NOT THE SEASON FOR ATHEISTS?

Here is a column I submitted to the Faith and Values page of the Spokesman. It was in response to the October guest column of a retired theology professor. I got the cold shoulder, even though I had been encouraged earlier to submit something from the atheist perspective. Is this the wrong season for diverse views?

In last month's column, Professor Howard Redmond reported that he and his Christian brethren are apt to leave out the subject of human suffering or, "natural evil," as they sit over coffee and donuts to explore the basic tenets of their theology. It is interesting to read such a confession. Though I do not believe that human suffering can be confined to disappointment and aimlessness, as he seems to say. And also, I would rather see Redmond and others state flat out their tacit assumption that God exists before they go on to discuss evil and so forth. It would show a more proper humility in the face of such a momentous question. As while it might seem redundant to some, readers like me are offended by the implication that we need to share this belief in order to be brought into the discussion But that won't stop me. To my mind, God is a fiction , the implications of which I find frightening and disturbing.

According to Redmond, "If we disobey or ignore him (our heavenly father), there are consequences we bring upon ourselves. But he always wishes our good." Consequences? Does he mean punishments? I could take it that way. Or if he is including good consequences, what is the point?. I'll bet that at the least he does not have in mind as a consequence anything which I might put on my list to Santa. So here I am, both ignoring and disobeying an omnipotent and omniscient tyrant - real, in the eyes of many. Shouldn't I be shaking in my boots, in case the faithful feel God needs help in meting out proper consequences?

The entire argument, used by Reynolds, that " In all things God works for good" is total malarkey on its face. It says that God allows evil so that some good will come in the future - hooray for God's providence. But without these evils permitted by God there would surely be much more good. Isn't that obvious? The unreasonable desire for faith in such a chimera as God blinds one to what should be crystal clear.

Evil is here to stay though it certainly should not be welcome. And in fact, belief in God has contributed more than its share to the total supply. But since there is no credible evidence supporting the argument for the existence of either a good God, an evil God, or any kind of God in between, it does not seem likely that he has anything to do with it, and hence there should be no real problem of God permitting evil. So why are these theologians giving themselves such a headache over the matter? Oh, that's right, they're theologians Astrologers get tangled up in the same way.

One issue that does give me pause is the huge number of humans that profess to believe in a God and his prophets. And when I see included in this number people I love or respect, the mystery for me deepens. That's when I like to recall the words of the great French mathematician LaPlace: "The mind has its illusions as the sense of sight; and in the same manner that sense of feeling corrects the latter, reflection and calculation correct the former." And it seems when an emotional payoff is added to the mental illusion it is extra hard to right the ship. But I have hope that in time more of the world will dig down and begin the required reflection and calculation

Finally, the authoritarian overtones contained in the references by Reynolds to a heavenly father and his children are disturbing. He asserts correctly that love can not be commanded - even by his God. But what about commanding belief in the absence of evidence? Should not our reason be free from commandments just as our love is? After all, if something appears false the best and most natural thing we can do is to acknowledge the fact, while of course leaving ourselves open to rational rebuttal or contrary evidence .

How has mankind lasted this long? We have proven ignorant enough to believe the most outlandish propositions; such as, the sun revolves around the earth, sex has nothing to do with birth, the meek shall inherit the earth, gods exist, and chiropractors can improve our overall health. And all this as so-called rational beings. But this is not the worst of it. We are consensually dictated to by unqualified strong men, many drugged, drunk, or half crazy. Not only are we ruled by such people. We have those just like them tending to our medical, dental, legal, engineering, and accounting needs. For spiritual needs, we turn to sexual deviates. Isn't this all enough to inspire a mass suicide. Apparently not, since we are still here and these curses seem to be in a roughly steady state.

There is one flaw though that is not in a steady st ate and combined with the above propensity for stupidity should shortly prove fatal. That flaw is our need to fight, evolving into a need for bigger and bigger wars. And the bitter thing is that there will be no one on this planet left to say, they did it to themselves.

CELL PHONE KILLS MUSING

See that girl coming out of the movie with a cell phone on her ear? What do you suppose she might be doing if she had no cell phone? Possible she and people like her would be musing; thai is, pondering or in deep thought. And that would be good. But one does not ponder well while talking on a cell phone. Hence, the world is being denied billions of hours of musings by the ubiquitous cell phone. That is not good. Einstein is said to have been a prolific muser. And many examples of genius such as songs and plays have been written in one's head while musing. Lyrics to Midnight Sun were written that way on a drive in a California desert. If Shakespeare had had a cell phone we may not have heard of Hamlet.

