Commenter Archive

Bob, this isn't really the place, but if you want to gave a real conversation, you can find me.

Bob, I'm quite sure you don't know what my position on science and myth are. At most I've expressed here the fairly self-evidence position that when the empirical claims of religion (e.g., that the earth is 6,000 years old, that all humans descend from two individuals who were created de novo, independent of all other species, etc.) contradict well established empirical fact, we have good reason for siding with the well established empirical fact. In fact, in some cases, to do otherwise is to our very real detriment, as in the case of antibiotic resistant bacteria.

My own views on the nature of man are not limited to the findings of empirical science. I am not a fan of the notion that science is the sole arbiter of truth. Quite the contrary. I'm of the belief that science is limited to (as one German might say) reasons, and the nature of beings is not exhausted by their reasons. As Voegelin often engaged that German in his work, I'm sure you can follow where that all is going.

Tom, since no one here has suggested only teaching science (to the exclusion of all else), or has been brutalizing anything, I consider those to be straw men. Perhaps you were referring to people not participating, though. In which case, good to know.

I've said this before, when Tom has brought out the "Brutalizing these people’s religious consciences" nonsense, but pointing out that people are wrong, by any measure of rightness and wrongness, and that they are being manipulated by people who know better, doesn't amount to brutalizing anything.

In addition, nothing in criticizing young Earth creationism implies that science, and only science, should be taught. How many straw men can you fit into one comment?

By the way, people may be able to get by without evolutionary theory, but they damned well better heed its consequences, and do things like take their full courses of antibiotics, otherwise they risk not living very long, and what's more, their negligence could affect me. If they heed the consequences of evolution, and guard against its negative ones, I don't really care whether they believe it's evolution that causes drug resistant bacteria and viruses.

Since I was talking about creationists and the people who mislead them, I think you can probably infer my opinion on the matter.

Having known a lot of creationists in my day, some of them quite well, I've always looked at them as being of two types, one of which might reasonably be considered evil. The first type is your average, ordinary, everyday creationist. He or she lives in a world in which creationism is, in many ways, the only possible belief. Not only do these people face a great deal of social pressure to believe as they do, but also to only accept certain authorities' views and pronouncements as true. The only way out is generally a radical break with family, friends, and their social community in general, along with accepting authorities whose views they've been taught are from the devil, essentially. These people aren't evil. They' re sometimes quite intelligent, too. They're just extremely sheltered, and they've been duped.

The second type of creationist writes books, goes on Christian TV shows, speaks at churches, etc. These, along with the religious leaders who promote them, are the authorities whom it is OK for the first type to listen to. They are usually smart enough and educated enough to know the truth, that is to know that they're full of shit in their "scientific" and theological critiques of evolution and modern cosmology, biology, geoscience, etc., but they choose to spread that shit anyway because it brings them money, respect, and a certain amount of fame. These people, and to some extent the religious authorities who promote them, can definitely be consisted evil. They spread ignorance and prejudice for personal gain. If that's not evil...

Yeah, I was just confirming that he wasn't a charlatan.

Not that I think postmodernism and charlatanism are synonymous, mind you. I just recognize when people are using the term postmodernism that way.

Also, Bonhoeffer's theological work, as opposed to his work on living as a Christian, tends to be co-opted by all sorts of Christians, because it's incomplete and unsystematic. It can be interpreted in a lot of ways. That's why it says a lot about a, person who holds Bonhoeffer's work as an example of serious theology -- it means they either haven't read a lot of theology or they have an agenda.

Bonhoeffer was a fascinating man, and hardly a jargon-slinging charlatan (I assume that's what you mean by "postmodern"). His stand against Nazism was truly heroic as well. But one is certainly showing where he or she stand by choosing to use Bonhoeffer as an example of a true theologian.

Also, on the Bible and science:

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/galileo-tuscany.html

I mean too many to have a sense of what's easy to understand. I use fairly complex, graduate level math in my work and even thinking about thinking about GR geometry makes my head hurt.

