Rasputin - A Profligate Christian Who Changed The Course Of Russian And European History

The Rasputin File by Edvard Radzinsky (2001)

Just finished this 500 page tome. Could hardly wait for him to get bumped off. Too long, yes, but if you want insight into what happened in Russian +/- 1900 re. the downfall of the last of the tsars, Russian religious mysticism of that period, Russia's role in WW I, and the major factor prompting the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, Rasputin himself, check this one out. The man was vile to the core, a demented debaucher who had the tsar Nicholas and, more so, tsarina Alexandra in his pocket, so to speak.... Only $1.05, used, on Amazon.com. Here are a couple of quotes from the book:

"It had come to pass by the end of 1916. It was neither the bullets of revolutionary terrorists, nor the shells of Germans at the front, but the existence of a single person that was threatening to destroy one of the greatest empires in the world. The opposition, society, the court had all struggled in vain against the illiterate peasant with the awful name from an unknown village."

"Just who was that man (Rasputin) who appeared in the fire of the first revolution (1905) and perished on the eve of the second? He was undoubtedly a deeply religious person. And at the same time a great sinner. With the simplicity of a century of uneducated, ignorant Russian peasantry, he tried to combine the mysterious passions of the body with the teachings of Christ. And he ended up a sectarian, a 'Khlyst,' a profligate, yet at the same time remaining a deeply religious person. He was the epitome of the Russian's staggering ability to live upright within while enveloped in unceasing sin."

See also Rasputin in Wikipedia.

Religion - Its Origin And Evolution

Why Did Religion Evolve? by Nigel Barber, Psychology Today, June 13, 2012

The origins of religion are to be found neither in its boost to reproductive fitness and fecundity, as the article above alleges, nor in religion's explanatory power and comfort.

Religion evolved along with other social structures and functions such as leadership (politics) and the distribution of wealth (economics). Primarily it emerged in the earliest stages of Homo's cultural evolution as a means of exerting social influence and control.  It agents for establishing such control were its practitioner's who proclaimed their possession of superhuman abilities to understand and control superhuman beings and supernatural processes they alleged existed.  They called these supernatural beings gods and their activities the various workings of Nature and the cosmos.

Ancient leadership, from early Homo into the earliest agrarian and urban civilizations, wasted no time in bringing religious cosmology under its firm control as an adjunct to brute force for maintaining control of the group (band, tribe, city, empire, civilization).  Since those distant times, for the most part, human leadership has succeeded in maintaining its control over religion.  However, today one finds leadership sometimes subordinating itself to religion when it is expedient or otherwise useful for leadership to do so, and one sometimes finds religion touting itself as liberated from leadership and as an empowering worldview of the individual.

Regardless, politics and religion have always been and will remain comfortable bedfellows.

Look for the origins of religion in our early cultural evolution as a form of social control, not in it's Darwinian fitness, solace, or explanatory power. The latter approach, as the above article exemplifies, is a biased speculative glance into our imagined ancient past using the worldview of the present.

As for species' future, the key for human progress, and very likely our and the Earth's survival, is to transform religion away from a focus on the supernatural to a reverence for a secular-scientific, factual understanding of Humankind, Nature, and the cosmos.

Are We Nearing A Planetary Boundary?

Disappointed EU Cites Rio+21 Bright Spots, UPI, June 25, 2012
Progress On The Sidelines As Rio Conference Ends by Simon Romero and John M. Broder, The New York Times, Americas, June 23, 2012
Scientists Urge Rio Moves On Population And Consumption by Richard Blac, BBC, June 13, 2012
Are We Nearing A Planetary Boundary? by Justin Gillis, The New York Times, Environment, June 6, 2012

"....the planet is nearing a "state shift," or tipping point, after which a "bubble" of population and economy will be unsustainable...."

Is this the beginning of the global disaster it appears must happen before Homo sapiens will put nationalism and supernaturalism second to science and the needs of all of Humankind, including accepting full responsibility as stewards of the Earth?

Fundamentalist Christian Apologetics Or A Crusade Against Science?

UPDATE
Religious Products: Prayers and Playthings, The Economist, July 14, 2012.  "Religions rarely praise consumerism. But 2.2 billion Christians and 1.6 billion Muslims are a big market. Sales of books on the world’s two biggest faiths are soaring, with interactive Korans and Bibles among the innovative products. Last year sales of religious books in America grew by 8% in a declining industry."

Popular Science Books Take Off: A Big Bang In Physics Publishing by Tom Chivers, The Guardian, September 6, 2010:

"Traditionally, evolutionary biology has received most attention from publishers. As the philosopher and neuroscientist Daniel Dennett says, no area of science has been so well served by its writers: Richard Dawkins, Stephen Jay Gould and John Maynard Smith are particularly fine examples.

"But since Dennett wrote that in 1995, evolutionary theory has been fighting for shelf space, as quantum physics and relativity mount a comeback. The past few weeks have seen Stephen Hawking’s new book, The Grand Design, move from the books pages to the front pages with its provocative argument that physicists do not need a creator to explain the universe’s existence. But a reader could equally well pick up We Need to Talk about Kelvin by Marcus Chown; In Search of the Multiverse by John Gribbin; Quantum by Manjit Kumar; Void by Frank Close; and dozens more.

"'There’s a real interest in science books at the moment,' says Stuart Clark, author of The Universe (part of the 'Big Question' series). And it’s not as if they’re light reading. Clark’s own book asks what stars are made from, whether there are alternative universes, what the fate of the universe will be, and whether, à la Hawking, there is cosmological evidence for the existence of God."

ORIGINAL POST
Contemporary fundamentalist Christians continuously and aggressively try to influence American politics and public education.  They also try to directly discredit and infuse science with supernaturalism and faith.  Their efforts are especially aimed at the foundational tenet of biology and all the life sciences, evolution.

