Last night I was looking for something else when I came on the paintings of Ernst Haeckel, and immediately forgot what I was looking for. Haeckel was a Lamarckian friend of Darwin who was smitten with the theory of evolution, and decided to paint the variety of forms, publishing a book called Art Forms of Nature.
He died in 1907. The surrealists appreciated his work.
I love how the left likes to go after the right on the evolution thing, which is meant to undermine the entirety of Christianity. If Genesis is wrong, then all of Christianity is wrong, and thus only naturalness can be a reason for everything and Christianity is unnatural, therefore anyone who believes in it is a fool.
I am a fool.
But, I like Ernst Haeckel's paintings.
One of the ways I like to get out of the scientists' wrestling hold is to argue that all of nature is God's canvas, and the different periods of evolution are like the different periods in Picasso's work. Then they say, well, that means you think all the pain of evolution is worth it -- each creature fighting for its life, struggling to attain supremacy over its predators, developing hard shells, larger teeth, fleeter feet, and wilier brains. All that is God's work?
God knows, I say, suggesting that it is above my pay grade to understand the entirety of planetary life from His perspective. I do note that the left is sympathetic to other mammals and is all Christian about saving foxes from their natural predators, and loving birds, collecting Audubon and putting up birdhouses. There seems to be a soft spot in their heads for Nature.
Haeckel apparently invented the term "ecology."
Luther stood up for animals, and said we shouldn't hunt them for fun. He also said that if this was the last day on earth, and he was alive, he would plant a tree.
How do you love pear trees, and not the carpenter ant? How do we love the lamb, and not the wild boar (esp. as it chases us up a tree)? Tusk, tusk. How do we love hummingbirds, and not the AIDS virus? The left believes that all of creation is sacred and beautiful, as part of Gaia. That is, until they get Lyme Disease from hiking (1% of Americans now have Lyme but hey it's natural so let's celebrate it).
If you love nature so much why don't you marry it?
29 comments:
What I find interesting is the way that the conservative Christians make belief in the literalness of Genesis as primary as the belief in God.
What I find interesting about you, Kirby, is that (and I'm not sure if you realize this) while you may be politically conservative, you are not conservative in terms of your Christianity.
I think you have a blind spot to the Intelligent-Design pushing, Evolution-denying, book-banning Christianity that looms large in my part of the country.
Kirby,
There is some truth, and a considerable amount of error in this.
1. Mostly True: The left likes to beat up the right on the evolution issue...
Belief in creationism is hardly universal among the right, and obviously, evolution is of no use in beating up those of the right who believe in it, which is to say, a considerable fraction of the right. That said, it is absolutely useful in beating up those who done. It makes them look like idiots, which in this regard they are, and exposing them as such tends to discredit all of their positions.
But certainly, the left loves the idea that there are some on the right who would set up belief in the intellectually discredible theory of creationism as a lithmus test for membership in the right. Because anything that divides and weakens the right is fine by us.
2. Mostly False: ... which is meant to undermine the entirety of Christianity.
That there are members of the left who perceive Christianity as such as an enemy I'll except, but you should likewise accept that this is rare, and not make such an outrageous misrepresentation. Indeed, as I've often pointed out, my political views are a consequence of my faith, and I am a part of a strong and ancient stream founded by Jesus of Nazereth in this regard.
3. Entirely false: If Genesis is wrong, then all of Christianity is wrong...
Genesis is mythology, not doctrine. That said, if Genesis is wrong, then a literal reading of the Bible is a false reading, as it is. But Christian faith hardly requires or demands a literal reading of scripture, and if you think it does, then the left is in no way responsible for your lack of faith.
4. Incoherent: and thus only naturalness can be a reason for everything and Christianity is unnatural
'nuff said.
5. True, but not by the argument you give. therefore anyone who believes in it is a fool
Certainly, the world at large sees little reason to believe in God as an external, all powerful eternal creator, judge, etc. And the world at large can make even less sense of the notion that such a God would take on humanity, which is to say weakness, foolishness, mortality. They do not understand how it can be the Jesus died, and was resurrected three days later. Such statements indeed foolish, a foolishness that I share.
But the foolishness of people who insist on belief in creationism in the face of evidence that is universally available today are fools of a different sort altogether.
Brett, I've rarely been to the south and am not aware of what it's like there on a cultural basis. I find everything fairly funny and am actually a centrist on most issues, as deeply as I would like to be conservative for pure shock value (ok, I admitted it).
If Marxism is radical leftism, I don't know what radical rightism would be. Is it really fundamentalist Christianity? I don't think it's very different from Marxism. Both posit absolute faith in some Messiah.
