New Majority → FrumForum

Posted on November 4, 2009 by David Hume

Here’s the explanation for the change in name. When I saw a page notifying of the change last night on NewMajority I thought someone had hacked the site and placed the note up as a joke. I guess that says it all about what I think about the new name. Let’s hope that they do a Pajama’s Media.

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Spirituality, real and imagined

Posted on November 3, 2009 by Heather Mac Donald

The sweat lodge deaths have focused scrutiny on the New Age community in Sedona, which over three decades has become a magnet for spiritual seekers thanks to spectacular scenery and links to Native American rituals. The Angel Valley retreat center, which hosted the five-day Spiritual Warrior event, offers a menu of services like soul retrieval, vortex healing and dolphin energy healing.

(From the New York Times, reporting on an October 8 sweat lodge ceremony intended as a rebirthing experience that left three people dead from dehydration.) 

I know that this is wildly unrealistic, but how about if people satisfy their “spiritual” longings with what we actually have: the human spirit.    There’s plenty of evidence that it can survive death.  Aeschylus’ Oresteia, for example, has lasted thousands of years through a transfer of custody as marvelous as any soul channeler could dream up.  Every time an orchestra starts the terrifying opening chords and palpitating, yearning arpeggios of the overture to Don Giovanni, Mozart’s spirit is given living form. 

Several years ago, the religious apologist David Hart wrote an essay celebrating America’s most zealous forms of religious enthusiasm.  Speaking in tongues and snake-handling showed America’s still robust faith and “spiritual” fiber, so different from Europe’s religious apathy, he argued.    My reaction is the exact opposite: I find such foaming-at-the-mouth frenzy repugnant.  I know that I am merely revealing my own limitations here, but consciousness at its most normally functioning seems to me not just an adequate way of inhabiting the world but a superb one as well. Continue reading →

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The necessity of the non-answer

Posted on November 1, 2009 by David Hume

Clark of Mormon Metaphysics points to this screed by Peter Lawler over at Postmodern Conservative by way of praising Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies. Lawler asserts:

… It begins as a criticism of the naive stupidity of the “new atheists” such as Hitchens, Dawkins, and Dennett from the perspective of the older atheist Nietzsche. The new atheists criticize religion (or basically Christianity) from an anti-cruelty, pro-dignity, pro-rights, pro-enlightenment perspective. They don’t realize that their humane values are, in fact, parasitic on Christianity and make no sense outside the Christian insight–completely unsupported by modern or Darwinian science–concerning the uniqueness and irreplacability of every human person. Nietzsche was right that secular Christianity or Christianity without Christ is unsustainable, and that the sentimental preferences of the new atheists are no more than that.

I have been blogging for 7 years now, and the whole time I have made it clear that I am an atheist. My readers who are orthodox Christians have often asserted that Nietzsche is the only true consistent and honest atheist, that only his atheism faces the plain facts of existence in a world without God, and that I should man up. Though the author of Atheist Delusions is an Eastern Orthodox theologian and philosopher, Lawler reports that his criticism of the New Atheists starts from a Nietzschian perspective. All I have to say is that homey don’t play that game. Friedrich Nietzsche was the product of a line of Lutherans pastors, so it should not surprise that his atheism engages so directly, and inverts so forcefully, the thrust of Christianity. As philosophy goes much of what Nietzsche had to say was captivating, but then I also find science fiction captivating, as well as some portions of the Bible.

The atheism of Nietzsche plays on the terms of Christianity, and that is why Christians often admire his work. It is entirely intelligible to them insofar as it operates in the same universe of morals, albeit characterized by inversions. So naturally Christians castigate atheists who are not Nietzschians, such a stance creates much greater difficulty in fashioning rhetorical thrusts. Too many presuppositions simply are not aligned. Where Lawler and many others declare that Christianity is a necessary precondition of humane values, I simply assert that humane values, or more accurately the values we hold today, used Christianity, as well as other religions and philosophies, as cultural vessels. Morality and ethics existed prior to religion, and the emergence of “Higher Religions” which fused a moral sense with supernatural intuitions was a process which occurred in the light of history. It was no miracle, and may even have been inevitable once humans reached a particular level of organization.

Of course this sort of argument leaves many loose ends hanging. So be it. Those who believe that they have the Ultimate answer do not, and yet we continue to muddle on.

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White men can’t be progressive?