Of course, you might say these people dashing around or lolling in public while talking on their cell phones are brainstorming, a very popular way of "creating" in this day and age. But I have heard many of these "conversation" from one end and that does not seem to be the rule.

It is hard to see how to stop this plague, this ongoing idea dearth, but we may at least be able to plan for coping with the dire results. That is, if we can find time off from our cell phones to muse on it.

SACCO & VANZETTI COMMEMORATION

Remember that 80 years ago today Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two immigrant anarchists who loved the America of Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine, were unjustly executed by the state of Massachusetts. I am nearly certain they were both innocent. But the ideals and opinions of those who say that they were do not fall upon the guilt of the two anarchists, though those ideals and opinions do soar upon the fact of their innocence. It is in this circumstance that one can see the rot of which we must rid this country.

The judge, the jury, the prosecutor, and much of the public wanted to see these two draft-dodging, Italian immigrant, atheistic anarchists slain - evidence and justice be damned. And this is what they got, in the hope that the execution would send a warning to all such men and women, and so save the country for the "good" people. Well, two years later the capitalist economy came crashing down, and not much later we were plunged into a horrific war, neither the doings of anarchists or immigrants, but of the capitalists themselves.

IRONY OF OUR AGE - PART I

The most brilliant men and women who were ever born are now with us. They comprehend the most complex material facts of the universe. Their individual brains are full to capacity and so they must work in teams, further multiplying their brilliance. Yet, we have a much larger horde of the dumbest bastards who were ever born and raised running rampant and threatening our existence. What a tragedy!

It is not simply pathetic education, though there's plenty of that. The American southern black was educated in sub par schools for years, yet he was smart enough to know it and to do something about it. The modern moron does not want to know the truth. He is too busy with booze, drugs, sex, religion, mindless travel, kissing his boss's butt, gaming, gambling, and making money - all things which take no serious thinking.

This trend was underway, as I see it, soon after the traumatic last world war, which was also not far from the end of a terrible economic depression. Brains were affected. We can see evidence for this in the political victories of DDE, first over Robert Taft and then over Adlai Stevenson. I'm not even saying here that Eisenhower was a bad President, but he was much dumber than his opponents. And many, many American voters admired that.

How is being deliberately dumb harmful? I'll let you know in part II.

I see that the current slant on the Spokane anarchists in the park dust up is that the police were protecting protesters from flag loving citizens. Weren't those thugs who threatened the protesters breaking the law?. What does our Chief of Police say about that? Why did the police not arrest the vigilantes, or at least take their pictures ? And it is disturbing that there have been so many letters to the Spokesman supporting such vigilante actions.

Two of the most shameful events in the history of this state were massacres of protesters carried out by vigilantes with tacit support of the police, one in Everett in 1916 and one in Centralia in 1919. Those particular incidents were a long time ago, but recall the citizen violence carried out during the more recent civil rights movement. . Let us not return to those days of lynch mobs and the abandonment of legal protection for those we don't like.

Please, Mayor Hession, get your police force under control and adopt a policy that requires everyone on the force to understand and support the principles of people like Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine, two men without whom there would be no Independence Day

ATHEISM AT LAST?

Can it be true? Are we finally to embark along a path leading to the time when a significant majority of the world outgrows religion? Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens are three bright and articulate writers who hope so and are doing their part to help. And they are not alone. Check out the upcoming (September) atheist conference in Washington D.C..

God Is Not Great, by Hitchens, is the latest of these books to get to the public. Harris wrote A Letter to a Christian Nation and Dawkins gave us The God Delusion. These are said by most reviewers to be a delight to read, proving that arguments from evidence do not have to be dry. It is amazing to me that three such books have arrived on the best selling scene over such a short time..

Let's skip the excellent credentials of the three writers. You can look them up. But each work establishes its own validity; a different kettle of fish, you’ll notice, from so much writing of the religious, which must resort to the authority of a god or prophet. Harris, Hitchens and Dawkins rely on neither prophets nor gods, nor do they claim to be such. They simply have well-trained and keen minds, capable of finding truth where it exists. And they certainly convince me that there is no such thing as God.

