2006 August | Way of the Mind

Monthly Archive for August, 2006Page 3 of 3

"Closed minds"

Published

on August 13, 2006

in logic, reality, reason and relativism

. 13 Comments

Unless you’re some kind of religious fundamentalist, it’s likely that you will agree that an open mind is a positive quality. And, when arguing, both you and your opponents should be on guard against having a closed mind, that is, refusing to even consider the possibility that you are wrong.

However, some people - I see this from time to time - use the “you don’t have an open mind!” argument in a very peculiar way…

It goes like this:

Person A: “2 plus 2 equals 4.”

Person B: “That’s very closed-minded. You’re not even considering the possibility that you’re wrong, and that 2 + 2 equals something other than 4. You refuse to listen to any opinions or ideas different from your own. Other people may believe that 2 + 2 equals, say, 5, and who’s to say that you know better than them? How can you be so arrogantly sure? You talk about keeping an open mind, and yet you accept on faith than 2 + 2 equals 4, and refuse to think further about it. That’s dogmatic, like any religion.”

<sigh>

Yes, relativism is a terrible thing - it denies the existence of facts, of an objective reality. To a relativist, there are no facts, only opinions, and there’s nothing that says that one is better or truer than another. A relativist prides himself on “an open mind”, because, after all, he’s prepared to believe anything and everything, without judging, without using his mind at all.

However, that attitude is nothing more than a refusal to think and to deal with an objective reality on its terms. It’s pure cowardice - reality is scary, so you deny it.

An open mind does not mean denying the existence of facts. That’s just an absurd distortion of the concept.

"All things are possible"…

Published

Pedro Timóteo

on August 11, 2006

in fanaticism and religion

. 4 Comments

The Martian has already commented on a great comment (!) from a thread in the God Is For Suckers blog, so I won’t repeat what he said; he’s obviously right.

However, another comment caught my attention as well. It’s the 2nd one, by Lynda:

And if she does fail she blames herself for not having enough faith in gawd or Jeebus. She will set unrealistic goals based on fairy tale expectations because some book promised that she would succeed if she just has enough belief in the “all powerful”. The end result is self-loathing and mistrust of her own abilities. She won’t be able to rejoice and take pride in any real accomplishments because they won’t measure up to the “all things are possible” standard.

See the problem? God is supposed perfectly good and all powerful, and the Bible says that “faith can move mountains”, that “with enough faith, all things are possible”.

So what if you pray for success in something… and fail?

Christian fundies will never doubt the existence of God. Nor his omnipotence, or his goodness. What remains, then? Lack of faith. With all the guilt it implies.

Say you have a sick son and pray for his recovery. He dies. But… how could that happen, since the Bible states that “God notices even the fall of a sparrow”? What about the promises of our prayers being heard? And aren’t all things supposed to be possible to God, and therefore to anyone with God on his/her side?

If you don’t doubt God, then only two explanations remain. One, “it was God’s plan” - which would make God an evil sadist, worthy of contempt, lower than most human beings, if he existed. The second explanation is “your faith wasn’t enough”. Or, in other words, “you deserved it”.

A lot of Christians say that they don’t think they could go on through life without their faith in God. Yet they’re the unhappy ones, always feeling guilty, because if something bad happens to them, their lack of faith - their “wickedness” - is to blame. After all, God is perfect, and he promised… if only you had enough faith…

(Now, some people will say that “God helps those who help themselves.” It’s an improvement… but it’s a modern interpretation, absolutely contrary to what it says in the Bible. I thought it was supposed to be the word of God?)

Ayn Rand was NOT a conservative

Published

Pedro Timóteo

on August 10, 2006

in definitions and objectivism

. 13 Comments

Ayn Rand, one of my favorite authors, is seen by many conservatives as “one of them”, as their “champion”, because she was totally opposed (and rightly so) to socialism and collectivism, supposed characteristics of “liberals” (at least in the American definition of the term).

However, conservatives have “stolen” Ayn Rand in pretty much the same way that Charles Manson “stole” Helter Skelter, a very good song by the Beatles. The song became associated with a repulsive murderer, while its creators never intended such a thing.