While I think Jesus is far more worthy of that mantle than Marx, He also said quite plainly that His kingdom is NOT of this world, so to try to make heaven on earth is a fool's errand.
While I am a foolish person, and therefore a fool, I don't see heaven on earth made by some human trick. We are in a ticklish situation -- we have to eat and this means other creatures are going to die. We have to die, too. If we are too kind to others, they will eat us out of house and home.
If we let someone on our property, they will want a house. Once they have a house, they want a good job. And then they want an education. I think this has to be done in a lawful way. Neither Marxism nor Christianity really have much to say about worldly laws and about democracy -- a Greek invention. I'm with the Greeks through Luther's two kingdoms.
It functions.
All that said, I would like the Bible and Christ to make sense. I find that I can't square what the Bible says with what science says. Luther said that it's ok, you can therefore go with science where science prevails over theology -- in terms of discovering the laws of THIS world.
But what I find funny is that if the law of this world is eat or be eaten, and is basically Caesar's rule, then why do leftists suddenly start talking about human rights for Mexicans, for minorities of every kind, for animals, etc.? Isn't this Christianity sneaking in the back door? If not, what on earth is it?
Stu, I'm probably not so party bound as you are. I am not so fond of the Republicans, as you probably are of the Democrats. I was a third party type for a long time. I vopted for the Owl Party in Seattle for years simply because I thought they were a hoot. I find the Democratic party has little room for humor now, and are so ickily earnest, and dumb.
They used to make some sense to me. But now they won't do basic things like close the borders, win a war, or tell the shiek in New York not right now, ok?
They are now pushed around by their own self-righteousness, and it's ooksville.
Do you find the pictures pretty?
I think they're really something. Isn't Haeckel a find? He decided to make art that was natural because I think the argument was that nature and art don't mix, and only humanity can make beautiful art.
But he points out how beautiful the world of nature is. It's kind of stunning.
Tis late, and I've been working on a jigsaw puzzle of an abstract painting by Norman Rockwell all day. IT has a man named the Connoisseur in a gray suit in front of a Pollock like painting that is 500 pieces of squiggles.
It's taken two whole days to get this thing done! Fihnally Riikka pitched in, and we are almost there. It's a very good picture.
But my mind has almost collapsed from the effort of putting this thing together. I'll try to read your arguments again tomorrow.
The whole puzzle is 1000 pizzas, but the squiggles by themselves are about 500 pieces. The wall around the painting is probably 300 pieces and it's all white, so all we had to go on was the shape of the pieces themselves.
The inner squiggles has no figuration at all, so you had to follow tiny variations in color, andsttrips of blue or green lines, like reading a tiny road map and finding the pieces' places.
An amazing, strange, and probably useless endeavor, but we try to do one of these every Christmas.
Kirby,
I'm probably not so party bound as you are. I am not so fond of the Republicans, as you probably are of the Democrats.
Tough call. You point to non-republican votes when you lived in Seattle. That was a long time ago, wasn't it? I can point to votes I've made for republican candidates, some roughly contemporaneous (e.g., Anderson) and some a bit more recent (Jim Edger for Illinois governor). I suspect that they're few and far between for both of us.
Both the democractic and republican parties are marriages of convenience of disparate groups with disparate agendas. So inevitably, there are parts of the democratic party that I'm o.k. with, and parts that just leave me shaking my head. And there are a parts of the republican party that I'm sympathetic to (e.g., the ever shrinking "good government" and "sane foreign policy" types in the Eisenhower/GHWB mold).
They used to make some sense to me. But now they won't do basic things like close the borders, win a war, or tell the shiek in New York not right now, ok?
Well, it might be noted that the republicans didn't do the first two either, and probably wouldn't have done the third. In any event, I'd heard that the sheik didn't have financing, so this was all pure posturing in any event. I don't see how any of these questions represent decision points between the parties, except in as much as (a) it was the republicans who got us into an unnecessary and unwinnable war in Iraq, and (b) the republicans did push a fencing effort to control immigration -- of course, it was outrageously expensive and ineffective, and so was little more than make-work for their corporate sponsors and propaganda for the easily deceived. After all, the reason that the mexicans are here in the first place is that they can get jobs, and we all know that small businessmen (the people hiring them) break strongly towards the republican party.
Isn't Haeckel a find?
There's a great tradition of scientific art work, especially in the areas formerly known as "natural history," of which Haeckel was a part. Years ago, I taught a course on math/stats/computing for humanities types. We used Gould's "Mismeasure of Man" as a source, and actually went back to the original data sets and had the students use contemporary statisticial tools (c.f., "Data Desk") to visualize/analyze that data/ Along the way, I worked through Morton's catalogues, including "Crania Americana" and "Crania Aegyptia," and the art work is magnificent. The images that Google coughs up are terrible misrepresentations of the precision, fine lines, and subtle shading of the original lithographs.
