Tornado watch

A tornado ripped through the southeast portion of the OKC metro area yesterday afternoon. At some point, it became clear that the storm was tracking more or less towards the massive windowless brick building where I work, that is, 3001 Staff Drive, on Tinker AFB.

Fortunately, I had taken the precaution of driving back across town a bit early in order to get home and out of harm's way. The wife was thrilled to find me home safe, and the whole family crowded around the television to track the progress of the storm while basking in the relative safety and comfort of our living room, situated as it is on the northwest side of the city.

While basking, we were informed by the nice folks at FOX 25 (who normally broadcast The Simpsons during that time of day) that the tornado was moving past the GM plant towards my place of employment. At this point I began praying fervently to all the gods and goddesses I could think of that the tornado would pass over my friends and smite my enemies. As it turns out, my incantation was only partially effective, for my friends were spared, but then too were mine enemies. Not a one of them was smote, not even a little bit. Alas and alack.

Probably the lesson here is to know ahead of time which gods and goddesses are more intimately connected with whatever natural disaster happens to be heading your way. If I could have focused my petitioning efforts only on those deities that deal directly with thunderstorms, I may well have been far more effective.

This morning, a friend of mine e-mailed me to let me know that he was okay. He obliquely mentioned the hand of fate in his life, “...had I left work five to ten minutes later, I would have been in the middle of it.” Now he must know that the gods and goddesses were looking out for him, and still he has yet to thank me for my intercessory prayers on his behalf. Ah well, there is always treasure in heaven.

Now that I think about it, had I left work nearly an hour later and taken a marginally roundabout route home (past the GM plant) I would no doubt have been struck by the full fury of the storm. So I suppose the deities are looking out for me, too. Probably I should send my mother a thank-you note for that.

As to those poor blighters that really got pounded, no doubt they had it coming to them. Nothing happens but by the will of the gods, and thus we may safely assume that they must have been transworld-depraved idolaters.

When politics, religion, and science collide...

You end up with codswallop like disclaimers on evolution textbooks in Oklahoma public schools. The original evolution disclaimer has once again reared its ugly head in the Oklahoma legislature, and this time it is up to the state senate to pass it along to the Governor or allow it to once again recede into the fevered imagination of its creationist sponsors.

A scathing yet scientific critique of said disclaimer may be found at Dr. Kenneth R. Miller’s website. If you want the politicians to stick to politics and leave science to the scientists, probably you should click here.

Electoral reform

As I walked about this past week trying to harvest my fair share of the +50k sigs needed to get the Libertarian party recognized in the great state of Oklahoma, I found myself rebuffed in rather interesting ways.  Many folks admitted outright (and with minimal prompting) that they had no desire for more than two choices on the ballot -- and some laughed out loud at themselves for doing so.  This naturally set me to wondering -- why is it so damnably difficult to get third-parties noticed in this nation?

In my deepening frustration and profound ignorance I turned to the internet to learn what the political scientists had to say and I found the following thoughts and references courtesy of the folks at Janda.org

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For almost 150 years, the U.S. has maintained a two-party system, which itself is rather unique among democratic party systems--as Jean Blondel shows in his classification of electoral systems. Why have we had only two dominant parties for so long when most other nations have a multiparty system? Our electoral system is the leading suspect. The French political scientist, Maurice Duverger, explained the influence of electoral laws on party systems in the late 1940s. One of his articles appears on our web site.

• Jean Blondel, "Types of Party Systems," in Peter Mair (ed.) The West European Party System (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 302-310.
• Duverger, "Factors in a Two-Party and Multiparty System," Party Politics and Pressure Groups (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1972), pp. 23-32.
• Farrell, Ch. 1: "The Study of Electoral Systems," 1-11.

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I found the Duverger article particularly straightforward and insightful.  All this time I thought the major parties had consolidated their hold on power gradually by adding statues to the books (e.g. restrictive ballot access) when the real culprit was the winner-take-all electoral scheme put into place at the founding of the republic.  Alas and alack.