Posted on November 1, 2009 by David Hume

Matt Yglesias says, White Men Are Not Very Progressive:

I would say that another message is that progressive politics is badly disadvantaged by a situation in which the overwhelming majorities of political leaders and prominent media figures are white men. There are plenty of white men with progressive views, but in general the majority of white men are not progressive and the majority of progressives are not white men. Drawing from the relatively small pool of white male progressives means drawing from a shallow talent pool.

This is not really right. From the GSS:


White non-Hispanic Men
All Bachelor’s degree Grad school degree Smart (WORDSUM 8-10), graduate degree
Extremely Lib 2.7 3.2 4 1.5
Liberal 9 11 16.2 17.4
Slightly Lib 10.4 12.9 14.4 19
Moderate 35.9 24.5 23.8 27.5
Slightly Cons 17.2 21.4 17.1 16.3
Conservative 20.5 22.9 20.9 16.7
Extremely Cons 4.4 4.1 3.6 1.6

Here’s a chart which makes the issue clear:
Continue reading →

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Magical thinking watch: “Education innovations”

Posted on November 1, 2009 by Heather Mac Donald

The Obama Administration has created a $650 million Investing in Innovation Fund (i3)— its snappy nickname undoubtedly intended to invoke the excitement of a Silicon Valley start-up.   “We’re making an unprecedented investment in cutting-edge ideas that will produce the next generation of school reforms,” Secretary Duncan said on announcing the i3 effort. 

The idea that some sort of radically new education innovation will close the minority achievement gap and raise the entire country’s science and math capacities is the most enduring delusion in modern education circles.  The field is dedicated to thinking up an endless series of diversions,  ideally involving information technology,  that distract attention from reinstating the only practices that have ever worked: a teacher teaching actual content, classroom discipline, self-discipline, memorization, drilling, study.   Such traditional (and cheap!) ideas are attacked from the left by the proponents of progressive pedagogy and ignored by clueless corporate types who are oblivious to the essential behavioral underpinnings of learning. Continue reading →

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Rationality & culture

Posted on November 1, 2009 by David Hume

At ScienceBlogs, where most of my readers are liberal, Katherine says:

This is why I think rightism is absurd: because it seems to be so uncomfortable with letting others simply go about their lives in whatever way they themselves wish.

I’m an atheist and a rational sort too. I think religion is inherently idiotic. At the same time, I would rather people came to the right answer through their own thought and rationality (if they possess them) and being exposed to the information rather than being forced to any extent into anything, which is the sort of attitude I got from your essay – institutionalized something-or-other and willful division of societies into groups.

People also need to learn to deal with others in different groups.

I see where she is coming from, this is a common position. To a large extent, I would paraphrase E. O. Wilson and say that the life rational is a great idea, but the wrong species! These sorts of comments remind me of Richard Dawkins’ assertion that ‘There is something illogical about the fear of death’. Great, I invite Dr. Dawkins to talk people out of their fear of death!

And of course, people who say they’re laissez-faire really aren’t. If one found out that a neighbor was about to perform a clitoridectomy on their daughter in 30 minutes, I think reasoned discussion would give way to force. One might say that children “are different,” but there are plenty of things which we allow parents to do to their children, and things we do not, and how we decide which belongs in which set is contingent on our cultural outlook.

Existence itself is not “rational.” Religious people have an “out,” they just push the reason for existence to gods (as I’ve tried to point out to religious people before, this awesome “can’t refute” answer is totally unpersuasive to the irreligious because the answer to the question is made-up). Rather, why live but not die? Because it is in our nature, and most of us have an aesthetic preference for life. Rationality is a tool which is distal to these ultimate conundrums, not the answer. The nature of cultures may be subjective, but that does not mean that we don’t have an attachment nonetheless. To be as one is is preferable to not being.

Posted in culture | 5 Comments

The Pagans are Coming!

Posted on November 1, 2009 by Andrew Stuttaford

How’s that whole Enlightenment thing going? Not so well, it seems: click here for Saturday’s New York Times story on the rise of paganism. Predictable, uncritical pap for the most part, although I noted this section with, well, I don’t know what:

…of course, the popular culture of the Harry Potter books, the television series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and the current zombie vogue have defanged Pagan religion for a mass teenage audience.

Frankly. I’m not at all convinced that the ‘mass teenage audience’ had hitherto given much thought to paganism one way or the other, but it’s strange to see a writer for the New York Times signing up for the idea-more usually associated with some of the nuttier notches on the Bible Belt-that Harry Potter has been acting as some kind of propagandist for paganism. And while we’re on this topic, I’m not at all sure that the ‘current zombie vogue’ (which has lurched and stumbled far, very far, from its roots in voodoo mythology) has anything to do with the supernatural whatsoever, unless you count the rather good fight in a church, which (if I recall correctly) took place in one of the Resident Evil movies.

