April is the cruelest month; also the time for folk to go on on pilgrimages

The Playlist

The Kingston Trio of the 80's:
(best when viewed full screen and full volume)

If You Thought that the World of Ideas Was Complicated Before

INFOGRAPHIC: The Most Influential Thinkers In History And How Their Ideas Are Connected

The Pedantry of Neil deGrasse Tyson or Someone Finally Awakens from Petty Science

This referenced essay is a bit over the top, but, if you understand it at all, it miraculously captures my dissatisfaction with Neil deGrasse Tyson and the scientific oobleck currently covering all thought. When Tyson first came on the scene, he seemed great! Recently, I haven't been able to figure out why he has become disturbing. This article articulates it all.

Lenten Break

The U.S. is not more criminal, just more lethal

I realize this is preaching to the choir, but there is a lot of information here. My emphasis for quite a while—that gun suicides should be our main focus in the gun debate—is well presented, as well as many other stats and sensible discussion points.
 

It's Lent and Time for Another Blog Series: Theories of Atonement I

Introduction

It is doubtful that the Hungarian-born chemist turned-economist-and-philosopher Michael Polanyi ever met James P. Carse, former Director of New York University’s Religious Studies Program. And, as far as I know, neither individual had any knowledge of the other’s work (although it is certainly possible that Carse could have read Polanyi without mentioning him). Yet, both thinkers reached similar and, to many, surprising ideas about religion.

Polanyi’s focus in much of his writing was on the process of scientific investigation and discovery. In his book, The Tacit Dimension (1967), he claims that, although the scientist often works within certain models and theories seeking to refute or validate them, imbedded in his scientific outlook is “the conviction that there is something there to be discovered.” That is, there is something outside his known reality “which he is seeking to apprehend.” The identification of a problem in current scientific understanding is itself a realization that there is “something else” that we don’t know: “To see a problem is to see something that is hidden.  It is to have an intimation of the coherence of hitherto not comprehended particulars.” And so, while much of science is devoted to examining current understandings, there is always within the scientist the impulse to break out of this structure and bring to light undiscovered aspects of reality.

The scientist’s recognition of problems – his dissatisfaction with the current scientific framework – and his intimations of discovery drive him to study the issues that stir his unease. Such anticipations sustain the researcher in the demanding work typically involved in making a breakthrough.  Indeed, Polanyi calls what lies behind the drive for scientific exploration as “intellectual passions.” And, sometimes those passions are rewarded. Polanyi in his book, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy (1958), speaks of the “overwhelming elation felt by scientists at the moment of discovery, an elation of a kind which only a scientist can feel and which science alone can evoke in him.” Indeed, “[t]he affirmation of a great scientific theory is in part an expression of delight. The theory has an inarticulate component acclaiming its beauty, and this is essential to the belief that the theory is true.” Polanyi quotes Johannes Kepler’s exclamation at his discovery of his Third Law: "nothing holds me; I will indulge my sacred fury."

Polanyi contends that the same impassioned impulse to search beyond the known that drives the scientist also propels the religious believer. Again, in Personal Knowledge, Polanyi says that, like the scientist, the believer is “guided by the intimations of discoveries still beyond our [human] horizon” as he “strives to break though the accepted frameworks of thought.” Indeed, Polanyi calls religious worship “a framework of clues which are apt to induce a passionate search for God.”

But, according to Polanyi, unlike the scientist, the unfortunate believer can never experience the joy of discovery and resolution of the problem because religious issues cannot be finally solved. In Personal Knowledge, he calls religion “a continued attempt at breaking out, at casting off the condition of man, even while humbly acknowledging its inescapability.” As Polanyi later says in his book, Meanings (1976), written with philosopher Harry Prosch, “we may not feel better, or be ‘better off,’ if we embrace religion. We may instead reap suffering, struggle, and sacrifice.”

