Jews Demand Signs and Greeks Look for Wisdom, but We Preach Christ Crucified

Review of God of the Mind, by Rob Haskell

This blog had its start in a religious discussion, pitting a Christian perspective against an atheist one. That discussion never ended because these viewpoints inevitably talk past each other, based as they are on fundamentally different epistemologies and axioms. Is truth facts, or is it a person? Does it have a capital "T", or a little "t"? Does reality come first, or does faith? With this election, this conflict, usually politely ignorable at the cultural sidelines, has come front and center, as half the country has transferred a Christian style of reasoning to politics, with catastrophic consequences.

I very much wish I had had this book by Rob Haskell back in the day. It lays out in a concise and thorough way all (well, let's say many of) the philosophical and psychological deficiencies of god-belief. It is hands-down the best discussion I have ever read on the subject- well-written, with humor and incisive insight. For example, he provides the bible quote that I have used to title this post, in a discussion of Christianity's approach to reason and intellect. While reams of theology support Christianity with reasons, at the end of the day, any honest theologian and Christian thinker will say that reason doesn't get you there. Faith needs to come first. Only then does all else follow. And this "all" is laced with superstition, suspension of normal rules of evidence, submission to authority, and a need to convert the whole world to the same system of belief. It is, implicitly, a preference for unity and power over truth. No wonder they were marks for the charismatic authority of Donald Trump.

One of the most disturbing aspects of the whole debate is the moralism that creeps into what is ostensibly a reasoned discussion of viewpoints and philosophy. If one does not accept god, Christians have been taught to believe that there is a reason. Not a logical reason, but a moral reason. Depravity is a word that comes up. Lack of belief betrays a moral failure, because god is the foundation of all moral law (those twelve commandments!). Those outside the fold merely want their false freedom to enjoy debauchery and crime, without the nagging conscience, which is apparently implanted not by god at birth, (let alone by evolution, or by moral reasoning), but by regular sermons, loudly professed faith, and bible reading. A bible, we might note, that is full of militarism, sexual abuse, deceit, and political authoritarianism. The whole proposition is absurd, from the ground up, unless, of course, you are of the religious tribe, in which case it has an irresistible logic and allure.

No wonder Christians feel good, right, and justified. And feel a birthright to rule over all, to claim that the US is (or should be) a Christian nation. One where resistance to its moral imperatives would, at last, be futile.

But here we are, getting off track! Rob Haskell is a former protestant missionary and minister, graduate of Regent College, and came to his new positions through deep personal engagement and turmoil. He knows intimately of which he speaks. An interesting aspect of his book is that he is almost more focused on psychology than on philosophy. For it is psychology that drives religious conversion, drives people to prostrate themselves before the void, and drives a faith that calls itself truth. Without the indoctrination by families, for example, no religion would amount to much- certainly not Christianity. And indoctrination of the young is obviously a highly irrational process, combining the most powerful psychological forces known- peer pressure, parental pressure, authority, tradition, community, repetition, fancy costumes. Who could resist? And yet Christians have no problem claiming that the result of all this is belief in truth, with a capital T. 

Haskell recounts an educational experience he had inviting Mormon missionaries to an extended discussion of why he should take up Mormonism. They tout the book of Mormon, which Haskell knows very well is a absurd fabric of early nineteenth century prejudices and speculations. They tout the archeological work a few believers have undertaken to prove their scripture, which is highly dubious, to say the least. But at last, when reason fails and argument slackens, Haskell is urged to pray. Pray hard enough, and the light is sure to shine. And for Mormons, brought up with all the pressures and templates ready-made for their belief, such prayer is very likely to work, activating the archetypes and feelings conducive to agreement with their culture. Will the story or the prayer work for others? Rarely, but occasionally it does strike a nerve, especially in the psychologically vulnerable. Haskell recognizes, uncomfortably, that while the stories are different, the psychological methods used by the Mormons and by him as a missionary are eerily similar.

"This points back to what I've already described, namely that in evangelical thinking, and possibly in all religious thinking, the acceptance of certain crucial and non-negotiable ideas comes first. Then, after that acceptance comes the search for evidence that supports it. But that evidence always gets the short end of the stick. Evidence is great when it affirms the things that are accepted by faith. But here isn't a lot of interest in evangelical circles in evidence itself, or in thinking clearly about evidence. And when the evidence falls short, the believer goes back to where it all started: not evidence but faith. So, it's really a matter of wanting to have your cake and eat it too. There's a built-in permission to be sloppy. 'We like evidence!' says the evangelical, 'so long as it proves our point. but when the evidence brings up difficult questions, we reserve the right to toss it out and appeal to faith.' ... How can you have a serious conversation with someone who thinks like this? It's like talking with your teenager."

Rationalization and confirmation bias are fundamental aspects of human psychology. Science has developed an organized and reasonably effective way to address it, but other institutions have not, notably the echo chambers of current news and social media. We do it all the time, (I am certainly doing it here), and it is no wonder that Christians do it too. The problem is the lack of humility, where Christians revel in their fantastical story, impugn anyone so dense (if not evil) as to not get it, and twist the very vocabulary of epistemology in order to declare that "Truth" comes, not out of reality, but precisely out of unreality- a faith that is required to believe in things unseen and tales thrice-told.

• And he writes a blog, too.
• Example of typical religious condescension, by J D Vance's mentor, James Orr.
• The Discovery Institute will try anything...
• Then there is the no true Scotsman defense.
• The Supreme Court lowers itself still further.
• What makes a human brain?
• We continue speeding ever faster to disaster.
• Poisonous propaganda + AI = our future.

The Impossibility of Morality

We have dark sides and do bad things. How come we all think we are good people?

Part of our political, and temperamental, divide revolves around how seriously to take morality. How idealistic to be about goodness, how hard to try, or whether to be more realistic to be about our dark side. For all the platitudes and commandments, the sad fact is that morality is impossible, so the question is perhaps more how intensively we blind ourselves to darkness rather than how dark we will actually be.

Weird, right? But the closer you look, the more impossible it is to follow any system of morality. There are Jains who will not hurt a fly, let alone eat meat. But plants have feelings too. And our guts contain astronomical numbers of organisms in a roiling dance of macabre death. What about them? Existence as a human is unavoidably destructive. Simpler moral systems preach kindness to others. But again, existence requires feeding one's own fire, and that must come at cost to something, or someone. Every trade is unequal, even if voluntary. Employees are notoriously exploited to give more than their fair share. The Earth is relentlessly exploited. There is no end to our appetites, as long as we are alive.

Psychologically, we build up defenses to say that we are no worse than others, that we are good people. Even if we are bad people, we say that we have been driven to crime, and it is no worse than the rich people who thoughtlessly abuse others. Or if we are a presidential candidate, we say that we are saving the world, and making America great, and the subject of cruel witchhunts. Self-defense is one more essential part of living, even if it comes at the expense of seeing the world clearly. Unflattering visions of our way of life are rejected and repressed, the more so if they come as criticism from others.

Defensive blindness is integral to "modern" life. The agriculture and food processing industry keeps the slaughterhouses hidden, the feedlots and inhumane poultry coops under wraps. The less we know, the better we feel. Money is the ultimate screen against the squeems and qualms of existence, shielding us from the rapacious mining that our electronics drive in tropical forests, the slave labor that makes our clothes, and countless other immoral and destructive processes we are ultimately responsible for. Clear consciousness of all this would make the whole system collapse.

Protesters carrying the pine tree flag of Christian nationalism. While doing good things for the country.

