Blog entries are in chronological order

April 4, 2005:  Back in college after John Lennon was assassinated I joked, in that obnoxious college student manner, that of the three assassination attempts that year (Reagan, the Pope, and Lennon), they managed to kill the wisest and most spiritual.

Since then, I’ve revised my opinion. Reagan was wise enough to stop the massive defense buildup in 1985, and work with Gorbachev, allowing Gorbachev to move forward with reform and setting up the peaceful end of the Cold War. The Pope emerged as one of the most important, influential, honest and committed to principle individuals of the last century. He consistently stood against war, the death penalty and abortion, a firm and unwavering commitment to principle that often made his supporters cringe. Hawkish pro-death penalty Catholics tried to simply ignore or 'explain away' his pacifism (the ultimate insult to their pontiff) by denying its importance as a practical real world prescription, while liberal Catholics found his abortion views (alongside many other views such as birth control and the issue of priest marriage) too old fashioned. Yet he was consistent, and principled.  He praised anti-war demonstrations in Europe and declared the Iraq war a "defeat for humanity."  Anyone supporting the Iraq war has to acknowledge that the Pope was an adamantly and vocally anti-war, based on those core principles he saw as clear and true.

He also took serious the church’s historical attempt to combine rational thought with faith. He strongly pushed for reform in Communist East Europe, reflecting his own experiences in his native Poland, seeing first hand the high cost loss of freedom has in terms of human dignity and spirituality. He was not afraid to reach out to opponents like Fidel Castro, agreeing with him on a number of points concerning the way modern capitalism operates. It was surreal to see Castro and the Pope sharing some agreements, but the Pope followed principle, and of course did not agree with Castro’s approach to governance. The Pope wanted to reach out to Russia as well, only to find the Orthodox Church adamantly opposed to a visit which they feared might strengthen the allure of Catholicism in Russia (their fear of ‘poaching souls,’ an odd concept to say the least!)

Perhaps the most impressive aspect of the Pope’s 26 year rule, and the one most worth emulating, is how he personified respect for others through his style of discourse. While standing adamantly on principle, he always showed respect for others, including his opponents, trying to reflect the love, tolerance, and care of God in his own person. In our culture of trash talking, political red meat rhetoric, and constant personal and emotional holy wars on talk radio, he stands as an example of how to clearly and with love state principle.

I am not a Catholic, and of course find myself disagreeing with the Pope and the Catholic church on a variety of issues. However, he distinguished himself as a spiritual man of principle, whose lesson is that if you stand for something, you don’t have to tear others down, engage in mean spirited and petty vindictive, or envision yourself in some kind of war or battle. Instead a gentle manner, a firm stand on principle, consideration and respect for others, and acceptance of disagreement are the attributes of a great spiritual leader – attributes that even we non-Catholics should aspire to emulate.

April 6, 2005:  What is the importance of morality in international politics? That question has always been important to me, given my personal belief that the most important aspect of life is ethics: how we treat other people. The ability to empathize with the other, to love and show charity to those with whom we disagree or are in competition, is the mark of someone virtuous. As John Henry Newman noted, knowledge and virtue are two different things.

When I was writing my tribute to Pope John Paul II a couple days ago, it struck me how easily people like President Bush and Tony Blair, both of whom talk about morality and “doing the right thing,” brushed aside the Pope’s strong anti-war message. I also wonder if Catholics and non-Catholics who praise the Pope took his stance against the war seriously. Or is it one of those things people explain way, “well, some don’t like his stand on abortion; others don’t like his stand on war…”? I don’t know. How can a Catholic, for instance, rally against abortion as murder, but then accept mass killing in war, especially a war that clearly doesn’t meet the criteria of a just war as set forth by Augustine, Aquinas, and later church scholars (just war theory being primarily a Christian/Catholic theory, though scholars like Michael Walzer have secularized it).

The answer is clear: there is a dualism in our society. Spiritual and moral matters have their “space,” but that space does not intrude on real world issues, especially if it involves acts of state. Don’t get me wrong. One does not have to share the Pope’s pacifism to be moral. The same is true with abortion, the death penalty and all of these very contentious issues.  My question concerns world politics: what role does (and should) morality play? It seems that focusing on the morality of the ends to justify whatever means are used is fallacious and prone to error. All you have to do is exaggerate the benefits of acting vis-ŕ-vis the costs of not acting, and you can rationalize anything. Morality is a question concerning the means used, and while the consequences of acting or not acting can be part of the calculation, these have to be direct, clear, discernable consequences, not easily manipulated through rhetoric and the positing of possible scenarios.

It seems to me the biggest problem in world politics is the ability of people, especially decision makers, to abstract away from the real world human impact of their choices in order to focus on the ends of power, national interest, or some kind of perceived future threat that needs to be pre-empted. The move to abstraction is taken by otherwise moral men and women, who don’t really comprehend that they are leaving true ethical analysis behind in shifting their thinking from that of the human dimension of their choice, to that of the abstract rationale behind their policy. The move to abstraction is dangerous, and in its extreme allows people like Pol Pot, Stalin and Mao to rationalize their crimes against humanity by positing a utopian goal, and claiming that the system they are overthrowing represents a greater evil. Most of the time it doesn’t go to such an extreme, but far too often it does. Furthermore, it seems easier for people acting in the name of a corporate entity (such as a state) to make that move; humans acting in the name of some kind of collective “thing” make choices that they might not make as individuals recognizing personal responsibility for their actions.  States also have the power to do much more harm.  Stalin noted that one death is a tragedy, a million a mere statistic.  That seems to often to be the case in the minds of most people, and the reason is abstraction and rationalization.  When people neglect the human element and talk in broad terms about power, interest, and ideology, that often reflects a dangerous move away from ethical thought.  I think the best way to avoid making that error is to always, always, always think about the direct consequences actions have on real people in real time.

April 7, 2005:  Looking at the crowds in Rome, I'm certainly glad the Italy trip I'm involved in for May term didn't correspond with the Pope's death.  That looks chaotic!

The Problem of Power and Governance, Part One: Yesterday I noted the disconnect between state action and individual concerns about morality.  It leads me to repeat a conclusion that I know irritates some colleagues: governments are perhaps the most dangerous social constructions humankind has ever developed.  I do not, however, think that governance can be done away with.  I further don't think that the governments are dangerous simply because they are governments.  Rather, the danger comes from an intense concentration of power, combined with the ability of power to corrupt human morality and create an ease of both abstraction (see yesterday's entry) and action.  Even if we got rid of government, large corporate actors (businesses, corporations, etc.) with wealth and clout would be just as prone to abuse their power, since they, like government, are made up of people.  People in powerful, centralized bureaucracies, without strong accountability, are capable of massive corruption.  And I say that as someone who has an essentially positive view of human nature.  I don't think people are bad, but they are self-interested, and self-interest plus the human capacity to rationalize and self-delude create situations where even otherwise good, ethical people become party to acts of, well, often acts of evil.

First, if you doubt the danger of government power, look at Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, Hitler, Mussolini, and current governments around the planet from Burma to Saudi Arabia.  Look at the wars taking place, including an unnecessary and misguided war (in my opinion) even by our own democratic government, and we can see the number killed through state power.  The American war in Vietnam killed a million Vietnamese, and landmines left over in the region continue to maim and kill.  States kill, even democratic states based on solid principles, and led by people of good intent.  It's nothing as bad as the true evil doers listed above, and I think there are reasons that democratic states are less prone to those errors, but we are not immune. I think leaders are led astray by the temptations of power, and the way abstraction and concerns of power can lead the mind away from proper ethical thought.  That plus propaganda can lead to national delusions and confusions.   Even the Roman Catholic church, based on the pacifist teachings of a Jewish philosopher they believe the son of God, has in its history times of awesome power and awesome corruption.  Power corrupts, states have the most power.