Those around the world who seek a future where all Humankind and our stewardship of Earth is guided by a secular-scientific yet pluralistic global forum, face a monumental challenge.  That being the efforts of fundamental Christians and Muslims who aspire to being more than equals in such a pluralistic future.  Their faith-based, supernatural views, for example, are not regarded by them to be pluralistic alternatives to scientific-secularism.  On the contrary, the views of fundamentalists are seen by the faithful to represent an absolute truth that must, if and when necessary, be imposed on Humankind.

In part, this zealous effort is carried out through the publication of books such as those listed below.  This small but nevertheless representative sample of fundamentalist Christian efforts was published between the late 1960s and 2008.  I bought them at used bookstores and garage sales in the small, very conservative, predominantly Christian county where I live here in the American South.  I was not surprised to discover that most of the books are not simply apologetic approaches to Christianity.  They are outright assaults on science.  I will gradually be placing comments below each book as I review them in depth.  I would be very happy to receive readers' comments on the books and your reactions to my reviews.

What I'm Reading

Afrikology, Philosophy and Wholeness:  An Epistemology by Dani W. Nabudere, 2011

The Master and His Emissary:  The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World by Iain McGilchrist, 2009

Aping Mankind:  Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity by Ramond Tallis, 2011

Good Natured:  The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals by Frans de Waal, 1996

The Rasputin File by Edvard Radzinsky, 2000

What's A Woman To Do?



The Worst Places To Be A Woman - Mapping The Places Where The War On Women Is Still Being Fought by Valerie M. Hudson, April 24, 2012

Why Do They Hate Us? - The Real War On Women Is In The Middle East by Eltahawy, Foreign Policy, May/June 2012

What's An Atheist To Do?

Number of Nonreligious Americans Continues to Increase: One-Fifty Are Atheist, Agnostic, or Believe in Nothing by Jeff Stone, International Business Times, Faith & Belief, July 21, 2012

Indian Atheists See Recogntion In The Land Of A Million Gods by Samuya Sethia, Times of India, June 30, 2012

Atheists, Muslims See Most Bias As Presidential Candidates by Jeffery M. Jones, Gallup, June 21, 2012

One Nation, Another Religion? by Rachel Pridgen, a review of  Nonbeliever Nation: The Rise of Secular Americans by David Niose and Religion for Atheists: A Non-believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion by Alain de Botton, eSkeptic, June 13, 2012

Non-Believers Who Aren't Atheists? by David Niose, Psychology Today, June 4, 2012

Is Atheism Increasing At The Expense of Theism? by Gregory Paul, Science and Religion Today, May 30, 2012

Atheist Nation - Where In The World are all the atheists?  by Michael Shermer, eSkeptic, May 8, 2012

Should Atheists Slam Religion Or Show Respect? by Valerie Tarico, AlterNet, May 4, 2012

How Not To Write About Africa

Is Africa's Negative Image Justified? by Femi Adewunmi, Pan African Visions, June 2, 2012
How Not To Write About Africa by Laura Seay, Foreign Policy, Argument, April 25, 2012

Occasionally African and non-African scholars, and in this case a journalist, write complaining about the poor quality of media coverage of events in Africa. I also complain about this, verbally and in writing. Whereas my focus is on those patronizing aspects of Western attitudes and beliefs (culture) that continue to prefer Africa and its peoples as "wild" and ever seething with "tribal clashes" (a term the BBC is still very fond of), the writer of the link above focuses on another important problem - media management not hiring enough African reporters on the ground. The article also contains a lot of good general information about the continent. Please write your editor and ask him/her to do better.

Which Way America?

I recently received the photos below, with captions, from a conservative friend from my high school days.

Many of my fellow Americans long and/or pray for the return of an idealized America as it is portrayed in these pictures.  There's nothing wrong with that unless you want a fuller, more accurate picture of our society in the mid-1950s you'd have to add a few not too pleasant pictures of our urban and rural poor, white and black, during this period.

The mostly white, wealthy, Christian conservative Republican leadership, from the 1970s to today, should be credited and blamed for convincing most of the white middle class people in the US that their party, the GOP, will help preserve what is left of the 1950s America they cherish.  Or, with the help of the evangelicals, they promise to take the country back to that time completely.  Here are a couple of the many strategies many Republicans have lined up with to do so:  "The New Apostolic Reformation Movement" and the "Seven Mountains of Culture" -  http://jameselassiter.blogspot.com/2011/08/seven-mountains-of-culture-in-need-of.html

The Republicans began this strategy in the 1970s using the Free Speech Movement, the Anti-War Movement, and the Civil Rights Movement, and their mostly liberal, diverse advocates and participants, as whipping posts.  The GOP did so to generate support for themselves among middle class whites who aspired to join them in being the wealthy "haves" of our country.

This strategy worked and continues to work today.  In fact, many white American have prospered.  The reason they have, however, has not been due to the efforts of rich, powerful Republicans.  Rather it has been due to the generally rising tide of economic growth and technological advancements we have enjoyed since WWII.  Republican leadership succeeded in taking credit for this rise citing their free market capitalism (a form of social Darwinism) approach to the economy and society.  To bolster their approach they added bogeymen, educated liberal elites and the poor, whom they vowed to the middle whites would ruin the country if not kept in check.  Remember Nixon's Vice President Spiro T. Agnew (1969-1973) who wailed about and vilified the "effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals" who dared to protest against US government policy and action?

Thus the humane ideals of contemporary, ethnically diverse liberals for expanding individual freedom, protecting and assisting the exploited, ensuring equal economic and educational opportunity have become hated "doctrines of socialism."

My experience is that most of those persons in the middle class who subscribe to the Republican view of our nation's social and economic problems and a libertarian solution to them are so convinced of what they have been told to believe they will seldom if ever look at the issues objectively, much less do their own thinking or change their views.  It is very much like trying to convince evangelical Christians that there is a preponderance of evidence that Humankind is a product of the same natural processes that gave rise to all other life on earth - you are wasting your time.