Kirby, thanks for posting images of the Haeckel paintings. I remember his "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" dictum (that has the developing human embryo manifesting ever-higher stages of the evolutionary process) as a brilliant but mostly faulty apercu.
Biological evolution was not the congregation-rending issue in the RC Church it was for some Protestant communions. Creationism seems not to have been doctrinal since the time of the Church Fathers, nor has intelligent design as natural science been endorsed by the authority of the magisterium.
That nature is "God's art" was a common intellectual and poetic attitude in the 18th c. (e.g., as expressed in Pope's "Essay on Man"), though there is the following c.'s doubt expressed in Tennyson's "nature red in tooth and claw" ("from "In Memoriam").
Trouble with stu's claim the R's got us into an "unwinnable war" in Iraq is that the war has actually been won, though it remains to be seen if a democratically- reconstituted Iraq will attain a relatively peaceful and prosperous future. Of late the jihadis have been targeting the vulnerable Christian communities in the country.
Hmmm...Kirby not party-bound? I mean, I know you were feeling cheerful and newly-open thanks to the Christmas season, and admitted that you pretend to be more conservative than you are to create a response...
That much has been easily decipherable for years, though I'm glad you came out and admitted it outright.
However, in life, and even moreso on the internet, we are what we project ourselves to be.
You may now Claim to not be tethered to the Republicans, but your Words and Actions indicate otherwise...
Such as when you repeatedly call Democrats stupid, and when you lionize even the daftest of Republicans.
Maybe you don't actually Believe those things.
But that's what we Hear from you.
And what we understand about you is only from that which we hear, not that which you might possibly think.
So now we are left to wonder - is Kirby now claiming relatively non-partisan status as a temporary way to deflect criticism?
Or is he openly revealing years of dishonesty?
Kirby,
If you love nature so much why don't you marry it?
You may recall that one of my earliest questions to you was whether you understood the notion of "dominion." You passed then. Would you pass now? Remember, we are answerable for how we treat God's creation. That is reason enough for me, and if should be reason enough for you, to advocate conservation, sustainable usage, etc.
James, could you explain the ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny line? I've heard it before but never understood it.
Brett, there is a problem with the labels. I think something may have happened when I went to Finland and returned. I realized that America is pretty great compared to even the best countries in the world (supposedly) like Finland. Which, I enjoyed, but wasn't exactly welcomed in by everyone (majr skinhead components in that society and I looked like I was from India to them).
I think earlier on, I never thought very seriously about politics, but was always very leery of Marxism, or even the faintest hint of redistribution, because I sensed where it led: to gulags.
Now that the Democrats are more and more openly Marxist, or at least openly redistributionist, and some of their highly placed members such as Howard Dean actually talk in terms of race, gender, and class (instead of grace, tenderness, and grass as they did in my day) I basically got off their meat wagon, but only in about 2006. By now, I am actually voting Republican on almost every vote, but it's only been the last two elections I've been doing this.
I voted for Gore in 2000.
Kerry was an eyesore. I might have voted for Edwards in 2004, had he made it to the top of that heap.
By 2008, he was crazier, and then, of course, there were the problems with his now dead wife and the blonde, and so on.
So we got hte redistributionist.
Fortunately the Republicans got enough of a tilt back so that the economy will begin to recover, and businesses will begin to peek out of the wormholes after the huge storm of the bizarre bills that Obama has managed to pass (which seem to be unconstitutional thanks to the commerce clause).
Stu, sometimes your questions -- are fine. If there is one thing I like stilla bout the Democrats it is the green side. If I sense that they are for something green, but not merely using it as a ruse to expand the government so as to install socialism, then I'm for it, generally.
But Bush is for ecology too. He put a lot of islands.
JADL,
If you think the war in Iraq to have been won, explain your victory conditions. Hussein is gone, I'll give you that. Is the middle east more stable? Horrible as it was, Hussein's Iraq was a counter-weight against Iran, in a way that the current government is not, and likely never will be. Did it decrease the threat of terrorism, or did the US's presence in Iraq facilitate terrorist recruitment?
Put the actual gains, as you see them, against what was lost in lives, wounds, and treasure, and explain how the balance favors us.
JADL,
Let me affirm your comments regarding the RC Church and evolution. The RC church never needed scripture as a counter weight against its own hierarchy, and so never had a reason to commit to scripture as primary authority. The reformers did, and so "sola scriptura." This has given the RCC a bit of maneuvering room, although it has not always been wise enough to use if, c.f., the persecution of Galilelo, which in some ways anticipates fundamentalistic Protestant difficulties with evolution.
