This is a great exchange, from the Wall Street Journal on line (of all places) regarding the place of religion in our lives.
You can’t make people who don’t “believe” into believers. But there is something more to it than that. There is something there that “believers” who have gotten beyond virgin births and resurrections realize: We make our rules for ourselves. But if we do not look beyond ourselves, if we do not vest authority in something higher than ourselves, then we have no rebuttal to those who say that only the strongest shall survive.
In other words, we need something bigger than us. If it is just us, then we are no more than wolves.
Richard Dawkins has his appeal. He routinely smunches creationists with his background in biology, his erudite speaking manner, his inquisitive nature. No doubt he is right. There is no God, at least not one that we can discern with our limited abilities.
And yet, he has come to annoy me. He doesn’t respect his opposites. He doesn’t see their wisdom, even if they do not understand the evolutionary path we are on. They know nothing of the science of biology, and yet they know more than him.
It’s a question of wisdom. Not knowledge.
Piece of Mindful 
This is one of the few times I agree with your sentiment.
I’m still afraid you are going to take everything I have and give it to someone else in the name of the greater good.
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And this is one of the few times I disagree with you. Faith doesn’t add anything to wisdom. I respect my friends when they want to hold hands and say grace at hunting camp. It’s their tradition, and it makes them feel good, wholesome and favored. But When it’s my turn to say thanks, I make a point to thank the people who bought the food, and especially those who cooked it.
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I get your point in total. But I suspect that some very smart people who are not believers assume the posture anyway, realizing that there is greater good to be had with humility than arrogance. That is, I think, the message of the trilogy about the ring.
Anyway, I am more and more accepting of non-fundamentalist religion as I get older, even though I know where food comes from.
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Fred-
Something tells me that you don’t have that much to take anyways.
So quit worrying.
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Steve, God talked about you in the book of Luke:
““I tell you, to all those who have, more will be given; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. But as for these enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them—bring them here and slaughter them in my presence.”
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That’s the funny thing about that kind of sentiment, Fred. The people who are most worried about so-called “redistribution” of wealth are the ones who don’t have any wealth. You’re just concerned with those poor oppressed rich-folk who might get a few percentage points added to their tax bracket.
It amazes me.
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The people who are most worried about so-called “redistribution” of wealth are the ones who don’t have any wealth.
That’s because most people don’t want to take from others. There are still thieves, embezzlers, and urban leftists in our midst who think otherwise.
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Fred – sometime soon I’m going to put something up about Monsanto and the way they have managed to take control of the soy bean crop in this country, probalby the world. The bottom line will be that we can’t simply let self-interest run amok.
This is where I think you and your brethren go haywire.
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I agree that self interest is not an unalloyed good. But where would our efforts be more useful: improving the market economy, or improving their replacement bureaucracies?
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Classic! False choice. What if a strong regulatory structure enhances markets? Look at agriculture right now, dominated by a few big players who face no real competition. That is how markets normally function.
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You think the Ag markets have any resemblance to free markets? They’re both subsidized and regulated higher than any other market in the country.
Is that your definition of “normal markets?” If so, that’s not much of a case for regulation.
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See below – it’s getting too skinny here.
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God sounds more like Idi Amin in Steve’s recitation of christian mythology, above. Once again–proof that belief in this so-called god of the “christians” will not lead one to wisdom or morality.
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Honestly, Fred, many of us have gotten beyond self-interest as the key to greater good. The meaning of life has kind of blown right by you.
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We are no more than wolves. When we (people, excluding the corporate kind) get that , the rest may fall into place, vastly increasing our chances of sustainability and survival. If the commodities market is our only connection to natural and spiritual forces, well, it doesn’t look so good in the near term.
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I don’t think Dawkins respects his “opposites” much because their wisdom isn’t really wisdom, it’s a veneer. Believers who try to look beyond themselves aren’t actually doing so. They’re making up rules that benefit themselves. Rich Christians believe in the prosperity gospel. Marxist Christians have liberation theology. Poor Christians believe in redistribution. And when they do make rules that are difficult, they give themselves loopholes like forgiveness. They’re putting a transcendental face on their self-interest. Vesting power in a higher authority only works if you have a set of verifiable rules from it to follow. Fundamentalists can almost claim that, except the Bible is so backwards and vile in places that even they can’t follow it completely.
The wisdom that you think Dawkins is missing is simply self-deception. Real wisdom is realizing we’re in this by ourselves and we need to make rules that make our lives as meaningful as possible. Bringing gods into it just causes problems.
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Everything.you say is true – people use God as a sock puppet. Dawkins deals fairly with these people. But I don’t think he really understands smart and mature people who understand that while there is superstition, overlook it because there is much good to be had.
A question was asked Dawkins that stopped me in my tracks: Say you were walking down dark street, and a gang of young men approached you. Would you feel safer knowing they had just come from a prayer meeting?