To be fair, however, I should concede that Buffy did feature at least two explicitly Wiccan characters, and there is indeed some evidence that the show may indeed have encouraged some people in a covenwards direction. That said, I suspect that Buffy’s Wiccans reflected a trend as much as they made it, but that wider trend is a discussion for another time.

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Catholics somewhat less conservative even if observant

Posted on November 1, 2009 by David Hume

Are Catholic Republicans More Liberal Than Protestant Republicans?, a comment:

A lot of people call themselves “Catholic” who really don’t even go to Church and who deny many Catholic Church teachings…ergo… the author’s conclusion is VERY flawed.

This is a plausible hypothesis. In fact, I wonder if the comment was left by God, because they clearly know who a real “Catholic” is, and are also aware that people who call themselves Protestants are “real” Protestants. In fact, in the comments of most political blogs opinions expressed have the voice of God, because stupidity does not exist in democratic discourse. But I know how to use web forms, so I checked political ideology of those with “Strong Republican” identities in the GSS. I limited the years to 1988 and after for contemporary relevance, and to whites. I broke them down into Catholics and Protestants who attend church at different rates. Results below.
Continue reading →

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Religious diversity & its discontents

Posted on November 1, 2009 by David Hume

CONGREGATIONAL CHURCHOver at ScienceBlogs I’ve put a comment up about tensions in New York City between a mosque & an establishment across the street which serves alcohol. The issues around public displays of religion, and the norms which are enforced around religious establishments, are both complex and cross-culturally general. In India riots have often occurred when a group of Muslims or Hindus march by an establishment of the other community in the course of a religious procession. Similar issues occurred in Europe during the Reformation when religious diversity was extant in many areas. Catholic festivals and parades relating to saints and relics were ripe targets for zealous Protestants to engage in disruption & violence. Apparently the same sort of clashes are now occurring in Latin America as sizable evangelical Protestant minorities challenge the Catholic domination of public space.

The relationship of Protestants and Catholics in the United States has often been fraught as well, not to mention strife between Protestant denominations themselves (in the latter case, one might read up on the oppression which Baptists and Methodists in New England complained of even into the 1800s at the hands of the Congregationalist establishment). John T. McGreevy’s Catholicism and American Freedom relates the sordid 19th century history of conflict between the majority and the minority, which often resulted in violence, as well as its 20th century ramifications. To a great extent the resolution was achieved once American Catholicism evolved into just another denomination in the American order, when American Catholic’s began to espouse beliefs and norms approaching those of Protestants (“traditionalist Catholics” resist this tendency, but they’re numerically marginal). Because Jews were so much less numerous the similar tensions never manifested. American Judaism before the emigration of Hasidic rabbis in the wake of the chaos in Europe in the mid-20th century, turned itself into another denomination, with the Reform Movement setting the tone. Unlike Catholics Jews simply did not have the numbers or political power to bargain for anything more. In fact, Reform Judaism in the 19th and early 20th century was more assimilated than it is today, having disavowed the concept of a Jewish nationality and recasting themselves explicitly as analogous to the Protestant groups which populated the American scene (see American Judaism). McGreevy describes how these Jews, Protestantized and often secular, formed an alliance after World War II with the post-Protestant WASP establishment and initiated the modern Culture Wars, with conservative Catholics, evangelical Protestants and Orthodox Jews arrayed on the other side.
Continue reading →

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Saying Boo To A Ghost

Posted on October 31, 2009 by Andrew Stuttaford

So far as Hallowe’en is concerned, the Pope, it seems, is all bah, humbug. The Daily Telegraph has the details:

The Holy See has warned that parents should not allow their children to dress up as ghosts and ghouls on Saturday, calling Hallowe’en a pagan celebration of “terror, fear and death”. The Roman Catholic Church has become alarmed in recent years by the spread of Hallowe’en traditions from the US to other countries around the world. As in Britain, it is only in recent years that Italian children have dressed up in costumes, played trick or treat on their neighbours and made lanterns out of hollowed out pumpkins.

The Vatican issued the warning through its official newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, in an article headlined “Hallowe’en’s Dangerous Messages”. The paper quoted a liturgical expert, Joan Maria Canals, who said: “Hallowe’en has an undercurrent of occultism and is absolutely anti-Christian.” Parents should “be aware of this and try to direct the meaning of the feast towards wholesomeness and beauty rather than terror, fear and death,” said Father Canals, a member of a Spanish commission on church rites.

Good luck with that.

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