But can they and their followers convince enough people so we finally have a world where there is no God? History does not hold out promise. Various regimes have tried over many years to stamp out religion and so far have failed. There is no doubt there is a mysterious universality of religious feeling, or at least a susceptibility to it's blandishments. But of course, that is no proof of a religion's validity. There are a number of theories as to the source of these puzzling "irrational" feelings and as to why they are defended with such passion.

The Stanford mathematician Keith Devlin offers, in a different context, one interesting speculation as to the source of this passion. Devlin is a regular contributor to NPR and on one of his shows he discussed a certain probability problem with a counter-intuitive correct answer . It is called the Monty Hall problem (see wickepedia) Many listeners were so sure their incorrect answer was correct they become quite angry with Devlin for demonstrating otherwise. He pondered this response, since it was so contrary to that of his students when he corrected their papers. Here's what he came up with.

Devlin posits that we have two reasoning processes. One he calls our everyday reasoning, and it has been "a highly successful survival strategy throughout evolutionary history, and today, is to base decisions on the immediate past and on the evidence immediately at hand." And though it rarely serves us well in this day and age, we are stuck with it. The other reasoning is that which we need for numerical calculations and to rigorously examine evidence, rather than to make unreliable snap judgments which would have been in the interest of our physical survival some thousands of years ago. But the first type of reasoning, Devlin asserts, while not often arriving at truth is a tremendous source of pride to us and its abandonment instinctively seen as a threat. So in a sense it seems a matter of life and death that we are right when relying on it. He feels that the Monty Hall problem is phrased so that this reliance on it is triggered. Is the same thing going on with religious beliefs?

A slew of other theories as to why religious feelings are so universal is presented by Paul Gabels in his recent book on the persistence of religion in Russia. Again they are mostly based on natural selection. But the bottom line is this: I am not going to believe something for which there is no evidence and is contrary to reason. Others are going to defend such beliefs, based on feelings and natural impulses. And if we don't kill one another, or others, over the dispute, what's the problem? But if we do, something must be done.

Concise General Statement and Solution of Monty Hall Problem

Two required math facts: For any integer n > 2, (n-1)/n > 1/n; The probability (Pr) of either event A or event B is the sum of Pr(A) and Pr(B) and equals 1, provided that Pr (A and B) = 0 and the two events exhaust the universe of events under consideration

Let there be n > 2 rooms, one which contains a car, all others being empty. If using a prescribed method of selection you pick the room with the car, you win the car. Here is the method: You pick one of the n rooms at random; i.e. with probability 1/n. Then (n-2) empty rooms are removed from the drawing and you are left with the option of selecting one of the two remaining rooms. Now, if you want to have the best chance of winning the car, do you keep your first selection or switch? That is the problem.

Solution: Since the car is certainly in one and only one of the rooms, the two probabilities are 1/n and 1-1/n = (n-1) /n. So our math facts say to switch and also that you increase your chances (n-1) times by doing so. The original Monty Hall problem was for n=3 and had several mentions of goats and doors.

The two current writers to whom everyone should be paying the most attention are Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins. Superstition has hampered human progress for thousands of years but it is only now that it directly threatens the survival of the human race. Yes, I mean it! And Harris and Dawkins are two of of a too small band of rationalists who have the nerve to speak to the problem without apology and with readily accessible works.

A scary side note to the above is a study in the current issue of Sceptic. Researchers suggest that superstition may be inherent and heritable. So we may be doomed by this path in any case. Right now I don't want to accept that.

INMATES TAKING OVER THE ASYLUM

I know it's a cliche, but our public discourse as reported in the columns and letters of the Spokesman-Review is truly a case of insanity in charge, with a fair share of mendacity thrown in to boot.

In the 2/27/07 letter section we have a letter writer attempting to make his case against man made global warning on the back of a petition circulated by the totally discredited Frederick Seitz to a list of "scientists." Before he reached his dementia, Seitz was the man who (mis) directed a major tobacco company's research into the harmful effects of tobacco.

A couple weeks ago the syndicated columnist Thomas Sowell tried to say Toyota was outbattling GM because they were non-union, completely ignoring the fact Toyota pegs their wages to the union wages at GM, only differing by pennies. This is the sort of phoniness in which Sowell regularly engages. Any fact that contradicts his biases is ignored, twisted, draped with obsfucation, or otherwise violated.

