Bad Stars

Once upon a time, astronomers hypothesized that most planetary systems looked a lot like the one that we live in - star in the center, "small" rocky planets in closer orbits and larger gas giants in farther orbits. But, as Robert Krulwich points out, that's not what the current data are beginning to show, according to researchers.

"We are now beginning to understand that nature seems to overwhelmingly prefer [planetary] systems that have multiple planets with orbits of less than 100 days," says Steve Vogt, astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

As I read through the article and the case was being made that our own solar system wasn't the run-of-the-mill, dime-a-dozen everyday sort of place that we once presumed it was, a thought came to me. "I wonder," I said to myself, how long it will take for the comments section to degenerate into an argument (or simply outright trolling session) about the existence of God."

Not very long, it turned out. Near the top of the comment threads I found:

Contemporary cosmologists are very uncomfortable with the notion that our planet or our solar system is unique because it hints at God."Art Aficionado"

And it started to go downhill from there.

I don't know the origin of The Great Scientific Atheism Conspiracy, but it seems to have become one the enduring facets of the Culture Wars. For a religious belief system that dominates civic and political thought in the United States, Christianity, especially the more conservative strains that put forward the Bible as a literal world history or understand that morality should be encoded into law, seems to be almost hypersensitive to the idea that there are people who are not invested in sharing their faith. And, as a result, it perceives enemies everywhere.

But what strikes me as most interesting about the many arguments that people have about faith in the United States is the apparently constant quest to obviate it. There is a constant quest for a concrete piece of data that will definitively prove the existence of the Judeo-Christian-Moslem God. And I find myself curious - do followers of Shinto or Seikhs or neo-Pagans believe that somewhere in the world lies the proof that their convictions are right - not just for them, but for everyone? Do they have the same concept of a piece of physical evidence that objectively demonstrates their moral correctness? Similarly do they understand the divine as something that is invested in people's faith, while at the same time remaining cryptic and inaccessible to those who don't already believe?

The march of Judaism, Christianity and Islam around the globe has resulted in the destruction or assimilation of countless other religions and practices. Did these, when they came to believe that they faced persecution and elimination, turn to the idea of a definitive proof that would not only stop the newcomers in their tracks, but leave them with no recourse other than conversion?

The attempts to deduce the nature of divinity from the heavens is an age-old one. Mankind has always sought for gods among the stars. But the nature of modern American politics makes the search for God in the findings of modern cosmology into something different - and something darker. Rather than seeking to share the hope, love and joy that they find in their faith, the goal seems to be impose their own strictures, rules and boundaries on those around them. Hardly a worthwhile reason to scour the cosmos.

We're Just Here For the Resources

I wonder, when I hear about the interminable debate over immigration, to what degree stories like this, real or imagined, are in the backs of some people's minds.

Because of fishing and their ability to adapt, the Yakunin Clan lives comfortably in Alaska, able to afford large boats and trucks. Though Vasily Yakunin says his father and uncle knew nothing about fishing when they came to Alaska, the Russian fishing fleet today has a reputation for aggressive tactics and self-policing. Americans in the surrounding communities can share stories about the Russian fleet setting nets too close to other boats, ignoring calls from the Coast Guard, and only responding to help if it comes from another Russian.

There are a couple communities of the Old Believers sect of the Russian Orthodox church in Alaska, and part of the reason that they live there is that it's remote from the rest of the United States, and they can make a living there. They'd migrated through other places before settling there - they'd left Brazil for Oregon because it was easier to make a living, and Oregon for Alaska to avoid Americanization. And while a community of Orthodox Russians is a far cry from Latin American migrants, in the minds of some people that I've spoken to over the years, the overall intent is the same - come to the United States, avoid becoming a part of American society and culture, build a better life with the resources the United States offer and eventually, the fear goes, displace and marginalize the "native" Americans.

Of course, there is a precedent for this. Simply remove the quotes from the word "native" and capitalize the "N," and the narrative starts to sound familiar. And while many modern Americans are dutifully upset over the treatment of the native population that lived here before their ancestors arrived, they reaped the benefits of that poor treatment, and they aim to keep them. Even some Libertarians, who can be famously hostile to any threats to absolute ownership of personal property and real estate, have settled on a definition of ownership that implies that the Native Americans didn't actually own the lands they lived and hunted on, with the result that the wholesale appropriation that land by European settlers was perfectly justified.

