Reflections on American Idol possibly going off the air

Well, according to some reports, the show "American Idol" may be coming to an end. This is unfortunate, since I have never seen the show that so many people talk about, and I was looking forward to continuing to be a non-viewer for years to come. So it comes as a hard blow to know that I now will be unable to continue to refrain from watching this great pop cultural spectacle.

But at least I can continue to be a non-viewer of other television shows of similar importance, such as "Dancing with the Stars," "CSI," and (probably my favorite show not to watch) "Desperate Housewives."

In fact, it is probably a good thing that "American Idol" may be going off the air, since it reduces the number of shows I don't watch, giving me more time not to watch others.

So many programs not worth watching, so little time not to watch them ...

Ann Rice: "I quit being a human"

Anne Rice who became famous for her vampire novels before announcing she had become Catholic, now says she simply refuses to perpetuate the charade of being human:

It's simply impossible for me to “belong” to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group.

She is now seeking other species with which she can join in solidarity (preferably herbivores) to promote peace and tranquility, and teach the world to sing in perfect harmony.

Oh, wait ... Hold on.

Actually, Rice announced that she is renouncing Christianity because it is quarrelsome, hostile, and disputatious. I don't know how I could have become so confused.

Nevermind.

Will this health care bureaucracy be more efficient?

How Obamacare works:

Now, raise your hand if you think this is going to make our health care system more efficient...

Some groups are "green" in more ways that one

Like I've always said: Follow the money. There are big profits to be made in green technology, and the multi-national corporations aren't leaving anything to chance. And many Green groups, who purport to be independent voices on environmental issues, may well be on the take.

And why is it that the President of BP, yes that BP, is on the advisory board of the Earth Institute?

Check out the Times Higher Education Supplement for an eye-opening exposé.

HT: Bishop Hill

Western vs. Eastern logic

In Our Oriental Heritage, Will Durant explains the Hindu system of logic. Like categorical logic in the Aristotelian system, Hindu logic recognizes the central place of the middle term, but the structure in its stated form is slightly different. Whereas the Aristotelian system contains only three premises:

(1) All men are mortal
(2) Socrates is a man
(3) Therefore, Socrates is mortal

The Hindu expression of the argument contains five statements:

(1) Socrates is mortal
(2) For he is a man
(3) All men are mortal
(4) Socrates is a man
(5) Therefore Socrates is mortal

Now there is nothing fundamentally different about the nature of the reasoning in these respective forms; the only difference is in the expression. Note that the first and fifth statements in the Hindu syllogism are the same, as are the second and fourth. All the Hindu syllogism does is to state at the beginning where the argument is going and bring attention to the minor premise. It is really an enthymeme of the Aristotelian form appended to the beginning.

There is a lot of talk about how different Eastern logic is from Western, but if there is a difference, it certainly isn't evident here.

Toro! Toro! Toro!

Catalonia is banning bullfighting, another modern victory for animal rights at a time when countries are continuing to liberalize their abortion laws, which once again proves my thesis that, when the qualitative distinction between humans and animals is erased, the result is either requiring that animals be treated with the same respect as humans or that allowing that humans be treated like animals.

Child Poverty is Up: More news on what happens when you have fewer traditional families

Child poverty is in the news again, this time because of a newly-released report from Kids Count. As the Louisville Courier-Journal put it:

The number of children living in poverty has increased in Kentucky and Indiana, following a national trend of high unemployment and growing poverty in families, according to the latest “Kid Count,’’ an annual state-by-state survey of child well-being by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

The poverty rate for children is listed at 23 percent in Kentucky, up from 22 percent last year. That is overstated, of course, since Kids Count relies on U. S. Census data which only takes account of a family's annual income, not it's total assets.

The Census data is notoriously unreliable as an indicator of poverty, since the average family living "in poverty" is actually not all that bad off. Almost half own their own air-conditioned home and have at least two color televisions; over two-thirds own their own car (a third have two); and the majority of the "impoverished" have VCR or DVD, have cable or satellite reception, and have a microwave oven and automatic dishwasher.