Turns out there are loads of ways around this problem, such as proportional representation in the legislature and alternative election methods for the executive branch.

Thoughts on the Efficacy of Prayer

The common theistic defense of prayer may be expressed compactly in the clich found on altogether too many bumper stickers and church placards throughout our state, God answers prayer. Oh, does he? If God answers prayer, one might expect the occasional, well, answers. Even though there were (contra Kathleen Parker) plenty of atheists in the planes which crashed into New York and D.C. on September 11th, you could probably make a safe bet that most of the theists (devout or not) were praying their hearts out. Any yet, no giant hand emerged from the clouds to catch the planes before they crashed. The terrorists were not suddenly overtaken by plagues of frogs, locusts, boils, and other such nastiness found throughout the religious literature as plagues of God. Neither were they stricken with sudden strokes, embolisms, ulcers, fainting spells or any of the other crippling maladies that (an alleged) God sees fit to visit upon innocent humans throughout the world. Even something as benign as severe muscle cramps or debilitating gas might have done the trick. What do we call someone who would simply stand by and let these things happen? Evil. So, if God exists, then it is not at all the friendly chap that so many seem to think. Atheism, then, is not bad news, it is good news. We humans are on our own to figure things out for ourselves, and it could be far worse.

Unadulterated poppycock

http://www.globalissues.org/Geopolitics/MiddleEast/TerrorInUSA/QA.asp

George W. Bush has claimed that the United States was targeted because of its commitment to freedom and democracy. Bush says people are jealous of our wealth. The truth is that anti-Americanism rests on feelings that the U.S. obstructs freedom and democracy as well as material well being for others. In the Middle East, for example, the United States supports Israeli oppression of Palestinians, providing the military, economic, and diplomatic backing that makes that oppression possible. It condemns conquest when it is done by Iraq, but not when done by Israel. It has bolstered authoritarian regimes (such as Saudi Arabia) that have provided U.S. companies with mammoth oil profits and has helped overthrow regimes (such as Iran in the early 1950s) that challenged those profits. When terrorist acts were committed by U.S. friends such as the Israeli-supervised massacres in the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps in Lebanon, no U.S. sanctions were imposed. But about the U.S. imposed sanctions on Iraq, leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent children, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright could only say that she thought it was worth it. When the U.S. went to war against Iraq, it targeted civilian infrastructure. When Iran and Iraq fought a bloody war, the United States surreptitiously aided both sides.

Many Muslims are pissed about all of the grievances listed above, but this does not imply that the U.S. is unjustified in its support of Israel, defense of Kuwait, sanctioning of Iraq, etc.  If they have taken such actions because of a "commitment to freedom and democracy" then both Bush and those who focus on grievances are correct in their assesment of terrorist motivations, the commitment itself lead to the instantiation of the grievances.  The question then is whether the U.S. took the moral couse of action.  The article seems to conclude that the answer is clearly in the negative, but it provides little support for its analysis. 

 

The reasons given in support of the premise that "the U.S. obstructs freedom and democracy" are for the most part vague and unsubstantiated.  On the off chance that they are substantiable, I've a few specific questions in the interest of playing devil's advocate...

Why exactly are Iraqi children starving?  Is it because of INTERNATIONAL sanctions imposed due to an UNPROVOKED invasion of a sovereign nation (Kuwait) have put their economy into the shitter or because the wealth of that nation (of which there is plenty) has been disproportionally allocated to those serving Saddam's fascist regime?  Surely it is partially due to both, but either way does not the Iraqi government stand morally culpable?  Could they not have prevented the famine by simply refraining from certain evils? 

How exactly are the Palestinians being oppressed?  Many of them are waging a bloody civil war against the sovereign nation of Israel, and most of them support it.  Was the South oppressed when we put down their rebellion?