Religions offer their own forms of defense. Confession in the Catholic church is a classic way to touch the darkness, but then to be absolved and feel good again. Exorcisms are offered as well. Protestant approaches tend to focus more on works, like community service, or in fringier precincts, on sermons of self-glorification. Everyone who is reborn in Christ is part of the club, and though a sinner, is also good, glorious, and heaven-bound. Possibly, even, in the Mormon system, himself a god. How they engage with moral darkness varies tremendously by religion, but the common need is to control it, in ourselves and others, sufficiently that our self-image of goodness and light can be preserved.

The extensive repression of moral darkness leads to the countervailing temptation to take another peek at it, under controlled conditions. It is the inspiration for much art- the detective thiller, the horror movie, the general apparatus of drama. Without darkness, there is no interest or light. And people differ markedly in their approach to such material. The more liberal and optimistic tend to focus on the light side, not the dark side, and do so politically as well. They have more moral idealism and hope, which means they have more repression of darker tendencies. Kumbaya is sung. Conversely, the more "realistic", conservative attitude scoffs at the do-gooder idealism of the left, and sees darkness around every corner- in foreigners, in sexual transgression and expression, in fluid social systems, in change itself. They recognize that moral aspiration is futile- such as the woke trend of recent times .. the bending over backwards to every minority group, micro-aggression, every insect and animal, and the climate.. is putting up an impossible and futile bar. That sticking to basics and tradition is going to get us further than such refusal to recognize the dark reality of human existence. 

These valences are apparent in the Palestinian dilemma. As the Palestinians were expelled from Israel during its establishment, the Jews proclaimed a right for Jews all over the world to come to Israel. Meanwhile, the UN created a right of return for Palestinians, to the very same land that formed Israel. It was the ultimate expression of bleeding heart unrealism, and has led (in part) to the existentially stuck misery of Palestinians for all these decades, as the UN took it upon itself to nurture an absurd dream of return and set up a now-permanent refugee apparatus of feeding, schools, and health care, all of which fuels the seething anger and terrorist dreams of ever-growing generations of Palestinians.

Another example is the US war in Vietnam- a curious and tragic mix of blindness, idealism, and realism. We wanted to help the (South) Vietnamese defend themselves from communism. In light of what happened in North Korea in the ensuing decades, this was not a bad goal. North Korea is moral darkness incarnate- a cruel and criminal dictatorship. But once the enormity of the task became clear, the moral realists took charge, with the aim of bombing Vietnam and its neighboring countries into submission. But even such extreme measures failed, leaving us with the ashes of horrible means used in the service of a futile goal. The US media was increasingly unwilling to hide the horrors, bringing into American consciousness all this darkness, which turned out to be unbearable.

So, is it better to blind ourselves to the darkness, and risk destruction and error, or better to be realistic, explore it, even celebrate it, as the Homeric epics do, and gird ourselves to deal with it, and deal it out to others? As in most things, societies are probably best off with a mix of perspectives. This mix is perennially expressed in our political spectrum, though of late the right seems to have gotten caught up in a peculiar reaction against the pieties of the left. As the left has gained the cultural and governmental high ground, as shown by the triumph of gay rights, ever-increasing concern for racial minorities, and a rising tide of official movement on environmental concerns, the right has turned apoplectic. They seem to be saying ... "We love our trucks, we won the continent fair and square, and we won the racial contest as well.."- leave us to our spoils, and don't be so concerned about "fairness" .. life isn't fair or moral, but goes to the darkest, baddest winner. (One can hear echos of the Confederate South in all this clearly enough.) Those on the left who are besotted with woke-ness and fairness will be singing a different tune when they are not at the top of the heap anymore, in their well-gentrified, rich and safe neighborhoods.

Perhaps this portrayal is extreme, but extreme concern for the moral fairness within a society can blind us to other issues, such as the competitive underpinnings of life, both within and verus other societies, and the ultimate impossibility of being totally fair, or moral, as historical actors. A balance of moral idealism and realism about unavoidable dark aspects is needed, but not in a conflict that tears the society apart. That depends on communication between the two sides, and less totalizing certainty from each side's respective mechanisms that repress doubt and screen (or valorize, in extreme cases) various different aspects of darker morality. Religion is notorious for reshaping its adherent's realities and protecting them psychologically from their own evil actions. But left wing certainty functions similarly, with its echo chambers and pieties. So, as usual, deeper insight is needed, mostly of our own blind spots and what they are hiding, but also of how such mechanisms work across the spectrum.

• Eating animals and loving them.
• Ready to be gouged more efficiently?
• Is your car really worth it?
• Corals are dying.

Bukharin's Lesson in Communism

A review of "The ABC of Communism", by Nikokai Bukharin and Evgenii Preobrazhensky, 1920.

Nikokai Bukharin was one of the 1917 revolutionaries that brought communism to Russia. He was in New York (as was Leon Trotsky) in February 1917, as the news of the budding revolution spread around the world, and joined that revolution in May. He and Trotsky were penning a socialist newspaper at the time, and were particular fans of the New York public library- a great example of a public-private partnership, (not to mention free speech), which houses countless products of private enterprise, in a public facility. Back in Russia, they helped establish the world's first socialist and communist state, destroying the nascent parliamentary system of Karensky, and then the arrayed forces of the old aristocracy in the Russian civil war. They did this by promising something even better than parliamentary democracy- a proletarian state that would forever place workers in power, and end the power of capital and the aristocracy. 

A convenient document of the thinking behind all this is the "The ABC of Communism", by Bukharin and Evgenii Preobrazhensky, put out in 1920 and republished long thereafter to provide a popular argument for communism and the soviet system. It encapsulates the economic and political theories that animated, at least at a conscious level, the new rulers. Bukharin was relatively young, regarded as a leading theoretician, and somewhat on the liberal side, not quite as ruthless as Stalin and Lenin. An autobiography and film about his wife tried to paint a positive image of him and of what things would have been like if Bukharin had managed to not get murdered by Stalin. So this work should present a relatively coherent and attractive case for communism.

Bukharin (center) in happier days, in Soviet leadership.

Well, I have to say that it is not very impressive as either economics or politics. While it provides insight into some capitalist dynamics, it fundamentally fails to understand the most basic drivers of economic systems, and obviously has not engaged with Adam Smith, who had written almost 150 years before. 

On the plus side, there is a lengthy treatment of the economies of scale, which rightly describes the advantages that large industrial enterprises have over smaller ones. The point of this, however, is mostly political, to show why anarchism, which was one of the many revolutionary threads still active at the time, made little sense. The Bolsheviks were besotted by industry and large-scale industrialization, which was at least one area where they put a lot of resources and accomplished a great deal, saving their skins in world war 2, later on.

"Consequently, THE LARGER THE UNDERTAKING, THE MORE PERFECT IS THE TECHNIQUE, THE MORE ECONOMICAL IS THE LABOUR, AND THE LOWER IS THE COST OF PRODUCTION."

Secondly, the author's treatment of cyclical crises in capitalism is not too far off the mark. They pin the problem on over-production, which then leads to workers getting laid off, loss of income and buying power, loss of credit, loss of ancillary business, and the downward spiral of depression. Whether lack of demand or over-supply, imbalances of this kind are indeed central to this kind of crisis. The author's solution? Better organization, in the form of state control over every aspect of the economy. They ceaselessly rail against the waste of capitalism- the competition with similar products, the disorganized manner of production by competing and cut-throat capitalists, the lack of overall harmonious coordination for the public good. But what of Adam Smith? It turns out that the chaos of capitalism has its beauties, and its efficiencies, squeezing every drop out of the environment, and out of workers, in its Darwinian competition.