So let's think of this in some perspective.

But the interesting thing about the data is that, along with the "poverty" rate, the percentage of children growing up in one-parent homes is continuing to rise. Gee, I wonder if those two things have something to do with each other.

In fact, the two chief predictors of whether a person will go on welfare is whether he or she (usually she) has had a baby out of wedlock or is divorced.

Go figure.

But let's not get all excited and do something crazy like have our schools and other cultural institutions start to uphold the traditional family as some kind of ideal or anything (Not like there's really any danger of that happening).

Conway's Stealth Strategy: Flying below radar has certain political disadvantages

Let the bloodhounds loose! It may be the only way to find Jack Conway, who, in his campaign against Rand Paul for Kentucky's second U. S. Senate seat, has yet to be sighted.

Conway has been running, but, as the Lexington Herald-Leader has pointed out, most of the running seems to be away from actual voters. While Paul is out pressing the flesh among electorate, Conway has been is apparently working "behind the scenes" building a "network."

He's a crafty one, that Jack.

One Conway hunter, Mandy Connell, host of WHAS's morning talk show, almost treed Conway last week, but the elusive candidate slipped away, failing to show up for her show, apparently to concentrate on "networking." Connell now says, however, that she has laid a trap for him this Wednesday, when he is rescheduled to show up.

I hope Connell has people there with camouflage khakis and tranquilizer darts to take the man into captivity, where he can be questioned at length.

The difference in coverage is striking:

In the last three months — April 22 through July 21 — major Kentucky newspapers, including the Lexington Herald-Leader and The Courier-Journal in Louisville, mentioned Paul 305 times in the first paragraphs of stories compared with 150 times for Conway.

... Among newspapers outside of Kentucky listed in the top 50 in circulation in Editor & Publisher Year Book, Paul’s name was in the first paragraphs of stories 196 times. Conway’s name appeared in opening paragraphs 12 times.

You could argue that some of Paul's publicity has been bad publicity, but given that Paul has postured himself as the anti-establishment candidate, you could easily argue that being hammered by the establishment simply contributes to the image he is trying to cultivate with voters.

Given the discrepancy in media coverage, you would think that, instead of taking cover whenever the media shows up, he would be out flagging down news trucks, showing off his newest press release.

But no. There's networking to do.

The only problem with flying below radar as a political strategy is that no one knows you're there.

Right to Life of KY responds on Obamacare

Michael Janocik of Right to Life of Kentucky takes on a response to his original letter in the Louisville Courier-Journal on Obamacare:

My sympathy and prayers go out to C. Stone, who lost her young husband to cancer. In her rebuttal to my letter in the Louisville Courier-Journal, "Obamacare Leads Us Down a Dangerous Path," Stone rightly points to serious flaws in the current third-party private health insurance market. Most Americans believe we can do better and I applaud Mrs. Stone for her contribution to do so on behalf of her husband and others. The point of my CJ letter is that Obamacare will exacerbate, not alleviate, the problems with which we are all too familiar - the denial or hindrance of health care coverage by third party payers.

Notwithstanding Stone’s helpful criticisms, her rebuttal actually affirms my argument. Stone writes: "Janocik, assistant director of Right to Life Educational Foundation of Kentucky, and his ilk continue to spout these "death panel" threats and continue to obscure what health care reform is all about. Can we please quit terrifying people?” Nary a handful of keystrokes click by before she writes, “I do agree with his comment that ‘when third-party, unaccountable bureaucracies control health care decisions, rather than patients and physicians, involuntary rationing is the inevitable result, with involuntary euthanasia not too far behind’,” citing the role that private insurance played in denial of care for her husband.