I want to start a list of a certain type of word. These will be words that are too little understood by many of those who use them. The thought behind them is quite fuzzy but the words reek of importance or erudition. The first word I put on the list is democracy. The second and last for today is parameter. Each of these words is in a different category of fuzziness. For democracy it would take a long essay to explain but take it from me it fits our definition. For parameter it is when the word is used informally that it fits. I'm still trying to come with a word or phrase to describe these words - and there are a lot of such words.

As the media attacks on Mayor Hession and his clandestine ways pick up, and the election campaing gets into full swing, it becomes even more clear that Spokane's strong mayor system is a bust. The architects of the change from the prior system were mostly looking to create a job for themselves. Al French worked mightily on the change and he is now running against Hession. And there may be more from the group of "founders" who will toss the old dunce hat into the ring. Power and the spotlight are quite magnetic.

Finally!!! A public official is speaking out against this tax increment financing dodge. Spokane County Treasurer Skip Chilberg is threatening a lawsuit if that form of theft of public property is used to help finance the Kendall Yards thing. This racket is just like the 10 year tax property tax abatement in that most developers lie and say it is essential to their project. How can you prove them wrong? And who even tries ? The developer and the decision maker are usually buddies, linked through campaign contributions, future jobs, business connections, and such. It's a network. And by the way, why aren't all the Spokane city council members who are professionals be required to make public a current list of those past and present clients and business associates who benefit in any way from city decisions?

ANSWERS TO ARGUMENTS AGAINST MANDATORY WAGE LEGISLATION

Laws which mandate wage level, - such as the one which may be passed this fall by the voters in Spokane - are ubiquitous in the United States. Only four states, all in the South, have no state minimum wage. And we have a federal minimum wage. Through an abuse of language and the facts of life, some expansion of these laws to special companies and conditions have come to be known as living wages. But in no case have the levels finally mandated risen to the level of a true living wage as measured by any scientific study.

Now, since these legislated pay levels are all but national policy, it is a little odd that as they are adjusted they should meet any substantial opposition in principle. But they do. And who are these radicals who want to overthrow the current regime? They can be divided into two overlapping groups: some of those who must pay the mandated wage increases and those who make an ideological case against the law. Let's consider the second group.

First, I dismiss the free marketeers by saying there never has been and never will be a free market that need concern us. Such phantoms exist only in the minds of ivory tower inhabitants and their unthinking followers.

Then there are those who say the law is bad for the low-paid working class at large in that there will be a lot fewer jobs. This proposition has been disproved by several studies and economic models. Along these same lines the opponents warn against employers deserting a region with these "high" wages and so inflicting a blow to the local tax base. I say it is along the same lines in that in both cases the advocates express a fake concern for the welfare of those other than themselves. This second attempt to stir up fear also fails to hold water when real world examples are studied, such as those of San Franciso and Santa Fe.

Now let me move on to those who say there is nothing wrong with a minimum wage as long as it is low enough. These folks like to call it an entry level wage, not a real wage but a token or sort of charity paid by the employer while the worker gathers the skills needed to move out of his or her slot, said slot described as a sort of holding pen for the unskilled. They make it sound like the jobs are simply make-work jobs and not essential to the business enterprise. This latter is a very dubious claim. I've heard all of the above with my own ears more than once from big companies , industry reps, and a chamber of commerce spokesman. While I started this paragraph giving the benefit of doubt to those discussed in the last paragraph as to their agreement with some measly minimum wage, I suspect many of them would just as soon entirely do without one.

The philosophy underlying this last claim of those opposing a minimum wage seems to be this: Might makes right. We pay as little as we can get away with - and then rationalize. On the one hand they say the low paid worker does not produce enough to justify the pay, but when a high paid worker such as a CEO does not produce he can be paid plenty, as Home Depot recently demonstrated. The difference is that the low paid worker has no power and can be replaced. The higher paid workers do have power in one form or another, such as proprietary knowledge of the company, unique skills, and so forth. Of course, this variation in power is feathered from the bottom to the top.

Traditionally, unions have come in as an equalizer of power on the side of the low paid worker. But for a number of reasons large sections of the labor force are now without union representation and not likely to get any soon. So those members of the community who value justice must ban together in support of the exploited worker and pass a law, thereby meeting the power of money and property with the power of a people's law.

I must get back to this blog on a more regular basis. I could be putting out a monthly newspaper keyed to lengthy letters, say 300-700 words, mostly from the left. It may have just a few news and humor features. Is this a good idea?