So, religion, and Christianity in particular, cannot be enjoyed the way science can. Instead, the believer lives in a continual sense of tension and anguish as reinforced by the ritual of worship. Says Polanyi, “[Religious] worship sustains as it were, an eternal, never to be consummated hunch: a heuristic vision which is accepted for the sake of its unresolvable tension.” Indeed, “[i]t is like an obsession with a problem known to be insoluble, which yet follows, against reason, unswervingly, the heuristic command: 'look at the unknown!' ”

In his book, The Religious Case Against Belief, James Carse ends up saying much the same thing about religion but from a different perspective. As an initial matter, Carse is fascinated with the longevity of religions. He says that no institution or human association of any kind – empires, governments, ideologies or cultures – has lasted as long as the great religions. Hinduism has lasted over four millennia; Judaism for almost three millennia. Buddhism has lasted 25 centuries, Christianity over 20 centuries and Islam 14 centuries.

Carse says that the other thing that distinguishes religions from other schools of thought is the inability of their followers to come to agreement on what they believe. Carse says, “the religions themselves have never succeeded in coming to a final agreement on the quest.” Rather, “[y]ou begin your inquiries and you find that as you get deeper and deeper in your studies, the questions get larger and larger. If people come to religion authentically, they find their questions not answered but expanded.”

Religions have an identity, says Carse, but they have little and only temporary consensus on their beliefs. He sees religion as an ongoing dialogue rather than a set of dogmas: “what religions do have is a pressing desire for talk.” He adds, “these conversations can become exceedingly rich and complicated, requiring long preparation for entering into them….” It is the lack of any final answers, says Carse, that has kept religions alive for so long – the faithful feel that they must continue the discussion. He compares religious texts to Oedipus Rex by Sophocles: “If we could agree on what Oedipus Rex is about we could focus on the agreement and ignore the play.” As with Sophocles’ play, as long as the debates continue, we cannot ignore the religious tradition itself.

As an example, Carse takes the person of Jesus himself and spends some 20 pages discussing the various – sometimes compatible and sometimes incompatible – pictures and ideas about Jesus that have arisen throughout the history of Christianity. I share with you a very abbreviated summary of Carse’s complicated history. He begins with the New Testament itself and shows how the four Gospels present differing views of Jesus that also differ from what St. Paul had to say about him. Carse calls the New Testament a “glorious confusion.”

Carse then moves on to Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, who described Jesus’ life as a recapitulation of Adam’s life in which Jesus reversed all the effects of Adam’s mistakes. Next is St. Augustine of Hippo, who established the notion of the incarnation – that Jesus was of two natures, fully divine and human. Carse discusses St. Anselm, who presents a Jesus unrecognizable to either Irenaeus or Augustine. St. Anselm argued that by logic alone it is clear that the incarnation was necessary.

Then, Carse turns to St. Thomas Aquinas and his development of the theology of the sacraments: that the key to understanding Jesus was that he established the Church and the Sacraments. But, then a few centuries later, Martin Luther and John Calvin come along and say that, not only is the Church and sacraments not the path to salvation, but that the Church is an impediment to Salvation.

Carse then describes the enlightenment take on Jesus. The German thinker Gotthold Ephraim Lessing asked this basic question: given the unreliability of historical evidence, how can we cross “the broad, ugly ditch of history” to prove the eternal fact that Jesus was God. Kant described Jesus as an example of perfect morality. Our own Thomas Jefferson follows up this idea by re-writing the gospels without any hint of Jesus’ divinity: The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth. For Hegel, Jesus was part of a vast scheme in which God alienated itself from itself so that it could reconcile itself as a perfect unity. Kierkegaard said that Jesus was the “absolute paradox” that could not be understood intellectually, a view at odds with both the logic of Anselm and Hegel.