Thirdly, they make a great deal out of the ambient excesses of capitalism, which were truly horrific, and were clear enough all over the world, leading to the communist's program of world-wide revolution by the working class. The monopolies, the strike-breaking, the child labor, the inhuman conditions, and the vast inequality- these were unquestionable evils, some of which remain endemic to capitalism, others of which have been ameliorated through reform in (relatively) democratic countries. As is typical, criticizing is easy, and there were, and remain, plenty of problems with capitalism and with democracy as well. The question is whether Bukharin plumbs the essential depths of economics sufficiently to come up with a better economic system, or of its associated politics to come up with a better form of the state.

And here the answer has to be, as history demonstrated, no. In their discussion of large scale enterprise, they go through a rather particular example to show the power of scale.

"How great is the advantage of this system was made manifest by some American researches instituted in the year 1898. Here are the results. The manufacture of 10 ploughs. By hand labour: 2 workers, performing 11 distinct operations, worked in all 1,180 hours, and received $54. By machine labour: 52 workers, performing 97 operations (the more numerous the workers, the more varied the operations), worked in all 37 hours and 28 minutes, and received $7.90. (We see that the time was enormously less and that the cost of labour was very much lower.) The manufacture of 100 sets of clock wheels. By hand labour: 14 workers, 453 operations, 341,866 hours, $80.82. By machine labour: 10 workers, 1,088 operations, 8343 hours, $1.80. The manufacture of 500 yards of cloth. Hand labour: 3 workers, 19 operations, 7,534 hours, $135.6. Machine labour: 252 workers, 43 operations, 84 hours, $6.81."

... "All these advantages attaching to large-scale enterprise explain why small scale production must invariably succumb in capitalist society. Large scale capital crushes the small producer, takes away his customers, and ruins him, so that he drops into the ranks of the proletariat or becomes a tramp. In many cases, of course, the small master continues to cling to life. He fights desperately, puts his own hand to the work, forces his workers and his family to labour with all their strength; but in the end he is compelled to give up his place to the great capitalist."

If we read this carefully, and do the math in the case of the ploughs:

$54 / 1180 hours = 4.58 cents per hour in wages

$5.40 per plough in cost

$7.90 / 37.5 hours = 21.1 cents per hour in wages

$0.79 per plough in cost

... we can see that not only is the plough almost ten-fold cheaper (some of which is presumably shared with the buyer in the market), but the workers were paid almost five-fold more per hour. How is this a bad reflection on capitalism? This is by way of telling why small scale production dies in a capitalist system ... it doesn't stand a chance. But the authors fail to mention that, in their own example, some of these gains are apparently shared with workers. So the gains in efficiency are shared quite widely- with customers, with workers, and also with the managers and capitalists, since this new form of work requires much greater contributions of management and capital equipment.

Bukharin and Preobrazhensky are "doctrinaire" communists, blind to a gem hidden in their own data that tells us how and why the capitalist system really works. Why did workers flock to the cities when there were agricultural jobs to be had? It was higher pay. Were the new capitalists holding workers as serfs against their will? Not at all. In the US likewise, whatever the horrors of capitalism, it did not hold a candle to the horrors of slavery.

More broadly, Bukharin and the communists generally had little appreciation for the difficulties and role of management. The surplus labor theory of Marxism leaves no room for management contributions of value to the final product- it is all excess labor stolen from the worker, to be restored in the idealized worker state/paradise. The capitalists are parasites:

"In communist society parasitism will likewise disappear. There will be no place for the parasites who do nothing and who live at others' cost."

Rentiers may be parasites, but managers are not. Theirs is the job to locate the resources, drum up the customers, to build the factories, to negotiate the wages, to run the work and fire the lazy. It is not an enviable or simple position to be in, rather is perhaps the most complex in the capitalist system, or any economic system. (And it is noteworthy that failures of management are endemic in government, of even the most enlightened kind, where crucial parts of this constricting set of incentives are often lacking.) It is the competitive forces pressuring on all sides- from customers, from workers, from government, from the financial markets, etc., that are integrated by the petty bourgeoisie / kulak class into a solvent enterprise, and are the soul of the capitalist system, for which they take a premium of profits off the top.

Bukharin and colleagues never pause to consider why capitalism is so dominant:

"Contemporary capitalism is world capitalism. All the countries are interconnected; they buy one from another. We cannot now find any country which is not under the heel of capitalism; we cannot find any country which produces for itself absolutely everything it needs."

Why is this? There was no shortage of experiments in the 1800's in socialistic styles of life, extending from the Shakers and the Owenites to the Tolstoyans. Few of them even survived very long, and none had a broader impact, let alone rising to the organic level of country-wide economic system. Religious monasteries are probably the only example of successful long-term socialistic organizations, though most are run on more or less totalitarian lines, with a whole separate set of emotional and personal committments. This starkly unsuccessful track record should have been a red flag- forgive the pun!- that while socialist utopianism is very popular, it is not practical.

This cavalier disregard of management and the elementary aspects of human economic demand (aka desire, aka greed) naturally came back to bite the communist Soviets, when, in the absence of a well-thought out way to run things in the wake of winning power on the back of their fantasy of a perfectly (and apparently easily, thanks to a mythical "statistical office") ordered and efficient economic system, they fell to the lowest device in the manager's toolbox- terror.

Bukharin on his way to execution, after having helped Stalin hound Trotsky to death.

Why the loose economics, fantastical pronouncements, and embarassing lack of realism? The reason becomes apparent as you read through "The ABC of Communism", which is that its main purpose is to inspire hate. It is a political tract that, as was current among communists then and since, seeks to frame an enemy, inspire hatred of that enemy, and support for the valiant vanguard that will vanquish that enemy. 

"What civil war can compare in its destructive effects with the brutal disorganization and devastation, with the loss of the accumulated wealth of mankind, that resulted from the imperialist war? MANIFESTLY IT IS ESSENTIAL THAT HUMANITY SHALL MAKE AN END OF CAPITALISM ONCE AND FOR ALL. WITH THIS GOAL IN VIEW, WE CAN ENDURE THE PERIOD OF CIVIL WARS, AND CAN PAVE THE WAY FOR COMMUNISM, WHICH WILL HEAL ALL OUR WOUNDS, AND WILL QUICKLY LEAD TO THE FULL DEVELOPMENT OF THE PRODUCTIVE FORCES OF HUMAN SOCIETY."

... "We are thus confronted by two alternatives, and two only. There must either be complete disintegration, hell broth, further brutalization and disorder, absolute chaos, or else communism."

Millions of people all over the world were thoughtless enough to accept this poisoned chalice, and went down the road of economic brutalization, famine, mass terror, and the gulag. Communism turned out to be a power play, not an economic Oz. It was a bright and shiny political lie. We are in the US becoming familiar with the power of such lies- their use of the basest and most powerful instincts- hate, and hope. Their ability to cut straight through any rational and empathetic analysis, and their ability to make seemingly reasonable people believe the flimsiest absurdities.

• China is looking at some serious problems.
• Utopias should be strictly for thinking, not doing.
• Wait, I can't live in an exclusive neighborhood?
• Is it OK for lawyers to engage in insurrection?

Everything is Alive, but the Gods are all Dead

Barbara Ehrenreich's memoir and theological ruminations in "Living with a Wild God".

It turns out that everyone is a seeker. Somewhere there must be something or someone to tell us the meaning of life- something we don't have to manufacture with our own hands, but rather can go into a store and buy. Atheists are just as much seekers as anyone else, only they never find anything worth buying. The late writer Barbara Ehrenreich was such an atheist, as well as a remarkable writer and intellectual who wrote a memoir of her formation. Unusually and fruitfully, it focuses on those intense early and teen years when we are reaching out with both hands to seize the world- a world that is maddeningly just beyond our grasp, full of secrets and codes it takes a lifetime and more to understand. Religion is the ultimate hidden secret, the greatest mystery which has been solved in countless ways, each of them conflicting and confounding.