Anyone who thinks General Relativity is easy to understand has taken way too many math courses (well beyond what's needed for econ), or doesn't have a clue what they're talking about.

I'll never forget Alexander Hamilton's version of Shrodinger's Cat, or Madison's brilliant essays on the halting problem.

Can you point to a time when science, either in its modern form or in its more general form as it was practiced before Bacon or Kepler or Galileo, say, was not political?

The fact is, politics will always infect science, and science will always be used for political ends, because science is a human social institution, and politics uses any ammunition it can get. Neither directions of influence is an indictment of science, however.

The more I read you, Bob, the more you look like a good ol' pragmatist, adopting the positions you adopt to avoid the implications you perceive in alternative views, and which you find unacceptable for practical purposes. You have more in common with those who adhere to a vulgar scientism than you think.

That's a really interesting view of history, Bob.

Alternatively, oh Bob, you say the darndest things.

I, personally, would not be proud of killing people or participating in the killing of people, even if I believed it was for a just cause (like stopping the Nazis, Fascists, and Imperial Japanese). But I don’t think it’s a moral blind spot if people are proud of their work in service of a just cause, as long as they fought as humanly as it is possible to do when killing other human beings.
I’ve already made my points about the motivations of Confederate soldiers, which no one has disputed (save Bob saying that I’m a product of the public education system, which I believe he considers to be a counterargument), so I won’t get back on that little hobby horse of mine, but I will say this: the Union Army fought “total war”, to a greater or lesser extent, in Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia, and Mississippi (Tennessee, which was full of Unionists, was fairly free of destruction not caused by the fighting itself), but I don’t see that how it was much different from any other major war of that century, or any past century, in which one army invades the territory of another which is occupied by a civilian population loyal to the enemy of the invader. Again, I wouldn’t be proud of it, but it’s what war is. There were truly egregious instances, to be sure, but for the most part the Union fought like an invading army (and the Confederates like a desperate one, which means they weren’t always so great to their own civilian population). I, personally, wouldn’t be proud of serving, even though I consider the results of the Union victory to be highly just, but I don’t think it’s a moral failing in someone who is proud of service that results in such an outcome simply because in some cases some soldiers on their side went beyond the boundaries of the ordinary conduct of war, or even because some generals told some soldiers to do so (as happened in South Carolina, e.g.).

You seem to be confusing what an army or nation is fighting for and how it fights. The fact is, in any war, every side will commit highly immoral acts. It’s part of war, and one of the many reasons why war itself is immoral and should therefore be undertaken only when all other alternatives have been exhausted. But if one is proud to have helped defeat the Nazis, Fascists, or Imperial Japanese, that doesn’t seem like much of a moral blind spot, unless one participated in such acts like the fire-bombing of civilians or killing of unarmed POWs. Again, if one is proud of that service, then one certainly has a moral blind spot.

That is an incredible letter.

I’m curious – if it was immoral to be a Confederate soldier (the victors always write the history books)… what about those Union soldiers who served under Sherman? Or to go a step further, what about the men and women who served in the same Army that fire-bombed Dresden?

I'm not sure what you know or don't know about Sherman, but their actions once they crossed the Savannah were immoral, to be sure, and being proud of that service in South Carolina would be a moral blindspot. In Georgia, the atrocities were minimal and generally committed by rogue units, whereas in South Carolina there was an organized plundering and widespread pointless destruction (Union soldiers weren’t too fond of South Carolina). I don’t consider what Sherman did in Georgia any more immoral than war generally. The fire-bombing of Dresden, or Tokyo, and perhaps even dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, would also constitute moral blind spots for anyone who was proud of participating in them (it’s interesting to watch McNamara deal with the conflicts between the moral and economic calculus of these acts in Fog of War).

Yeah, Congressmen have apologized because they said Rush is not a thinker, which he's not. I don't know about you, but that makes me worry more about Rush. If speaking the truth, and it can't be said enough that it is the truth, is so dangerous because an individual wields enough influence to make it dangerous, that's much more frightening than bloggers who had some influence on Howard Dean voters in 2004.