Like I said, it’s the same thing. I can’t say I love Rand’s books and philosophy without being seen as “conservative”. And yet…

Ayn Rand was an atheist. Conservatives are mostly Christian (and usually pretty fanatical about it).
Ayn Rand had no use for tradition. Conservatives worship tradition.
Ayn Rand said that reason should be man’s only absolute. To conservatives, reason is irrelevant; what matters is faith, obedience, duty, tradition (again), etc..
Ayn Rand believed in a minimal government. Conservatives like to convince themselves of the same, but in fact they want their governments to legislate morality, outlawing anything they believe to be “wicked” - even if done by consenting adults. (edit: if you don’t see what I mean here, read the 2nd comment)
Ayn Rand believed in the heroic. Conservatives have no use for it.
Ayn Rand believed that man’s own happiness is the moral purpose of his life. Conservatives believe in sacrifice to “the country” (much like socialists believe in sacrifice to “the people” - see, they aren’t so different after all), and servitude to God.
Ayn Rand believed in progress (though not in the sense that socialists say “progressive”), and in improving our lives. Conservatives do everything in their power to return to “better times”, or, at least, to keep everything as it is.
Ayn Rand believed that only rational beings have rights. Conservatives have no problem with killing people in a war (they’re foreigners, anyway), but believe embryos, which aren’t sentient and don’t even feel pain, are “sacred”, and can’t be harmed, even if it means sacrificing living people with diseases.
Ayn Rand said that morality comes from rational principles. Conservatives believe it comes from God, that there is no rational reason to be “good” except that God wills it.
Ayn Rand believed in the non-initiation of force. Conservatives invaded Iraq for no reason at all.
Ayn Rand believed in freedom. Conservatives believe in freedom to agree with them.

And I could go on.

Dear conservatives: please stop trying to steal one of my favorite thinkers for yourselves. She wasn’t like you at all, and you are only showing that you never understood what she wrote (or never read it at all) in the first place. Thank you.

Honesty and the Iraq war: calling things what they are

Published

Pedro Timóteo

on August 9, 2006

in courage, definitions, honesty and truth

. 1 Comment

Two posts ago, I wrote:

Let’s hope this is but the beginning of a wave of people finding out where their balls are.

And I’d really like to see it happening, though I’m not too optimistic.

For instance, take U.S. Democrats. While they criticize the Bush administration, they always say things like “mismanagement of the war”, “faulty intelligence on WMDs”, “negligence”, and so on.

Where is the politician (Democrat or Republican) with the courage to say that Bush lied? That the war was, and is, all based on deceit? Is it political suicide to say the truth, these days? Is it barely acceptable to say that the war wasn’t handled very well, but not to say that it was wrong from the start? That there never were any WMDs there, or a connection to 9/11, or any kind of threat to the U.S.?

How many politicians supported the war because they didn’t want to be seen as “weak”? Were they all deceived by the administration’s lies? I doubt it. They simply went along with the lies, because they’d lose influence if they spoke up - they’d be seen as “weak on terrorism”, as (perish the thought) “liberals”.

The Iraq war isn’t being “mismanaged”, it’s going exactly like the Bush administration wants: never-ending. Why, if the war ever came to an end, people might want their lost civil liberties back… or believe that it was OK to criticize the president again without being “unpatriotic”… or notice the state of the economy… and we don’t want that, do we?

A reply to my Anti-Intellectualism post

Published

Pedro Timóteo

on August 9, 2006

in reality, reason and religion

. 1 Comment

Kent Newsome has commented (thanks, Blogger Web Comments) on my post about anti-intellectualism, a few days ago. And I feel I must comment on one of his comments.

[...] I feel compelled to point out that I don’t buy the fact that intelligence and learning are inconsistent with religion and faith.

The essence of faith is to believe what you cannot prove. If you question it, if you can make the argument that it is logically impossible, yet you still believe it- that is faith. The more capable you are to question it, the stronger your faith is when you conclude that you believe it anyway.

True, that is faith. But how is that different from beliving in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy?

If faith is knowing that something cannot logically, rationally, be true, and, yet, still believing in it… then why stop at one rationally impossible thing? Why not believe in anything that suits your fancy? Why not believe that all pink objects are alive and sentient, for instance?

If your mind and your reasoning tells you there probably isn’t a god, your eyes see no traces of a god, science explains more and more, up to a point that what is left for God, even if nothing further was explained by science, isn’t really that much… and you still believe there is a God… why? Why is that? What is the source of your belief?

Wishful thinking? A “feeling you can’t describe”? The need for “something greater than yourself”? Indoctrination?