The problem for fundamentalists is that they're ultimately unwilling to cede that the RCC was right in part during the reformation.
As an intellectual as well as religious heir of the reformation, I'm hardly about to cede defeat on a broad front to the RCC regarding the reformation, but I do think it is time to acknowledge that there are no easy answers as to the question of authority.
Stu asks some good questions here and I don't want to get in the way of he and JADL's comments as I learn a lot from them. I just hope JADL answers.
The question of authority is something I wanted to take up, and run with a bit.
The French have this great essayistic titling habit in which they nix two authorities -- Ni Marx Ni Jesus, for instance, and then they posit some tertium quid or another.
One of the problems I have had in blogging, and writing, is affiliation. If I am profoundly against Marxism of any variety since it has such a strong tendency, rooted in its poorly structured leadership -- in which it silences the hoi polloi in the name of the hoi polloi and promises that later this structure will wither -- when it only hardens and gets worse and worse a la Kim Jong-Il, to name one of many figureheads, and since it then silences business communities in the name of nationalization, and then completely implodes economies and famine sets in (the dear leader is the last to know since there is no free press), I can hardly be with the left.
The right is strange to me. I don't know many actual rightists. I listen to Limbaugh or Ann Coulter and find them primarily to be extremely funny. That much I like especially compared to the insipid humor of someone like Jon Stewart, who is never just plain silly, or completely ouit of his mind.
But I would like to find some serious centrist position. This is hard to discover, and seems to be largely unpopulated. I dare myself to go further right, and am rarely disappointed by what I find there. I like the Catholic hierarchy as they attempt to filtrate their pedophile priest population, and I like many of the Seventh Day Adventists or Mormons.
I find nothing wrong with these people as people.
The scientist as authority question baffles me. Apparently 94% of scientists are Democrats. I read that recently on Ann Althouse's blog. Does that represent funding sources?
That wouldn't be true in other countries. 100% of scientists in N. Korea would be communist, I presume. In Germany under Hitler, they would have been Nazis.
What constitutes a scientist? How large is their area of authority? Do they understand morality better than others? Do they live better lives than others? Are they more likely to be atheists, as well?
And to see themselves as the only true authority, as Carl Sagan did?
I thought Sagan was a person of no culture whatsoever, couldn't stand his lousy sentences, or his grating voice.
I suppose I go back to the Ten Commandments as the final source of authority. Especially like how Luther parsed them.
I think of myself as something like a Lockean Lutheran.
I think there is something to be said for a certain ecumenism, however. Luther himself said that where science is right, we should listen.
Still not sure about global warming. It snowed in Atlanta this week for the first time since 1882.
Researched the ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny bit:
Ontogeny is the course of development of an organism from fertilized egg to adult; phylogeny is the evolutionary history of a group of organisms. The phrase "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" originated with Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919). It means that as an embryo of an advanced organism grows, it will pass through stages that look very much like the adult phase of less-advanced organisms. For example, at one point each human embryo has gills and resembles a tadpole. Although further research demonstrated that early stage embryos are not representative of our evolutionary ancestors, Haeckel's general concept that the developmental process reveals some clues about evolutionary history is certainly true. Animals with recent common ancestors tend to share more similarity during development than those that do not. A dog embryo and a pig embryo will look more alike through most stages of development than a dog embryo and a salamander embryo, for example.
Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/what-is-the-meaning-of-the-phrase-ontogeny-recapitulates-phylogeny#ixzz19TItwERC
Kirby,
Much to respond to, but it's been a long day.
Still not sure about global warming. It snowed in Atlanta this week for the first time since 1882.
That's not right. I was in Atlanta for the AMS meetings in January of '88. We got hit with a snow storm -- about 6" of stuff the consistency of Italian Ice -- and it was a disaster, as the entire snow removal capability of the state of Georgia seemed to consist of a single Ford Ranger with a 6" blade. Here in Illinois we have IDOT trucks the size of small condominiums to keep the streets clear.
Anyway, we left the meetings to visit my folks, who lived in Clearwater at the time. Plenty of cars on I-75, pretty much all with Michigan plates. Driving through Macon, we heard on the radio that (1) I-75 had been closed for three days (news to us!), and (2) would people with four wheel drive trucks please come help pull the tow trucks out of the ditches.
Kirby, I see you've found a source that explains and exemplifies Haeckel's theory; I'd remembered the gills and tadpole appearance of the human embryo in its early-stage development and likewise the appearance of a human caudal appendage as putative examples. I think another was the fact that the cerebrum in humans develops last.
stu, I think there's little doubt that the war in Iraq was a victory, though not the kind of decisive one if compared to the Allies' victory over the Axis Powers in WWII.