Dawkins said no. I said yes.
Anyway, Weinberg says that for good people to do bad things, it takes religion. I’m not so cynical as that anymore. But you are right that we have to make rules here, and we do. But humility can’t hurt.
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I think that sort of question is more interesting than responses to it. Religious people are generally thought of as non-threatening when they’re part of your own cultural group. But then again, what if you’re black and you see a bunch of white rednecks? Do you feel better than they came from a prayer meeting? What about if it was a Christian Identity prayer meeting? What if it was a Muslim prayer meeting and you were Jewish? What if you were gay?
To flip it around, would you feel more or less threatened if they had come from a secular humanist meeting? A lecture by Noam Chomsky? A lecture about Gandhi? Hell, what if it’s the chess club or an accounting study group?
It seems to me that a question like is a way to reveal internal prejudices. Whether those prejudices tell us something useful or are just reflections of our own cultural status is less obvious.
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Interesting – would I feel safer if I knew they were from a
Christian Identity prayer meeting? Yes
Muslim prayer meeting and you were Jewish? Yes
What if you were gay? No
Secular humanist meeting – yes
A lecture by Noam Chomsky? Yes
A lecture about Gandhi? Yes
Chess club? Yes
Accounting study group? Hell no. Wild asses.
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Nice exchange.
Real wisdom is realizing we’re in this by ourselves and we need to make rules that make our lives as meaningful as possible. (Jeff)
Are you willing to entertain the notion that religious rules maybe give more meaning to life than atheist rules? It seems to me that in the game of life a man of faith prevails over the non-believer. What atheist society/group has lasted any length of time? OTOH, the Taliban with a $100 million and a 1/5 acre fire control base are tying down a more secular group with 1000 times more money.
It seems to me that a question like this is a way to reveal internal prejudices. Whether those prejudices tell us something useful or are just reflections of our own cultural status is less obvious.
“Prejudice” as a pejorative seems mostly a later 20th century thing. Earlier people freely discussed their prejudices and advocated for their ethnic group without shame.
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I wouldn’t say that religion is detrimental in every sense. It absolutely makes people more fervent (this is sometimes good, sometimes bad). But as far as determining what morality is, I don’t think it’s useful. People confusing their own wishes with a god’s just doesn’t help us push through our ignorance (to acknowledge Dave’s quote and the silliness of me saying “real wisdom” is anything).
I actually wasn’t using prejudice in a pejorative sense in my last post, by the way. Biases might be a better term.
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(Real) wisdom is the admission of one’s own ignorance – Socrates.
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Dave:
You think the Ag markets have any resemblance to free markets? They’re both subsidized and regulated higher than any other market in the country.
Is that your definition of “normal markets?” If so, that’s not much of a case for regulation.
You make a valid point, and I agree. Ag markets bear no resemblance to free markets. Governments generally regard domestic food supply as too important to outsource, national security and all of that.
And, beyond that, I continually make the point that free markets, left to themselves, allow accumulation of pockets of wealth that lead to control of government by that wealth. That’s all that has happened with Monsanto and soybeans – starting with Clarence Thomas, lawyer for Monsanto, who wrote the majority opinion in the SCOTS case that allowed the patenting of seeds. And on and on.
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The regulation of Ag started with the New Deal to reduce supply and increase prices. It had nothing to do with security and was (and is) all about wrong-minded economic policy (FDR had over 3 million pigs slaughtered and had millions of acres of productive land taken out of production at a time when people were starving.)
As to the court adding to any oligopoly, the cure is for Congress to change the intellectual property rights laws. You know, check and balances and all that rot. But with guys like Tom Harken, Max, Tester, and all of the Senators that represent Ag states the corporatist/government fix is in – regardless of the fact that it raises the price of food and spending.
It’s also worth noting that the vast majority of Ag subsidies go to large Corporate farms – exactly the opposite of what they are sold to the public as doing. The spin is always about “the family farm.”
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Well, I was told in college (not meaning anything) that ag tends to be the closest thing that we have to a pure market, and for that reason always comes under control of a few producers without regulation.
Unfortunately have to work today, but want to know more about the FDR thing. Always two sides … manyana, or later today. Interesting.
the cure is for Congress to change the intellectual property rights laws…
Exactly! And why don’t they? Why doesn’t FTC break up the Monsanto seed monopoly? Control of governmetn by wealthy sectors, now gone so far as to be unfixable without collapse.
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I’m not a pessimistic as you but it will take a long time and a great deal of work to get rid of career politicians.
But what you were told in college is partly right. We don’t (yet) offer any significant subsidies or protections to fruit and vegetable markets – and it’s amazing how the level of price and consumer choice has improved over the years. Both of us remember when, in the 50’s and 60’s, we could only get certain kinds of produce when they were in season and then selection was limited.
