On Fact-Free Bigotry

[Ed. note: Having put a lot of trouble into finding out some actual facts, I thought I should re-post my rebuttal to Her-We-Don't-Speak-Of on the subject of Global Warming.]

I should probably let this go, but:

and GOD said blah too

. . . invites some examination. The implication is that Christianity (and I'm assuming here that the accusation is leveled specifically at the Christian Right) is led by people claiming that the Bible says something about Global Warming.

Let's look at the usual suspects:

Rick Warren

Sorry, no hits.

James Dobson

Only other people's accusations about Christianity, not about what Dobson actually says. But let's check the grand Poobah himself:

Jerry Falwell

BINGO, we have a winner! Except . . . when you read the statement, it's all about the science. Nothing about what God says or doesn't say about global warming, only that it's not part of the Great Commission.

Let's check the news at a centrist clearing house of what's happening in American Protestantism:

Christianity Today

Mmmm . . . this is interesting. Notice how all the editorializing is in favor of "doing something" to prevent global warming.

The articles give us some backstory. The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) is on the global warming bandwagaon. Falwell and Dobson both have criticized the NAE leadership for this on the apparent grounds that the issue is outside of the NAE's mission. But still no word on what God says.

There is an organization called the Evangelical Climate Initiative, also on the bandwagon. Rick Warren is a member.

There is an organization called the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance that says that we ". . . should focus on helping the poor create wealth and providing them with clean drinking water and medical care. Efforts to fight global warming could ultimately harm the poor more than help them." But no claims that God sez there's no global warming.

But why check the facts? When you haven't darkened a church door since your early teens, and you hear somebody say, "THOSE people, they said that God said blah," and this happens to line up nicely with all your dearest prejudices . . . why spoil a good thing?

Ironically, at least one global warming skeptic blames the hysteria on religion: Michael Crichton. So it seems that no matter which way we go, Christians are going to get blamed.

I'm starting to see a pattern here . . .

Hymns vs. Choruses

I think there is a lot of truth in "Praise Music Flunks" over at the American Spectator:

IT IS AN INTERESTING PARADOX. Churches devoted to rigorous, difficult theology -- real Christianity, in short -- have largely adopted praise music, mainly to get people in the doors. In doing so, they have denied their parishioners an intimate connection with the art, the music, the poetry, and the history of the faith of our fathers, embodied in hymns.

Mainstream churches, which have left Christianity behind for liberation theology, "peace and justice" theory, deconstruction, and modernism, still cling to the hymnbook, to the hard work of teaching choirs to sing in harmony, and to the expense of maintaining pipe organs.

Read the whole thing.

The article reminded me of an insider's joke that some of you might be able to appreciate:

An old farmer went to the city one weekend and attended the big city church. He came home and his wife asked him how it was.

"Well," said the farmer, "it was good. They did something different, however. They sang praise choruses instead of hymns."

"Praise choruses?" said his wife. "What are those?"

"Oh, they're OK. They are sort of like hymns, only different," said the farmer.

"Well, what's the difference?" asked his wife.

The farmer said, "Well, it's like this - If I were to say to you "Martha, the cows are in the corn"' - well, that would be a hymn. If on the other hand, I were to say to you:

Martha, Martha, Martha,
Oh Martha, MARTHA, MARTHA,
the cows, the big cows, the brown cows, the black cows
the white cows,
the black and white cows,
the COWS, COWS, COWS
are in the corn,
are in the corn, are in the corn, are in the corn,
the CORN, CORN, CORN.

Then, if I were to repeat the whole thing two or three times, well, that would be a praise chorus."

The next weekend, his nephew, a young, new Christian from the city came to visit and attended the local church of the small town. He went home and his mother asked him how it was.

"Well," said the young man, "it was good. They did something different however. They sang hymns instead of regular songs."

"Hymns?" asked his mother. "What are those?"

"Oh, they're OK. They are sort of like regular songs, only different," said the young man.

"Well, what's the difference?" asked his mother.

The young man said, "Well, it's like this - If I were to say to you 'Martha, the cows are in the corn' - well, that would be a regular song. If on the other hand, I were to say to you:

Oh Martha, dear Martha, hear thou my cry
Inclinest thine ear to the words of my mouth
Turn thou thy whole wondrous ear by and by
To the righteous, inimitable, glorious truth.

For the way of the animals who can explain
There in their heads is no shadow of sense
Hearkenest they in God's sun or His rain
Unless from the mild, tempting corn they are fenced.

Yea those cows in glad bovine, rebellious delight
Have broke free their shackles, their warm pens eschewed
Then goaded by minions of darkness and night
They all my mild Chilliwack sweet corn have chewed.