So, here we are.  What to do?  Someone has to be right here.  Which of these approaches to society and ultimately the planet is the most reasonable and sustainable?  If you choose "Republicanism" you are selfishly dooming your life, that of our nation, and the health and well-being of planet to the short term.  If you choose fiscally conservative yet liberal, diverse global thinking, we have a chance at a long term and more humane future.  The former is the pursuit of ourselves and our nostalgic past, winner take all.  The latter is a realistic path to survival and happiness for the greatest number of people, as individuals and caretakers of the planet.

For more on this topic, please see my earlier blog post:  http://jameselassiter.blogspot.com/2010/10/obama-is-intelligent-well-educated.html 

Have you seen the new cars coming out next year? It won't be long before $2,000.00 will only buy a used one.

Did you hear the post office is thinking about charging 7 cents just to mail a letter.

If they raise the minimum wage to $1.00, nobody will be able to hire outside help at the store.

When I first started driving, who would have thought gas would someday cost 25 cents a gallon. Guess we'd be better off leaving the car in the garage.

I'm afraid to send my kids to the movies any more. Ever since they let Clark Gable get by with saying DAMN in GONE WITH THE WIND, it seems every new movie has either HELL or DAMN in it.

I read the other day where some scientist thinks it's possible to put a man on the moon by the end of the century. They even have some fellows they call astronauts preparing for it down in Texas.

Did you see where some baseball player just signed a contract for $50,000 a year just to play ball? It wouldn't surprise me if someday they'll be making more than the President.

I never thought I'd see the day all our kitchen appliances would be electric. They're even making electric typewriters now.

It's too bad things are so tough nowadays. I see where a few married women are having to work to make ends meet.

It won't be long before young couples are going to have to hire someone to watch their kids so they can both work.

I'm afraid the Volkswagen car is going to open the door to a whole lot of foreign business.

Thank goodness I won't live to see the day when the Government takes half our income in taxes. I sometimes wonder if we are electing the best people to government.

The fast food restaurant is convenient for a quick meal, but I seriously doubt they will ever catch on.

There is no sense going on short trips anymore for a weekend. It costs nearly $2.00 a night to stay in a hotel.

No one can afford to be sick anymore. At $15.00 a day in the hospital, it's too rich for my blood.

If they think I'll pay 30 cents for a haircut, forget it.

Nanocomputing In Your Lifetime?

Physicists Create A Working Transistor From A Single Atom, by John Markoff, The New York Times, Science, February 19, 2011

America in Decline?

How Bad Is It? by George Scialabba, a review of books by Morris Berman, The New Inquiry, May 26, 2012
The Rise Or Fall Of The American Empire, Foreign Policy, February 14, 2012
Political Columnists Think America Is In Decline.  Big Surprise.

Does Quantum Mechanics Support Supernaturalism And Postmodernism?

UPDATE
Does Quantum Physics Make it Easier to Believe in God? by Stephen M. Barr, BQO Big Questions Online, July 10, 2012

Deepak's Dangerous Dogmas by Phil Mole, eSkeptic, June 6, 2012 (originally published in Skeptic magazine volume 6, number 2 (1998).  Chopra's conflation of quantum mechanics and human spirituality is an unsupported leap of logic.

ORIGNAL POST
From Brian Greene's The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality (2007):

Debate on the issues discussed in this chapter will no doubt continue as we grope to understand what space, time, and spacetime actually are. With the development of quantum mechanics, the plot only thickens. The concepts of empty space and of nothingness take on a whole new meaning when quantum uncertainty takes the stage. Indeed, since 1905, when Einstein did away with the luminiferous aether, the idea that space is filled with invisible substances has waged a vigorous comeback. As we will see in later chapters, key developments in modern physics have reinstituted various forms of an aetherlike entity, none of which set an absolute standard for motion like the original luminiferous aether, but all of which thoroughly challenge the naïve conception of what it means for spacetime to be empty.
...
There is no single, preferred, universal clock; there is no consensus on what constitutes a moment, what constitutes a now.  Even so, you can still tell a clockworklike story about the evolving universe. The clock is your clock. The story is your story. But the universe unfolds with the same regularity and predictability as in the Newtonian framework. If by some means you know the state of the universe right now—if you know where every particle is and how fast and in what direction each is moving—then, Newton and Einstein agree, you can, in principle, use the laws of physics to predict everything about the universe arbitrarily far into the future or to figure out what it was like arbitrarily far into the past.

Quantum mechanics breaks with this tradition. We can’t ever know the exact location and exact velocity of even a single particle. We can’t predict with total certainty the outcome of even the simplest of experiments, let alone the evolution of the entire cosmos. Quantum mechanics shows that the best we can ever do is predict the probability that an experiment will turn out this way or that. And as quantum mechanics has been verified through decades of fantastically accurate experiments, the Newtonian cosmic clock, even with its Einsteinian updating, is an untenable metaphor; it is demonstrably not how the world works.

Intervening space, regardless of how much there is, does not ensure that two objects are separate, since quantum mechanics allows an entanglement, a kind of connection, to exist between them.  ...  the quantum connection between two particles can persist even if they are on opposite sides of the universe.  ...  Our universe is not local.  ...  Irish physicist John Bell showed that the issue could be settled experimentally, and by the 1980s it was. The most straightforward reading of the data is that Einstein was wrong and there can be strange, weird, and “spooky” quantum connections between things over here and things over there.

-  -  -  -  -  -

Having just completed reading Lawrence Krauss' A Universe From Nothing: Why There is Something Rather Than Nothing (2012) and now halfway through Brian Greene's The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality (2007), I fantasized running outside, throwing myself face down, spread eagle on the ground and clinging as best I could with my arms and legs to the surface of our planet; and pleading both in gratitude and fear that I would not be cast into the oblivion of the cosmos, either forward or backward in spacetime.