I’ve known of FDRs Ag policies for years. The best documentation of their negative effects can be found in Jim Powell’s FDR’s Follies and Aminty Shleas The Forgotten Man. Yoy can argue the conclusions all you want but both books are very well researched as to the facts.
From Wiki:
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Under Ag Secretary Wallace, Roosevelt slaughtered six million pigs and plowed under millions of acres of cotton. In modern parlance it would be called a PR disaster. The objective was to bring commodity prices up, but the very idea of letting meat go to waste when people were starving created a storm of controversy.
The administration thereafter created an agency whose purpose was to be sure that surplus food and cotton made its way to relief agencies.
So much was going on back then that it does not surprise me that books are written for and against the policies of the day. You bring wisdom after the fact. It’s hard to defeat a guy who knows what would have happened had things been done differently.
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Are you objecting to learning from history? And it wasn’t just cotton it was wheat and corn as well. This wasn’t a PR disaster it was a humanitarian disaster. There was no “surplus food.” People were starving. And the people who got hit hardest were farmers that didn’t own the land they farmed, mostly black – all of the subsidies went to land owners.
So when money was scarce across the country the administration decides that prices needed to be higher? For what, to make sure that the 75% of people in the country that weren’t farmers could buy less?
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They screwed up. Point taken. Government is big, and interests are often over or under represented. They tried to address one problem, oblivious of another.
After that PR disaster, they took steps to be sure it did not happen again, and redirected mislocated food to the needy. “Surplus” merely referred to the inefficiencies in the distribution system due to collapse of prices.
Overall, we were better off for having had the Roosevelt Administration. Ask my parents.
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Good advice, Mark. What, your parents were like 10 years old in 1929? Oh, and I’m sure they weren’t effected by the massive government propaganda extolling the virtues of government. If they are you primary point of reference you need to question what you think.
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So, as I understand it, government both caused the Great Depression, and then failed to get us out of it. Damned fools can’t do anything right. And we all know how smoothly things go without them. We’re seeing it now.
My parents carry the scars of government interference in their lives. They both cursed Social Security and Medicare. Dad was especially upset that he could support his family while Mom stayed home and took care of the kids. Damned Roosevelt gave us the fucked up fifties.
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Mark, I’ve never said that the government caused the depression – although maybe the Fed helped or could have helped it. I have consistently the depression was caused by a market failure. The government,did, however, add to it’s pain. Smoot-Hawley, BTW, was signed by Hoover was repealed by FDR. And I give him credit where credit is due. But the point is that the endless economic experimentation did not help the Depression and most likely made it last much longer than it otherwise would have.
And FDR didn’t have anything to do with the economics of the ’50s. The 28& savings rate,full employment of WWII and the fact that the U.S. was the only developed country left with a viable manufacturing infrastructure made us the manufacturer of the world. Non of that can be attributed to the New Deal.
One last thing. I’m not an econo-anarchist. Stop painting me as though I am. You know that I’m not.
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Well, we have agreement that the government did not cause the Great Depression and that the Fed did not help things. We have agreement that FDR was not alive to see the fifties, though much of his legacy survived and certainly did not hurt things.
I mgiht also add that the fifties were a time of high union membership and very high taxes. The wealth creation machine was at work, and the wealth was being spread around.
Did FDR prolong the Depression? I only know that he retreated in the late thirties, and unemployment numb ers, which were headed down, retreated. I know that it satisfies the demands of your philosophy to have government make things worse, but I am not convinced that is the case.
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Yes, a “second” recession started after the tax increases of 1937. Spending did not decrease so the “backing off” was actually a matter of anti-supply side tax policy not from backing off Keynesian demand side policy. What conclusion about tax policy can be derived from that?
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If there are simultaneously a reduction in spending, a tax increase, and a rightening of the money supply, and thereafter a recession, how can one assign sole responsibility to tax policy? If there is later a massive increase in spending without a tax cut, and unemployment decreases, isn’t tax policy a neutral factor?
Anyway, that’s my bottom line – taxation is not so big a deal as you make it out to be. Clinton, not my favorite man, offered strong evidence of this in the early 90’s. His tax increase didn’t hurt anything at all, despite protestations.
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I can’t find any historical examples to compare you hypotheticals to. Maybe Calvin Coolidge for the first one but I don’t think so. Hoover increased taxes but also substantially increase spending.
The Clinton example doesn’t give much to go on since the tax increases were relatively small – not to mention the commercialization of the Intel 8088 micro-processor – which had more of an impact on productivity than any other technology in the 20th century. But the fact is that the tax increase didn’t effect growth – I concede. But it wasn’t a radical change in marginal rates so I can’t call it “proof.”
Likewise, EU economies with very high marginal tax rates have had much slower growth and much higher systemic unemployment.
Tax rates aren’t necessarily determinative but they do matter.
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