Ehrenreich's tale is more memoir than theology, taking us on a tour through a dysfunctional childhood with alcoholic parents and tough love. A story of growth, striking out into the world, and sad coming-to-terms with the parents who each die tragically. But it also turns on a pattern of mystical experiences that she keeps having, throughout her adult life, which she ultimately diagnoses as dissociative states where she zones out and has a sort of psychedelic communion with the world.

"Something peeled off the visible world, taking with it all meaning, inference, association, labels, and words. I was looking at a tree, and if anyone had asked, that's what I would have said I was doing, but the word "tree" was gone, along with all the notions of tree-ness that had accumulated in the last dozen years or so since I had acquired language. Was it a place that was suddenly revealed to me? Or was it a substance- the indivisible, elemental material out of which the entire known and agreed-upon world arises as a fantastic elaboration? I don't know, because this substance, this residue, was stolidly, imperturbably mute. The interesting thing, some might say alarming, was that when you take away all the human attributions- the words, the names of species, the wisps of remembered tree-related poetry, the fables of photosynthesis and capillary action- that when you take all this this away, there is still something left."

This is not very hard to understand as a neurological phenomenon of some kind of transient disconnection of just the kind of brain areas she mentions- those that do all the labeling, name-calling, and boxing-in. In schizophrenia, it runs to the pathological, but in Ehrenreich's case, she does not regard it as pathological at all, as it is always quite brief. But obviously, the emotional impact and weirdness of the experience- that is something else altogether, and something that humans have been inducing with drugs, and puzzling over, forever. 

Source

As a memoir, the book is very engaging. As a theological quest, however, it doesn't work as well, because the mystical experience is, as noted above, resolutely meaningless. It neither compels Ehrenreich to take up Christianity, as after a Pauline conversion, nor any other faith or belief system. It offers a peek behind the curtain, but, stripped of meaning as this view is, Ehrenreich is perhaps too skeptical or bereft of imagination to give it another, whether of her own or one available from the conventional array of sects and religions. So while the experiences are doubtless mystical, one can not call them religious, let alone god-given, because Ehrenreich hasn't interpreted them that away. This hearkens back to the writings of William James, who declined to assign general significance to mystical experiences, while freely admitting their momentous and convincing nature to those who experienced them.

Only in one brief section (which had clearly been originally destined for an entirely different book) does she offer a more interesting and insightful analysis. There, Ehrenreich notes that the history of religion can be understood as a progressive bloodbath of deicide. At first, everything is alive and sacred, to an animist mind. Every leaf and grain of sand holds wonders. Every stream and cloud is divine. This is probably our natural state, which a great deal of culture has been required to stamp out of us. Next is a hunting kind of religion, where deities are concentrated in the economic objects (and social patterns) of the tribe- the prey animals, the great plants that are eaten, and perhaps the more striking natural phenomena and powerful beasts. But by the time of paganism, the pantheon is cut down still more and tamed into a domestic household, with its soap-opera dramas and an increasingly tight focus on the major gods- the head of the family, as it were. 

Monotheism comes next, doing away with all the dedicated gods of the ocean, of medicine, of amor and war, etc., cutting the cast down to one. One, which is inflated to absurd proportions with all-goodness, all-power, all-knowledge, etc. A final and terrifying authoritarianism, probably patterned on the primitive royal state. This is the phase when the natural world is left in the lurch, as an undeified and unprotected zone where human economic greed can run rampant, safe in the belief that the one god is focused entirely on man's doings, whether for good or for ill, not on that of any other creature or feature of the natural world. A phase when even animals, who are so patently conscious, can, through the narcissism of primitive science and egoistic religion, be deemed mere mechanisms without feeling. This process doesn't even touch on the intercultural deicide committed by colonialism and conquest.

This in turn invites the last deicide- that by rational people who toss aside this now-cartoonish super-god, and return to a simpler reverence for the world as we naturally respond to it, without carting in a lot of social power-and-drama baggage. It is the cultural phase we are in right now, but the transition is painfully slow, uneven, and drawn-out. For Ehrenreich, there are plenty of signs- in the non-linear chemical phenomena of her undergraduate research, in the liveliness of quantum physics even into the non-empty vacuum, in the animals who populate our world and are perhaps the alien consciousnesses that we should be seeking in place of the hunt through outer space, and in our natural delight in, and dreams about, nature at large. So she ends the book as atheist as ever, but hinting that perhaps the liveliness of the universe around us holds some message that we are not the only thinking and sentient beings.

"Ah, you say, this is all in your mind. And you are right to be skeptical; I expect no less. It is in my mind, which I have acknowledged from the beginning is a less than perfect instrument. but this is what appears to be the purpose of my mind, and no doubt yours as well, its designed function beyond all the mundane calculations: to condense all the chaos and mystery of the world into a palpable Other or Others, not necessarily because we love it, and certainly not out of any intention to "worship" it. But because ultimately we may have no choice in the matter. I have the impression, growing out of the experiences chronicled here, that it may be seeking us out." 

Thus the book ends, and I find it a rather poor ending. It feels ripped from an X-Files episode, highly suggestive and playing into all the Deepak and similar mystical tropes of cosmic consciousness. That is, if this passage really means much at all. Anyhow, the rest of the trip is well worth it, and it is appropriate to return to the issue of the mystical experience, which is here handled with such judicious care and restraint. Where imagination could have run rampant, the cooly scientific view (Ehrenreich had a doctorate in biology) is that the experiences she had, while fascinating and possibly book-proposal-worthy, did not force a religious interpretation. This is radically unlike the treatment of such matters in countless other hands, needless to say. Perhaps our normal consciousness should not be automatically valued less than more rare and esoteric states, just because it is common, or because it is even-tempered.

• God would like us to use "they".
• If you are interested in early Christianity, Gnosticism is a good place to start.
• Green is still an uphill battle.

Hand-Waving to God

A decade on, the Discovery Institute is still cranking out skepticism, diversion, and obfuscation.

A post a couple of weeks ago mentioned that the Discovery Institute offered a knowledgeable critique of the lineages of the Ediacaran fauna. They have raised their scientific game significantly, and so I wanted to review what they are doing these days, focusing on two of their most recent papers. The Discovery Institute has a lineage of its own, from creationism. It has adapted to the derision that entailed, by retreating to "intelligent design", which is creationism without naming the creators, nailing down the schedule of creation, or providing any detail of how and from where creation operates. Their review of the Ediacaran fauna raised some highly skeptical points about whether these organisms were animals or not. Particularly, they suggested that cholesterol is not really restricted to animals, so the chemical traces of cholesterol that were so clearly found in the Dickinsonia fossil layers might not really mean that these were animals- they might also be unusual protists of gigantic size, or odd plant forms, etc. While the critique is not unreasonable, it does not alter the balance of the evidence which does indeed point to an animal affinity. These fauna are so primitive and distant that it is fair to say that we can not be sure, and particularly we can not be sure that they had any direct ancestral relationship to any later organisms of the ensuing Cambrian period, when recognizable animals emerged.

Fair enough. But what of their larger point? The Discovery Institute is trying to make the point, I believe, about the sudden-ness of early Cambrian evolution of animals, and thus its implausibility under conventional evolutionary theory. But we are traversing tens of millions of years through these intervals, which is a long time, even in evolutionary terms. Secondly, the Ediacaran period, though now represented by several exquisite fossil beds, spanned a hundred million years and is still far from completely characterized paleontologically, even supposing that early true animals would have fossilized, rather than being infinitesimal and very soft-bodied. So the Cambrian biota could easily have predecessors in the Ediacaran that have or have not yet been observed- it is as yet not easy to say. But what we can not claim is the negative, that no predecessors existed before some time X- say the 540 MYA point at the base of the Cambrian. So the implication that the Discovery Institute is attempting to suggest has very little merit, particularly since everything that they themselves cite about the molecular and paleontological sequence is so clearly progressive and in proper time sequence, in complete accord with the overall theory of evolution.