Your points about whether the cost was worth it or whether it helped or hindered the terrorist jihadists are legitimate, though their ongoing campaign against the West seems incidental to the Iraq War. The mere existence of the West (or Israel) with its relatively free and successful institutions seems provocation enough for these barbarous cultists to attack wherever opportunity presents itself (of late, in neutral Sweden and elsewhere).
The current Iraqi government is definitely preferable to the brutal dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, and I've no misplaced regret for his fall. One could speculate as you have on Saddam as a "counterweight" to a nuclear-bent Iran by counter-speculating that Saddam himself might have stepped up his own country's nuclear arms development as a necessary "counterweight." The threat that the dozens of SCUD missiles Saddam fired into Israel during the Gulf War could later have been carriers of nuclear weapons (had Saddam's dictatorship survived) is horrifying. I'm thankful we are no longer facing such a prospect.
Kirby, on the AGW issue, you might check out this short video of the AGW-sceptical astro-physicist and meteorologist Piers Corbyn, whose weather predictions in the last few years have been so uncannily accurate. He's also got the "mad-scientist" look. See him here:
http://video.foxnews.com/v/4475360/mocked-meteorologist-gets-last-laugh
Kirby,
The question of authority is something I wanted to take up, and run with a bit.
Sounds like a plan...
If I might anticipate your thoughts a bit, let me start by positing that divine authority, and only divine authority, will not fail. Note that for atheists, this reduces to the simpler premise that all authority fails.
A corollary, which requires the additional premise that we are not gods, is that all human authority fails. This is one of the foundations of Nuremberg prosecution: as all human authority fails, you can't evade personal responsibility for your own actions via appeal to authority. You are responsible for the choices you make in the authorities you follow.
A core problem for those of us who accept the theological premise "God is," and therefore believe that there is an infallible authority, is in discerning and interpreting that authority. For some, this question is mooted by God himself by direct revelation, but very few have been given the gift of standing with unshod feet before a bush that burns but is not consumed. For the rest of us, it is not so easy, and the very real phenomenon of false prophesy means that we can't simply take the word of those who claim the gift of direct revelation. Even the disciples doubted. We're again confronted with the premise that all human authority fails, and that prophets are human.
Turn now to scripture. Scripture has passed through human hands, and it is established beyond all doubt that the transmission of scripture, while remarkably good, has been less than perfect. Fundamentalists will cite 2 Timothy 3:16-17, All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work. (NRSV) as an internal proof text for scriptural infallibility, but this is a weak argument. Fallible sources often claim infallibility, but all human authority fails. In any event, it is very far from clear that the intended meaning of θεόπνευστος -- God breathed -- is anything like what fundamentalists mean when they use the word "inspired." Ironically, they're not being literal enough in their reading of a central proof text.
The existence of variant texts is certainly clearer to us than it was to the reformers, who were inspired by finally having direct access to imperfect, but original language, texts, and so were in a position to call into question readings of the Vulgate, and arguments for the infallibility of the RCC hierarchy that had been built upon them.
So I see the claim of "scriptural infallibility" as well as "papal infallibility" as theological versions of the Nuremberg defense, resting on the same error. Human authority cannot be trusted blindly, since all human authority fails.
What then? Do I deny all human authority, or claim exemption from its demands upon me? By no means. We all depend on authority, and are subject to its demands. I am no exception. But we cannot use authority to evade personal responsibility, and therefore authority must be tested. And indeed, for this, I can cite scripture as well, for it often speaks of testing by both God and man to ascertaining righteousness, faithfulness, apostolic authority, etc.
Returning again to scripture, we might ask what its uses are. If we test it against the claims of 2 Timothy 3:16, "useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness," is passes, albeit a few caveats. If we test it as a source of scientific knowledge, it often fails. It is our personal responsibility if we ignore the results of those testings.
Kirby,
The scientist as authority question baffles me. Apparently 94% of scientists are Democrats. I read that recently on Ann Althouse's blog. Does that represent funding sources?
No. After all, the funding purse strings have been held by republicans more often than democrats, and until recently, there has been true bipartisanship in the notion that American economic prosperity rests in large part upon technological advances, which rest upon scientific advances.
Let me first throw some doubt on on the Althouse statistic. In my experience, mathematicians are usually politically agnostic, but the exceptions break towards the extremes. Chemists are usually republican, or at least are republican often enough to make the 94% figure extremely doubtful. But I have little doubt that most scientists these days are democratic.