The vagaries of American history have resulted in a fragmented population. And many of these fragments, for reasons of their own, tend to live in terror of being marginalized. While most of us have never encountered the worst effects of it firsthand, for many, it lurks around the corner, waiting to once again be the order of the day. As long as that fear lives, discussions about the role of immigration, especially en masse, into the modern United States will always have the specter of a hostile, avaricious or uncaring Other in them and a be tinged with a fear that the Other will do unto Americans as they have done before.

Clearly

Clearly, we need faith as a component, and it's just silly to say otherwise. You know the Age of Enlightenment and Reason gave way to moral relativism. And moral relativism is what led us all the way down the dark path to the Holocaust.
Penny Nance. CEO, Concerned Women for America

“Moral relativism,” according to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “is the view that moral judgments are true or false only relative to some particular standpoint (for instance, that of a culture or a historical period) and that no standpoint is uniquely privileged over all others.” Or, as many of us experience it today, morality is not objective. From a Judeo-Christian-Moslem standpoint, this is incorrect, as the justice that is the stated goal of moral behavior rests upon the idea of a single, neutral and consistent arbiter who holds the final judgment. The principles by which this arbiter judges are what render moral judgments true or false, and its standpoint is, by definition, privileged.

The difficulty that Nance's statement creates is that acts that we consider evil, like the Holocaust, pre-date the Age of Enlightenment and Reason. The armed religious pilgrimages-cum-massacres that were many of the Crusades were certainly not driven by the idea that humans could arrive at workable moral and ethical frameworks without a reliance on faith. And long before the Crusades is the story of the destruction of the Amalekites at the direct command of God, and the rebuke of Saul because he sought to honor God in a way other than simple obedience of the command to slaughter.

And that is the problem. At the heart of Euthyphro's dilemma is the simple fact that what religious authorities have told people were “right” and “moral” has often not squared with what people independently concluded were thus. And this has been true for thousands of years. And if you take divinities out of the equation, you are left with fundamental disagreements between people as to what actions (or inaction) constitute “right” and “moral.”

It doesn't take a student of theology to realize that just about any community, anywhere, if it is going to be stable and have any longevity, must eventually settle on a set of rules that govern the behavior of its members. And as all of these rules have similar goals, they are unlikely, in fact, to appear to be random when viewed from outside. While detractors famously point to “The Survival of the Fittest” as a principle that mandates that every person do what is required spread their own genes at the direct expense of their neighbors, the fact remains that this deals with only one of three basic facets in the Struggle for Existence put forth by Darwin. Individuals in a given species do not compete solely with one another. They compete against other species and against the very environment in which they live. To the degree that there have been societies that have persisted for long periods of time with rules that differ from the codes, inspired by Jewish, Christian and Islamic thought, that have dominated Western and Middle-eastern civilizations, their moral codes were just as relevant and successful as any other. Moral relativism is simply an acknowledgement of that, and a refutation of the idea that it was just for conquering invaders to denounce as evil and then exterminate those other moral codes, simply for being different from their own.

It has become fashionable among Christians to see intellectualism, and the denial of the need to be strictly obedient to the word of a deity or to have faith as a prerequisite for moral behavior, as a pernicious force that leads people away from divine guidance and grace, thus leaving them susceptible to acting on baser instincts that a faith-based morality would supposedly quash. It is equally fashionable to accentuate the “otherness” of the Nazis (who are popular whipping boys due to their status as morally unambiguous villains) by presenting what seems to be a highly self-serving understanding of Christianity as, instead, a form of devout Atheism, using the “Socialist” aspect of “National Socialism” to portray the Third Reich as sharing Marxism's dim view of religiosity. This supports the idea that the Holocaust was the result of a rejection of traditional morality, rather than the same sort of bending morality to the service of national and ethnic superiority that more skeptical observers see throughout history.

h/t George E. Williams IV

What Goes Around

At some time when I was in high school, it occurred to me that, for many people in the United States (and perhaps the world), there was only one appropriate way for oppressed, mistreated and marginalized Americans (people) to behave - a grovelling obsequiousness, following all of the rules of those that injured in them in a desperate hope that they would be recognized as worthy to be brought into the "in-group," and allowed to come in from the cold. Rage, anger and a desire to redress things if they will not be redressed for you are not allowed. Instead they bring retribution and further oppression, mistreatment and marginalization.

