Archive for November, 2008
Posted in Academic Life, Atheism, Democracy, Extended, ethics
November 30, 2008 at 1:32 pm
As Newtonmas approaches, I just wanted to remind everyone that if you’re looking for a charity to donate to, Penny Arcade’s Child’s Play is always the way to go. 100% of what you donate goes to kids that are sick in the hospital over the holidays. So many new hospitals are participating that there’s sure to be one local to you by now (and if there’s not, we first donated to Seattle’s Children’s hospital when we were in NJ, and distance didn’t make it any less wonderful of a charity).
I’ve been looking all over for the vouchers that someone started producing 7 or 8 years ago to drop in Salvation Army buckets to let them know you would’ve been donating to them if they weren’t homophobic bigots. I haven’t managed to find them (although I found some reasonable facsimiles after enough googling). I did find that the Human Rights Campaign has put out a Buyer’s Guide scoring organizations on their support for GLBT equality so that those of us not in the crosshairs can be socially aware of where our money is going. (courtesy of gaywallet.com).
I already bought some generic holiday cards to send out, but anyone who remembers my most beautiful newtonmas cards to date and wants to support a great artist should do so here (she has some lovely holiday cards up right now). One of these days I’ll actually set up Newtonmas.com, but tenure-line professoring is distinct from adjunct professoring and teaching assistantships in the absurd number of meetings and events one has to attend on top of the normal teaching, advising, and scholarship duties. I figure Newton can wait.
Posted in Atheism, Critical Thinking?, Democracy, Extended, Science, ethics
November 21, 2008 at 9:54 am
I meant to blog about this days ago (and one of my Intro Philosophy students even posted it to our message board) but I haven’t had a chance. Now, in addition to the link posted in the blurb column by Bloom on evolution and first-person identities, I find myself writing about him again. I’ve long been a fan of Bloom’s work. I have referenced his book, Descartes’ Baby, in several papers, and spread the ideas around my graduate university until even the undergraduate Metaphysics class was forced to read them. I appreciate that Bloom addresses questions of dualism as they are evolutionarily selected for (much like I address the way our language itself rests upon those concepts to such a degree that embodiment theorists have to struggle to make a concept of embodied mind understandable.)
In this Slate article, Bloom addresses how atheism seems to affect how nice we are.
The experiment referenced shows that religious priming can produce what looks like more charity than non-religious priming. (Although I would question whether this is an atheist v. theist discussion, since priming with the word God would make even this atheist more likely to remember the catholic upbringing that equated god with charity, and maybe even make me forget for a moment that the realities of that same catholic church are more often child-molestation cover-ups, sold indulgences, and intentional deceptions than they are actual charity).
Maybe, then, religious people are nicer because they believe that they are never alone. If so, you would expect to find the positive influence of religion outside the laboratory. And, indeed, there is evidence within the United States for a correlation between religion and what might broadly be called “niceness.”
Thankfully, though, Bloom goes on to explain that in America, at least, atheists are not even afforded the poor considerations that Muslims enjoy, but are considered unpatriotic, bad Americans (on the most charitable read).
The sorry state of American atheists, then, may have nothing to do with their lack of religious belief. It may instead be the result of their outsider status within a highly religious country where many of their fellow citizens, including very vocal ones like Schlessinger, find them immoral and unpatriotic. Religion may not poison everything, but it deserves part of the blame for this one.
I have only anecdote to back up my claims, while there is apparently science backing up the claim that religion makes one nicer (again, I say this with great reservation given the pervasiveness of equating god with goodness in our society), but in my own experience, atheists are the most moral and the most charitable individuals I know. God isn’t coming to save us and we have no greater life to look forward to, so most of us are well-aware that if humankind is to be lifted up to any greater level, there is no one to do the work except for us.
Link to article in Slate.
Posted in Blurb, Evolution, Philosophy, Science
November 21, 2008 at 9:35 am
Imagine a long, terrible dental procedure. You are rigid in the chair, hands clenched, soaked with sweat—and then the dentist leans over and says, “We’re done now. You can go home. But if you want, I’d be happy to top you off with a few minutes of mild pain.” There is a good argument for saying “Yes. Please do.” Paul Bloom in the Atlantic
Posted in Blurb, Digital Culture
November 18, 2008 at 1:06 pm
For festival-starved Boston, Brainwaves is a massive undertaking, especially given its focus on music at the fringes from avant-folk to free improvisation to drones. “Other cities — New York, LA, London — get All Tomorrow’s Parties. Barcelona gets Sonar, Montreal has Mutek, but Boston really doesn’t have much in the way of festivals. Brainwaves is a big festival for Boston, but it still feels really close-knit. It’s like a family gathering.” Brainwaves is this weekend in Boston. You should go. Article in the Phoenix.