Carse concludes with a two-page laundry list of more contemporary views of Jesus. Again, I give just a sample: “a pure-blooded and exemplary Aryan, first member of the Master Race” (Nazism), “a messiah who magically transports himself to the Americas after his resurrection in Jerusalem” (Book of Mormon), “a paragon of efficient business discipline, a master advertiser” and founder of the modern corporation (The Man Nobody Knows by Bruce Barton); a “Jewish peasant Cynic” (John Dominic Crossan), a revolutionary who confronts repressive capitalist culture (Liberation Theology). Other descriptions include Roman spy, Pharisee, extraordinary athlete, member of the Essene cult, and avatar of Krishna. Again, I only touch upon Carse’s more extensive list.

This is all by way of illustrating that religion is a passionate pursuit of questions for which it is unable to find final answers. For all the discussion about Jesus, Christianity still debates who he was and what was his significance. As Carse says, “[t]here is something about the man that is yet to be known, something unresolved, but something that must be resolved.” Carse points out the similar centuries-long debates that persist in Islam and Buddhism. This ongoing conversation, says Carse, is the source of religion’s vitality and longevity. The debate itself fuels the passion for religion. Here, we hear echoes of Polanyi: Religion “is like an obsession with a problem known to be insoluble, which yet follows, against reason, unswervingly, the heuristic command: ‘look at the unknown!’”

The question of the nature of Jesus was not the only debate over the long history of Christianity. There is another puzzle at the very heart of Christianity that was never satisfactorily explained to me in the 12 years of weekly Sunday school I attended or in the theology courses I took at a Catholic university. Here is the puzzle. We were all taught that Jesus died for our sins, and that all humankind was saved by his death and resurrection. As Tertullian says, “it was for this purpose that he came – to die for sinners." But, what exactly was the salvation that Jesus brought – what were we saved from, and how did His death and resurrection achieve this?

The various attempts by thinkers and church leaders to answer these questions are referred to as the theories of atonement. As with the identity of Jesus, numerous theories of atonement have been proposed and discussed over the history of Christianity, and the debate continues. After 2 thousand years, we have been as yet unable to resolve the meaning of this basic Christian tenet.

God willing and the creek don’t rise, this post will be the first of a series that will discuss a select number of theories of atonement that have been offered by various Christian writers.

As Jim once offered the top ten definitions of God, I will offer the top five theories of atonement. 

Stay tuned.

Michael Polanyi

James Carse

Next Post: Theories of Atonement II (Classical or Patristic Theory – Part 1)

For Mike

Let's try the American way. (No, not the usual underhanded, strong-arm, terroristic CIA way, but terribly crippled democracy.)

This Will Soon Be Everywhere

I just wonder how many rehearsals (and how many injuries)?

For Mike

For Future Reference....

- Renee

In Progress endorses: Bernie Sanders!

Epistemological Postmodern Hermeneutics (Continental Edition)

This will be appreciated by some more than others, but if you are not a techie, you may freely substitute you own vocabulary. Familiarity will work fundamentally the same.



This is so good, it rivals The Lord of the Rings itself!

Anyone Can Quantum

Caltech has been one of the leaders in the development of quantum science.  On Tuesday, January 26, and Wednesday, January 27, this week, Caltech's Institute for Quantum Information and Matter hosted a Quantum Summit.  The event began with a public program titled “One Entangled Evening” focused on the legacy and vision of Richard Feynman.  Part of the program involved showing the film below, which brings you a chess match for the ages: Paul Rudd vs Stephen Hawking in a game of Quantum Chess, narrated by Keanu Reeves from 700 years in the future. 

By the way, there really is a game called quantum chess. Quantum chess was created by USC graduate student Chris Cantwell, which will soon be promoted on Kickstarter.

Werner Herzog saying Pittsburgh

Something for Those Snowbound Today

Everyone loves the The Wizard of Oz.  It's a beloved film classic, a longtime television staple, and the movie that gave us Judy Garland's "Over the Rainbow."

But haven't you at some point thought to yourself, "I wish every word in this film were presented in alphabetical order?"  Well, your wish has now come true.  Filmaker Matt Bucy, first came up with the idea in 2001, recut the film accordingly in 2004, and then posted the result to the internet in early 2016.   It now makes its appearance on "In Progress." 