Obviously, it doesn't have to be this way.  Clearly the governments of, oh, Norway or Belgium are not engaged in mass killing or warfare.  Often governments do more good than harm, solving problems and bringing people together for collective action otherwise unlikely to be completed.  Politics also is omnipresent.  States exist because humans had reason to create them (with the modern sovereign state beginning in Europe as the Church fell from being the dominant political power).  States persist in large part because there is a need for a forum for political contestation, and a requirement that some legal entity protect rule of law and act in the name of the larger community.   If an anarchist were to get his or her way and governments would disappear, people would soon choose to re-construct them, governance of some sort is unavoidable, and governance must adapt to the historical context of an era and a culture.

And that's it for today -- I've got to get back to grading.   I'll develop the argument more off and on in various blog entries over the comming months, thinking about how globalization provides possible ways to view governance as something that can be done with more accountability and oversight, lessening the dangers of centralized power.  This includes consideration of international organizations (the inspiration for this line of thought comes from two courses I'm teaching that really addresses the way politics is changing due to globalization) regional integration such as the EU (some really exciting innovations are taking place in that development) to questions of spreading democracy and emphasizing human rights, and how to define those rights.   On blog entries that continue to develop this "argument" (or reflection, as I'm not sure where the 'argument' is going to end up) I'll label them on the start "the problem of power and governance," so people will know it relates back to this discussion.   Now, back to grading!

April 8, 2005:  So much about power, morality, government in the last week, I'll make this Friday entry a bit less serious.   First, one little political point.  A sign of continued failure in Iraq is the massive fraud that's developing, a level of corruption which may make Iraq the most corrupt state on the planet.  As students of political science know, corruption is a parasite that destroys the host, and this is not a good omen:  http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0407/dailyUpdate.html   More on that, and Iraq's new government next week.

Spring is here (the snow in my yard is just about gone, save a small patch struggling for existence against the heat and sun -- it'll likely be finished tomorrow), and that's a great time for people to get in shape.  One negative aspect of our modern technocracy is that it is so easy for people to get out of shape.  Besides sedentary activities, we have supersized fast food,  and delicious tidbits ranging from breads, pastries and delicious meals to my favorites -- Dairy Queen blizzards, M&Ms, and other sweets.

Yet, there are a lot of disadvantages to succumbing to the temptation to "eat and sit."  First off, though, I'm not writing this to diss fat people.  If someone chooses to enjoy their food and hates exercise, that is a choice I'll respect, and it certainly does not make the person less valuable.  The cultural emphasis on beauty and thinness is in many ways perverse, it's based on some kind of connection of human worth to human beauty, and that is absurd.  In no way does this defense of exercise and being in shape constitute support for that obscene aspect of our culture (and don't get me started about plastic surgery or shows like 'The Swan.'  Yuck.)

I think people will really benefit by starting and maintaining a good exercise program.    First, of course, is health.  Students now feel immortal, but over time extra weight creates a variety of problems, problems with high social costs, as well as personal costs.   Being riddled with health difficulties, fears of a heart attack, and concern about cholesterol and high blood pressure is not a fate you want.   Second is freedom, as someone who loves to travel, I enjoy being free to run to a train about to leave, be able to spend a day walking around a city without feeling worn out or unable to enjoy myself.   Being in shape means more freedom to do what you want, with physical limits fewer.  If freedom is worth fighting for, it's certainly worth exercising for!  Finally there is energy!  If you are active, you have more energy.  You don't feel lethargic, you don't get worn down easily, you are less likely to suffer depression, and more likely to want to do more things.   I'm convinced that exercise is probably a better treatment for a lot of minor psychological difficulties than any drug.

But where does one find time?  Answer: you make it part of a routine, you make it a priority.   Set a schedule, and follow it.  That doesn't mean no exceptions -- some days the body just isn't ready for a work out, some times you may have to go a week or two entertaining guests, or dealing with some unexpected event.  The key is to get back to the routine, and stick with it.  I'm teaching an overload, dealing with a two year old, and commuting to work, and it would be easy to find a lack of time excuse.  I just don't allow myself to do that.  Also, track yourself.  Keep a chart of what you do, be proud of your activities.  Joschka Fischer, German foreign Minister who lost over 50 pounds and runs daily was asked if he didn't find it difficult to find the time to do that.  His response was that by taking the time to work out, he had MORE time for other things, since he had more energy, and could do things more efficiently. 

In short, it's worth it.  I don't think people should become extremists -- if anyone tried to tell me I should never eat refined sugar, boycott Cinnabon, or resist those DQ Blizzards, I'd say "No way!"  I'll load up on pasta and carbs at an Italian restaurant, and enjoy the awesome culinary variety life in this time and place has to offer.  I'd not want to give that up!  But the key is balance and a modicum of discipline.  But it's worth it!  

April 11, 2005:  In Iraq it appears that an exit strategy may be possible, though historically this foreign policy intervention will be at best a mistake, at worst a disaster with long term implications.  Here's the way it could play out: the US agrees to a time table to leave within two years.  Offering amnesty to insurgents, and making deals to convince them that they will not be shut out of the new Iraq, major insurgency leaders surrender, leaving a smaller group of hard cores that can be dealt with more easily.  In fact, some current insurgents could be brought into the Iraqi military.  The US would leave, albeit without the long term bases or the close regional ally we had hoped for.  The Iraqis would be responsible for determining if a stable democracy could develop, if the massive corruption can be fought, and how Iraq would get along with its neighbors.

The US had hoped that after victory the rest of the world (those who opposed the US) would join to help, so as not to be left behind.  As it was, the US received virtually no help, and coalition partners started to leave as they saw that there was little gain in maintaining a presence.  The war's aftermath was not only completely different than expected, but left no alternatives as to how to achieve the regional goals.  Instead, the goal became basic: how to find a way to leave and be able to say Iraq now can take care of itself, so we succeeded.  But at this time, a 'declare victory and leave' solution would be a success of sorts anyway, since scenarios of long drawn out occupation would be costly and dangerous.

Yet one has to keep in mind Vietnam, where a 'declare victory and leave' conclusion only delayed the inevitable defeat.  Iraq could easily drift into ethnic civil war if the Shi'ites and Sunnis can't find a mutually acceptable compromise, or if corruption takes on a strongly ethnic tenor.  A coup or drift to dictatorship is possible as well, especially if elections in the future produce contentious results, or instability in the masses.  Ironically, Iran's proximity may be a very positive force.  Iran wants a Shi'ia dominated Iraqi government, but is more concerned about Iraqi stability, and fears a disastrous civil war or a Sunni power grab.  They will likely urge moderation from the Shi'ia elite in order to maintain stability, and have a stable Arab ally in the region (Iran is already close to Syria, both would like to be on good terms with a new Iraqi government). 

Yet with 300,000 protesting yesterday, continued corruption, and unclear politics, seeing the possibility of an exit strategy, while positive, reflects only a tenuous possibility.  Insurgents apparently have as a demand that Saddam not be executed, many Kurds and Shi'ites have an emotional desire to see him killed.  Emotion and passion are probably the biggest threat to having all sides able to make the compromises necessary to lead to a stable transition.  Ultimately, Iraq's political culture is not one used to democracy, and thus it is unlikely that democracy will succeed there on this first try.   A time table for US withdrawal will help, and efforts to integrate the insurgency into the new system are essential if this is going to succeed.  Iran -- the only state in the region which is a democracy, albeit a theocratic one -- also could play a positive role.  One can only hope that the Iraqi people can pull it off.  There is little the US can do at this point, the longer we stay without a clear departure plan, or more active we are in military operations, the more we actually hinder the process.

And, while this is clearly not near as good as most war planners thought back in 2003, there is a real possibility that it will not be as bad as I and others thought in mid-2004.   I hope this is remembered more as a costly error, than a strategic disaster.  Time will tell.

