbers are dwindling, and soon they will be as outdated as monarchists and fuedelists.
Tools- Science, Crescent wrenches, hope, and a strong judicial system are all tools that we use to get things done. They are beliefs, not truths. It is improper to say that science is true because science is necessarily founded on the premise that better science will eventually come. How can Truth be better or worse? It cannot. Truth is static and either is or is not. The kind of truth that science encompasses is not in fact Truth at all, but storytelling, a fiction of sorts, that enables human beings to do things. It's like a U.V. filter.
When we drop a scientific theory over the way that we see the world, the world is made simple enough that we can understand how it works. However, at the same time, we are necessarily filtering out a lot of what the world has to offer. When astronomy was still based on the theory that the Earth was the focal point of the universe, astronomers were able to make calculations that correctly predicted the movements of the stars, the planets, and even predict early eclipses. However, when we moved to a model of the solar system that placed the sun at the center, all of those calculations became better, more accurate, and more simple. If scientists believed that the earth was at the center of the solar system today, we would still be able to make sense of the solar system, but we would not have progressed to easily or quickly in astronomical science.
So it must be with science, that a good scientist can never believe in any kind of big-T truth, because the next fiction that comes along, perhaps that the solar system is actually centered around a point in space that is only very near the sun, could make the calculations to Mars and back more accurate. Right now, we are only able to calculate the movements of the planets to within a couple of dozen meters or so, but if we found another point to center our universe, perhaps we could start calculating to a couple of dozen centimeters, and then perhaps millimeters as our fictions and our stories change.
So too must it be with evolution. One of the problems of the scientific and secular communities who are attempting to defend evolution is that we present it as though it is some kind of big-T Truth, but this is a basic misunderstanding of science. Big-T Truth can never change. Big-T Truth can never be adjusted and is not malleable, and it either works entirely, or leads only to disaster. Evolution is, like all science, at best, a half truth, and perhaps it is only a very small amount of truth with a lot of guess work. Evolution is a means of understanding the world that makes every known living thing come into sharper focus than it ever has before. Science must necessarily only move incrementally, while big-T truth is all or nothing. Scientists who have made evolution into some kind of bit-T truth will be desperately disappointed every time we make a discovery that brings things into sharper focus (like homo floresiensis). In a misguided attempt to defend science, they will constantly alienate those who know that science will never be able to explain everything, because science is only a tool, not a paradigm.
It is improper to say that evolution is not a theory, because if it is not a theory, but some kind of scientific fact, than human beings have reached the end point of exploration for the origins of human beings, and we have ceased to progress. Science is a belief, just as is religion, but it is not truth. Science is a belief just like when we look at a soccer ball and a net and say, "I believe in kicking." We should not say that we believe that kicking exists, that somewhere on the planet, right now, even as we speak, some child is kicking a soccer ball into a net. What we mean is that the best way to get that soccer ball into that net is to kick. When we say, "I believe in evolution." we are saying that the best way to understand the way that things work and to have those things work for us, as far as we know, is through the code book written by Darwin and his progeny. It is needless, and anti-scientific, to say that we believe in the physical existence of australopithicines, homo erectus, and homo habilis. Not only does it not matter if they actually existed, worse than that, it is anti-scientific because it speaks about the thing rather than the evidence of the thing. Scientists are allowed to use shorthand for the evidence of a thing, by saying australopithicus afrensis (think Lucy) as though it exists as a fact, but they only do so in order to build on the theory behind evolution and attempt to challenge the theory until it is best able to conform with the world. It is only a bad scientist that does not understand that evolution is only a theory, a tool, which can, for example, help us to understand generational change, which is a tool for helping us understand DNA, which is a tool for saving lives.
Religion is a belief like when we say, "I believe we are in Delaware." as we drive up I-90. Believing that we are in Deleware is a belief about the existence and relation of things. When we say "I believe in God and that he created the world." we are speaking about the existence of a deity, and his relationship to the creation of the world. Because we believe that he told us how he created the world, we also believe that the world was created a certain way, and that way cannot be modified. When we believe in God as told through the Bible, we must believe in the Bible, because it is God's book. The words are literally true, as true as any words can literally be. We can take into consideration the possibility that our understanding of the Bible is flawed, and every Christian does at some point feel that her understanding of the Bibile is flawed (usually our spiritual guides help us through those moments), but we can never question the truth of the Bible. That does not mean, however, that we must turn down medication that was only available through understanding of the theory of evoltiuon. We are all still allowed to take antibiotics despite the fact that they wouldn't be possible without the theory of evolution. Our belief in the existence of things and their relationship to one another does not change when we take that pill in order to save our own lives.
So why, then, do we feel so threatened by seeing the tool in use? Because we are confused. We think that evolution is the same as the Bible in that it pruports to be big-T truth, and for many misguided scientists it does, but the fact remains that it cannot and does not. Learning about evolution and believing in it as a way to create powerful drugs, plants, and domesticated animals that we use and enjoy every day of our lives is like learning about and believing in democracy. For millenia, the leaders of nations believed that monarchy was the only Christian way to lead a country, that to believe in democracy was literally to denegrade God. That believe seems foolish that we understand the difference between a belief in democracy and a belief in God. They are two entirely seperate beliefs. In millenia, evolution or its progeny, will still be around because it is too powerful to ignore, and too successful a tool to simply disregard. The many millions who comfortably believe in evolution as a tool and in religion as big-T truth understand that science is a tool, while religion is a life. Those who do not understand the difference between belief in God and belief in science, may never be convinced, but there numbers are dwindling, and soon they will be as outdated as monarchists and fuedelists.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Why Intelligent Design Cannot Be Science.