For we should always keep in mind that an intelligent designer has a free hand, and can make all of life in a day (or in six, if absolutely needed). The fact that this designer works in the shadows of slightly altered mutation rates, or in a few million years rather than twenty million, and never puts fossils out of sequence in the sedimentary record, is an acknowledgement that this designer is a bit dull, and bears a strong resemblence to evolution by natural selection. To put it in psychological terms, the institute is in the "negotiation" stage of grief- over the death of god.

Desperately Seeking Cessation of Desire

Some paradoxes, and good points, of Buddhism.

I have been reading "In the Buddha's Words", by Bhikkhu Bodhi, which is a well-organized collection / selection of translations of what we have as the core teachings of Buddhism. It comes from the Pali canon, from Sri Lanka, where Buddhism found refuge after its final destruction in India after the Arab invasions, and offers as clear an exposition of the Buddhist system as one can probably find in English. A bit like the scriptures of Christianity, the earliest canons of Buddhism originate from oral traditions only recorded a hundred or so years after Buddha's death, but as they are slightly less besotted with miraculous stories, the collection has more of a feeling of actual teaching, than of gnomic riddles and wonder stories, not to mention Odyssean mis-adventures.

Both prophets make audacious claims, one to be god, or its son, the other to have attained a perfectly enlightened state with similar implications for everlasting life (or lack of rebirth, at any rate). Each extends to his followers the tempting prospect of a similarly exalted state after death. Each teaches simple morals, each attracts followers both lay and career-ist, the latter of whom tend to be rather dense. Each launched an international sensation that bifurcated into a monastic/ascetic branch of professional clerics and a more popular branch that attained a leading role in some societies.

But Buddhism has attained a special status in the West as something a bit more advanced than the absurd theology of Christianity. A theology that could even be deemed atheist, along with a practice that focuses more relentlessly on peace and harmony than does what Christianity has become, particularly in the US. It is congenial to seekers, an exotic and edgy way to be spiritual, but not religious.

But how much sense does it really make? For starters, much of the Buddhist mythology and theology is simply taken from its ambient Hindu environment. The cycle of rebirth, the karma that influences one's level of rebirth, the heavens and hells, all come from the common understandings of the time, so are not very particular to Buddhism. Buddhists did away with lots of the gods, in favor of their own heros (Buddha, and the Bodhisattvas), and developed a simplified philosphy of desire, suffering, and the relief of suffering by controlling desire, optimally through advanced meditation practices. Much of this was also ambient or at least implicit, as Buddha himself began as a normal Indian ascetic, trying to purify himself of all taints and mundane aspects. For his Buddhist Sanga, he dialed things back a bit, so that the community could function as a social system, not a disconnected constellation of hermits.

Bodhisattvas floating in heaven. These are Buddhists who have attained enlightenment but not entered permanent heaven, choosing rather to have compassion on humanity in its benighted state.

As a philosophical system, it seems paradoxical to spend so much effort and desire in seeking nirvanna and the benefits of lack of desire. To sit in meditation for years on end demands enormous discipline. To submit to a life of begging and poverty takes great will and desire for whatever is promised on the other side. This is not evidence of lack of desire, much less the kind of wisdom and knowledge that would license its practitioners to advise lay people in their mundane affairs (or politicians in affairs of state). And the ethical system that Buddha promulgated was simple in the extreme- merely to be and do good, rather than being and doing bad, all staked on the age-old promise that just deserts would be coming after death.

No, Buddha was clearly a charismatic person, and his insight was social, not philosphical. Remember that he was a prince by birth and education. I would suggest that his core message was one of nobility- of idealism about the human condition. In his system, nobility is not conferred by birth, but by action. All can be noble, and all can be ignoble, regardless of wealth or birth. For the mass of society, it is control over desire that allows virtue and prosperity- i.e. nobility. Those who are addicts, whether to power, to drugs, to bitterness, to sex, or innumerable other black holes of desire or habit, are slaves, not nobles. This is incidentally what makes Buddhism so amenable to the West- it is very enlightenment-friendly kind of social philosophy.

The monks and Sanga of Buddhism were to be the shock troops of emotional discipline, burning off their normal social desires in fires of meditation and renunciation, even as they were on the hook for a whole other set of desires. Which are, in my estimation, wholly illusory in their aim, despite the various beneficial effects of meditation, in this world. They provide the inspiration and template for the society at large, modeling a form of behavioral nobility that any and all can at least appreciate, if not aspire to, and model in their own circumscribed lives and ethical concerns. I think that is the real strength of the Buddhist system. The monks may be misled in philosophical terms, but they fulfill a critical social role which governs and moderates the society at large. 

The monks provide another benefit, which is population control. One of the greatest pressures on any society is overpopulation, which immiserates the poor, empowers the rich, and can ultimately destroy its resource base. While the monastic institutions are a great burden on their societies, they also help keep them sustainable by taking in excess males who might otherwise become brigands and parents. This is particularly evident in traditional Tibet, despite the corruption of the monastic system by clan rivalries and even occasional warfare.

The fact of the matter is that desire is the staff, even essence, of life. Those who lack desire are dead, and Buddhist monks sitting in endless renunciation are enacting a sort of living death. Nevertheless, they have an important function in their societies, which is one we see replicated in the priests of Orthodox and Catholic Christianity (most of the time) and other ascetics and clerics around the world. Buddha was right that the management of desire is absolutely critical to individual and communal social life. Compare his system, however, with the philosophy of the Greeks, which arose at roughly the same (axial) time. The Greek philosophers focused on moderation in all things- another way, and I would offer, a healthier way, to state the need for discipline over the desires. They additionally fostered desires for knowledge and as complex ethical investigations, which I would posit far outstripped the efforts of the Buddhists, and gave rise, though the Greeks' continuing influence over the Roman and ensuing Christian epochs in Western Europe, to a more advanced culture, at least in philosophical, legal, and scientific terms, if not in terms of social and political peace.

• Meanwhile, a Christian court makes us a Christian nation, like it or not.
•  Length of Covid infection and viral shedding is unaffected by strain or vaccination status.

God Save the Queen

Or is it the other way around? Deities and Royalties in the archetypes.

It has been entertaining, and a little moving, to see the recent celebration put on by Britain for its queen. A love fest for a "ruler" who is nearing the end of her service- a job that has been clearly difficult, often thankless, and a bit murky. A job that has evolved interestingly over the last millenium. What used to be a truly powerful rule is now a Disney-fied sop to tradition and the enduring archetypes of social hierarchy.

For we still need social hierarchy, don't we? Communists, socialists, and anarchists have fought for centuries against it, but social hierarchy is difficult to get away from. For one thing, at least half the population has a conservative temperament that demands it. For another, hierarchies are instinctive and pervasive throughout nature as ways to organize societies, keep everyone on their toes, and to bias reproduction to the fittest members. The enlightenment brought us a new vision of human society, one based on some level of equality, with a negotiated and franchise-based meritocracy, rather than one based on nature, tooth, and claw. But we have always been skittish about true democracy. Maximalist democracies like the Occupy movement never get anywhere, because too many people have veto power, and leadership is lacking. Leadership is premised naturally on hierarchy.

Hierarchy is also highly archetypal and instinctive. Maybe these are archetypes we want to fight against, but we have them anyhow. The communists were classic cases of replacing one (presumably corrupt and antiquated) social hierarchy with another which turned out to be even more anxiously vain and vicious, for all its doublespeak about serving the masses. Just looking at higher-ranking individuals is always a pleasant and rewarding experience. That is why movies are made about the high ranking and the glamorous, more than the downtrodden. And why following the royals remains fascinating.