April 13, 2005:  Blogs with a purpose!  Since I suspect few if anyone is actually reading these entries, I'm going to use them in the foreseeable future to develop my own ideas on two major issues: a) the problem of power and governance (already begun); and b) the issue of spirit and belief in modern society (a theme I've mentioned consistently since starting the blog last fall, and is both intellectually and personally the most interesting issue for me).   Today, though, one more foray into American foreign policy.  I was struck by a claim by Donald Rumsfeld that the US would have a "victory strategy" not an "exit strategy" in Iraq.  Victory?  I'm constantly amazed at the level of spin in modern politics, where truth is irrelevant as long as one protects ones policy or political party.  Iraq is already a failure.  Even if we get out and democracy manages to continue, the costs were tremendously higher than anticipated, the goals at the start were not achieved (look at the claims made before the war of Iraq easily paying for its reconstruction, the implications of a 'victory'), and the disadvantages immense.  One is that it invigorated the Islamic extremist movement, benefited Iran, and weakened American influence in the region.  But the issue I'm going to address today involves the high cost the US has paid in ignoring the rest of the world before going to war, belittling people like French President Chirac (who, gee, turned out to be right in just about all his arguments, even the one that American policy makers scoffed at, his claim that he wasn't convinced there continued to be stockpiles of WMD in Iraq), and believing that the US didn't need the "international community."  In the book At War With Ourselves, Michael Hirsh points out that the "international community" is built on American made and American inspired institutions, and that it is in our interest to continue to foster them, and not try to belittle or minimize their import.

The nomination John Bolton to be US Ambassador to the United Nations is in this context widely criticized, and rightfully so. Yet there is always a hope that when an outsider comes inside an organization he or she previously opposed, he or she recognizes that there is validity to the enterprise and there is a change in perspective.  Perhaps this will happen with Bolton.  The risk is that the US could find all that has been accomplished in the last sixty years threatened, with potentially disastrous consequences.

Wow. That is a pretty strong statement! Is Bolton really so important? No. Neither is the Ambassador to the United Nations that important of a post. The risk is not from Bolton personally, but a perspective of anti-internationalism that is contrary to the values America has successfully championed throughout the twentieth century. 

In looking at a world dominated by Hobbesian power politics and competition between sovereign states who distrusted each other and saw few common interests, Woodrow Wilson invoked a Lockean vision of enlightened self-interest based on values of cooperation, democracy, free markets, and human rights. When this was rejected, and World War II demolished the European system, the US was in a position to use its post-war status as the only major industrial power not decimated by the war to propose and actively work to build a new international system based on free trade, attempts to spread democracy, an emphasis on individual human rights, and promotion of cooperative conflict resolution over myopic national interest. The collective national interest as defined by politicians was seen as contrary to the individual human self-interest of the citizens.

So now we have the WTO emerging from GATT.  GATT started with 23 nations and the "most favored nation" principle, the WTO has codified a free trade regime encompassing most of the world, and working not only to lower tariffs, but eliminate non-tariff barriers and find ways to mediate disputes about unfair trade practices.   The form of the United Nations (and its family of sub-organizations), the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and many other powerful IGOs were built primarily on the basis of American input and thus reflect American ideals.  In Europe, the EU exemplifies the efficacy of this American vision – the states destroyed by their own power lust have embraced cooperative interdependence and have flourished, with the idea of war between the old powers gone.

Now, just as the United States should be celebrating the victory of the values that provided a different approach to world politics than the failed Realpolitik that destroyed Europe, the US appears willing to turn and walk away and put that victory at risk.  It is as if a running back broke free and bolted downfield only to lose interest once he reached the ten yard line, and wander towards the sidelines.  His teammates would be yelling at him, "keep going, don't give up, we need you."  That's what our allies are doing, will we listen and head back towards the end zone, or simply let the game fall apart as we go our own way?

 It would be a perverse and tragic development if the United States were to abandon the institutions and systemic norms it created, and embrace the kind of “go it alone” Hobbesian notion of power politics and myopic national interest that had led to so many problems in the past. The US is on the verge of victory in the development of what President Bush (the Elder) correctly called a “new world order,” though it really is an order that has been in the making for over half a century. The only way to combat problems like terrorism, environmental crisis, the north-south gap (which could foster more terrorism), and fears of economic collapse should oil prices or some other crisis spread, is through international cooperative institutions. Nothing else can work in an age of globalization. If the US turns away from its own creation, and out of fear or paranoia rejects the kind of global system it nurtured for half a century, the results could be tragic.

I’m not sure why we've veered from that route. Do people like Bolton get tempted by American power to think that nothing can hold us down, we can create our own realities? Do they have a view of human nature shaped more by the thought of folk like Calvin and Hobbes than Locke and Voltaire? Whatever the case, the United States is in a position to actively accept and participate in the continued building of an international order based primarily on the values we brought to the table. The stakes are high, and a wrong choice could be disastrous.   The irony is that the only real threat to the victory of American ideals since 1945 would be if the US were turn its back on success of the past 60 years.

April 14, 2005:  Before we begin, an indispensable link about what’s really happening in Iraq from University of Michigan Professor Juan Cole, who has been on NPR, the major news networks, and is an internationally known authority on Shi’ia Islam, with connections in the region: http://www.juancole.com.

Today and tomorrow will introduce my series on Spirit and Belief.  Next week I'll continue the power and governance series.  These two series will be developed over the summer and for as long as it takes, and links above will take you to the entire series in chronological order (as of today each has only one entry, but that will change over time). 

Spirit and belief in the Modern World, PI

This series of entries explores the role of spirituality, religion, belief and faith in a modern world defined by reason and secularism.  I do not know for sure where this series of speculations will take me, though I firmly believe that there is a role for faith and spirituality in human existence, and the challenge for modern humans is to find a way to express that.  I also am convinced that traditional organized religions are incapable of providing that capacity moving forward; the only kind of religious belief that is congruent with science and nature is one that does not divide on the basis of which myth one accepts, or which theology one holds dear.  But given that current religious thought is dominated by these organized traditional religions, it's difficult to figure out how a new form of religious or spiritual expression might look.  My goal in this series is to think through these issues.  Feel free to e-mail me with thoughts or ideas.  My starting point for this speculative set of reflective essays is Deism.

The Deists of the 18th century, as well as Christians like Anglican Bishop Joseph Butler (at least in his work in the 1720s), were convinced that nature held the secrets of God’s will, and that only by exhibiting self-interest and pursuing happiness could we truly live according to our nature as ethical, moral humans.   Voltaire would exemplify the move from the “optimist” Deism to the “enlightenment” Deism (Thomas Jefferson is in this category); and Rousseau would recognize that evil in the world, while real, was a human not a devine creation. This, I believe, is the tradition to build from in considering the role of spirit and belief in the modern world, a tradition that begins with reason, and recognizes that claims on revealed truth are not credible. Organized religion based on conservative traditional perspectives is, to be blunt, obsolescent. It long ago lost out to enlightenment thinkers who pointed out the numerous contradictions in the Bible, the unreliability of relying on “previous authority,” and the illogic of saying that whether or not you are raised in the “true” faith is most often an accident of birth, depending on where you were born and raised. 

So, starting here (though we’ll end up perhaps months from now in a very different place), there are a couple of components to explore: naturalism and happiness. Today I’ll deal with happiness.

A proposition for your consideration: People who are not ethical and moral are very rarely happy. People who use others to achieve their own short term goals are rarely truly happy, even if they are wealthy. Is that a believable proposition? Note, I am using a psychological definition of happiness here, based on my belief that pleasure of the senses is not the same as happiness; if one could subject oneself to constant sensual pleasure that is not the same as one being constantly happy. In fact, the ultimate in pursuit of constant sensual pleasure is the addict, and their experience demonstrates that you sacrifice freedom if you become a slave to sensual pleasure. The momentary sensation is a false happiness, an external manipulation of the neural system to separate oneself from reality. Addiction to material possessions or such things as sex, violence, or any external stimuli is similar, it’s an attempt to escape the boredom and anxiety of daily existence through sensual pleasure. Psychological happiness is to have joy in living in reality, with sensual pleasure a complement to that joy, not a replacement. Sensual pleasure to cover up psychological despair or longing is inherently ineffective and likely to create negative side effects.