Over the intervening decades, I haven't always held onto that particularly bleak view of American (or human) nature, but it comes back to me from time to time. It moved in again most recently when I was reading Ta-Nehisi Coates' "Fear of a Black President" from last September, and many of the comments left on James Hamblin's "Have You Ever Tried to Force-Feed a Captured Human?"

As I've grown older (or simply old) I've come to the conclusion that the most enduring legacy of oppression, mistreatment and marginalization is the enduring fear of oppression, mistreatment and marginalization. Societies and nations change, sometimes radically, but that history never really goes away. There is always a suspicion that there is a cadre of people who are just waiting to turn back the clock (say, to 1850), and that despite the uplifting words of the society at large, the rush to accept lives of privilege paid for with the blood, sweat and tears of others will erase all of the hard-earned gains of years, decades and centuries. As much as I often feel this fear is misplaced, as an indifferent student of history and at-times appalled student of the six o'clock news, I can sympathize with it.

But I also try to keep in mind that the fear of oppression, mistreatment and marginalization also exists in the minds of the people who were historically behind the oppression, mistreatment and marginalization in the first place. Hence White American conservatives are easily roused to fear by Black rage, the potential anger of Guantanamo detainees becomes a reason for continuing their indefinite detention and a Men's Rights Activists movement casts themselves as victims of aggressive feminism. Although I must admit that I less sympathy in those cases. Where their fears to actually come true, and the streets began to run red with blood, I don't know that I would be willing to pay the price of intervention.

And that, of course, is the problem.

In Front of Your Face

One of the important lessons that my father taught me as a child was that: "'Obvious' is something that is so crystal-clear than you are the only person who sees it." Like a number of my father's sayings it was, while memorable, a bit cryptic for a pre-teen, and so I really didn't "get it" at the time, although the basic message was clear enough. As I've grown older, I've revisited that saying over and over, and my understanding of it has developed nuance and layers. In the end, I think, the message is a fairly simple one, than can be summed up as: Obvious is in the eye of the beholder.

I've done my best to take this to heart, and, as a result, I work at keeping in mind that something is obvious to me because of my perceptions - and my perceptions are shaped by may experiences. I've learned what's obvious to me, rather than been gifted it because of my intellect and sensitivity. And so I hope that I'm careful about assuming that things are obvious to other people.

And so I found myself nodding in agreement with Clive Crook as he lamented Paul Krugman's willingness to dismiss his critics as "knaves and fools" who "have an intense desire to be wrong." While haven't seen Mr. Krugman refer to his critics as sociopaths, I have been in discussions with people who follow his theories, and they have no qualms about labeling those who disagree with him as mentally ill. Of course, this doesn't end there; instead, Mr. Crook is now in someone else's crosshairs. We'll see who answers that fusillade, and how long the firefight goes on.

I'm not terribly familiar with Mr. Crook's writing. I'd heard the name before, and that's really about all I know about him, so I hope to stay out of the Keynesian versus Hayekian/Liberal versus Conservative politics of the issue. (Besides, I see the two approaches as differing more in style, than in substance.) For me the issue is a simple one - lots of people are convinced enough of the self-evidential nature of their beliefs that they are comfortable in calling out their critics as fools, knaves or mentally ill. And I, for my part, simply don't see how that helps things.

I understand frustration with people appearing to be incapable of understanding things that have been laid out for them again and again. But one of the things that I've learned from my father's aphorism is that no-one, no matter how correct I might think myself, is obligated to ever see me as correct. If I expect someone else to do something based on an argument that I am making, the burden is on me to prove it to them, on their terms and to their satisfaction. If I cannot do this, that's my problem, not theirs. And if I come to the conclusion that they are being willfully obtuse, in order to thwart me, then I have to be able to prove that, as well - rather than simply conclude it.