After returning from this imaginary fit, I now ponder what quantum mechanics and our species' most recent discoveries in physics and cosmology may mean for other less secular-scientific understandings of Humankind's state, past and present, in the cosmos.  Spiritualists, pantheists, supernaturalists, paranormalists, religionists, and postmodernists come to mind.

The ideas in physics and cosmology that there is in fact a "substance" to spacetime, some kind of "aether," where a particle in one section of spacetime can directly influence another particle on the opposite side of the universe of spacetime, without having any physical connection with that second particle, that is, no "locality," is astonishing.  If these are the most current and accurate inklings scientific secularism has as to the natural laws of the cosmos, have we not, in fact, taken a step back in our efforts to understand these laws?  Are not our understandings such as atomic theory as well as the evolution of the cosmos in need of such drastic revision that we must begin to ask if the accidents and contingencies that have occurred at both the sub-atomic and cosmological levels, and the subsequent agencies and emergencies that have taken place, require more of our attention than we have relegated them in the past?

Surely, this is being taken as proof-positive evidence by many non-secular supernaturalists and postmodern relativists that a cosmic power does, in fact, exist - a supernatural power and reality they have been trying to convince ancient thinkers, natural philosophers, and modern scientists of for thousands of years.  Their argument might be couched in the following terms:  If space has substance and we can predict its actions, past and present, with only a degree of probability rather than certainty, then is it not game up, all understandings of the cosmos, those scientific and those supernatural, are equally valid?  That science will either never reach a "certain" understading of the laws of nature, or, if it does, it will be forced to admit the existence of a supernatural power and reality behind the laws that will remain forever beyond science's reach.

Where Do New Biological Species Come From?

An interesting refresher on speciation in eSkeptic:  Darwin's Legacy by Donald R. Prothero, eSkeptic, February 15, 2012

The False Allure of Group Selection by Steven Pinker, Edge, June 18, 2012

The American Religious Fundamentalist and Political Conservative Assault on Science, Reason and Democracy

SUGGESTED READING:

In U.S., 46% Hold Creationist View of Human Origins by Frank Newport, Gallup.com, June 1, 2012
The Right-Wing Media's Discipline Machine by Ben Adler, The Columbia Journalism Review, February 15, 2012
White House's Budget Gets Down To Earth by Allen Boyle, Cosmic Log on MSNBC, February 13, 2012
The Legacy of 9/11 and the War on Intellectuals by Stephen Zunes, truthout, September 10, 2011
The Years of Shame by Paul Krugman, CommonDreams.org, September 11, 2011
It's Long Past Time to Get Over 9-11 by Mark Karlin, Buzzflash, September 11, 2011
War: The Fiscal Stimulus of Last Resort by Ellen Brown, truthout, Sepember 12, 2011
Disbelief Is Not A Choice by Dave Niose, Psychology Today, September 12, 2011
The Terrorism Issue That Wasn't Discussed by Gareth Porter, Commondreams.org, September 12, 2011
Why The Anti-Science Creationist Movement Is So Dangerous by Adam Lee, AlterNet, September 8, 2011
A Fundamental Republican Problem by Andrew C. Revkin, The New York Times, Opinion Pages, August 22, 2011
A Teacher on the Frontline as Faith and Science Clash by Amy Harmon, The New York Times, Education, August 23, 2008
The Fall of the United States by John Atcheson, Commondreams.org, September 15, 2011
The Phony Solyndra Solar Scandal by Dave Johnson, truthout, September 15, 2011
Between Race and Reason: Anti-Intellectualism in Americam Life by Susan Searls Giroux, from her book of the same name, September 16, 2011
What If The Tea Party Wins? by Ian Millhiser, Center for American Progress, September 16, 2011
A Point of View: The Revolution of Capitalism by John Gray, BBC News Magazine, September 3, 2011
The Responsibility of Intellectuals, Redux by Noam Chomsky, Boston Review, September/October 2011
Free to Die by Paul Krugman, The New York Times, Opinion Pages, September 15, 2011
The Unseen Influence of the Religious Right by Dave Niose, Psychology Today, July 11, 2011
As Religion Fades, Will Atheism Be Enough? by Dave Niose, Psychology Today, July 21, 2011
Concerns About the Religious Right Are Not Overblown by Dave Niose, Psychology Today, August 23, 2011
The Truth About Class Warfare in America by Richard Wolff, Commondreams.org, September 20, 2011
Let's Explore the History of "Class Warfare" by Myles Spicer, The Minneapolis StarTribune, September 24, 2011
Notes on Class Warfare by Paul Krugman, The New York Times, Opinion, September 20, 2011
9 Policies Conservatives Were For Before They Were Against Them by Joshua Holland, Alternet, September 21, 2011
Conservatives Say It Out Loud: They Hate Democracy by Dave Johnson, Campaign for America's Future, September 23, 2011
The Social Contract by Paul Krugman, The New York Times, Opinion Pages, September 20, 2011
Denialist Demogogues and the Threat to Science by Donald R. Prothero, a review of The Inquisition of Climate Science by James L. Powell, eSkeptic, September 28, 2011
Government Neutrality is Not "Anti-Religion" by Dave Niose, Psychology Today, October 3, 2011
How the Oligarchs Took America
We Live in Perilous Times for Science by Elizabeth Loftus, The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, May/June 2011
Conservatism: Screwing the Poor, Elderly, Sick and Disabled by Al Stefanelli, examiner, October 7, 2011
The Myth of American Exceptionalism by Stephen M. Walt, Foreign Policy, November 2011
Punching a Hole in Bubbles of Denial and Addiction: Late Capitalism and Its Discontents of the American Autumn by Phil Rockstoth, Common Dreams, October 13, 2011
Religion in the Affairs of Man: Mixing Theology and Politics by Jeff Schweitzer, Huffington Post, January 22, 2010
Seven Republican Economic Lies
Twilight of the GOP Foreign Policy Wise Man by Jacob Heilbrunn, Foreign Policy Magazine, October 12, 2011
Science by Think Tank: The Rise of Think Tanks and Decline of Public Intellectuals by Massimo Pigliucci, eSkeptic, October 19, 2011
Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science From Bunk by Massimo Pigliucci, 2010
Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science From Bunk by Massimo Pigliucci, 2010, an excerpt on eSkeptic, October 19, 2011
The Evangelical Rejection of Reason by Karl W. Giberson and Randall J. Stephens, The New York Times, The Opinion Pages, October 17, 2011
Can Science and Faith Exist Together?, Letters, The New York Times, The Opinion Pages, October 24, 2011
The Un-American War On Science by Shawn Lawrence Otto, Huffington Post, October 28, 2011