So, unethical people may have fun at times, they may get some pleasure, even out of seeing another person suffer. Unethical folk seem to take joy at seeing the suffering of others, ethical people rarely want even their enemies to suffer. The sensation oriented and bitter happiness of the unethical is transient; it doesn’t last, and needs constant repetition. Such people are like a glass with a gaping hole – you keep filling it, and for awhile there is water (or wine or Hefeweizen), but it runs out, and you need to keep up the refills. From here comes not only lack of happiness, but also evil, as this gaping hole often leads to desire to attack and cause pain in others in an attempt to create happiness for the self; again, a pointless pursuit, and one that leads one farther away from their natural (spiritual?) true self. Many times such folk might wrap themselves in a religious orthodoxy to create a disciplined attempt to escape the spiral. Perhaps that can work for some, but likely only as a bandaid, since a need to believe an orthodoxy to avoid the danger of attempting to gain happiness through external stimuli is to avoid confronting ones true self and situation.  Not all unhappy people are unethical -- they may simply be misguided, confused or unwilling to embrace the link between self-interest and ethics.  In our modern stressful world which creates demands and pressures unnatural to the species, many people are ethical, but create barriers to truly allowing themselves to be happy.   But unethical people are usually not truly happy.

No, the only people I know who are truly happy and content with life are people who act ethically, and genuinely care about others. Furthermore, they act out of self-interest. They do not help others out of some kind of moral obligation (gee, I guess I have to help since it’s the right thing to do…) They want to help others, they get joy and satisfaction from that. In fact, the people most happy are those who act ethically, and are also selfish. They act ethically because they truly want to act ethically. And I don’t mean that in an abstract sense such as “I want to be ethical, but find it hard to obey the rules,” but in a real sense of “that which I want to do is the same as that which is the ethical thing to do.”
In other words, people are happy when they don’t sacrifice their pursuit of happiness for some kind of rule book, their interests are ethical. Or, as I believe, they have discovered that ethical behavior achieves happiness far beyond that which behavior that abuses or uses others can achieve.

This isn’t as far from Christianity as one might think. I’m not sure who it was, perhaps Bishop Butler, who pointed out that the bible says to love your enemy as yourself. Inherent in that command is the need to love yourself. Be selfish. Be self-interested. Do what gives you joy, don’t feel guilty if you seek pleasure. But if your pleasure is fleeting or provides only short term distractions from a greater unease or sense of emptiness, you probably are misunderstanding pleasure and happiness, and not really pursuing true happiness. Either that, or you don’t accept that happiness and pleasure are good, and that selfishness is natural. If we correctly understand what brings true happiness, and if we are able to look beyond societal expectations of what we “should want” and are true to our hearts, we will find divinity and joy in our natural selfishness. But this claim only begs new questions, and I’ll continue with that in the next installment of this series.

So I am at heart closer to the Deists, albeit in a modern spiritualist sense. The Deists were too “orderly” and mechanistic in their sense of nature, they didn’t know what Einstein and quantum mechanics would do to this whole schema.  The proof of God as a first mover shows that their orderly naturalism was too deterministic and materialist; they reflected scientific knowledge at that point, but now we have much more from nature to go on, as well as recognition that reason itself has real limits.  The skepticism of Hume and Berkely show weaknesses of their approach as well.  Deism is my starting point, not my end point.

April 15, 2005:  TWO ENTRIES TODAY!  Today I provide a second installment of both the "Power and Governance" and the "Spirit and Belief" series.  Next week is spring break, so I'm not sure how often I'll get in to write, so any readers out there, be patient if I don't offer much next week.  But today is probably my largest entry since starting this, so enjoy!

Power and Governance, PII

For the next few entries I’ll think about the nature of the state, and various types of states.  The state is an odd entity, traditionally defined by territoriality and sovereignty.  A state is simply a place, a piece of territory, over which originally a sovereign (now a sovereign government) has legitimate power.  That power includes, at least in sovereignty’s pure form, the right to regulate all activity within the borders of that state, and to act on the world stage by entering into relations with other states.  Sovereignty became the fundamental organizing principle of the European system after the 30 years war (in 1648), beginning the era of modern international relations.  Later, colonialism extended this principle to the rest of the globe, and to this day states claim sovereignty as a reason to act against systemic norms, defend against charges of human rights abuse or other complaints about internal treatment of citizens, or to reject global agreements such as the ICC or Kyoto Accords.

Clearly, sovereignty is both at the core of international law and politics, and a core cause of the problem of power and governance.  Sovereignty is centralized power, the ability of a government to control all aspects internal to a state.  Furthermore, a state is not a society.  A state can contain diverse ethnic groups that see little common interest, or it can (as is more often the case in Europe where these things developed) generally follow cultural and linguistic borders.  States can be very large, with bureaucratic governing structures unresponsive to the needs of citizens, and they can also have varying levels of corruption and abuse of power by governments.

 As we go ahead in this series, you’ll see that I think the days of the sovereign state are numbered.  Globalization, interdependence, and the emergence of transnational actors all point to a reconfiguration of the international system on a scope perhaps rivaling that of 1648; we may be in the end days of the era of the sovereign state.  But for now, let’s consider the problems inherent in the state.

 First, states create a disconnect between the rules of power and governance, and the rights and status of individuals.  This is not surprising; sovereignty emerged when individuals didn’t matter – sovereignty was for sovereigns, who ruled by divine right.  Yet even when popular sovereignty emerged, arguing that the power to rule came from the people not God, the status of the state remained one where the state was the actor with rights in international affairs, the people’s status depended upon the choices and powers of sovereign governments within states.  Movement away from this, including concern on human rights, came only grudgingly, as most sovereign governments jealously guarded their power.  Sovereignty protects states, not people.

Second, the size of states (excepting, of course, very small ones like Monaco or Andorra) tends to work towards a large bureaucracy and distance between the government and the governed.  This increases the probability of corruption, and decreases the likelihood that individual rights will have priority.  It further creates dangers of abuse of power, both domestically and internationally.

Third, states are as an organization contrary to the globalization trend of the international system.  As global capital crosses borders increasingly without significant obstacles, trade expands interdependence, and corporations merge to create large multi-/trans-national entities, the state appears to be an anachronism.  An organization based on territoriality in a world where territoriality is consistently losing importance.  This can have huge consequences.  Consider: states like the US and China hold on to sovereignty, believing their size and military power mean they don’t need international institutions or the international community as much as smaller states.  Yet they are so linked to the international system that they actually rely on the international community for their economic vitality.  This is a fundamental misunderstanding of power and capacity, and acting upon a false understanding of what a state can accomplish can yield foreign policy disasters.  Not only is the state an organization contrary to how the system is changing (in what in many ways is a revolution more than an evolution), but the way of thinking it engenders could lead to international crises that might threaten the system.

The sovereign state system is unlikely to last the next century.  Yet we are not sure what will replace it.  By the way, anyone reading these should see that there are parallels between my two ‘series’ and why I’m taking both on at once.  Society is going through a transformation caused in part by technology, in part by the expansion of trade and interdependence that alters how we think about our world, and the nature of power within it.   The old traditional sovereign state is analogous to old traditional organized religion – a structure that served its era, but now is being challenged by forces which will ultimately overwhelm it.  It is necessary to think about what this means, and analyze the dilemmas.

