★ ★ ★
“Faith and Foolishness: When Religious Beliefs Become Dangerous,” by Lawrence Krauss
The National Science Foundation runs a report every year to survey the scientific understanding of the general public. This year when they released their results, they left out the questions regarding whether Americans accept scientific facts like evolution and the big bang.
You may be asking yourself why they left those questions out, well they claim the questions were “flawed indicators of scientific knowledge because responses conflated knowledge and beliefs,” meaning, as Krauss states, “if their religious beliefs require respondents to discard scientific facts, the board doesn’t think it appropriate to expose that truth.”
Fortunately, Science Magazine was able to obtain the results of these questions and the findings are disheartening…
When presented with the statement “human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals,” just 45 percent of respondents indicated “true.” Compare this figure with the affirmative percentages in Japan (78), Europe (70), China (69) and South Korea (64). Only 33 percent of Americans agreed that “the universe began with a big explosion.”
Consider the results of a 2009 Pew Survey: 31 percent of U.S. adults believe “humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.” (So much for dogs, horses or H1N1 flu.) The survey’s most enlightening aspect was its categorization of responses by levels of religious activity, which suggests that the most devout are on average least willing to accept the evidence of reality. White evangelical Protestants have the highest denial rate (55 percent), closely followed by the group across all religions who attend services on average at least once a week (49 percent).
We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us, y’all.
“Arcade Fire’s High Dive Into The Big Empty,” by J. Edward Keyes
Great review of the new Arcade Fire record, for emusic.com…
Accordingly, most of The Suburbs is about waiting. Butler may be “ready to start” on the grinding number of the same name, but a few minutes later he’s standing in line, a guitar turning lazy curlicues behind him. In the mad rush of “Empty Room,” he and wife Régine Chassagne announce, “My life is coming, but I don’t know when,” strings racing by them in the background. At certain points, he wanders around like a bedraggled Gulliver in a land of lunatics. When he encounters a pack of enlightened “modern kids,” all they do is fake profundity by stammering the word “rococo” over and over, stormy cymbal crashes and a seasick string section underscoring the absurdity.
If past outings had a tendency to overstate their existential agony, what strikes most about The Suburbs is its protracted sense of sadness. It’s remarkable to hear a band that focused so much of their early career on epiphany now be equally consumed by the lack thereof. The record goes on, but Butler and Chassagne never get any closer to the exit. In the absence of salvation, all they can do is obsess over the small details: flashlights on bike reflectors, kids in buses, house numbers obscured by shadow.
At just over an hour, The Suburbs is far too long, and a handful of songs in its second half are mealy and undercooked. But just as the record seems to be losing steam, a fascinating thing happens: It starts to double back on itself. Lyrics from its first half are repeated verbatim in act two; musical themes are briefly resurrected, familiar images flicker again across the screen. Songs start appearing in pairs: “Half Light I,” “Half Light II.” “Sprawl I,” “Sprawl II.” “Grab your mother’s keys, we leave tonight,” Butler sings in the ninth song, which is the exact same thing he sang in the first one. Gradually, the record starts to feel like a long locked groove, creating a horrifying sense of enclosure where escape is just an illusion, and where everything that happens is just a repeat of things that have happened before. In “City With No Children,” Butler wheezes, “The summer that I broke my arm/ I waited for your letter,” and then seven songs later, it’s: “I used to write/ I used to write letters…/ It may seem strange how we used to wait for letters to arrive.”
(via)
On Civility
Rod Dreher complains about the lack of it, within the scientific community…
What is it with science-oriented advocates who consider contempt a virtue? Who, exactly, do they think they are going to persuade? (You could say the same thing about sneering political bloggers, sneering religious bloggers, and, well, sneerers in all forms of public discourse, inasmuch as sneering seems to be a popular pose these days.) Most of us are tempted to sneer every now and then (I certainly am guilty of this), but some of these people adopt sneering as a basic intellectual stance to the world.
[...]
A few years ago, I was in an editorial board meeting with some pro-science academics and others, who had come in to speak to us about some issue, I forget precisely what, having to do with science education in Texas. We entered that meeting entirely on their side, but by the time it was over, we were, as I recall, still on their side on the merits of the argument, but we had a distinctly nasty taste in our mouth. The advocates were simply dripping with contempt for their opponents, and carried themselves with an aristocratic hauteur, as if they considered it beneath them to be questioned by others about this stuff.