And why “God”? Why not someone or something else, equally supernatural, unknowable and untestable? Why not several things at once? The existence of the supernatural already contradicts science and observation of reality, so why not believe - with all your heart, of course - in two different supernatural beings whose existence contradicts one another, as they are both supposed to have created the universe, at different times, and in different ways? After all, “faith is knowing that it is logically impossible, yet believing in it”… right?

Lieberman’s loss, and lack of integrity

Published

Pedro Timóteo

on August 9, 2006

in politics and principles

. 0 Comments

I’ve seen some news sources saying that Lieberman’s loss is actually bad for the Democrats, because Lamont will be pictured as “too liberal” and may actually lose the state to the Republicans - not to mention that, around the country, the Reps will be saying things like “See, Joe Lieberman was not liberal enough for the Democrats! They’re extreme left wing!” Even some Democrats are scared, because Lieberman could attract many more “centrist / right-wing” voters than Lamont, and now the entire party may be seen as “too liberal” or “not tough enough on terrorism” (WHAT terrorism? What does the Iraq war have to do with “terrorism”?)

Am I the only one who sees a problem here?

Is the only goal in politics to win elections? Must politicians base their campaigns on opinion polls, instead of actually having principles of their own? Do they just say anything they have to say to get elected? Anyone with half a brain knows that the war in Iraq is wrong, but because so many people don’t have half a brain, our candidate must support the war? Is that it?

Or am I too naïve by being surprised?

I’m glad Lamont won. It’s time politicians - and everyone - stop being afraid of standing up to the Bush administration, because they don’t want to be seen as “liberal extremists”.

Let’s hope this is but the beginning of a wave of people finding out where their balls are.

Lieberman lost. Good.

Published

Pedro Timóteo

on August 9, 2006

in censorship, politics and principles

. 1 Comment

I’m not American, so why do I care?

Because America influences the rest of the world, like it or not. And Lieberman’s loss may finally mean that things are changing for the better over there.

Funnily enough, I’ve long disagreed with Lieberman, before the Iraq war, before even the Bush administration. Because I remember: Joe Lieberman is an advocate of censorship.

He’s the kind of sleazy politician who promotes censorship and other controls of media like video games, without really knowing anything about them, just to show soccer moms and conservatives how much “a guardian of moral values” he is. In other words, he despises the first amendment, individual choice, and freedom.

People, censorship is wrong. Always. And in this particular case it’s even worse, because it’s not censorship based on something that is actually there, but on a lie repeated so often that people accept it as true without even checking. The lie that “there are video games where you are rewarded for raping and beating up women”. I’m a gamer, and I tell you, there is no such thing in mainstream video games, no matter what Lieberman, or Hillary Clinton, or one of the most disgusting creeps in the world, say.

Video games are just like comic books in the 50s, or rock music in the 60s: they’re unknown to older, scared people, and dishonest politicians take advantage of that, promoting such entertainment as “deviant” and “dangerous”, and attempting to appear as guardians of morality. And people keep falling for it.

But Joe Lieberman is even worse. Let’s take one of his more recent comments, about the war in Iraq:

“In matters of war we undermine presidential credibility at our nation’s peril.”

(source)

Excuse me?!? Isn’t that the same as saying “if we’re at war, the president is our supreme leader and cannot be questioned”? What kind of absurdity is that? Isn’t he, in effect, saying that any president can start a war, and is then allowed to do whatever he wants, that he actually becomes above the law? Clever, then: start a generic “war on terror”, without a defined end.

And that man had the nerve to call himself a “democrat”. Last time I looked, “democracy” didn’t exactly go for supreme leaders…

Good thing he lost. I hope he loses again, when he runs as an independent.

Socialists and "liberals"

Published

Pedro Timóteo

on August 8, 2006

in definitions and politics

. 1 Comment

A weird thing about Americans (I’m European) is that they call socialists “liberals”. And they use the latter term as if it was a dirty word.

You see, I’m far from a socialist - I’d say I’m something akin to a libertarian, although there’s no libertarian-like party around here. However, I do consider myself a liberal - because, around here, “liberal” means someone who cherishes individual freedom (real freedom, not just “freedom to agree with me”), and who opposes any kind of authoritarism. It has nothing to do with socialism or collectivism or “big government” or social security or the “welfare state” or all those meanings they ascribe to the term; instead, its meaning comes from the origin of the word “liberal”: liberty.

But Americans, as I said, use it like a dirty word.

Strange country.