Spirit and Belief, P II –

Yesterday I claimed that traditional religious faith is obsolescent, harkening back to the enlightenment Deists as having an interesting approach which, if flawed by their limited understanding of both nature and the limits of reason, is a good starting point.  Today I want to address why traditional religion is obsolescent.  At base, faith in a particular religion is arbitrary, dependent on an accident of birth, or a choice of which mythology to believe in, with no way to determine the truth.    

The Deists had arguments internal to religion that are persuasive.  Look at the Old Testament, with a God ordering the Israelites to slaughter whole populations (hint: we’d call this genocide and crimes against humanity today), or favoring a thief and adulterer like King David.  Consider that the scriptures to be included in the Christian faith were voted upon in early councils with the rather grandiose claim that however the vote went, that was the infallible will of God.  Consider how especially in the Old Testament God is anthropomorphized, often with negative human traits, and how a truly infinite God would not be so vain and petty as to require adoration from creatures he created, and would be willing to send those who refused to eternal pain, even if they simply were born in a country that had a different religious tradition. 

 Now, some Christians (and while I’m picking on Christianity here since that is the pervasive religion of this culture, the same kinds of arguments can be made against pretty much all religions organized around a specialized mythology, particularly Judaism and Islam) respond to all of this with a claim, “we are not to question God and his mysterious ways.”  No one is questioning God.  All one can do is question human claims about God, particular conceptions of Gods.  The internal claims of this human conception are contradictory.  It is logically impossible for a loving, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God to have the characteristics that are given to him in the Bible.  Organized religions are localized attempts to codify tradition and a sense of meaning.  Now that we see the vast variety of religions, all with their own claims of truth and distinctiveness, it becomes clear that religion is a fallible human made attempt to understand the divine and its nature, not a revealed set of truths from a devine entity attempting to give us a rule book and convince us that our way of thinking is right, and our neighbors are wrong.  A rational person will find it very difficult to have faith in a conception of God like that.              Some defend religion with a socio-functional reason for religious belief – a particular religion may not be true, but society needs it, or it gives a group of people identity.  Since that rationale has no concern for truth, at some level it isn’t worth countering – it readily admits it makes no specific truth claim.  More fundamentally, though, there is an extreme danger in saying that for the purposes of social order we will propagate a false belief.  That is similar to fascism, and the belief that any belief to support the state and its goals was legitimate, with truth irrelevant.  When you make truth irrelevant to what to believe, it’s a slippery slope to the irrational.  Moreover, our culture is modern, secular and critical, and such motives for religious belief are doomed to fail in the long run anyway. 

Assuming we’re dealing then with beliefs that people are convinced are true, we are dealing with the concept of faith.  So what is faith?  Some would say that faith is not rational, so faith defies explanation, you either have it or you do not.  Reason is different, it is human and of the mind, while faith is sublime and of the soul.  Yet faith is not something that is simply there, it is something humans at some level choose.  Some people may be more genetically or from upbringing prone to strong devotion (Christians might call that the ‘gift of faith,’) but how that devotion is applied is a conscious choice of the individual.  That must be the conception of the Christian too, since they focus on the choice of faith in order to be saved.  If this was not a choice, then faith in a particular conception of God is programmed into those who have it, and is not into those who don’t.  Perhaps that can fit into a theology of pre-destination, but overall it seems pretty clear that humans have some control over how they choose to have and to exercise faith.

I define faith as having two components: a) belief in an unfalsifiable proposition; and b) allowing that belief to have a significant impact on the individual’s life choices.  An unfalsifiable proposition may be either logically unfalsifiable (e.g., everything happens because God wills it to happen – one could never disprove that hypothesis) or contingently unfalsifiable due to lack of the means to test (e.g., hypotheses on superstring theory that cannot be tested with equipment of the kind we have at this place and time).  The latter may at sometime become falsifiable.  Belief in either of those could be faith if it meets the second condition, strongly affecting ones life choices.  If I believe in superstring theory, it is unlikely that will guide my choice of a spouse, cause me to make sacrifices or open my house to particular strangers.  It is just a belief I have, based on reading science and reflecting on theories of the universe.  If I’m wrong, and find out that another theory is better at uniting modern physics, well, cool.  But if I believe in a God with a particular book or mythology, then I may choose only to have a spouse with a similar belief, and make a variety of life choices based on that belief.  That is faith, operationally defined.

Faith is likely generated from a confluence of emotion and reason.  Reason gives the mind the idea that belief in a particular thing makes sense, and emotion gives it the power to lead one to make life changes otherwise unlikely to be made.  One sees that in a lot of “faiths,” including communism and nationalism, secular faiths where emotion often overtakes reason in creating a strong belief in that ‘ism.’  The more one is self-critical about ones’ faith – willing to question it, willing to examine other possibilities, the willing to recognize that humans are infallible, and their choice of where to put their faith may be as well – the more ‘reasonable’ that faith is.  The more one holds on to these beliefs regardless of evidence, and in fact the more one is averse to questioning faith based on evidence, the more ‘dogmatic’ that faith is.

As society modernizes (becomes secular, industrialized, and emphasizes individualism), it becomes more likely that people who have ‘reasonable’ faith will reject old fashioned religions as simply not making sense given our increased knowledge of both the world, and other faiths.  Indeed, the age of reason and enlightenment, which started what some call the “de-Christianization” of Europe, coincides with the advent of the social process of modernization.   Two types of faith are more likely to survive this.  One would be dogmatic and more extreme, seeing the modern world and its questioning as an assault on the “values of civilization,” an enemy that threatens the essence of what human meaning is.  Thus as traditional, organized, religion becomes obsolete; there will be an increased level of confrontation between societal groups, and an increase in extremism.  The second will be a “habit-based” faith going through the motions and stating a belief, since that’s what they were taught to do, and they don’t really care to take the time to question or reflect, nor do they want to risk the social costs of rejecting their belief (rejection by family members, close friends, etc.)  This is a weaker faith, especially if the only real impact on life is that every once in awhile they go to chuch on Sunday, rather than basing their life on their faith like the more devout would do.

It’s about time to wrap this up for today.  Here’s the core point: religion of some sort seems a part of our human essence (a later entry will go into that); if the old fashioned traditional style of organized religion is becoming obsolete, then it is unlikely to be replaced by atheism or agnosticism, as they have their own logical flaws, and cannot respond to the human need for meaning, and the sense of the divine that either by psychological quirk or spiritual insight most people possess.  Rather, we have to rethink religion, spirit, and belief in order to develop ideas that are congruent with scientific and human developments, and which work in the modern world, standing up to questioning and reflection, and providing a sense of meaning.  That’s what this series of blog entries is meant to explore.

April 25, 2005:  Spring break is over (and I'm still not caught up!), and I'm back.  A few tidbits, as well as my third entry on spirit and belief today.