To redress that denial of coverage, Stone wrote she was able to pay for care above and beyond what her insurance covered. That is true and that is precisely one of the freedoms, among others, that Obamacare will abolish - Stone’s ability to purchase health care treatment beyond the scope of her government-approved insurance policy.

It seems counter-intuitive then, that Stone would defend health care legislation that would, by her own acknowledgment, 1. ) further concentrate power to deny health care coverage within one federal bureaucracy, rather than within hundreds, if not thousands, of private insurers and, 2.) deny her the means by which to pay for additional medical care for her husband that will not be covered by “universal health care.”

Stone’s exegesis of the current health care failings seems well-informed by her personal challenge to do right by her beloved husband. Perhaps her perception of the solution, however, is clouded by same.

Michael Janocik
Assistant Director
Right to Life Educational Foundation of KY

Is there a way to criticize Christianity without assuming it?

There are a number of tangents commenters on the last few posts have gone off on, most of them interesting and worthy of discussion (I may have started a few of them myself). One of them had to do with the foundations of moral judgment. There were several claims being aired. Among them:

1. That moral judgment requires divine warrant (like a theistic God)
2. That moral judgment assumes some metaphysical standard

It seems to me that the first is a species of the second. It was unclear to me whether the atheist posters on the post were denying just 1. or whether they denied 2. as well, but it seemed to me that they were denying both--and they clearly reject the authority of Christian ethics.

All of which makes me wonder why they keep making moral judgments on Christians--and Christianity--that derive from Christian ethics.

If they want to reject Christianity, isn't it a little self-defeating to employ Christian ideas in order to do it? If Christianity is bogus, then there ought to be some other ethical standpoint from which to criticize it. If so, then what is it, and why don't they use it? And if there really is some other ethical standpoint from which you can criticize Christianity, what obligation, outside the anti-Christian's own preferences, does anyone have to accept it as authoritative?

Toward a theory of why atheists think there is a moral obligation to have an opinion on the age of the earth

Okay, I think I've figured this out.

Several posts ago, I asked whether it was reasonable to ask people who didn't have any expertise or knowledge about the issue to take a public position on the age of the earth. P. Z. Myers responded with a few arguments before doing what dogmatic atheists always do, which is call you names, tell you you're ignorant, and then characterize you as morally deficient, all in the service of saying that, yes, even if you don't have any particular knowledge or expertise on the question, you should still have a position on it.

As Thomas, my co-blogger has pointed out, it seems rather strange for anyone to say that there is some kind of moral obligation to have a position on this one scientific issue. In fact, it's rather strange for atheists, most of whom are mechanistic materialists of some form, to say anyone has a moral obligation to do anything.

But if you think about it, it actually makes sense.

To atheists, questions like the age of the earth have an almost holy status--like the doctrine of the Double Nature of Christ for Christians, or the Eightfold Path for Buddhists. The Age of the Earth is one of the Five Pillars of Atheism.

It's not only holy: it's necessary. If you're going to be an atheist, you have to believe it, since it is necessary for your system of belief, and maintaining it becomes a matter of vital necessity. There are many creationists who hold to their position for exactly the same reason: they view a literal seven day creation and a strict reading of the genealogies as necessary to their faith. For historic Christianity, however, the question is simply not crucial. Nothing important hangs on it. God could have created the world quickly or slowly.

So when someone tells an atheist he doesn't think it's a particularly important issue, they react like natives whose god has been insulted. You have defiled the holy place. And so they point their rhetorical spears at you indignantly, jump around making threatening gestures, whooping and hollering, at which point you have to make a run for it before they boil you in a pot or something.

You just don't tell these people that one of their central religious dogmas is not important. It makes the scientific gods angry. It's taboo.

Just like the religious fundamentalist, the atheist's position on the age of the earth is part of his creed. It is not just a matter of scientific importance to these people; it's a matter of moral imperative because their whole belief system is bound up in it.