So look to the bright shining day by and by
Where all foul corruptions of earth are reborn
Where no vicious animals make my soul cry
And I no longer see those foul cows in the corn.'

Then if I were to do only verses one, three and four and do a key change on the last verse, well that would be a hymn.

Nature is Trying to Kill You!

Civilization--every civilization worthy of the name--is built and maintained by making war against nature.

I was talking to my daughters about this the other day. I can be screedy that way. At six and three, they probably only have the vaguest idea of what I am talking about half the time. But this is why I think its important: most children go through a period of being sentimental about nature. By "sentimental", I mean that in the child's imagination the birds, flowers, trees, and sundry critters are more benign, more authentic than the houses, cars, streets, clothes and food from which they obtain their actual sustenance. Our food, even our pets, are the product of thousands of years of selective breeding, breeding undertaken by human beings to make them safe for our use and companionship.

I'm guessing this is a product of the post-modern age. It springs from the combination of (1) taking the fruits of civilization for granted, and (2) the decadence of a culture unwilling to do the work of preserving the gains it has made.

Most children outgrow this. But some do not: as a boy, my own brother had what started as an above average sentimentality about nature. My parents treated it indulgently, and it eventually metastasized into the pseudo-religion of environmentalism. Everything, including his actual religion, was eventually jettisoned in favor of this new faith.

Here is somebody else who didn't outgrow it: Timothy Treadwell, who wandered off into the Alaskan outback to make friends with the Grizzly Bears. This worked for a while, but one year he arrived at his bear camp a couple of weeks early, when it was still feeding season. He and his girlfriend were promptly eaten. Ross Douthat put it best:

Grizzly Man [about Treadwell] is a film about religious experience, among many other things, but not a form of religious experience that's familiar to most people in the still-Christ-haunted West. Human beings are caught between the animal world and the spiritual world, bound by fleshly requirements, but able to imagine themselves as immortal, freed from bodily concerns, quasi-divine - and in response to this problem, Christianity (and most other mainstream faiths) tells people that the way out is up, and that to escape the conflicts and miseries that come with being half angel and half ape, you need to become more like an angel, and less like an ape.

But the imitatio Dei isn't the only possible solution to the dilemma of being made a little lower than the angels. You could also go in the other direction, and give up on human reason, human self-awareness, in the hopes of returning to a pre-rational, pre-spiritual, entirely animal state . . . But Nature won't take us back.

So . . . what? What are the consequences of allowing our sentimentality to slide into decadence? I shall never tire of telling my children the story of Detroit: Once upon a time, there was a mighty city, the capital of the industrial heartland. But [lots of economic theory skipped over here] all the people that could take care of this city left, and the people that remained had neither the means nor the inclination to preserve and protect what they had been given. The result? Not but a few decades later, the natural world is reclaiming the city! Parking lots turning to fields. Trees growing right through the buildings. This is how the world ends: not with a bang, but a wimper.

So, children, the moral of today's lesson is: nature is trying to kill you. You do not need to be afraid of nature. Human beings are the smartest ones on the planet, and there is great adventure to be had testing ourselves against the rest of it. So go ahead: enjoy the hunting, fishing, hiking, rock-climbing, and white-water rafting. I've enjoyed all these myself. But be smart, because if you are stupid, nature will eliminate you from the gene pool.

Link Love:

this post was inspired by Bobvis who wrote an excellent post on a similiar issue rather more scientifically.

The Hitchens Takedown

Ross Douthat reviews Hitchens God is Not Great. That thump! you heard was Hitchens being body slammed:

More likely, though, the reader will come away unpersuaded of anything save the self-evident truth of the matter, which is that human beings, being a clannish and quarrelsome lot, tend to find all sorts of things to fight over, and that nearly every aspect of human affairs can serve as a powerful spur to actions both heroic and deplorable. So religion produces both Torquemada and Dorothy Day; philosophy spurs Socrates to die for truth and Heidegger to prostitute himself for Hitler; science cures polio and speeds our missiles on their way; the bonds of family provide the foundation for innumerable happy childhoods, but also for the Wars of the Roses. None of this is to excuse the crimes of religious believers; it's merely to suggest that the line between good and evil runs through every aspect of human affairs, and denouncing belief in God for poisoning the world is as absurd as denouncing "democracy" because it has empowered tyrants from Hitler down to Hugo Chavez, or "equality" because its partisans have included the Jacobins, the Khmer Rouge, and the KGB.

Read the whole thing.

Let's face it: Atheism works better when it is confined to an elite taste. Atheism for the masses, is . . . um, about as intellectually serious as religion for the masses, only less edifying.