The New Pope:

Pope Benedict XVI has been criticized by many as being too conservative, especially by Catholics in Germany.  Well, given that most of the Cardinals were appointed by John Paul, how could anyone expect anything but a conservative Pope?  At least he's from a developed very modernized country, meaning he understands the dilemmas his religion faces in trying to maintain tradition in the face of constant change.  He's also a brilliant scholar, even though I personally (as a non-Catholic) disagree with him (such as silencing Eugen Drewermann, etc.)  The Catholic church historically moves forward, but does so slowly, with resistance.  I think that trend will continue.  The good news to me is that the new Pope will remain a strong voice against war, carrying on the tradition of John Paul II.  A lot of pro-war Catholics are in conflict with their own church when they support a war of aggression.   (Though it is amusing to watch some conservatives and Catholics praise John Paul, but try to ignore his condemnation of the Iraq war -- John Stewart had an hilarious bit showing examples of that, including Cavuto from Fox trying to deny that the Pope took a clear stance, which certainly can cause one to question Cavuto's journalistic integrity).   Here's an article on Pope Benedict XVI and war:  http://www.tcrnews2.com/PopeBenedict_war.html

The War In Iraq:

As violence increases, and many parts of the country remain in anarchy, the continued failure to create stability is clear.  I think that after I finish one of the two "series" I've got going, I'm going to start one about explaining why the US made such a huge policy error as to attack Iraq -- an attack based on now admittedly bad intelligence, shifting rationales, and false assumptions about what would happen.  This is likely a bigger failure than Vietnam, with more severe implications -- but also some valuable lessons.  The simplistic "blame Bush" response by many opposed to the war overlooks continuities in policies between administrations (Clinton's Kosovo war was a failure in most ways as well), bureaucratic in fighting, and general dangers of super power foreign policy.  In general, I think this is an example of a new type of conflict in a globalized world, and as such we need to investigate it and learn from it.   I doubt I'll get that series started until the late summer or early fall, and I'm going to finish one of the other two first (and I'm not sure how far those will go).  The purpose will be less to argue against the war, but instead to analyze what went wrong and what it means.  Currently there is a problem in forming the new Iraqi government which the US may be involved in (a dangerous form of manipulation if true), and this needs to be watched.  The longer they lack a stable government, the more support the insurgents gain, and the greater the chance of civil war, or other insurgencies.  Some links:
The war costs over $300 billion
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20050421/D89K30P00.html
Over 1000 Iraqis killed a month:
http://dailytelegraph.news.com.au/story.jsp?sectionid=1268&storyid=3004165 
 

Spirit and Belief -- Part III

Once we’ve determined that faith must be reasonable to be viable in the modern world (save for some cults and fundamentalists who have no problem ignoring the mind in favor of what feels good), the big question before thinking about the nature of modern spirituality is what makes a faith reasonable?  That pre-supposes that modern spirituality need rest on faith, of course. 

Think first of the following three possibilities: 1) one could argue that all we have are our experiences of nature and how we generalize from them to develop theories (science).  In such a case you could argue that spirituality is irrelevant or delusional (agnosticism and atheism); 2) one could follow the Deist approach and say that anything you need to know about spirituality can come from observations of nature, a “natural philosophy;” and 3) one could argue that faith is separate from reason, and that the real world and attempts to understand it are man’s foolish arrogance, with the truth being to study the revealed world of God.  

The first possibility requires belief (a faith?) that there will never be verification for a falsifiable hypothesis involving spiritual matters (that it is logically impossible, not just a result of contingent unfalsifiability), or that any kind of spiritual belief is arbitrary given it is about things outside our direct experience.  On its face this makes sense, but it isn’t a self-evident truth; we would need to investigate in order to determine if spiritual belief is truly arbitrary (if there isn’t a reason for choosing one over another) and logically unfalsifiable.  At best the first possibility allows dismissal of dogmatic faiths relying on a claim of revealed truth, or belief due to some kind of conversion experience.  Since conversion experiences/emotional causes for faith are similar across religions, it isn’t reasonable to believe they make rationale belief in any one faith.  And, clearly, claims that everything happens due to God’s will are logically unfalsifiable, but we need not base spiritual beliefs on such circular claims.

The third possibility some appeal, especially if you take philosophical skepticism seriously, but runs aground on that old problem of what faith is true – many claim to have revealed truth, but would a real God make having the right faith primarily an accident of birth?  How does one choose which faith to take on faith?  

The second possibility is the best one to build from (as I noted in my first essay in this series).  But while the Deists focused on nature as “God’s clockwork,” revealing truths about God, our knowledge of science now suggests that it may be better to see nature as potentially having information about the spiritual or religious side of life.  For instance, it could be that nature is simply God’s schoolhouse, where we learn lessons and hopefully have fun, out of touch with the true grand reality hidden.  That may suggest that nature is inadequate (leading to possibilities one or three, depending on your mood), but if it is a schoolhouse, it should at least have hints to explore possibilities suggested by nature.  Second, anthropomorphizing spirituality by creating a God concept is likely more a result of our human arrogance than anything about reality; nature might contain hints on the nature of “god” which could range from pan-theism to some kind of struggle between Star Wars like forces of good and evil. 

I’ll assume that nature and science, while perhaps not telling the whole truth of God or spirituality, at least are likely to have hints that could be used to develop ideas about spirituality, and help us recognize the limits of our knowledge.  Some fundamentals for doing this include: a) acceptance of basic science, especially the theory of evolution and the basic set of theories of modern physics; and b) a willingness to change belief if scientific evidence suggests past beliefs were wrong. 

Take, for example, the Roman Catholic Church.  Where would it be today if it had not ultimately accepted the Copernican revolution and Galileo, while rejecting Aristotelian scholasticism and perfect crystal circles defining stellar orbits?  In those days, ideas like those of Galileo were as radical and to traditional conservatives dangerous to the faith as some consider evolution and quantum mechanics today.  Yet reality bites, and those who try to stand against change usually are made fools by history.  Indeed, the survival of the Roman Catholic church, seen now by people as being in essence conservative, has been because of its liberalism in being willing to alter its tenets (sometimes only after long wars or obviously false teachings) to avoid being left in the dustbin of history.  With technology and science advancing, “conservative” religions will not be long for the world; they must accept that what we learn about the world cannot be denied within their religion.  The Catholic church seems to try to maintain a balance between change and tradition by moving slowly and grudgingly – but moving nonetheless.  Since even the most fundamentalist of any religion now accepts that the geo-centric theory of the universe is invalid, what else is scientifically undeniable.

 Evolution is something that cannot be denied.  Every respected biologist and almost all educated people recognize that it is a well developed theory so well supported by evidence that no one can honestly and reasonably deny its existence.  And indeed, if you scan arguments against evolution, some rest on absolute absurd claims (e.g., that it violates the laws of thermodynamics, which, when someone makes that claim, only shows that persons utter ignorance of basic science) or arguments against Darwin (whose original theories were often incomplete or had errors, but which have been improved upon and developed over the years) rather than the state of evolution theory today.  The bottom line: it is impossible to try to deny evolution and take science seriously at the same time.  Any religion that does will not last any more than the Catholic church could have lasted if it had insisted on sticking to the geo-centric theory of the universe.  The theory isn’t perfected, it isn’t unalterable – science rests on the contingent nature of all scientific truths – but there is no rationale reason to reject it.

As for modern physics, Einstein’s theories of special and general relativity (special relativity really only expanded Galileo’s relativity principle to include electro-magnetism as well as motion) altered our understanding of time and space so that we can’t see them as separate or linear.  There is no such thing as absolute time and space.  Our knowledge of subatomic particles and quantum mechanics, incomplete as it may be, also lets us know that we are in a probabilistic universe, yet one where the laws of physics do apply, and which themselves are absolute (at least in our space-time).  Any religion that denies Einstein’s theory and tries to ignore its implications is also going to be unable to last.  Later in the series we’ll go more into the science and religion issue, as well as the puzzles and possibilities raised by modern physics.

To sum up today’s entry: a reasonable faith recognizes that nature and science might give hints on things involving spirituality or religion, and this is worth investigating.  Religions which try to deny the basics of scientific knowledge or reject change in response to what we learn about the world are unlikely to be successful given the way our culture operates, and risk being purely arbitrary (I believe X because X claims to be right and I get an emotional feeling from believing in it).  The theories of evolution and relativity (special and general) are examples of such strongly verified theories that attempts to deny them or their implications are the mark of a religious belief that fails the test of reasonableness.

April 27, 2005: 

Iraqi Dangers Grow

Some links:
Civil war now is becoming seen as more likely as the crisis in putting together a government grows: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/BAK623643.htm
The US is admitting the insurgency in Iraq is not declining (which means this is a quagmire): http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200504/s1354084.htm

This isn't a "war" that the US can win.  The US already won the war part of the conflict, quite easily within three weeks.  Rather, the military cannot be expected to shape political outcomes, especially in a country with such a difficult history, ethnic divisions, and an authoritarian past.  That is the biggest mistake made in the entire process, to assume (as many so-called neo-conservatives assumed) that winning the war would make shaping a political outcome easy.  That is rarely the case -- the examples they would give of Japan and Germany after WWII were, as is now even clear to them, exceptions, not the rule. 