Posted in Books, Comics, Media, Science
November 18, 2008 at 12:45 pm
Once again the day is saved by SCIENCE! Once again our CITY is saved by science! Nikola Tesla makes a HERO of science! Science makes a HERO of Nikola Tesla! Sleep soundly, New York City! Science has made you safe again! Ask yourselves — Why hasn’t your GOVERNMENT done the same? Matt Fraction at Powells.com
Posted in Books, Media
November 18, 2008 at 12:39 pm
I sigh, depressed, and grind my teeth. I toy with shouting some tidbit more-some terrifying, unthinkable threat, some blackly fuliginous irddling hex-but my heart’s not in it. “Missed me!” I say with a coy little jerk and a leer, to keep my spirits up. Then, with a sigh, a kind of moan, I start very carefully down the cliffs that lead to the fens and moors and Hrothgar’s hall… John Gardner at Powells.com
Posted in Democracy, Extended, ethics
November 18, 2008 at 11:26 am
Back when the Technoprogressive blog was young and hopeful, I made a post about the fact that it’s offensive to be barred from blood donations in the US if you ever admit to having had sex with any male, ever, who has ever had sex with any other male. I spent 4 years donating regularly at my local bloodbank in Eugene, OR, and then another year at the Red Cross in Portland. I would estimate my donations to have been about 30 pints in the last 6 years. I am the wet dream of the Red Cross. I am also a universal blood donor because of my blood type.
I get past the offensiveness of the question of gay sex usually by justifying that if they aren’t accepting blood from gay men (or any women who have been with bisexual men) then they need my blood more than ever, and some poor bastard who needs a transfusion shouldn’t be the one to suffer for the bigotry of the blood industry. But my first donation with the local bloodbank today went too far. They have the questionnaire computerized, so the text is read to you while they show you photographs with little captions. The usual question “Have you ever had sex with a man who has had sex with another man” showed a photo of two apparently quite happy men playing in a field, one riding piggyback upon the other’s back. Beneath the photo was the caption “Unsafe sex?” I guess I should appreciate them being upfront about their bigotry, because it makes the same un-illustrated question at the Red Cross seem much less innocuous, but instead it has prompted me to spend my morning crafting a letter both to the bloodbank and the community outreach center on campus that sponsors the blood drives and brings them here, admonishing them for views that were offensive in the 1980s and outdated in the 1990s.
As someone who donates every 8 weeks faithfully, I can say I’ll be choosing to drive further to donate with the Red Cross (who aren’t MUCH better) or keeping my blood to myself from now on, unless they change the illustration and caption with this question. Next up: getting the laws changed to eliminate the question entirely, instead asking a question about promiscuity among ANY sexual orientation.
Posted in Democracy, Extended
November 3, 2008 at 1:40 pm
I’ll be volunteering as an election official at my local polling place Nov. 4th from 6.45am until every eligible voter has voted (polls close at 7 or 8pm, but I’m expecting to be there at least until 11pm-midnight). We’ve been told lunch would be miraculous and bathroom breaks would be a luxury. Please bring me donuts and a cath tube.
Think of my suffering and make it worth something. GO VOTE.
Posted in Atheism, Evolution, Extended, Philosophy, Science
November 2, 2008 at 11:19 am
Pascal Boyer is one of the few scientists approaching the question of evolutionary advantage or selection for religion in a way that I find satisfying. He doesn’t reduce the questions down to their simplest components (ritual, community, etc.) and just look for biological explanations. He recognizes that this is a quesiton that demands interdisciplinary cooperation and examination, and that it is a much richer phenomenon than the simple reduction that is usually made of religious activity by us heathens. Here he is in Nature:
In the past ten years, the evolutionary and cognitive study of religion has begun to mature. It does not try to identify the gene or genes for religious thinking. Nor does it simply dream up evolutionary scenarios that might have led to religion as we know it. It does much better than that. It puts forward new hypotheses and testable predictions. It asks what in the human make-up renders religion possible and successful. Religious thought and behaviour can be considered part of the natural human capacities, such as music, political systems, family relations or ethnic coalitions. Findings from cognitive psychology, neuroscience, cultural anthropology and archaeology promise to change our view of religion.
Link to Nature article.