And "these days" is an important caveat. If we wind the clock back to the 60's or before, I expect that we'd find that most scientists then were republican. After all, as JADL has correctly pointed out, prior to the southern strategy, the republican party held the liberal position w.r.t. civil rights, and there was a clear correlation between educational attainment and republican affiliation. What has happened since the '60's though, has been a serious of changes to the republican party that have put it into intellectual and philosophical conflict with the sciences. Part of this is the southern strategy, a conscious choice to visibly reposition itself to the right of the democratic party on civil rights. Part of this is the alliance with evangelical/fundamentalist christianity, which brought with it claims of scriptural authority and a belief that findings of science that run contrary to scripture are demonic. This is most evident in the evolution debate.
Looking forward, I only see this getting worse. Now, we see that the republican party is generally standing against sustainability, in favor of the "rights" of polluters, and in denial about global warming. JADL can cite all of the authorities he likes, as indeed can the creationists. The point is that young scientists coming up will make their own judgments, and are. And vast majorities are making the judgments that evolution is our best explanation for the diversity of life on earth, and that anthropogenic forcing factors are our best explanation for global climate change. These judgments have real consequences as regards the choice of political affiliation, even within a population that judges itself as a meritocracy of accomplishment, and so might seem to be more sympathetic to republican philosophical commitments. But republicans have long since given up their ideas of a meritocracy of accomplishment in favor of antebellum southern ideas that tie aristocracy to wealth to power. It is not the scientists who have changed, but the republican party.
Of course, if you add to this teabagger focus on federal debt, and with it on discretionary expenditures like the NSF, then funding does become an issue. But I think you're got causality reversed. Scientists strongly trend democratic for reasons other than funding, but this trend has resulted in funding attacks against the scientists from the republicans. This will naturally perpetuate the trend.
Authority or legitimacy is an important problem, and maybe that's what we need to look at more thoroughly. Many think that science is and should be the new and only authority.
I can't see that since science can only look at empirical facts and decide if they match a given hypothesis. The hypothesis itself is made up imaginatively, and is therefore always subject to question.
There's a hilarious trend in personality studies where people will claim that some personality mechanism (the enneagram, or the MBTI) has been vetted by thousands of scientific studies. But you can't really prove anything that is self-reported and is so unstable in its nature as personality.
So then some claim personality study is an ART as if that gives it another kind of authority or legitimacy.
These things are highly speculative.
Meanwhile, I'm reading a biography of Chicago poet Carl Sandburg, a native of Galesburg, which is some sixty or ninety miles from Chicago, apparently.
Sandburg was Lutheran as a child, but his pastor was indicted for knocking up a congregant and the congregation split and then the pastor took off with the treasury, leaving the church destitute. Sandburg felt apparently that this destroyed the legitimacy of the church itself to have allowed such a hypocrite into its inner sanctum.
He then turned toward socialism.
But I think Stu is right to grant that only God has Truth in His hands, and the rest of us get only an inkling of that at best, and the transmission is highly likely to be defective in some sense or another.
For those who continue to "follow" Marx, their claim is that Marx didn't mean to create Stalin or Kim Jong-Il, and that it's possible to do better than that.
I really doubt this.
The best chance we have is pluralistic viewpoints, and many different competing parties, agencies, and institutions, with countervalent paradigms, and armies of investigative reporters and poets and others.
Sandburg's reputation was apparently destroyed in part by an article by WCW in Poetry Magazine in 1951 that claimed because he had articulated no coherent poetic theory, he had produced a "formless mass" of work" (cited in Penelope Niven's biography of Sandburg, xiii).
Niven claims that some of the Beats liked Sandburg (especially Ginsberg, I should think), and that presidential correspondence and many other correspondences continue to make him a worthwhile read.
This whole notion of legitimacy through affiliation, through publication, and so on, is almost very important. And then of course along comes the boy and says the Emperor has no clothes.
JADL,
We defeated Saddam Hussein. If that's your victory condition, then you can indeed claim victory. It seems to me to be a remarkably low bar, though, as well as an ex post facto one, given the aspirations of those who advocated for the Iraq war.
You say that the on-going campaign against the West is incidental to the Iraq War. There is truth in this, but I think also in the notion that aggressive western armies in Arab states, waging war on false pretenses, has been a tremendous boon to them in recruitment, which is to say the means by which that campaign is fought. Far from cutting off the root of terrorism, we've watered it.
I concur that the current Iraqi government is preferable to Hussein's by most measures, although this is a more difficult judgment than you seem to believe. Hussein, at least, kept a lid on most sectional violence (the exception, of course, being Muslim vs. Kurdish violence, one of the few legitimate causes for war, and in the end, the legal basis for the post-war trials of Hussein and his lieutenants). The question of whether the level of violence Hussein used to keep a lid on sectional violence was greater or lesser than the sectional violence itself seems like a legitimate topic for discussion, and I doubt it favors your position.