On Filibuster

Ace of Spades has been emphasizing:

A Vote For Cloture Is A Vote For Amnesty

Which got me to thinking, should the bar for voting against cloture on a bill be higher than merely voting against the bill? Why not filibuster everything you oppose, assuming you can persuade 39 of your collegues to do the same? Come to think of it, why not just change the constitution to require supermajorities on every Senate action?

Full disclosure: I've been on the other side of this question. Justices Alito and Roberts relied for their confirmation on two or three senators (I forget the exact number) who, knowing full well that the nominees had more than 50 but less than 60 votes in favor of their appointment, nonetheless voted for cloture and against confirmation.

For which I am extremely grateful, and in consideration of which I hold to the general principle that at the end of the day legislation should have an up-or-down, majority-wins vote. But how does the process actually work?

Here is my speculation: senators do what they can get away with. The voting public itself has a higher bar for the filibuster than it does for the legislation, the standard probably being that the legislation has to be really really bad to justify a filibuster. Not exactly a model of clarity, so the senators have to keep their finger in the wind before making that kind of decision. At some threshold of popular opposition, he opposes it; at a higher level, he filibusters. It probably is really that simple . . .

. . . Except when it might be more complicated. Remember that the Alito and Roberts votes were held against the backdrop of the "Gang of 14" agreement, whereby seven Democrats promised to raise the bar for the filibuster (in some unspecified way) in exchange for the promise of seven Republicans not to change Senate rules to prevent filibusters in toto. So when the hearings went well for the nominees, the Democrats probably believed that it was more important to maintian their own credibility, and to preserve the agreement, than prevent the justices' confirmation. Even though their core base was crying loudly for a filibuster. Again, I'm grateful.

So what about the Comprehensive Immigration Sellout? Shoule we filibuster? Well, yes we SHOULD filibuster, on the grounds that the Senate skipped the hearings. As Stanley Kurtz wrote:

I’m still stuck on the way this bill was going to be pushed through without a public airing of crucial provisions, in the two or three days before Memorial Day recess. But I should be stuck even further back–on the way this bill was cooked up in a backroom deal that bypassed the ordinary process of public hearings. We take them for granted, but those civics textbook fundamentals are there for a reason. We’re going to pay a steep price for setting the fundamentals aside.

But having said all that, if the Senate DOES hold hearings, then the final bill WILL deserve an up-or-down vote.

On Bureacracy

Megan writes a compelling post on the function of bureacracies: to manage risk.

It is far more compelling than The Nation article that inspired it:

At a time when the press failed to check a reactionary Administration, when the opposition party all too often chose timidity, it was the lowly and anonymous bureaucrats, clad in rumpled suits, ID badges dangling from their necks, who, in their own quiet, behind-the-scenes way, took to the ramparts to defend the integrity of the American system of government.

Good thing we had all those bureaucrats; otherwise we would have gotten into a war in Iraq . . . um, wait . . . .

This one paragraph alone is ample target for a day's worth of potshots. In what mental universe is George "No Child Left Behind" Bush a reactionary? And when a Democrat administration is thwarted by the bureaucracy, what will The Nation have to say?

More prosaically, Bobvis makes a good comment:

When a bureaucrat or law writer decide that people are starting the wrong kinds of businesses in the wrong areas or aren't buying big enough homes and the like, he isn't protecting a public good. Rather, he is using his own superior knowledge of what should be happening to affect the changes he wants to see despite the preferences expressed by the people government presumably serves. You are right that it isn't because he maliciously wants to wield his power. It is because he, like you, believes that he honestly knows what's best. Again: good for water, bad for commerce.

And for my two cents: let's be carefully before we bow before the prophetic bureaucrat who predicted Bad Thing X. One feature of bureaucracies is that they have LOTS of bureaucrats predicting LOTS of things. Given enough time and bureaucrats, EVERY eventuality is predicted by somebody, and most of these predictions are wrong.

Update: And we haven't even addressed the issue of bureaucratic featherbedding. Helpfully, Trumwill does:

It's more than that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, it's that no one believes that it's in the government's best interest that they lose their job, be more closely scrutinized, take a paycut, or whatnot. People will always be able to convince themselves that what is best for them is best for the nation.

Sympathy for the Devil (please)

Ross Douthat writes "The Vice-President in his Labyrinth." The money line:

From the vantage point of punditry, it’s easy to scoff at the one percent doctrine, and easy, as well, to argue that the “ticking bomb” scenario that seems to undergird Cheney’s approach to detention and interrogation never really happens, or is sufficiently rare to be a poor guide for policy. I tend to agree with both these contentions, but I also don’t come in to the office every day to find an intelligence briefing on my desk that’s probably thirty percent rumor, forty percent guesswork, and twenty percent lies, but that could turn out to be the briefing that accurately predicts the next 9/11 or something far worse.

Well said!