But that is not all! The Queen is also head of the Anglican Church, another institution that has fallen from its glory days of power. It has also suffered defections and loss of faith, amid centuries-long assaults from the enlightenment. The deity itself has gone through a long transition, from classic patriarchial king in the old testament (who killed all humanity once over for its sins), to mystic cypher in the New Testament (who demanded the death of itself in order to save the shockingly persistent sinners of humanity from its own retribution), to deistic non-entity at the height of the enlightenment, to what appears to be the current state of utter oblivion. One of the deity's major functions was to explain the nature of the world in all its wonder and weirdness, which is now quite unnecessary. We must blame ourselves for climate change, not a higher power. 

While social hierarchy remains at the core of humanity, the need for deities is less clear. As a super-king, god has always functioned as the and ultimate pinnacle of the social and political system, sponsoring all the priests, cardinals, kings, pastors, and the like down the line. But if it remains stubbornly hidden from view, has lost its most significant rationales, and only peeps out from tall tales of scripture, that does not make for a functional regent at all. While the British monarchy pursues its somewhat comical, awkward performance of unmerited superintendence of state, church, and social affairs, the artist formerly known as God has vanished into nothing at all.

• Fisheries are killing far more than fish.
• Grooming on youtube.
• Wolves really touch a nerve.

Love Beauty Truth

Book review of "Finding your Feet after Fundamentalism", By Darrell Lackey. With apologies to the other book.

An old friend has published a book. We had an epistolary relationship, fretting about creationism, intelligent design, and related topics back when those were livelier issues than today (and it directly inspired the birth of this blog). He was on his way out of Christian fundamentalism, and into something more liberal, even post-modern. His new book is a somewhat autobiographical account of the problems of fundamentalism, and of leaving fundamentalism as one's tradition. Naturally, evangelism dies hard, and takes this new form of broadcasting the good news of a more moderate and decent Christianity.

The book hits hardest on the issue of Donald Trump. No scandal has so thoroughly demonstrated the ultimate hypocrisy of fundamentalism than its allegiance to Trump. The transaction has given religious conservatives control of the Supreme Court, (though perhaps that owed more to Mitch McConnell), but in return, they showed their support for the most morally vile and incompetent person ever to hold the job. Lackey relates how he was fully in the FOX news orbit in the 90's, happily imbibing its bile. But then something snapped, and by the time of the Trump election, he had fully left fundamentalism and its communities behind. Living in California might have something to do with it, since liberalism, at least of a lip-service sort, is the dominant way of life here. Something that Republicans have learned the hard way. 

Yet the interesting part is how strenuously Lackey hews to Christianity, proclaiming that liberal versions are not gateway drugs to atheism. Quite the contrary- close attention to the actual New Testament provides ample justification for things like supporting marginalized communities, helping the poor, afflicting the rich, and viewing one's enemies as possibly reasonable human beings, if not friends in the making. He mentions how false it is for evangelicals to be so eager to spread the good word, but at the same time so deaf to the words of others that actual relationship is impossible- an evangelism of a closed-off community. 

For what are the fundamental values? Lackey cites love and beauty. Love is clear enough, (and damning enough regarding the FOX- driven culture of conservative Christianity), but the role of beauty needs a little more explaining. Religious thinkers have spared no effort in extolling the beauty of the world, but in the current world, serious artists are rarely Christian, let alone make Christian art. Why is that? Perhaps it is just intellectual fashion, but perhaps there is a deeper problem, that art, at least in our epoch, is adventurous and probing, seeking to interrogate narratives and power structures rather than celebrate them. Perhaps it is a problem of overpopulation, or of democracy, or of living in late imperial times, or of modernism. But whatever the framework, contemporary Christian communities have become the opposite of all this- anti-intellectual, tone-deaf, and art-hostile (not to mention power-mad). It must be exasperating to someone with even the least appreciation for finer things and for art that is "interesting".

Jean-Michel Basquiat- too messy for insensitive temperaments.

Beauty has deep Christian connotations. The world is god-made, good, and thus beautiful, as indeed we all feel it to be. But life is also messy, competitive, and dark. Death and suffering are part of it as well. If we refuse to own those aspects of the world, and of ourselves, we become blinded to the true nature of things, and expose ourselves to unintended and invisible expressions of the dark side, as we see in the deep hypocrisy on the subject of Trump, on sexual morals, and countless other areas within fundamentalism / evangelicalism. Lackey ticks off a lengthy list of subjects where conservative Christians have become blind to the obvious teachings of Jesus while fixated on relatively minor cultural flashpoints and red meat- symptoms of a general moral blindness borne of, arguably, flaccid aesthetic and intellectual habits.

So I would like to offer another value, which is truth. As a scientist, it is a natural place for me to start, but I think it is both illuminating of, and interrelated with, the other virtues above. What modern artists seek is to express truths about the human condition, not just ring out positive affirmations and hallelujas. Truths about suffering as well as truths about beauty. What scientists seek to do is to find how this world we find ourselves in works, from the cosmos down to the gluon. And they do so because they find it beautiful, and, like addicts, would like to unlock more of that beauty. Beauty inspires love, and love ... can only survive on truth, not lies. So I think these values live in a reinforcing cycle.

All that implies that there is another step to take for someone who has left fundamentalism. That is, to re-evaluate Christianity as a whole. While the achievement of decency (and better taste) by the renunciation of FOX and its religious satellite communities is an enormous step, indeed a momentous one for the preservation of our country's sanity, grappling seriously with the value of truth would suggest an extra leg to the trip. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Christianity as a whole is a questionable proposition, philosophically. As a narrative and moral system, it clearly has positive as well as negative potentials. But as a "truth"- with its miracles, resurrections, triune deity, and salvation at the end of the line, (whether for the elect, the saved, the good, or for all)- well, it is impossible to take seriously without heavy doses of tradition and indoctrination.

For his part, Lackey has headed in another direction, into the Eastern Orthodox church, finding a place that richly satisfies the fundamentalist urge to return to one of the most traditional and historically continuous churches in existence, and also one that does not tie itself into intellectual knots about literal truth, living biblically, and the like. Orthodoxy accepts mystery, and cherishes its ancient rites and structures as sufficient theology. It is not modernist, or goaded by the enlightenment to make a rational system of something that so obviously resists reason. 

For there is a fine line between lies, illusions, and truths. As anyone who is married will understand (or a citizen of a country, or part of a corporation, or part of any social structure), truth is not the only or necessarily best virtue. A bit of illusion and constructive understanding can make a world of difference. Narrative, ideology, framing, etc. are essential social glues, and even glues of internal psychology. So, given that illusions are integral, the work to identity them, bring them into consciousness, and make positive choices about them is what matters, especially when it comes to social leadership. Do we choose narratives that are reasonably honest, and look forward with hope and love, or ones that go down the easy road of demonization and projection? And what role should the most traditional narratives in existence- those of the ancient religions- have in guiding us?

• Beautiful? You be the judge.
• Kasparov on freedom and evil.
• Kids should be able to navigate neighborhoods.
• Lies and disinformation are a public health crisis.
• More variants are always coming along.
• We are not doing enough against climate heating.

E. O. Wilson, Atheist

Notes on the controversies of E. O. Wilson.