I agree that a nuclear-armed Iraq would have been a disaster, but I'd also argue that you're seriously misreading me if you think that by a "counter-weight," I am positing a nuclear Iraq, or if you believe that a nuclear Iraq was a reasonable possibility given the post-Gulf War I compliance and inspection regime. But I don't believe that Iraq would have had to have gone nuclear to serve as a counter-weight to Iranian aspirations, even given a nuclear Iranian state. Iran will find nuclear weapons to be useful politically or diplomatically, but any attempt to actually use them will result in reprisals it is unwilling to face. Iran is, after all, very far behind Israel (considering Israel in isolation, which is unrealistic) in the number and quality of weapons, and even more so in the ability to deliver them with useful precision. Hussein's SCUD attacks, it might be remembered, were pursued without any real ability to monitor impact locations, and so were militarily ineffective.
In any event, you concede that my questions about cost vs. benefit are legitimate, but don't address them further. Let me posit that a "Pyrrhic victory" is no more than a strategic defeat hidden in the guise of a tactical victory, and that's what we've had here.
Kirby, like stu, I'm sceptical of the 94% of scientists are Ds claim, though I'd dispute a number of other claims stu makes.
I think Rs have not rejected the "meritocracy of accomplishment," and liberal Ds have been conspicuous in promoting strong "affirmative action" measures, including quotas, university admissions and hiring preferences, minority set-asides in contracts (which for some D pols has pitted African-Americans against all other racial and ethnic minorities in claiming racial preferences, or very often since the 70s African-Americans against Caucasian women), even racial reparations, or recently in the Akaka bill, statutory ethnic favouritism for "aboriginal" Hawaiians. Meritocracy, indeed.
And it's the Ds (especially wealthy ones, as of the richest 10 members of Congress, 7 are Ds) who favour the federal political and bureaucratic patronage system that rewards dependable D constituencies like selected racial minorities and government employee unions (the latter of which should not even exist).
stu even resorts to the spurious comparison between AGW sceptics ("deniers" is misapplied to a considerable number of them) and creationists here:
"Now, we see that the republican party is generally standing against sustainability, in favor of the 'rights' of polluters, and in denial about global warming. JADL can cite all of the authorities he likes, as indeed can the creationists." Perhaps stu might offer examples of scientifically-qualified AGW critics who are also creationists.
And in place of "sustainability," read "lower standard of living" and "rapidly rising energy costs to support in many cases costly and inefficient 'green' power sources like ethanol, solar, wind, and tidal. For example, since the Scottish government opposes all nuclear power production, its wind turbines that are supposed to generate a third of its power actually can now generate only 2 1/2% of demand--the solution? Bien sur, purchase nuclear power energy from France! This situation reminds one of the current administration's demur on increasing proven sources of energy production (fossil fuel and nuclear) here in the States.
Or for "'rights' of polluters" read "freedom for producers of vital energy and industrial commodities to respond to demand within sensible limits for environmental protection."
The Kurds, large and small, have been the real victors in this war, having managed to segue off from the fighting, and have a quiet and nice northern spot to get going in.
The Assyrian Christians, largely located in Mosul, expected to come out as victors, but are being shredded. They've lost more than half of their population already (mostly to emigration), and that trend should continue. Christians were a strong middle class under Saddam, and his VP was Christian.
There goes that.
Because of all the factions in Iraq, that war set off a powder keg.
But I think it'll have to settle down eventually.
The Kurds have it nice.
I think everything is uncertain now throughout the region because Obama sends so many mixed signals. Everyone knew what Bush thought on every topic.
No one knows what Obama's really thinking on any topic whatsoever.
He's a mystery wrapped in an enigma, papered over with PC symbols. He's a kind of IED.
You just never know where he's going to go off, or why.
One day it's all "fat cat bankers need to be reigned in" and the next "we need the entrepreneurs" and the next, "we need huge taxes,"
and whatever. He just signs something eventually.
The guy just isn't clear. It's as if we won the Civil War or almost did under Lincoln, and then Buchanan was the next president.
JADL,
Perhaps stu might offer examples of scientifically-qualified AGW critics who are also creationists.
This is not necessary, and certainly overstates any claim that I made. My claim was that creationists also have scientifically trained authorities who they cite in much the same way that JADL cites AGW deniers/skeptics. Creationism is certainly a more marginal position than Global warming skepticism/denial. And I'd actually make a distinction here between global warming deniers, who deny the extensive evidence for global warming, and skeptics, who deny (or minimizes) the role of anthopogenic factors, but affirm the reality of the warming data.