This, of course, says nothing about whether the evidence is good or bad. Despite what several commentators have implied, I have never argued that the evidence for the older age of the earth is problematic. I really don't have any problem with it, other than I think holding people to particular figures two or three places to the right of the decimal point in your millions of years figure is a little silly.

The only real material difference I have with the atheist fundamentalists is that I don't need to believe it. My worldview is just fine no matter how old the earth is. To me, the age of the earth is, indeed, a scientific question. But to the atheist it is a religious question. That is the single and only reason why anyone would say you have a moral obligation to have an opinion on it.

If you step outside the theological system of the atheists, why is it that you have a moral imperative to set forth your position on the issue of the age of the earth and to be able to say that it is exactly 4.567 billion years old? There are a whole lot more fundamental scientific issues out there. Why this one?

Should everyone have a well laid out position on quantum mechanics? The origin of the earth was, presumably, a very long time ago. Quantum mechanisms are operating now.

Where is Rand Paul on the issue of quantum gravity? What does he think about string theory? What a loon he must be for failing to have a position on the issue! He must be some kind of nut.

Maybe, but only from the perspective of someone to whom scientific questions are held as religious dogmas.

In Defense of Atheists

Well, the good folks from P. Z. Myers blog have shown up here in force, and I wanted to make sure that our regular readers understood why the level of discourse seems to have experienced a noticeable decline. I felt the need, you see, to make special accommodations for the atheist crowd in order for them to be able to give full vent to their emotions by temporarily suspending the normal posting rules having to do with name-calling and questioning of motives.

This is important for a number of reasons. For one thing, it is probably good for them. Repressing your emotions can result in sometimes unhealthy neuroses. We don't want to see them hurt themselves, so I think it would be best to let them get it out of their systems.

Secondly, we want them to be able to adequately make their point and it would be unfair to dogmatists not to allow them to engage in what dogmatists always do when you question their cherished orthodoxies: lash out emotionally at those who disagree with them.

But I also wanted our loyal readers to understand the causes behind this behavior. What we have here, after all, are a group of presumably higher level hominids who--despite their pretensions of occupying the highest branch on the evolutionary tree--seem not to have developed any noticeable system of manners.

Note the litany of epithets and questioning of intentions, along with accusations of moral turpitude. Then there are the accusations of a lack of courage (and hypocrisy)--made, ironically, by people who refuse to identify themselves.

There are other things we have noticed as well. In fact, we have watched them, clipboard, stopwatch, and other scientific instruments in hand (in the scientific attitude) and made some very important empirical observations, the most significant of which seems to be that there are two varieties of atheist species: the consistent ones and the inconsistent ones.

The inconsistent atheists are the ones who still unaccountably cling to rationality, despite the fact that their own materialistic view of the world precludes it (truth and validity both being metaphysical concepts). They still make the attempt to make rational arguments despite the fact that their largely materialist assumptions rule out the very procedure they try to employ.

The consistent ones (which our observations indicate are far more numerous) are the ones who either don't bother to argue at all, but simply use taunts or epithets to make their case--or who attribute their opponents position, not to some mistaken chain of reasoning, but to some underhanded motive. Rationality being impossible in their worldview, they must attribute people's word and actions, not to a rationale, but to a cause--usually some form of intellectual dishonesty.

Among these latter individuals, the correct position on any scientific matter is intrinsically bound up with morality to the extent that truth and good are completely indistinguishable. Since the two cannot be separated, this means that if you believe someone to be incorrect on an issue, they must also therefore be evil. No one can be honestly wrong, This accounts for the penchant (typical of dogmatists of all varieties) to impart some sort of intellectual dishonesty to their opponents.

Furthermore, these characteristics make them indistinguishable in many ways from the religious fundamentalists they profess to scorn, living in a similar black and white world where there exists only the one morally correct position, and all others are to be scorned.

So, while we spend a few days disentangling the arguments from the epithets in order to answer them, please take these things into account and be patient with them.