DNA Research Reveals More And More About Human Origins

DNA, 1947, The New York Times, Science, Nicholas Bakalar, February 27, 2012
Gains in DNA Are Speeding Research Into Human Origins

No "Arab Spring" Needed In Sub-Saharan Africa - I Agree

Does Africa Need An Arab Spring? by George Ayittey, BBC, January 24, 2011

The Virtues - Is Honesty In Decline?

With this essay I am beginning a new series of posts on the virtues.  I am prompted to do so from my experience of writing Secular Truth and Morality:  Being Virtuous, Happy, and At Peace Without God and Religion.  Motivation to do so also comes from my current reading of Andre Comte-Sponville's A Small Treatise on the Great Virtues.

For now I will postpone discussing the meaning of "virtue" in the evolution of Humakind, and commenting on "honesty" as discussed in the following.  More soon....

Our Debt To The Greeks by Brendan Boyle, The Wall Street Journal, Bookshelf, July 13, 2012, a review of Pursuits of Reason: Six Ways of Life From Socrates to Plotinus by John M. Cooper (2012)
One Virtue At A Time, Please by Alan Ryan, a review of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness Reframed: Educating for the Virtues in the Twenty-First Century (2012)
by Howard Gardner
The Death of Honesty, Defining Ideas, A Hoover Institution Journal, January 12, 2011

Humankind Evolving: Navigating "Windows" Of Opportunity Into Survival Or Extinction

The old appeals to racial, sexual and religious chauvinism and to rabid nationalism are beginning not to work. A new consciousness is developing which sees the earth as a single organism and recognizes that an organism at war with itself is doomed. We are one planet. - Carl Sagan

UPDATE:  Here's a great writeup on the Toba volcano eruption and its probable impact on human evolution @ 60,000BP - Toba Catastrophe Theory.

ORIGINAL POST
At the end of Wednesday evening's regular meeting of Fayette Freethinkers here in north central Georgia we ventured into the very murky matter of the future of Humankind.  A fellow member asked for more details about an assertion I made.  In the course of the discussion I boldly and somewhat naively allowed my right brain holistic hopes elbow out my left brain parsimony, as usual.

I asserted that our species has a successful track record of passing through a number of narrow evolutionary "passages" - to get through some of these we used our brains, others our tools, others our feet, and still others we were just plain lucky.  That this success rate was a good enough reason for me to be optimistic about Humankind passing through the current window of evolutionary "trial" - tribalism, nationalism, "religionism", and environmental willful ignorance and indifference, and their various consequences such as war and life-threatening pollution.

Fortunately, in my zeal, I was coherent enough to make clear that my optimistic view of Humankind's future was probabilistic, not one of certainty.  After all, evolutionarily, our species is batting a thousand in American baseball parlance.  We could, however, very easily, through our own efforts or lack of effort, or due to causes beyond our control, not make it through another window such as the one we are now facing.  It's of course every person's choice as to where s/he thinks our species will end up - be optimistic about our species' survival and work to help make it come about, or be pessimistic that we won't, do nothing about it, and await the realization of the gloom and doom we fear and the fate of extinction 99% of life on Earth has succumbed to.

At the meeting, a small, casual and professionally and politically diverse group of "freethinkers", I presented the example of the vanguard of our fully human ancestors in the Horn of Africa @ 60,000BP, numbering less than a few thousand at the time.  This group, their backs turned to the increasingly arid environment of the Horn and the rest of East and Southern Africa, nevertheless successfully migrated through what appears to be a route near the mouth of the Red Sea into South Asia and thereby avoided extinction.  Their improbable penchant for "success" ultimately allowed our species to establish populations in the rest of Asia, Australasia and Europe, and ultimately back in Africa.

Christopher Hitchens once cited this example from our incredible list of good fortunes claiming that the total population of Homo sapiens alive at 60,000BP had declined to less than 2,000 individuals (click here).  I have so far been unable to find a reference that supports this very low number.  [If any of you know one please let me know.]  It is likely an extrapolation from DNA or mitochondrial statistical analysis.  For now, here is an excellent article published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on the subject:  Why Did Human Populations Disperse From Africa 60,000 Years Ago? A New Model by Paul Mellars.

For more on this topic see my posts, The Driving Forces of Human Evolution - A Reading List, Cultural Evolution, Phase II - Establishing A Unified Worldview, and Human Evolution: Expansion Of Humans Out Of Africa Into Asia Earlier Than Previously Known.  I will also be posting more on this topic in the coming months.

Happy 2012!

Does Science Make Belief In God Obsolete? - A Reply By Christopher Hitchens

Will Science Someday Rule Out The Possibility Of God? by Natalie Wolchover, Life's Little Mysteries, September 17, 2012
Is Religion Just A Downer?, by Nigel Barber, Psychology Today, February 16, 2012
No, But It Should by Christopher Hitchens, eSkeptic, January 4, 2012

Happy Holidays And Prosperous New Year!

Like many of my American friends who have lived and worked among the various gracious peoples of Africa, especially in the rural areas of that great continent, I have been the grateful recipient of more fresh gift chickens than I can count.  All of them cage-free, free-roaming, bug-eating, and delicious, of course.  This one is a Holiday Gift for all of my friends and family in Africa, America and 'round the world.  He's a fresh Ugandan bird wrapped in banana leaves with a plastic bag 'round his rear to keep your place clean until you are ready for him....  Happy Holidays and Prosperous New Year!