Anyway, regarding the claim I actually made, I invite you to wander over to the institute for creation research, and to follow the link About Us > Research > Impact Articles. A standard template for those who oppose science is to position themselves as the "real" scientists, and the consensus as the fakers. I'm not arguing that this appearance is an argument against AGW denial/skepticism, just against your argument that this appearance is an argument for AGW denial/skepticism.
And in place of "sustainability," read "lower standard of living" and "rapidly rising energy costs to support in many cases costly and inefficient 'green' power sources like ethanol, solar, wind, and tidal.
It's far from clear that sustainability equates to lower standard of living on anything other than the shortest time scales. There's good evidence that we're past peak oil, and that accelerating demand means exhaustion of economically exploitable reserves in decades. Playing a pat hand also means a lower standard of living, and even more rapidly rising energy costs. We're going to need alternatives, and the more time we give ourselves to work on them, the better they're likely to be.
As for the Scottish government, I think we will need to reconsider nuclear (more precisely, fission-based) power. Certainly, the balance sheet of cost vs. benefit has changed since the last time this exercise was done, as has our knowledge of the dangers and costs (both up-front and hidden) of nuclear power.
As for "sensible limits for environmental protection," contemplate the Gulf of Mexico, and the all-to-recent disaster therein.
Kirby,
Many think that science is and should be the new and only authority.
I'm doubtful that "many" think any such thing. Certainly science has authority within its own domain. That domain consists of making observations about the physical universe, and then making testable hypotheses about the physical universe. It does not include aesthetics, nor morality, nor religious faith, to give a few examples.
This isn't to say that science has nothing to say on questions outside of its own domain, merely that we cannot look to science alone for answers.
Let's consider an example. Science can't decide the abortion debate, which ultimately depends on notions like the sanctity (vs. value) of life, whose life is at issue, etc. But questions can arise within the context of that debate that science can, at least in principle, answer. E.g., at what gestational age does a fetus feel pain? At what age is it capable of life outside of the womb? But these are not the central question.
stu, I didn't offer my request for examples of scientifically-qualified AGW sceptics who are also creationists as an argument, but as an ironical reference to the rhetorical juxtaposition of the two that sometimes AGW proponents unfairly make, with the "just as bad as" implication. I'm pleased you don't agree. Likewise that of AGW "deniers" with Holocaust deniers. Or the ad hominem "in the pocket of big oil" canards frequently levelled against sceptics (or conversely, "no government grant without an AGW reference or conclusion" charge on the other side). And like you, I've tried in the past to distinguish between types of AGW sceptics as well as the reasons for their respective scepticism.
I realise that fossil fuels are not renewable resources and I agree alternatives eventually will have to be found, or, like nuclear energy (once demonised by the left), expanded, though "peak oil" estimates vary and unconventional sources like oil sands and oil shale are not often counted in the reckoning of potential resources.
I don't know how prominent the scientists are all you need group are -- but certainly Dawkins has no need for theology, art, or anything else, it seems. Another similar mind is that Daniel Dennett. In his Darwin's Dangerous Idea he implies that science is more than enough, and that through it we can find the entire universe as sacred. Which is a ridiculous idea, because it means we would worship the Lyme virus next to the rainbow.
You get that sense too through Haeckel. You could make equally beautiful paintings of poisonous spiders, or again, of various viruses.
But I am glad that Stu sees the necessity for other dimensions of thought and experience.
I am, by the way, continuing to poke along in my mathematical studies, but until I arrive at a clearing or a newly intense thicket, shall remain mum.
I don't know the entirety of Haeckel's work by any stretch but my guess is that in folding art back into science, he tends to cut off any need for art to stand on its own outside of science. That imperialistic maneuver of SOME scientists (Dexter-ish if not Dexter-ous) drives me nuts. Carl Sagan would be another.
The problem for me with many of these guys is their horrible wooden prose. Sagan is just awful, Dennett somehow even worse, and people like Dawkins, generally just plain reductionistically ooksville.
I know that I'm getting in late on this, and the discussion has nothing to do about animals :D
Personally, j'adore boar. It is the finest meat on God's green Earth. A carnivore hasn't lived until she's tasted some wild boar that's fed on wild mushrooms, northern truffles, and berries.
Eastern Europe is now overrun with the beasts because their habitat is finally recovering from the pollution of Soviet-era industrial activity. Where they used to have two or three boarlets, now they have seven or eight.
I had some gorgeous boar in Budapest. If you haven't had it, it's a revelation (with a side of blackberry wine sauce).
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