Thinking Slow about San Bernardino

On December 2 last year, a Muslim couple – U.S.-born Syed Rizwan Farook and his Pakistani-born wife Tashfeen Malik – opened fire at a holiday party at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, leaving 14 dead and 22 seriously injured. 

The political reaction was swift and unequivocal.  Chris Christie of New Jersey announced, “Our nation is under siege… What I believe is we’re facing the next world war.” Ted Cruz of Texas claimed, “This nation needs a wartime president,” and, by way of suggesting that he fits that bill, has promised to “carpet-bomb them into oblivion.” Jeb Bush declared, “Islamic terrorism wants to destroy our way of life.  They have declared war on us, and we need to declare war on them.” 

Marco Rubio weighed in similarly:  “This is a clash of civilizations. … There is no middle ground on this. Either they win or we win.” Rubio called for a "substantial ground army" to take on the Islamic State.  He has also said that he would support a Congressional formal declaration of war on ISIS.

Mike Huckabee adds: "If [ISIS is] allowed to go unchecked, if you don't go in and kill it, destroy it -- not just contain it, destroy it -- it will continue to grow, metastasize, and kill us." 

Senator Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina: “We’re at war, folks. They’re not trying to steal your car; they’re trying to kill us all.”  And then, just in case you missed this point, he added: “The bottom line is, we’re at war. They’re trying to come here to kill us all,” and, “The ISIL leadership wants to hurt you, and your family, and if I’m President they will not get here ’cause we’re going to kill ’em over there.”

Donald Trump has vowed not only to kill the terrorists but also to kill their families.  Everyone says we must ban Syrian refugees, and Trump wants "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States."

This sort of reaction reflects a serious misperception of the risk that ISIS poses to the United States or its citizens.  Many other risks that we willingly accept as a part of being alive are much more significant than any we face from terror organizations.  So, let's get some perspective on these risks.  In their book, Chasing Ghosts: The Policing of Terrorism, John Mueller and Mark G. Stewart include a table comparing the annual fatality risks of particular threats to Americans.  Comparison of Annual Fatality Risks (revised Aug 29 2015).  The terrorism fatality information in the table is based on data in from the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) headquartered in the University of Maryland.

According to Mueller and Stewart’s table, in 2009, there were 560,000 deaths due to cancer in the US, amounting to a fatality risk for that year of 1 in 540.  In 2007, there were 119,000 deaths due to all accidents, posing a risk that year of a fatal accident of any kind of 1 in 2500.  Car accidents by themselves numbered 37,261 in 2008 and posed a risk of fatality that year of 1 in 8,200.

Here are some other annual fatality risks we Americans face:

• Homicide   Year: 2006   Total:  14,180   Risk:  1 in 22,000

• Industrial accidents   Year:  2007    Total:  5,657    Risk:  1 in 53,000

• Natural disasters   Years:  1999–2008    Total:  6,294    Risk:  1 in 480,000

• Drowning in bathtub   Year: 2003   Total:  320   Risk:  1 in 950,000

• Death from home appliances   Yearly average:  200    Risk:  1 in 1,500,000

• Deer accidents   Year:  2006   Total:  150   Risk:  1 in 2,000,000

• Commercial aviation deaths   Yearly average:  130   Risk:  1 in 2,300,000

Now let’s look at the death numbers for terrorism. The START data shows that terrorism in America from 1970 to 2013 has claimed 3,372 lives.  Thus, it poses an annual fatality risk of 1 in 4,000,000 – fully one-half the risk we face from deer accidents, and an even smaller likelihood of fatality than what we face from home appliances and bathtubs.  See "Americans Are as Likely to Be Killed by Their Own Furniture as by Terrorism."