Neuroeconomics? - Neuroscience No Panacea For Understanding Humankind

UPDATE
How Reliable Are The Social Sciences? by Gary Gutting, The New York Times, The Opinionator, May 17, 2012
The Value of Social Science by Elizabeth Clark-Polner and Margaret Clark, The New York Times, The Opinion Pages, May 18, 2012
Overcoming "Physics Envy" by Kevin A. Clarke and David M. Primo, The New York Times, Sunday Review, The Opinion Pages, March 30, 2012

The Neuroeconomics Revolution by Robert J. Shiller, Project Syndicate - A World of Ideas, November 21, 2011

From Konrad Lorenz's ethology of the 1950s to the sociobiology of the 1970s to the "new" neurosciences beginning in the 1990s there seems to be no end to the desire to link societal functions and their underlying cultural beliefs and values to the anatomy and physiology of the human brain and/or the biochemistry of our DNA.  Here's an incomplete but representative list of assertions made over the past two decades giving clear evidence that behavioral science explanations of human behavior and societal functioning are being passed over in favor of a reductionist, deterministic neuroscience and genetics that explain by describing neuronal or chromosomal locations and activities:

The Y chromosome causes violence to be higher in males than females.
Homosexuality has a genetic basis.
There's a gene that predisposes us to a belief in God.
Brain activity shows we make decisions before we are conscious of them.

Around the beginning of the 20th century, when the new behavioral sciences, beginning with Freud in psychology, Durkheim in sociology and Boas in anthropology and others in these disciplines, had taken human social and cultural behavior from 19th century armchair speculation and placed it in the labs, couches, and ethnographic present of science and thereby encumbered the study of Humankind with the scientific method of objective, testable, and replicable observation and experiment, expectations within the academy and society at large went sky high.

Surely, academics thought, we will one day have a physics and chemistry of human behavior, an anthropology in the strictest sense of the term.  Meanwhile, humanists in the arts and literature, including humanistically-inclined thinkers in the behavioral sciences, continued on in a tradition begun during The Renaissance and extended during The Enlightenment by practitioners of what later became known as the academic disciplines of history, modern philosophy, art, literature and music.  Their conviction was and remains that human psychic, cultural, and social life can be adequately described, portrayed, and explained holistically without deterministically reducing it to physics and chemistry.

Scientifically-inclined behavioral scientists on the other hand, suffering from what a friend of mine calls "physics envy" or perhaps finding the pursuit of another grand theory such as Darwin's irresistible, embarked on a search for experimental and observational data that would reveal the "laws" of human behavior.  Scientific theories of mind, society and culture began to abound.  Some were grand theories purporting to explain all, others proffered more modest models and descriptions of specific aspects of how we think, how we organize and behave as groups, and how we learn, use and change the various beliefs and values that make up cultures.

Free Will - Why Do Many Neuroscientists Say There Is No Such Thing?

UPDATE
Brain Might Not Stand in the Way of Free Will by Anil Ananthaswamy, New Scientist, August 8, 2012

Free Will and "Free Will": How My View Differs from Daniel Dennett's by Sam Harris, The Blog, April 5, 2012

The Illusion of Free Will by Sam Harris, Excerpt from Free Will, February 12, 2012

ORIGINAL POST
Is Neuroscience the Death of Free Will?  by Eddy Nahmias, The New York Times, The Opinion Pages, November 13, 2011

I have never accepted neuroscientist Sam Harris' claim in his books and on his blog that free will is an illusion. I knew there was something wrong in his extrapolation from neuroscience to how we make decisions: the brain processes information subconsciously; this subconscious activity has been shown to be the precursor to decision making; this in turn makes conscious consideration of information a mere after the fact reflection or projection of such decisions. It seems to me Harris is using neuroscience to beat the dead horse of dualism: brain=subconscious decision-maker=no role for the conscious mind=to think mind is free to or has a role in making decisions is an illusion.

I've been puzzling for some time on how to articulate my objections to Harris regarding free will but have been unable to put my thoughts together as well as philosopher Eddy Nahmias has in this link. I am a monist. Brain, decision-making and mind are one. But I reject Harris' idea that all we need to really understand is a detailed understanding of the neurology of decision-making; that a belief that our conscious mind is involved in decision making is a illusion, or more accurately a delusion or self-deception. Nahmias' article expresses my objections to Harris' and other so inclined much better than I ever could.

The implications for the value of human freedom and, conversely, absolving the individual of moral and legal responsibility if Harris' and other like-minded scientists prevail in such reductionism are staggering.  I can also see how religious fundamentalists could latch on to Harris' idea and impute God's will into the neurology of the brain - after all, God made our brains and knows our thoughts and decisions before we think about them or make them.

For more on "free will" see my previous post:  Free Will:  Of course we have it!  Don't we?

A Taste Of African Food And Culture

Here are three very different presentations that have one thing in common - a love of Africa, its people, and all Humanity.  Enjoy!

Bagisu women prepare matooke for steaming

1.  The first is a post on the "Elgon Pearls - A Ugandan Journey" blog:  Traditional Ugandan Food In Pictures by Immy Rose Namutosi Lassiter, Elgon Pearls, November 8, 2011.  The owner of the blog and author of the post is my wife and best friend, Immy Rose Namutosi Lassiter, from Mbale in eastern Uganda.  Her post is about traditional Ugandan food with an emphasis on the specialities of her ethnic group, the Bagisu, also known as the Bamasaba.  The photographs were taken mostly by Immy Rose and me.  There are other very interesting posts on this blog about life in Uganda.

The Gisu are linguistically classified as Bantu-speakers.  Their homeland is located on the very fertile western slopes of the dormant though still beautiful volcano Mt. Elgon in eastern Uganda, on the Uganda-Kenya border.  Most Bagisu in their homeland, which is known as Bugisu, are small-scale farmers and coffee growers.  The city of Mbale is the commercial center of Bugisu and the administrative capital of Mbale District.  Other Gisu and other ethnic groups very closely related to them live in Kenya on the eastern and southeastern slopes of Mt. Elgon.