E. O. Wilson was one of our leading biologists and intellectuals, combining a scholarly career of love for the natural world (particularly ants) with a cultural voice of concern about what we as a species are doing to it. He was also a dedicated atheist, perched in his ivory tower at Harvard and tilting at various professional and cultural windmills. I feature below a long quote from one of his several magnum opuses, Sociobiology (1975). This was putatively a textbook by which he wanted to establish a new field within biology- the study of social structures and evolution. This was a time when molecular biology was ascendent, in his department and in biology broadly, and he wanted to push back and assert that truly important and relevant science was waiting to be done at higher levels of biology, indeed the highest level- that of whole societies. It is a vast tome, where he attempted to synthesize everything known in the field. But it met with significant resistance across the board, even though most of its propositions are now taken as a matter of course ... that our social instincts and structures are heavily biological, and have evolved just as our physical features have.

Toxic Nostalgia

Making Russia great again.

What is it about the past? Even though we are condemned to live in the future, we can't stop fantasizing and fetishizing the past, and wanting to go back. On the gentle side, Proust wrote nothing but loving remembrances of his (sometimes mortifying) past, trying to evoke its moods, textures, smells, and feelings. But why does nostalgia so often curdle into bloodlust and terror? For that is where the Russian autocrat is going with his nostalgia for the Soviet era when Stalin ruled even more autocratically over a well-cowed populace extending from Hungary to the Pacific. Ah, those were the days!

It isn't just our current crisis- far from. The Trumpists want to make America great... again. The Muslim jihadists are bent on reproducing the pre-eminent dominance of Islam of 1300 years ago. The Serbs hearken back to their own grand empire of 700 years ago. Shia muslims fetishize their losses and in a theology of repair and redemption. Jews have both bemoaned their losses of their great kingdoms two millennia ago, and militantly sought their promised land back. And fundamentalists of all stripes yearn to get back to the basic tenets of their faith- the pure origins of incendiary belief and miracles.

It all seems a little over-determined, as though the operative emotion isn't nostalgia exactly, but powerlust, seizing on whatever materials come to hand to say that we as some tribe or culture are better and deserve better than we've got. While the future remains ever shrouded, the past is at least accessible, if also rather protean in the hands of dedicated propagandists. In Russia's case, not only did Stalin help start World War 2 by co-invading Poland, but the prior holocaust/famine in Ukraine, followed by the transplacement of millions of Russians into Ukraine.. well, that all makes this current bout of nostalgia far from sympathetic, however well-twisted it has been for internal consumption. Of course the propaganda and the emotion is mostly instrumental, in a desperate bid to fend off the appearance of happy, secure, and prosperous democracies on Russia's borders, which is the real danger at hand, to Putin and his system.

In remembrance of Russia's great patriotic war, which it helped start.

Yet, such nostalgia is strongly culturally binding, for better or worse. Rising states may have short histories and short memories, resented as the nouveau-rich on the world stage. They are not "as good" in some essential way as those whose greatness has passed into the realm of nostalgia. Worth is thus not in the doing but in some ineffible essentialist (read nationalist/tribal) way that is incredibly resistant to both reason and empathy. It is analogous to "nobility" in the class structure within most societies. In the US, we seem on the cusp (or past it) of our time atop the world stage. Do we then face hundreds of years of regret, comforting ourselves with tales of greatness and seething resentment?

With echos of a deeper past.

• Could the West have been smarter; more generous?
• Apparently, we are all going to die.
• Tires are bad.

Myth and Science

Stories we tell about how things work.

I am reading an ancient book about ancient myths, covering some of what was known of the ancient world's stories circa the mid-20th century (that is, the "developed" ancient world of Egypt, the Near East, China, India, etc.). The authors occasionally seem exasperated that their colleagues- the ancient authors of these stories and myths- do not always take their stories as seriously as scholars themselves do, after having so painstakingly learned the relevant languages, unearthed the precious tablets, papyri, inscriptions, and other sources, compared different versions, and interpreted them in light of the historical setting. No, ancient myths can be playful affairs, evolving in dramatic complexity, freely mutating to serve the needs of the moment in their mutable oral traditions. This is especially true the farther back you go into ethnographic history, such as into the stories of the Inuit and other First Peoples of North America. It is evident that ancient societies varied widely in their theological and mythological sophistication, and particularly how closely entwined these were with the centers of power.

Inuit mythologies and their custodian, the shaman.

The scholarly apparatus around myth studies has a very earnest and modernist cast, which derives from two sources. First is Christianity, which as an extreme political and social elaboration of ancient religions has progressively reified and codified its myths. Inheriting a grab-bag of disparate ancient myths and stories, Christianity shored up its social position and theological bona fides by insisting that it was all true. The more sclerotic and far-reaching its bureaucratic structure, the more tightly it held to the absolute truth of its dogmas. A second aspect was the enlightenment and the rise of scientific modernity. That world view was not interested in playful myths of psychodrama, but in hard truths of how the world really works, stripped of the colorful trappings. Competition with this world view helped to further push religious dogmas in an absolutist direction, to that point where today, both Christian Evangelicals and fundamentalist Islamists insist that their scriptures are literally true, handed down from an all-powerful god who really exists and is not fictive construct meant as a playful expression of our scientific ignorance on one hand, and our love of social drama on the other. Anthropologists took their cues from all this, assuming that the precious myths they were studying had to be expressions of a society's absolute truths, organizing principles, and deepest motivations. But perhaps they were originally ways to pass the time and enchant a few youngsters.

Science is telling stories, too. Are they really so different? On the one hand, our need to orient ourselves in the world remains unchanged from ancient times, so the core purpose of explaining reality and society through complicated tales of causes and effects remains. And to a lay person, the explanations of quantum mechanics or cosmic inflation are no less impenetrable than myths about gods and dragons. Thus the scientists who are the custodians of these stories find themselves in the ironic position of a new priesthood, cultivating the cultural narrative around origins, natural phenomena, biology, and the like, while extending these stories in systematic ways that the priests (and alchemists, and shamans, and druids) of yore could only dream about, if they could even conceive of such reliable beliefs untethered from social drama and social control. But today's scientists can't and won't inject ancillary drama into these stories, so they will remain split off from their traditional roles and uses.

So the telling of dramatic stories and the consequent management of society through the narratives of origins, myths, and meaning- if ancient myths really did fulfill these functions, which is perhaps an anachronistic construction on our part, or at least varied widely with the nature of ancient societies- are skills having nothing, really, to do with the scientific enterprise of today, and thus nothing to do with this new priesthood. Who takes these roles?

Theology would seem the natural place for the living and socially relevant myth. But theology has split definitively from science, from history, and indeed from reality, nurturing narratives that are absurd while claiming they are true, and which in their antiquity and provincialism are impossibly remote from our current concerns, morals, and social ability to relate even allegorically. Theology has thus become lost in a sterile wilderness, doomed to be cut off from its mythical and social power. Even the more liberal and elastic precincts, if they do not insist on absolute literal truth, adhere to the crusty old stories of the Bible, which while occasionally artistic, are mostly a maddening hodgpodge and, frankly, boring. What was riveting in antiquity about lengthy ancestor lists, angry gods, virgin births, and ascending into the clouds is ridiculous today. 

The story-telling mantle has obviously been taken over by Hollywood- by the Marvel series, Star Treks, Star Wars, Potter series, and similar epics of modern fantasy. They bend reality in classically mythical ways, make up their own theology as they go along, (and throw it away as casually with the next installment), and communicate constantly updated social mores. The graphics are otherworldly, the stories and morals are updated, but the fundamental sophistication of these stories can't really be said to have advanced much. They are speaking to human nature, after all- a conversation between our inborn archetypes and the social and technological conditions we find ourselves in.

The key point is that Hollywood myths are taken as intended- as fertile and mind-expanding fantasies with social and moral lessons that are (hopefully) beneficial and relevant for our times. They are not trying to claim their myths as true- that would be absurd. Thus they do not collide with either scientific or theological claims, and use myth as it was originally and truly intended- as the dreamlike realm of symbolic human drama, full of lessons, yes, but not scientific ones, or even pseudoscientific ones.