Of particular note is the difference in risk between gun violence and terrorism, since Congress apparently is unwilling to lift a finger to prevent gun violence.   As the CNN chart below shows, we’ve had over 400,000 deaths due to gun violence – accidents, suicide and homicide – from 2001 to 2013 and 3380 deaths due to terrorism during the same period, which includes the 9/11.  This averages to over 31,000 gun deaths per year compared to 260 average annual deaths from terrorism.  In other words, gun violence poses a risk to Americans that is 120 times the risk posed from terrorism.  (Note:  You may wonder why the CNN chart over a shorter period of time has slightly more deaths due to terrorism over than the START data.  The difference is that CNN included overseas American deaths, whereas the Start information reflects only terrorist actions within the US.  Also, in the interest of full disclosure, some of the gun deaths are due to terrorist acts, but obviously a very small number.)

In fact, at least in two recent years, the chance of being killed by a toddler (a child under age 5) was greater than the risk of being killed by a terrorist.  In 2015 and 2013 the number of deaths caused by toddlers, either self-inflicted or inflicted on others, exceeded the number of deaths, including those in San Bernardino, caused by terrorists.  Kindergarten, Stop (2015).  Toddlers Killed More Americans Than Terrorists Did This Year (2013). 

You might well ask, where is the political pugnaciousness about these much more serious threats to our safety.  Why is no one announcing that we are under siege from deer (OK, other than Jim)?  Why has no one proclaimed that we need to declare war on home appliances?  Or, insist that there is no middle ground with bathtubs?  Why has Congress done nothing about the toddler threat?  And, here is the more serious question:  why are we not spending the trillion dollars – the amount Congress has appropriated to the Department of Homeland Security since 9/11 – on cancer prevention, which poses a fatality risk to each of us that’s over 7,000 times greater than terrorism?

Actually, there is an answer, supplied by someone who has graced the pages of this blog before, Daniel Kahneman.  See "Why Smart People Are Stupid."  In 2011, Kahneman published the popular book, Thinking, Fast and Slow.  There, he discussed two modes of human thinking, that he calls, simply enough, System 1 and System 2.  “System 1” is a fast decision making system responsible for intuitive decision making based on emotions, vivid imagery, and associative memory.  “System 2” is a slow system that observes System 1’s outputs, and intervenes when “intuition” is insufficient. Such an intervention occurs “when an event is detected that violates the model of the world that System 1 maintains.”  

System 1 is the way we operate most of the time.  And, as Kahneman demonstrates, under this mode of thinking, there is a general inability of the human mind to deal comfortably with statistics and the actual likelihood of an event occurring. Rather, when we “think fast” we are prone to making decisions based on rapid and often superficial intuitions, usually based on a small number of oversimplified analogies. We have particular trouble when simple analogies come to mind quickly and vividly.   Kahneman’s suggestion that in System 1 we too easily turn to simple and commonly used analogies is echoed by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.:  “I trust that a graduate student some day will write a doctoral essay on the influence of the Munich analogy on the subsequent history of the twentieth century. Perhaps in the end he will conclude that the multitude of errors committed in the name of Munich may exceed the original error of 1938.”

It needs to be said that this is not necessarily a bad thing.  Fast thinking made us fit for the Pleistocene era when risk avoidance meant running away from tigers.  Even today, we need to think fast to avoid being struck by a car or to stop an infant from drinking cleaning fluid.  Nevertheless, our Pleistocene risk machinery was not designed for the information-laden modern world.

This risk machinery becomes particularly illogical when it comes to acts of terrorism.  The mental image of a terror event – the thought of a suicide bomb or a mass shooting – produces a much more vivid and horrific image of death and suffering than, say, someone suffering from diabetes, and it produces an instant and uncontrolled emotional response.   Even though people may “know” that such events are rare and their probability is low, they cannot escape the psychological discomfort caused by such vividly imagined threats.  And then, the news media’s disproportionate and unrelenting focus on cases of terrorism reinforces such mistaken perceptions. As Kahneman explains in Thinking, Fast and Slow, “extremely vivid image[s] of death and damage” resulting from terrorist attacks are “reinforced by media attention and frequent conversation,” leaving us with highly accessible memories of such events. When people who have been exposed to such coverage later assess how likely more terrorism is, such events come readily to mind — and so they are likely to assign probabilities biased upward.  Such reporting results in people being "guided by emotion rather than by reason, easily swayed by trivial details, and inadequately sensitive to differences between low and negligibly low probabilities," says Kahneman.