Intelligent deign is based upon the premise that the universe is being directed by some kind of intelligence, be it the Judeo-Islamo-Christian God or some other intelligent universal director. Intelligent Design was originally a theory put forward by some turn of the century philosophers to explain how science and religion are compatible. The basic premise, as put forward by Alfred North Whitehead, was that science describes mechanisms, and religion describes purpose. The difference between these two descriptions is the difference of the two meanings of the word "because."
"Because" is defined as "for the reason that" in Merriam-Websters. There are two kinds of reasons for things. One is the mechanical reason. This is the physical movement behind things. An example of mechanical reason is when a woman slaps a man, the muscle in that woman's arm twitches causing her arm to twitch, which causes her arm to flail her hand, which causes the hand to slap the man's face. That chain of events is mechanical in nature. Each causation is another step in the movement towards the slap. The other kind of reason for a thing describes purpose. The woman may have struck the man because he raped her, or because he pinched her ass, or because she remembered a man from her childhood that looked like the man. Both of these reasons are necessary to the slap. That is to say that neither of these kinds of causes are sufficient. Neither of these kinds of reasons are more or less correct or accurate than the other. However, when we are trying to figure out what caused the slap, we talk about two very different things. A biologist is needed to determine how the mechanical cause worked. A moral adjudicator (a judge, a priest, a philosopher) or social scientist of some kind is needed to determine the ultimate purpose of the slap.
Biological inquiry is ultimately an attempt to answer the question "Why does that thing work the way it does?" In the example of the woman slapping the man, biology can say, "the muscle twitched, and the arm twitched, and the hand twitched." That information is valuable for finding out which part of the arm is broken if the woman suddenly finds that she can't slap the man any longer. Biology cannot hope to answer the bigger question of why the woman decided to slap the man. The most biology can say about purpose is that the muscle twitched "because the woman told it to twitch." Similarly when someone asks why does life exist the way it does, evolution can say, "because natural selection combined with mating selection tendencies, genetic mutations" etc etc. These processes can help us understand what goes on when we have genetic diseases, cancers, or in helping Watson and Crick discover DNA. However, intelligent design theorists are attempting to answer a different kind of question. To the question "why does life exist the way it does?" they can only answer "because someone or something told it to exist." It may very well be true, but it stops the question from being asked without answering anything about the mechanics of life.
Many intelligent design theorists cite the eugenics movement as a reason why evolution is wrong. However, the eugenics movement suffered from the same flaw as intelligent design itself when it mistook mechanical cause for purpose. If science stops attempting to find mechanical cause, science ceases to be science and starts to be philosophy or religion. Biology cannot simply stop and say that "an intelligent being created that," because it would be the cessation of the act of science itself. Similarly, we philosophers, clerics, and social scientists should not allow science to hijack intelligent design because the question of what purpose lies at the root of the universe is properly ours, not the material of cold, material, mechanical scientists.
"Because" is defined as "for the reason that" in Merriam-Websters. There are two kinds of reasons for things. One is the mechanical reason. This is the physical movement behind things. An example of mechanical reason is when a woman slaps a man, the muscle in that woman's arm twitches causing her arm to twitch, which causes her arm to flail her hand, which causes the hand to slap the man's face. That chain of events is mechanical in nature. Each causation is another step in the movement towards the slap. The other kind of reason for a thing describes purpose. The woman may have struck the man because he raped her, or because he pinched her ass, or because she remembered a man from her childhood that looked like the man. Both of these reasons are necessary to the slap. That is to say that neither of these kinds of causes are sufficient. Neither of these kinds of reasons are more or less correct or accurate than the other. However, when we are trying to figure out what caused the slap, we talk about two very different things. A biologist is needed to determine how the mechanical cause worked. A moral adjudicator (a judge, a priest, a philosopher) or social scientist of some kind is needed to determine the ultimate purpose of the slap.
Biological inquiry is ultimately an attempt to answer the question "Why does that thing work the way it does?" In the example of the woman slapping the man, biology can say, "the muscle twitched, and the arm twitched, and the hand twitched." That information is valuable for finding out which part of the arm is broken if the woman suddenly finds that she can't slap the man any longer. Biology cannot hope to answer the bigger question of why the woman decided to slap the man. The most biology can say about purpose is that the muscle twitched "because the woman told it to twitch." Similarly when someone asks why does life exist the way it does, evolution can say, "because natural selection combined with mating selection tendencies, genetic mutations" etc etc. These processes can help us understand what goes on when we have genetic diseases, cancers, or in helping Watson and Crick discover DNA. However, intelligent design theorists are attempting to answer a different kind of question. To the question "why does life exist the way it does?" they can only answer "because someone or something told it to exist." It may very well be true, but it stops the question from being asked without answering anything about the mechanics of life.
Many intelligent design theorists cite the eugenics movement as a reason why evolution is wrong. However, the eugenics movement suffered from the same flaw as intelligent design itself when it mistook mechanical cause for purpose. If science stops attempting to find mechanical cause, science ceases to be science and starts to be philosophy or religion. Biology cannot simply stop and say that "an intelligent being created that," because it would be the cessation of the act of science itself. Similarly, we philosophers, clerics, and social scientists should not allow science to hijack intelligent design because the question of what purpose lies at the root of the universe is properly ours, not the material of cold, material, mechanical scientists.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Is March a Bad Time for Relationships?
It used to be the case that every March I would get in some serious doldrums with my partner. This year I've been lucky, but that is the first time, I think, even though I've been with my current partner for the last two Marches also. I have an unsubstantiated theory that March is bad on relationships. Perhaps it's spring fever. Perhaps I'm crazy. Any thoughts?
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