The fact is that before the American Revolution, there was a significant number of people who thought slavery to be a moral abomination, and by the time of the Civil War, when much of the civilized world had already abolished slavery, there was a huge abolitionist movement in the U.S. Because southerners viewed slavery as a "noble institution" doesn't mean that we can't see them through better eyes, because better eyes existed then. And plenty of them!

The "as they understood themselves" nonsense is a cop-out. There is no one way that people understand themselves at a given time. Bolsheviks (and their opponents, let's be fair) viewed their slaughtering of any and all opposion, or even potential opposition, in 1918, as a necessity. Do you think it's wrong to judge the Bolsheviks by our standards? And what's to stop us from applying this pernicious view to today's world? I suspect, in fact I'm quite sure, that you don't look at radical Islam and judge the rightness or wrongness of suicide bombing by considering how radical Muslims "understand themselves." But that is how they view themselves? In your relativism lies the route to the justification of every irrational and inhuman prejudice, every sort of oppression, because they are merely products of the way people view themselves.

So whose "understanding of themselves" do we choose when thinking about the Civil War and slavery? I'm going to go with the side that respected human dignity. I suppose you can pick whichever side you please, just don't pretend that in doing so you've selected the only, or even the most historically accurate position.

Tom, you remind me of the Black Knight. You will declare victory no matter how few limbs you have left.

Tom, I was merely repeating a previous critique: you never say anything or argue for a position, you just quote people and then say anyone who disagrees with you is biased. If that's what constitutes getting my ass kicked by you, then I certainly am.

Bob, since I actually presented several arguments, from different perspectives, arguing the same thing (and it's not the view of today only, it was a common view then as well), I'm not sure you're doing anything more than rationalizing your own indefensible position by convincing yourself I, not you (or Tom), am the one who is biased.

I know this is well-trodden territory, but the assertion that being proud of fighting for the Confederacy is not a moral blind spot is absurd. Sure, as Bob says, many southerners (particularly after 1862) fought because "they were down here," but that's just the immediate cause. It always surprises me that someone like Bob, who's always talking about underlying causes, focuses only on the immediate cause here, but I suspect he has ulterior motives.

Even if we look only at the immediate cause (for some, not all Confederate soldiers), the argument that it was not a moral failing falls apart quite quickly. For example, there were certainly many who volunteered or were conscripted into the Heer in 1944 or '45 who fought because they, the Russians and the Americans-British-Canadian-French-Polish were moving in on Germany or actually on German soil. Were they not still fighting for the army of the Nazi State? Should they be proud of that fact?

What's more, still sticking with the immediate cause (and accepting that it was the main one) it ignores the fact that they still had a choice. By some estimates more than 100,000 southerners fought in the Union army. These peoples' homes and families were equally threatened (in some cases, more so, as many were from states like Tennessee and Virginia where most of the fighting took place), but they made a choice not to fight for the Confederacy. And it was a difficult choice, but the right choices often are.

But the immediate cause was not the only cause, or the primary cause, of the war. They were down here because the southern states seceded, and made it clear that violence was the only way to restore the Union, short of accepting the South's position on the main issue that resulted in secession: a guarantee that slavery could still exist in the South. And most southerners supported secession, and most favored states rights, which at the time meant slavery.

And it's clear that many, many soldiers considered themselves to be fighting for states rights (read just about any war memoir by southern foot soldiers -- not officers, enlisted and noncoms). The culture of the Confederate Army promoted states rights, in much the way that every army promotes a cause (fighting terrorism, say, even in Iraq). And states rights meant slavery.

By the way, it's equally absurd to say "we see slavery as wrong now, but times were different then." There was a large abolitionist movement by the time of the Civil War, and plenty of people saw slavery as a moral evil.

BlaiseP, Plato had plenty of moral blindspots. Slavery? Infanticide?

You consider it an argument? Funny, I think of it as a clarification.

Granted, I persist in the cause of Raiders hatred because I find Raiders fans so insipid.

Bob, do you really believe global warming was Gore's idea, or do you just need bogiemen to make you feel better about your, own world-view?