Dreher then directs it towards Anne Rice, for her announcement about leaving Christianity…
I’m sorry, but this is weak, and makes me wonder what really happened. Surely a woman of her age and experience cannot possibly believe that the entirety of Christianity, current and past, can be reduced to the cultural politics of the United States of America in the 21st century. Does she really know no liberal Christians? Has she never picked up a copy of Commonweal? Does she really think that if she asked a Christian on the streets of Nairobi or Tegucigalpa what they, as Christians, thought of Nancy Pelosi, they would have the slightest idea what she was talking about? And Christianity, anti-science? Good grief. Has she not noticed that Catholic Church, to which she did belong until yesterday, has affirmed evolution, and embraces science? How can a woman of her putative sophistication really think that Christianity is nothing more than a section of the Republican Party at prayer?
Jason Rosenhouse finds Dreher hypocritical and ridiculous…
That Dreher complains about a lack of civility one minute and then engages in snotty incivility the next is indicative of a common phenomenon among those who complain about the tone of blogs. The problem rarely seems to be incivility per se. Usually that is just a cover for the real complaint, which is seeing incivility directed towards people the writer does not think deserve it.
[...]
Anne Rice serves up a few Twitter posts criticizing institutional Christianity and Dreher flies off the handle. But scientists being contemptuous towards people who lie about the facts of science, and then try to alter school curricula to peddle their lies to children is incomprehensible to him. Suppose someone argued that the ceremony of the Eucharist promotes cannibalism. Do you think Dreher would say, “What an interesting viewpoint! Let us have a civil discussion about it”? Or do you think maybe he would consider it beneath him to have to reply to such a thing?
[...]
Let me also suggest that it is never a good argument to complain about someone’s tone by saying something like, “You’re not going to convince anyone!” That is a lazy argument used exclusively by people more interested in seeming above it all than in actually engaging the issues. Incivility is a tool in the arsenal. It is very good for calling attention to an issue and to a point of view. If the incivility is backed up by a good argument it can be very powerful.
[...]
Consider The God Delusion. Can anyone argue with a straight face that Dawkins would have been a more effective advocate for his view had he written a stodgy academic treatment of his material? Such treatments exist, of course, but mostly they sit unread on the shelves of university libraries.
[...]
So much of the discourse on these topics imagines two clearly defined sides with everyone having already taken a stand one way or the other. People with an emotional stake on one side are likely to dig in when confronted by rudeness from the other, so we are all supposed to speak in soothing, gentle tones. But that is a ludicrous oversimplification of reality. What about all the people who are on the fence? What about people who have long been uncomfortable with their religious lives but have never heard a non-cartoonish version of any alternatives? What about all the people who have their eyes opened by the visibility atheism now has as a result of Dawkins’ writing? What about all the other books, and public presentations, and YouTube videos that were sparked by Dawkins’ success?
And, yes, some people will be turned off by his tone. So be it. Life is full of trade-offs. The price of reaching a large audience is calling attention to yourself in ways that some will find distasteful. You can’t please everyone and all that. But the anger directed at people like Dawkins has almost nothing to do with his tone. It is because he harshly criticized religion, and has been very successful doing it.
VA – Moonlight Feels Right
Here’s another mixtape quick on the heels of my last one for the Summer Mix Series.
I went 70s AMGold on this, and steered away from clever transitions. I wanted it to play as if I was a DJ at a(n adventurous) classic rock station in the late 70s. Less talk, more rock. Enjoy.
Tracklisting:
1. America “Miniature” / Richard Hart & Jan Yanihiro
2. Little Feat “Kiss It Off”
3. Chris Rea “Fool (If You Think It’s Over)”
4. Jefferson Starship “Miracles”
5. Gerry Rafferty “Baker Street”
6. 10cc “I’m Not In Love”
7. Bob Welch “Sophisticated Lady”
8. Pink Floyd “Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Osvaldo Wilson Grey Sunday Edit)”
9. Atlanta Rhythm Section “So Into You”
10. Climax Blues Band “Couldn’t Get It Right”
11. Starbuck “Moonlight Feels Right”
12. Freeway “Don’t Drop It”
13. Fleetwood Mac “Hypnotized”
14. Wishbone Ash “Heart Beat”
15. Batteaux “High Tide”
16. Elton John “Love Song”
DOWNLOAD: VA – Moonlight Feels Right (1 hr. 5 min. 38 sec., 117.6MB)