Kahneman points out as an example that in the early 2000s many travelers in Israeli cities avoided buses because they feared suicide bombings, even though the statistical probability of being injured by a terrorist attack on a bus remained much smaller than being killed in a traffic accident in a car.

Whether terror organizations are aware of Kahneman’s book or our Pleistocene propensity to overreact to vivid images of death, the strategic goal behind terrorism is to produce an unthinking overreaction.  The terrorists know that, on own their own, they pose no real threat to great powers and cannot impose their will on these powers.  Instead, terrorists seek to weaken strong powers like the United States by goading them into overreaction and, in so doing, waste their own blood and treasure, create sympathy for the terrorists and boost recruitment.   

Unleashing an exaggerated response to terrorist actions plays right into the basic terrorist propaganda that its enemies are all evil monsters and need to be dealt with mercilessly.  And, when the response also inflicts casualties on neutral or unsympathetic locals, it often turns them into terrorist supporters.  One could imagine that nothing would make ISIS leaders happier than a US decision to “carpet bomb” Iraq and Syria.  

Similarly, hostility toward Syrian refugees also plays into ISIS’s hands.  ISIS despises the Syrian refugees: It sees them as traitors to the glorious caliphate.  Beyond that, the millions of fleeing refugees dramatically expose the ISIS lie that its territory is a paradise for Muslims. But if refugees do make it out, ISIS wants them to be treated badly — the more the West treats them with suspicion and fear, the more it supports ISIS's narrative of a West that is hostile to Muslims and bolsters ISIS's efforts to recruit from migrant communities in Europe.  On the other hand, nothing would poke more holes in the ISIS claims of Western hostility toward Muslims and undercut ISIS support than a western wholesale welcome of the Syrian refugees. 

So, the question is:  can our cognitive illusions be overcome?  If we know of our propensity to think fast, can we avoid its pitfalls?  Kahneman is not encouraging. Because System 1 operates automatically and cannot be turned off at will, errors of intuitive thought are often difficult to prevent. Biases cannot always be avoided, because System 2 is often unaware of System 1 errors.  Even when cues to likely errors are available, errors can be prevented only by the enhanced monitoring and supreme efforts to activate of System 2.  As Kahneman says of his own book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, “It’s not a case of: 'Read this book and then you'll think differently.'  I've written this book, and I don't think differently." 

And, constant monitoring of our thinking may not even be desirable.  Kahneman says that, as a way to live your life, continuous vigilance is not necessarily good, and it is hopelessly impractical. Constantly questioning our own thinking would be impossibly tedious, and System 2 is much too slow and inefficient to serve as a substitute for System 1 in making routine decisions.   In the end, no one would be able to get anything done.

The best we can do, says Kahnemen, is a compromise: learn to recognize situations in which mistakes are likely and try harder to avoid significant mistakes when the stakes are high.  Science, for example, recognizes the danger of bias, and so it insists on the principle that there is evidence of findings that other people are able to evaluate.  Is it too much to ask our politicians to meet a similar standard and produce evidence of their conclusions, especially when they are considering a major military adventure overseas?  Certainly, the stakes are high enough to insist on some slow thinking.  

A Bowie moment, courtesy of Wes Anderson

Best Review of Star Wars, Episode VII

I wish I could take credit for this, but that belongs to my brother Dan. In an email exchange where I accepted that the movie just wasn't that good, his response is the best review I have read:

I don't think it was necessarily bad but just a reiteration of the first star wars movie with somewhat better acting. Same story line except that Darth Vader is replaced by an emo guy and Han Solo and Leia have a ridiculously unconvincing romance.

That pretty much sums it up.

The Origin of the (Original Eight) Silly Picture

This was the original in a continuing theme of silly pictures. This original, however, is reduced to 4 plus a neighbor.