• An outstanding dissection of just how bad US policy and behavior was in Afghanistan.
• Facebook / Fecebook is a cesspool, by design.
• Dead ender racism.
• A mutagenic drug to save us all.
• How about those great vaccines?
• Some nice piano.

All Facts are Theories, But Not All Theories are Facts

Are theories and facts different in kind, or are they related and transform into each other?

During the interminable debates about "Intelligent Design" and evolution, there was much hand-wringing about fact vs theory. Evolution was, to some, "just" a theory, to others a well-attested theory, and to others, a fact, whether in the observation of life's change through time (vs the straight creationists), or in the causal mechanism of natural selection (vs the so-called intelligent design proponents). Are theories just speculations, or are they, once accepted by their relevant community, the rock-like edifice of science? And are facts even plain as such, or are they infected by theory? Our late descent into unhinged right-wingery poses related, though far more complex, questions about the nature of facts and who or what can warrant them. But here, I will stick to the classic question as posed in philosophy and science- what is the distinction and or relation between facts and theories? This follows, but disagrees with, a recent discussion in Free Inquiry.

The official scientific organs (NCSE) have generally taken the position that theories are different from facts, making a pedagogically bright line distinction where things like tectonic plate theory and evolution are theories, while rock compositions and biochemistry are facts. In this way, science is made up, at a high level, of theories, which constantly evolve and broaden in their scope, while the facts they are built on arrive on a conveyor belt of normal scientific progress, via lab experiments, field work, etc. Facts help to support or refute theories, which are such abstract, dynamic, and wide-ranging bags of concepts that they can not rightly be regarded as facts.

All very pat, but what are facts? It turns out that nothing we observe and call a fact escapes some amount of interpretation, or the need to be based on theories of how the world works. We grow up with certain axiomatic and built-in conditions, like gravity, vision, and physical cause and effect. Thus we think that anything we "observe" directly is a fact. But all such observations are built on a history of learning about how things work, which is in essence starting with a bunch of theories, some instinctively inborn, which are gradually satisfied by evidence as we grow up ... to the extent that we take many things for granted as fact, like being able to count on gravity as we are walking, that the sun comes up every day, etc. Facts are not automatic or self-attested, but rather are themselves essentially theories, however simple, that have been put to the test and found reliable.

And therein lies a clue to how we, and especially scientists, evaluate information and use the categories of fact and theory in a practical and dynamic way. Lawyers often talk of coming up with a theory of the case, which is to say, a story that is going to convince a jury, which has the job of finding the facts of the case. When the jury finds the theory convincing, and vote for the lawyer's side, the facts are found insofar and the law is concerned. Their determination may come far short of philosophic rigor, but the movement is typical- the movement from theory to fact. 

On the other hand, what is a theory? I think it can be described as a proposed fact. No one would propose a theory if they didn't think it was true and explanatory of reality. Whether broad or narrow, it is a set of interpretations that seek to make sense of the world in a way that we limited humans can categorize, into our store of knowledge. For instance, Freudian theories of repression, Oedipal complexes, castration fears, etc. would have been, if borne out, facts about our mental lives. Being rather vague, they may have needed a great deal of refinement before getting there, but all the same, they were proposed facts regarding what we feel and do, and the psychic mechanisms that lead to those feelings. 

In science, it is the experiment and its communication that is the key event in the alchemy of transforming theories into facts. Science is unusual in its explicit and purposeful interaction with theories that are unproven. Tectonic theory was once a mere theory, and a crackpot one at that. But as observations came in, which were proposed on the basis of that theory, or retroactively appreciated as support for it, such as the lengthy hunt for mid-ocean ridges where tectonic plates separate, and other faults where they converge, that theory gained "fact-ness". Now it is simply a fact, and the science of geology has gone other to other frontiers of theory, working to transform them into fact, or back off and try some others.

The mid-Atlantic ridge, straining to be understood by observers equipped with the theory of plate tectonics. Also, a video of the longer term.

Another example is the humble molecular biology experiment, such as cloning a gene responsible for some disease. The theory can be so simple as to be hardly enunciated- that disease X is in part genetic, and the responsible mutation must occur in some gene, and thus if we find it, we can establish a new fact about that disease as well as about that gene. Then the hunt goes on, the family lineages are traced, the genetic mapping happens, and the sequencing is done, and the gene is found. What was once a theory, if an unsurprising one, has now been transformed into a fact, one perhaps with practical, medical applications.

But the magic of experiments is usually only discernable to the few people who are sufficiently knowledgeable or interested to appreciate the transformation that just happened. The boundary between theory and fact depends on the expertise of the witnesses, and can be sociologically hazy. Does homeopathy cure disease? Well, hemeopathic practitioners regard that as fact, and have gone on to an elaborate practice and pharmacopeia of dilute solutions to effect various cures. Others disagree and regard the whole thing as not only a theory, but a stunningly wrong-headed one at that- as far as can be imagined from having gained fact-hood. Real science revolves around experiments done to what is essentially a standard of philosophical proof. Techniques are reported and consistently applied, controls are done to isolate variables of interest, materials are described and made publicly available, and the logic of the demonstration is clarified so that readers knowledgble in the arts of the field can be confident that the conclusions follow from the premises. And the practitioners themselves are culturally vetted through lengthy apprenticeships of training and critique. 

The practice of peer review is a natural part of this series of events, putting the experiment through a critique by the (hopefully) most knowledgeable practitioners in the field, who can stand in for the intended audience for whom the experiment is supposed to perform this alchemical transformation of theory. The scientific literature is full of the most varied and imaginative efforts to "factify" hypotheses, hunches, and theories. Very few of these will ever be appreciated by the lay public, but they lay the ever-advancing frontier of facts from which new hypotheses are made, new theories tested, and occasionally, some of their resulting facts are discovered to be useful, such as the advent of gene therapy via the Crisper/Cas9 gene editing system, liposomes, and associated technologies. 

Another aspect of the public nature of science and peer critique is that if a knowledgeable observer disagrees with the theory-fact transition purported by some experiment, they are duty-bound and encouraged to replicate those experiments themselves, or do other experiments to demonstrate their counter-vailing ideas. On a cheaper level, they are welcome and encouraged to ask uncomfortable questions during seminars and write tart letters to the editors of journals, since pointing out the errors of others is one of the most enjoyable activities humans pursue, and doubles as a core of the integrity that characterizes the culture of science. In this way, facts sometimes reverse course and travel back into the realm of theory, to sweat it out in the hands of some disgruntled grad student and her overbearing supervisor, destined to never again see the light of day.

Experiments crystallize most clearly the transition from theory to fact. They create, though careful construction, a situation that banishes incidental distractions, focuses attention on a particular phenomenon, and establishes a logic of causation that forms (hopefully) convincing evidence for a theory, transforming it into fact, for knowledgeable observers. They create controlled and monitored conditions where knowlegeable people can "see" the truth of a theory being put to a decisive test. Just as we can now see the truth of the heliocentric theory directly with the use of spaceships sent out across the solar system, the observation of a fact is a matter of the prepared mind meeting with a set of observations, either tailored specifically in the form of an experiment to test a theory, or else taken freely from nature to illuminate a theory's interpretation of reality. Nothing is intrisically obvious, but needs an educated observer to discern truth. Nothing is completely theory-free. Nevertheless, facts can be established.

• Lies are power.
• On social contagion.
• Code red.
• The electricity interconnect of the Eastern US slowly grapples with reality.
• How many has Covid killed?
• In Afghanistan, the US has spent decades building a political and military paper tiger.