Oh, and fascism is alive in America:  Luckily, it's only crackpots at this point, but Hitler started off being viewed as a crackpot, so we gotta make sure these folks are kept on the margins: http://frontpagemagazine.com/.  See the editorial at the libertarian site http://antiwar.com  about this gang: http://www.antiwar.com/orig/jfrank.php?articleid=5735  There is a huge difference between conservative and fascist, just as there is between 'liberal' and communist.  These guys cross it. 

Spirit and Belief, Part IV

Question: Are religion and science contradictory?
Answer: They need not be!

Last time I mentioned two branches of science which are accepted by virtually all credible scientists: evolution, and modern physics (relativity and quantum physics). These theories seem to attack the fundamental bases of religious belief more than most science out there (they explain life and the nature of reality), but I will argue yet they still leave considerable room for spirituality, belief, and faith.

Over the next couple “articles” in this series I want to use the examples of evolution and modern physics to show the limits of science, and the opening for religion/spiritual belief. This will set the stage for investigating various ways to develop a modern spirituality, one in accord with both reason and science. I think it is important to combat the spiritual poverty of the modern secular age, where too many people replace spirituality with a belief in pure materialism. But as one who can’t be satisfied with the raw emotionalism of fundamentalist religion, or the grasping at tradition in the face of change and science, I’m convinced religion and faith in the future will have to be fundamentally different than in the past. More on that in a future article!

I find modern physics to be the most fascinating subject in science, but today I’ll finish up with using the example of evolution, which I introduced Monday. Unlike Einstein, who devised his theory based on mathematics and thought experiments, Darwin was an empiricist who traveled the world and built generalizations based on observations. Whereas the basics of Einstein’s equations remain valid, having been proven over time, expanded upon, and used to launch new kinds of examinations, Darwin’s original theories have been dramatically altered over time. Darwin was wrong in much of what he wrote, even if he set science on the right track. Consideration of why some religious folk attack evolution – and how they attack it – demonstrates both the superiority of science to dogmatism, and also helps determine what kind of faith is compatible with science.

While evolution is almost universally accepted, work is being done on various aspects of the theory, with disagreements and puzzles within. That is science; all scientific truths are contingent, even theories such as evolution, whose foundation is so widely accepted that it is considered to be as much a ‘fact’ as we can have in science, still undergoes constant revision and refinement, with controversies and dilemmas around its continued development (gravity is the same way – Einstein fundamentally altered Newton’s theory, but that doesn’t discredit Newton). This gives the propagandist opponents of evolution, usually arguing from a starting point of religious belief, ammo to come up with attempts to argue evolution isn’t a strong theory. Such an argument is either dishonest or ignorant, and also demonstrates a fundamental danger with dogmatic religious belief: it leads people to try to search for arguments against something inconvenient to their world view, rather than engaging in a legitimate search for knowledge.

Dogma – both religious and secular – can lead to the willful ignorance of evidence because of its disconnect with a pre-existing conception of how the world is. This leads obviously to propaganda (support of the faith or ism by any means necessary, often by resorting to irrational attacks such as ad hominems: ‘those godless secular humanists who want to destroy society’ and silliness like that), but also to an inability to separate belief from reality. That which is believed becomes the only reality that such people accept; any thing else must be countered or attacked as dangerous to the faith (or ism). For religions this can lead to witch hunts, inquisitions, and ‘morality police’ like those found in some conservative Islamic states. For ideologies this can lead to McCarthyism, Communist dictatorships, war, and mass murder (such as Pol Pot and his desire to create a pure Cambodia).

Thus when religious types attack evolution they do by first falsely positing it as an alternate orthodoxy or faith, which is to be studied for any inconsistencies or uncertainties, and then by ignoring the science and trying to claim that unanswered questions in the ‘orthodoxy’ they’ve defined make it an unviable “faith” (meaning that faith in their particular world view is thus justified). That, by the way, is an approach opposed to the critical, open and honest approach to reality that defines academia, and must be fought at all times, especially when there are attempts to control what is taught in the class room.

Of course, there is absolutely no ‘either-or’ choice in terms of evolution (or relativity) and religion. My Biology prof, a devoutly religious man, during my first year of college at Augusta College, a Lutheran school, gave as his first lecture in the evolution unit a long explanation of why there is no contradiction. In fact, he saw the beauty of evolution as proving intelligent design. Whether it be by quantum tunneling or the evolution of species, a “God” could use many methods.

Darwin can be compared to Copernicus: Copernicus’ idea was to replace the geo-centric theory of the universe with a helio-centric one. The helio-centric theory was ultimately proven wrong. The sun isn’t the center of the universe, Copernicus was wrong in his claim orbits were circular, and even now we don’t have all the answers. Flat earthers could write tracks about how “Copernicus was wrong!” and they’d be right – he was wrong. But he set science on the right track. Newton was wrong in many of his basic claims, but he was certainly on the right track. The beauty if science is that success does not depend on having an absolutely correct orthodoxy, but instead on being able to question and re-examine everything, keeping what works, and rejecting what does not. And there is nothing contradictory between accepting this, and believing in a God or some sort of spiritual essence to life.

The only time contradictions between science and religion appear is when: a) religious dogma tries to hold on to its claims even when they are directly disproven by overwhelming scientific evidence; and b) science is used in an effort to condemn or ridicule all faith, an act which itself ironically requires considerable faith!

Bottom line: modern spiritualism and religion can co-exist with modern science.

April 28, 2005:

One might wonder why I've expanded the spirit and belief series to five entries (with one more to come before I take a break from that series) rather than the power and governance one which is in my field of specialization.  The reason is simple: the ideas for this week's set of entries came to me during spring break, and it's just taken me a week to get through the development of the argument, which is still just a set up to the real exploration of what spirit and belief mean in a modern, secular, globalization and cosmopolitan world.  I do have ideas for the power and governance series that I'll turn to next...here's a hint: even though I'm a political science, I have a very cynical view of politics, and a negative view of the state.  There has been more evil done by organized governments than any entity ever constructed by humans.  While some ideologies like nationalism and communism have created the most vile results, the problem exists in some form whenever you have people exercising power over others.  But I'm no anarchist (though debates with anarchists, some which were very heated, helped me develop my view and question conventional views on the possible 'goodness' of government), nor do I find capitalist libertarianism all that appealing.  So the issue we'll focus on is going to be how to deal with the contradiction that power is inherent in human interactions, and power corrupts human morality.  And, if you wonder why I'm doing these two series at the same time, here's another hint: at their conclusions they will link up (I believe -- I don't have the whole thing charted, but that's my general thinking now).  Though I'm still at the beginning of each.

Well, I have a meeting on the Italy trip (18 more days!), so I'll jump into it.  Another entry on spirit and belief:

Spirit and Belief – Part V

Science and the weirdness of our world

Religion and spirituality are often seen as something humans invented in order to explain the natural world; a world which appears magical, wondrous, but also dangerous and arbitrary. To some, the advent of science and increasing knowledge of why things happen means that humans need to simply push away spiritual belief systems as unnecessary vestiges of a time when such things were needed to provide a coherent story of why things are as they are. There is some truth to that – particular myths may be irrelevant in the world of modern science. But the mystery is still there, and the more we learn about the world, the more mysterious it becomes.