Regarding our alleged "bolstering" of authoritarian regimes, were there any democratic movements to choose from?

Was there any morally significant difference between conquest by Iraq and Israel? (Hint: Think unprovoked invasion vs. national defense...)

 

Finally, the only specific charge listed above is the slaughter in Lebanon, which was committed in Lebanon by the Phalange (Kata´eb) militia, a Lebanese force fighting in the Lebanese civil war.  Surely the IDF might have anticipated and prevented the tragedy, but the Lebanese must bear the ultimate moral blame, hence sanctions against Israel would have been completely inappropriate.  OTOH, the Iraqi army invaded a sovereign nation under orders from the Iraqi government.  It should thus be blindingly clear why exactly the political entity of Iraq is far more directly to blame in the latter case than that of Israel in the former. 

 

Peace love and happiness to you all - and may death come swiftly to our enemies!

A Thumbnail Sketch of Personal Apostasy

An only child, from a very early age I was keenly interested in reading and learning, especially scientific books. In grade school I spent much of my spare time either in the local library or at home with my own books, such as The Dawn of Man and Cosmos (it remains beyond me why my mother would buy such imposing books for a grade schooler, perhaps I requested them). This early stage molded (some might say warped) my nature into a more reclusive and rational mindset. No doubt the incessant reading impaired me socially, not only because of the hours spent alone rather than interacting with others, but also because the children I grew up with seemed to genuinely loathe learning in general and bright kids in particular. I considered this an unfortunate aspect of public schooling, but I was fortunate in that I did not grow up in a part of the nation where the entire (adult) culture was actively anti-intellectual. That is until 7th grade, when my Mom remarried and we moved to Oklahoma City, smack in the buckle of the proverbial Bible belt. There I was to discover that much of what I had learned in my precious books was "utter rubbish" and was to be extricated from my mind in favor of the Genesis myth.

This confused and upset me somewhat, and despite the amazing flexibility of the young mind I never really managed to do away with the idea of empirical evidence in favor of faith. Nevertheless, I prayed the sinner's prayer that I might not go to Hell and became a good Baptist kid. Indeed, I thrived in the Southern Baptist environment, making many friends at the Henderson Hills Baptist Church (HHBC). I learned the Christian Scriptures (or at least the Protestant English translations thereof) through and through, and by the time I was a freshman in high school, I was teaching Sunday School to 4th graders. It wasn't until some time later, while in post-graduate school, that I began to seriously question my faith. I had always dealt with the occasional torturous bouts of doubt, usually at night, in which I'd lie awake and fret over the possibility that the metaphysical naturalists might be right, and there would be no afterlife for me or anyone. I saw this as a genuine possibility since I was initially steeped not in dogma but in science, and my undergraduate degree in physics had only reinforced the plausibility of such a notion.

Taking a straightforward approach to my doubts, I undertook to read the best atheistic arguments available, and counter them with the best apologetics available, thereby settling in my mind the question of God. I aspired even to perhaps become an apologist myself. As so I set out on my literature review. I did not make it far before being downright overwhelmed by the sheer force of the atheistic arguments. Most striking to me was the finding of the various schools of higher criticism which grew out of the German Bible scholarship of the 19th century. To see the incredible similarities between the gospels and other Hellenistic legends and Jewish messianic figures blew me away, as did the history of canonization and the progression evident in the Christian Scriptures. The possibility of mythical development of the gospels was so well argued by the likes of Mack, Crossan , and Wells that I could no longer treat gospels as reliable historical sources. Between the Biblical criticism and the moral arguments from evil and hell, I was rather quickly losing my religion. I tried to modify my beliefs to hold on to some vestiges of my faith, progressing rapidly through christocentric universalism, fideism, deism, and various combinations before finally realizing the futility of my endeavors. There was nothing in particular that pushed me over the edge, but there was a particular moment at which I admitted to myself (and my spouse) that I no longer believed. That was around four years ago this summer.