Comfort's Wager

The biggest howler in Ray Comfort's "Special Introduction" to the Mutilated Edition of On the Origin of Species comes not in the parts about Darwin, but in the Bible-tract preachment that makes up the last third of the piece.  He offers the following instructive dilemma:

Imagine I offered you the choice of four gifts: 

• The original Mona Lisa
• The keys to a brand new Lamborghini
• A million dollars in cash
• A parachute
  

You can pick only one.  Which would you choose?  Before you decide, here's some information that will help you make the wisest choice: You have to jump 10,000 feet out of an airplane. (pp. 40-41)

The answer is supposed to be obvious, of course, though this is set up like one of those lateral-thinking exercises in which you take the keys to the Lamborghini and offer them as a bribe to some poor sucker who has one parachute and not a lick of sense . . .

The Affliction of Comfort

Today marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species.  To mark the event, Ray Comfort (a.k.a. The Banana Man) of Living Waters Ministries distributed free copies of the book . . . last week sometime.

The edition of the book in question contains a strategically abridged version of Darwin's text with a 52-page introduction by Ray Comfort himself, drawing a direct connection between Darwin and Hitler and warning readers (*yawn*) of eternal hellfire, and so on.

Comfort has been a bit cagey about the whole thing, and the complete text of the introduction was recently removed from his website.  Before the big day, last week, Comfort stopped answering questions.  This from an article posted on the website of Living Waters Ministry:

From now on I will refuse to answer questions about the book or its contents," Comfort said, "because there is such a deep-rooted anger in the atheist world about this publication.

"They desperately want to stop us," he said, "and I don't want to give away any further details regarding the campaign."

Angry? Is he kidding?  I'm delighted! I managed to find a PDF of the introduction through another website.  I plan to spend a diverting hour or two playing Name That Fallacy.

It'll be like shooting fish in a barrel.

Politics Takes the Plunge

From time to time, I've made posts to this blog in which I've criticized political activists, from environmentalists to tea partiers, for engaging in ridiculous theatrics to draw attention to one cause or another.  Such useless and distracting political gestures typically serve only to obscure real, important questions of value and obligation that lie at the heart of most policy debates.

For all that, political theatrics can sometimes strike a chord.  For some reason, I found this one particularly touching:

Blog, Blog, Blah, Blah

Today has been dubbed "Blog Action Day" by a group of people who have come together to dub today "Blog Action Day." Here's what the dubbers of "Blog Action Day" say about their event on their website:

Blog Action Day is an annual event held every October 15 that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day with the aim of sparking discussion around an issue of global importance. Blog Action Day 2009 will be one of the largest-ever social change events on the web.

Why have they done this dubbing?

Manifesto

Last week, while I was mulling over the principles of the 912 Project, I fell into a long and rambling conversation with the two other members of one of the bands in which I play fiddle.  The three of us have somewhat different backgrounds and come down in different places on the political spectrum.  Still, through our conversation, I started to glimpse the possibility of a new political movement.

I later dubbed it "The League of Noisy Moderates."

Lots of people are out there making lots of noise, motivated either by rigid ideology, nameless fear, or some other force that deprives their speech of nuance as it raises the volume.

Meanwhile, thoughtful people, those who might be willing and able to do the actual hard work of democracy, sit back quietly and shake their heads.

Enough of this.  The time has come for those of us who are in the broad political middle - from thoughtful conservatives to thoughtful progressives, and everyone in between - to take to the streets in angry protest, demanding . . .

an end to angry street protests?

Oh, never mind.

The Gold Standard

As I have been reconfiguring this blog, I have also begun to explore more widely what I've started to call The Skeptics' Corner of the blogosphere.  Some things I read this evening have converged with a few other threads that have been running through my thinking of late concerning the character of skepticism, all pointing to questions that require some sort of answer.

Here I am, ranging through human experience, subjecting beliefs and assumptions to the acid of doubt.  But what standard should I apply when I scrutinize beliefs and assumptions?  On what basis should I say this belief is faulty, but that belief is all right?

And then: To what end am I doing all this?

Death and Taxes

From time to time, I discuss the problem of evil - or, The Problem of Evil - with my students.

This week, it was in the context of a special topics course on the Darwinian Revolution and its philosophical implications.  Trying to bring them to some insight into pre-Darwinian ways of thinking, I had them read a few selections from Leibniz on the principle of plenitude - sorry, the Principle of Plenitude - and the Principle of Sufficient Reason, followed by the First Epistle of Alexander Pope's Essay on Man.

Two lines from Pope provide a deft summary of Leibniz, and help to solidify the idea of the Great Chain of Being.

. . . all must full or not coherent be,
And all that rises rise in due degree.

Weak Tea, part five, addendum

Thomas L. Friedman's column today in the Times is worth a read.  It relates to an idea I was trying to develop in yesterday's post: the people as a unity, not just an aggregation.

Toward the end, he lists a number of factors that have changed American politics, allowing noisy and unthinking fringe groups on all sides to overwhelm the ingenious checks and balances of the system set down in the Constitution and make it difficult, if not impossible, to do anything at all for the common good:

Weak Tea, part five

Here, at last, is the ninth principle of Glenn Beck's "912 Project": 

9. The government works for me. I do not answer to them, they answer to me. 
Who works for whom? “I consider the people who constitute a society or a nation as the source of all authority in that nation.” Thomas Jefferson

Yet again, the principle as stated obscures and distorts some genuinely interesting and important questions.  And, again, it openly contradicts the fifth principle, that no one is above the rule of law.   How is the rule of law carried out, except that executive power is entrusted to a government, and each of us thinks of ourselves, in this respect at least, as answerable to the government?  There seems to be a muddle here, which can only be sorted out by going back to the basics of democratic theory.

I would note in passing that the quotation from Jefferson is a bit ambiguous.  What does he mean by “the people”?

Weak Tea: A Side Show

My brother sent me a link to the following video, with a note that it "speaks for itself."

This is outrageous!  I mean, what a terrible, terrible song!

If I were Mr. Obama, I'd be mortified.