Enjoy the post!  Make your next vacation destination Uganda to taste these delicious foods and meet some very friendly, gracious people!

2.  "Wanahamuna," A song by Immy Rose and Jim Lassiter, Sung to the tune of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," November 17, 2011

The song is about Wanahamuna, a squirrel known among the Bagisu for his clever, tricky and humorous ways.  Here are the lyrics:

Wanahamuna – by Immy Rose and Jim Lassiter.  Sung to the tune of The Lion Sleeps Tonight – G C G D

Tsya iyoyo, tsya iyoyo, tsye yoyoyo

Tsya iyoyo, tsya iyoyo, tsye yoyoyo

Chorus

Wanahamuna, wanahamuna, wanahamuna, wanahamuna

Wanahamuna, wanahamuna, wanahamuna, wanahamuna

V1

In Mbale, upon Wanale

A squirrel makes his home

In Mbale, upon Wanale

A squirrel makes his home

V2

In a village, a Gishu village

The squirrel steals g-nuts

In a village, a Gishu village

The squirrel steals g-nuts – Chorus

V3

Nyondo farmers, they chase the squirrel

To save their g-nut crops

Nyondo farmers, they chase the squirrel

To save their g-nut crops

V4

But the squirrel, the naughty squirrel

He laughs and runs away

He’s not worried, no he’s not worried

He’ll come another day – Chorus

Tsya iyoyo, tsya iyoyo, tsye yoyoyo

Tsya iyoyo, tsya iyoyo, tsye yoyoyo

3.  Finally, a link to a YouTube post of Lost in Africa - Episode 6.



This is a wonderful portrayal of remote village life in Kenya, specifically that of the Pokot people.  American Kevin A. Urban and his Kenyan friend and collaborator Hosea Azere travel throughout Kenya to meet members of the country's various ethnic groups and share their experience with the rest of us via YouTube.  Kevin and Hosea possess a great appreciation and respect for the people they visit which is reflected in the humanistic way they interact with, photograph and interview them.  After viewing Episode 6 take a look at the previous five episodes of Lost in Africa on YouTube for a candid, down-to-earth and therefore realistic portrayal of this part of Africa.  You'll be glad you did!

Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army - The Facts vs. Rush Limbaugh's Lunacy

The Lord's Resistance Army: End Game?, The International Crisis Group, November 17, 2011
Lord's Resistance Army News, The New York Times, Commentary and Archival Articles
Heartbreaking: Former Abductee Responds to Rush Limbaugh's LRA Comments, Mediaite, October 19, 2011
Limbaugh Defends Lord's Resistance Army by Robert Mackey, The New York Times, News, October 17, 2011
Lord's Resistance Army, The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, REFWORLD
Lord's Resistance Army, Human Rights Watch

Neuroscience And Darwinism Rule! - "Curb Your Enthusiasm" Says Knowledgeable Briton, Raymond Tallis

A knowledgeable curmudgeon, Raymond Tallis, pokes neuroscience and Darwinism in their respective, metaphorical eyes.  See Raymond Tallis Takes Out the 'Neurotrash' by Marc Parry, The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 9, 2011.  Perhaps both endeavors need such doses of skepticism and critique to help curb the public's and some scientists' enthusiasm (and worry) that these current paradigms that dominate the scientific study of our species can and will explain it all.

Seems to me there's something in all this about our species' apparent insecurity with the incomplete and provisional nature of science on the one had; and yet on the other a counter-current fear that science will expose our precious selves and take our individual uniqueness and privacy away.

Many of us who reject the absolute truth of the Abrahamic religions regarding the nature of the Universe and Humankind, really would like to see secular science keep trying to explain it all.  I am one though as I have written elsewhere on this blog, scientific knowledge will never be complete.  Maybe science will eventually explain a significantly greater portion of the "All" than it can at present.  But not so fast, says atheist Tallis. 

I welcome Tallis' critique as a dose of needed humility for secularists at large, and as a cautionary antidote for the possible emergence of scientific absolutism.  His criticism is good for the growth of scientific knowledge.

Tallis' recently published book might be worth a read:  Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis, and the Misrepresentation of Humanity

FURTHER READING ON NEUROSCIENCE

Decoding the Brain's Cacophany, Profiles in Science - Michael S. Gazzaniga, by Benedict Carey, The New York Times, Science, October 31, 2011

Vatican Seeks A Global Ethic And Universal Common Good - What Do They Mean By "Ethical" And "Good"?

Vatican Calls For Radical Economic Reform Of World's Financial Systems by Victor R. Simpson, Huffington Post, October 24, 2011

Let me see if I have this right. The headquarters of the world's most dominant bastion of supernaturalism is calling for a new world economic order based on "ethics and the 'achievement of a universal common good.'" The above report goes on to say: "The (Vatican) proposal acknowledges, however, that a 'long road still needs to be traveled before arriving at the creation of a public authority with universal jurisdiction' and suggests the reform process begin with the United Nations as a point of reference." Finally, Huffington says the Catholic pronouncement "also attacked 'utilitarian thinking,' saying what is useful to the individual does not always favor the common good."

What kind of global ethic, common good, and public authority would the leaders of Catholicism support? What kind of "utilitarian thinking" are they referring to as not good for the common good? Here's a stab at some answers: Behave ethically/morally because if you don't God will be angry at you and punish you and not let you have ever-lasting life. Humankind's "common good" is one where all of us are best served by believing in a supernatural father-deity that we can pray to to guide us individually and collectively. Finally, do not engage in "utilitarian" thinking, that is thinking that is practically useful, here and now, and based on reason and evidence, for this will undermine achieving an ethic and common good as defined above.