Consider modern physics. As the work of Galileo and Newton solidified the world of classical physics, it seemed we had an orderly, predictable ‘clockwork’ universe. Everything followed the laws of physics, the laws of motion. Presumably if you could ever be able to know where every particle in the universe was, and their motion, then you could predict through the laws of physics everything that would happen in the future. If you want to include free will in this, you could always say that humans or especially God has a special status outside this clockwork universe; perhaps God gave humans the ability to choose to alter motion (we can choose to change the direction of how we move, etc.) and impact this world, that could be the gift of free will. But the universe itself was perfect and orderly.

Modern physics destroys that, though it does so in a quirky (or quarky) way. Things have gotten much more complex with the theories of special and general relativity, as well as quantum physics. Yet each step of the way, the complexity came through a kind of simplification. Things once seen as different have been unified. Galileo’s relativity was applied to electro-magnetism (special relativity), meaning matter and energy were governed by the same laws. Not only that, but Einstein showed that matter and energy were essentially the same stuff, and then with general relativity the one condition of Galilean relativity and Newtonian phyics (that all things must be in uniform motion in order to apply the laws of physics) was dropped. This solved a range of problems, and makes possible much of the technology we have today.

Yet there are implications. First, space and time are not separate, nor are they absolutes. Time is a dimension of space; space-time is an entity, not a stage on which events are played out. Gravity is simply the curvature of space-time, caused by the influence of matter. This means that time can go slower or faster depending upon one’s speed through space-time, up to the point that if you enter the event horizon of a black hole the passage of time from our perspective outside the hole would seem to stop completely (we’d never get to see you enter), while you’d see time progressing normally. Theoretically time travel to the future is possible: if you go fast enough away from earth a vast distance and come back, you might have aged only a couple years and have only felt a couple years pass while on earth 20, 30 or 50,000 or more years may have passed. Time travel to the past doesn’t seem possible without leaving space-time.

Why? Again, time and space are not absolute. Time slows as you speed up, and objects change size, at least relative to the speed of time and the size of objects in another frame of reference. In reality, the person who travels fast enough to move 50,000 years in the future when she returns to earth after a 5 year trip has only seen five years pass. Experiments have verified the expectations of special and general relativity, even some of the most bizarre ones. We live in a world where we experience time as some kind of constant, and space as a stage upon which we act, separate from time. But that’s an illusion.

But if special and general relativity aren’t weird enough, along comes quantum physics. Energy (including light) is quantized into small packets, so small that we can’t truly study them without subjecting them to so much energy that we alter them. This is Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, and creates a limit to what we can know about the universe. Furthermore, while these quanta seem to be particles (they will act like particles and be captured as particles when we try), they are also waves, doing things that would only be possible if the particles were in two places at the same time. We can know where they are, but can’t know how fast they are going. We can know how fast they are going, but then we won’t know where they are any more. Light is both a wave and a particle, but we can’t study light as being both at the same time, we have to choose one or the other. Even matter has wave length as well as mass.

This leads to a host of strange implications. One is that the clockwork nature of the Newtonian universe is smashed. We can only talk in terms of probabilities, at least on the small scale of quantum physics. I could go on, but I think it’s clear that modern physics makes the world seem much stranger than we learn in 8th grade science!

Using the insights of these theories, scientists have come to a very well evidenced conclusion that the universe had a beginning. Space time was created, and the continued expansion of the universe makes it clear that at the creation, space/time was exceedingly small, and then exploded outward with intense force. Even if we can get our minds around quantum physics and the implications of general relativity, it’s hard to really imagine how such a world can be; we are much more comfortable in the Newtonian world of predictability that “works” in most day to day situations

So think about it – space and time is an entity that was created. Within this creation certain laws of physics operate in ways beyond our comprehension. We live in a creation, and science can only speculate on the nature of the creation or what came before it (which is a rather non-sensical formation of the question since what was before the creation of space-time was, by definition, not within our “time” framework – we can’t even ask the question in a way that makes sense!) Now, if this doesn’t open the door to possibilities of spirit and religious belief, what does?

Now if you want to say a deity lived 6000 years ago, created the earth, and planted dinosaur bones to fool us, then this doesn’t help your case. If you want to say that humans are God’s sole creation and there is no other life out there, this doesn’t help your case (it would be rather bizarre for God to make so large and complex a universe if we are to experience it in such a limited way, on a rock in a mundane galaxy circling a rather average star). But if you want to say that this shows that the world is so vast and mysterious that it is folly to think our human minds can truly grasp the meaning behind it through material observations along, then this helps your case.

And it gets even better...

April 29, 2005:

Wow, May is almost here!   My goal was to finish the first part of my 'spirit and belief' argument this week, and I have.  I'll switch to work on the other set of articles now, though through the summer I hope to develop both of these.  If you click the link above you can read it in chronological order (rather than in the reverse chronological order of the blog pages).

Spirit and Belief -- Part VI

Right now it appears that galaxies are expanding away from each other faster than previously believed.  In fact, there are some theories that say this could literally tear the universe apart.

Scientists don’t know why.  There isn’t enough matter in the universe to cause such an expansion.  With the known matter, we should be in a closed system that ultimately will contract, and perhaps produce another big bang.  But that doesn’t seem to be the case.  Scientists theorize that there must be a lot of “dark matter” out there that adds mass to the universe and keeps it expanding.  This sounds basic enough; the expansion is caused by matter hidden between galaxies or somehow not able to be seen.  Yet we cannot even find evidence of large quantities of dark matter, it remains a mystery.

If that matter is out there, it probably is not the kind of matter we know about.  It is probably something very different, not captured by the standard theory.  If that’s the case, then not only are we on a little bit of created space-time which operates under weird laws, but most of what makes up our universe is something we have no clue about.  We are trying to make sense of our world with a very limited vision on what the world actually is, meaning that our theories are at best crude estimates based on limited evidence.

I could go on…string theories that posit 11 more dimensions (we only experience four), and other speculative attempts to deal with the information we have.  But by now it should be clear that while science doesn’t point to the necessity of a religious or spiritual belief system, it certainly makes it seem rational to consider the possibility.  This also shows the limits of Deist thought, which assumed that the natural world that we experience was the essence of the natural world that is.  Clearly, we experience the world from a limited frame of reference, one which keeps more of what reality is hidden than not.   Moreover, this doesn’t even touch the issue of consciousness, or why a universe might exist.

The creation of space-time cannot be explained because we have no conception of what could exist outside of space-time.  Our perceptions are bounded by essence of what we are.  After all, how could existence itself come into existence?  Why is there a world, how could a world possibly come to be?  One can see the allure of religions that give an answer steeped in tradition, faith and emotional satisfaction.  The kinds of questions listed above are outside our realm of comprehension.  We either posit an answer, or admit we don’t, and probably can’t know.

That suggests to me not only that science does not contradict religion, but scientific evidence indicates the taking spirituality and religious belief seriously is rational and useful.  Religion and spiritual philosophy reflect the one aspect of human life that has since the dawn of recorded history claimed an insight into those aspects of existence that are outside the material, literally outside of space-time.  The persistence and universality of religious/spiritual experience is prima facia evidence that there might be something to this claim.  Perhaps its not just a psychological need being addressed through myth making and searching for explanations about what happens in nature.  Maybe the self has an aspect not defined by space-time, but which nonetheless is a non-material part of each person (commonly referred to as the soul).

This pushes us away from science towards philosophy (originally science was called natural philosophy, so in a sense this takes us back to the roots).  This also suggests consideration of psychology (dreams, human nature, etc.), comparative religions, and the nature of personal reflection. 

I’m going to take a break from this series, and concentrate on the power and governance series for awhile. I wanted to get through this initial argument, however, to show clearly that science and rationalism – the essence of our secular, modern, society – not only are not contradicted by a consideration of spirit and belief, but actually suggest that such a consideration makes sense and should be undertaken.

I’m not sure when I’ll come back to this series – it could even be after the Italy trip, which would mean sometime in June.  But who knows – this is my blog and I’m free to write whatever I want to write when the ideas come J