The Vatican's idea of the UN as a starting point for a process to develop a "public authority with a universal jurisdiction" is noble and one with which I agree with them. Pluralism is needed in this. However, let's keep a close eye on these folks and be careful in letting them get their nose under the metaphorical tent of Humankind’s on-going efforts at creating a secular global morality and civilization. They are as clever at manipulating language and ideas for their sole benefit as are the lawyers of the world's nationalist governments who monopolize power and the financiers who control the planet's wealth.

The US Social Welfare System – What Is Its Real Purpose? Is It Moral To Force Citizens To Fund It With Their Tax Payments?

I am not an economist, sociologist or political scientist.  I therefore do not know the past and current literature and statistics in these fields.  What follows is my opinion as it is informed by my understanding of culture, human nature, my general education, and my life experience in the US and elsewhere.

I am not aware that the American social welfare system has failed to fulfill its promise, as many claim.  The argument that the $16 trillion spent on this system between 1965 and 2008 has led to a society where 1 out of 6 currently live below the poverty line and that 1 in 4 children live in households that depend on the government for food is an indicator that social welfare has failed, is a misplacement of cause and effect.  The fact that we have poverty and hunger in the US is not causally connected to our national expenditure on the welfare system.  Many on the right seem to be saying that $16 trillion should have pretty much bought us out of poverty and filled most of the stomachs of the poor.

The real problem with this reasoning is that money spent on the welfare system is not spent with the intention of eradicating poverty, hunger and their causes.  It is intended to be a stopgap response to help avert the utter degradation and destruction of human lives and families, and forestall damage that such fearful and desperate citizens might do to the fabric and well-being of society.

Those who wish to abolish or reform welfare often assert that it diminishes the self-esteem of the recipient and makes him a ward of the state, and thereby strips him of his aspiration to be productive and independent.  Though this is an accurate description of too many individuals on US welfare roles, past and present, the fact that such conditions exist is far from a proven indictment of the entire social welfare system.

I do not believe the social welfare system of the US has failed and is in need of replacement as many Libertarians, Republicans and conservatives claim.  I agree with those who believe it needs, as a friend has said, to be “reformed gradually and with great care.”

Perilous Times For Science

"We live today in perilous times for science: conflicts of interest that taint research; pressures on scientists to cut corners to get fast results; a public culture that alternates between hostility to science and irrational expectations of what science can provide. If we as scientists want to preserve our freedom (and the welfare of others), now more than ever we have a responsibility.  And that responsibility is to bring our science to the public arena and to speak out as forcefully as we can against even the most cherished beliefs that reflect unsubstantiated myths." - Elizabeth Loftus

The Classsic, Beautiful and Controversial Books That Changed Science Forever by Tanya Lewis, Wired Science, July 5, 2012
Why We Don't Believe In Science by Jonah Lehrer, The New Yorker, Frontal Cortex, June 7, 2012
We Live in Perilous Times for Science by Elizabeth Loftus, The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, May/June 2011
Science by Think Tank: The Rise of Think Tanks and Decline of Public Intellectuals by Massimo Pigliucci, eSkeptic, October 19, 2011
Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science From Bunk by Massimo Pigliucci, 2010
Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science From Bunk by Massimo Pigliucci, 2010, an excerpt on eSkeptic, October 19, 2011
The Un-American War On Science by Shawn Lawrence Otto, Huffington Post, October 28, 2011

Secular Truth And Morality - New Kindle Book on Amazon.com

Now expanded and available as a Kindle book at Amazon.com.  You don't have to own a Kindle reader to purchase and read the book.  If you open an account with them, Amazon offers a free downloadable Kindle book reader software for PCs:  http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=kcp_pc_mkt_lnd?docId=1000426311

Click here or below for the book:



Secular Truth and Morality - Being Virtuous, Happy and At Peace, Without God and Religion

From the Amazon.com book description:

In this book, his first, American anthropologist James E Lassiter offers an alternative to the absolute truths of the Abrahamic religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – for understanding our place in Nature and how we might behave more humanely and responsibly toward each other and the planet.  He describes scientific truth, upon which secularism is founded, in comparison to religion, as a far more apt corollary to and explanation of the evolution of the Universe and Life itself.

Both, the practice of science and the evolution of Nature, he argues, are ever provisional, invested in objective realities and natural laws, yet undetermined and ultimately unpredictable.  Both are remarkable undertakings that occasionally bring into existence fortuitous opportunities and options, some of which have been favorable for Humankind.

On a more personal level, the book offers a secular path to a more humanistic and rationally moral way of life - a morality that, the author argues, arose from our mammalian evolutionary past yet must be continually re-created in the present by each of us based on personal experience and evidence.

This book should be of interest to secularists, believers as well as those who are searching for a more embraceable worldview.  In his chapter entitled “The Present and Future of Secular Morality” the author reviews the works of a selection of prominent contemporary thinkers who recommend various approaches to secular truth and morality as means of living well without God and religion.  The works reviewed also provide guidance for establishing an emergent global morality as an ethical basis for a global civilization.

Finally, in his concluding chapter the author offers a favorable outlook for the future of Humankind.  He foresees the successful emergence of a secular global morality based on pluralism, a global civilization based on transnational law and covenants; and the development of a pluralistic world organization for settling disputes, safeguarding human dignity and equality, and providing effective and sustainable human stewardship of Earth.

About the author:  James E. Lassiter is a privately practicing anthropologist who resides in Atlanta, Georgia, USA.  He received his PhD (1983) and MS (1975) degrees in anthropology at the University of Oregon, and his BA (1974) honors degree in anthropology and evolutionary biology at California State University, Sacramento.  James has over thirty years of experience studying African societies and cultures, implementing U.S. Government humanitarian foreign policy in Africa, and living and working on the continent.  He served as Peace Corps Volunteer science teacher in Swaziland, Southern Africa from 1980-1983.  He is currently writing his second book entitled From the Unknown Into Uncertainty:  The Past, Present and Future of Humankind.