Category: Religion

The next transformational technology?

Noah Smith writes:

Addendum: I seem to be the only person talking about Desire Modification as a transformational technology. Greg Egan and Vernor Vinge have written books in which this technology plays a central role. In my “spare time” I’m writing a couple of sci-fi short stories based on the idea. It’s a really big deal, and I’ll write a post about it soon.

The new Thomas Nagel book

The title is *Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False*.  Here is a brief summary of his “teleological” argument.  My bottom lines on it:

1. He is good on attacking the hidden hypocrisies of many reductionists, secularists, and those who wish to have it both ways on religious modes of thinking.

2. He fully recognizes the absurdities (my word, not his) of dualism, and thinks them through carefully and honestly.  Bryan Caplan should beware.

3. The most typical sentence I found in the book was: “We can continue to hope for a transcendent self-understanding that is neither theistic nor reductionist.”

4. He doesn’t take seriously enough the view: “The Nagel theory of mind is simply wrong.”

5. People will dismiss his arguments to remain in their comfort zone, while temporarily forgetting he is smarter than they are and furthermore that many of their views do not make sense or cohere internally.

6. It is ultimately a book about how Christian many of us still are, and how closely the egocentric illusion is connected to a broadly religious worldview.  I don’t think he would see it that way.

For the pointer to the book — now out early on Kindle — I thank David Gordon.

Euro auction markets in everything (a good start)

…an entire Tuscan village has gone up for sale on eBay.

Nestled among oaks at 850 metres altitude and blessed with stunning views over the Casentino valley, the medieval village of Pratariccia has stood empty for 50 years, ever since its population of farmers and shepherds abandoned their stone cottages for factory jobs during Italy‘s economic boom.

Now the owners of the remote village – reportedly a religious order – are seeking to cash in with an online sale.

“They tried and failed to sell the village through agencies for years but have got a lot of attention by putting Pratariccia on eBay and should get a result,” said Luca Santini, mayor of nearby Stia, who walked in the woods around the village as a child picking mushrooms.

There is more information here, hat tip goes to @grahamfarmelow.

Is Jesus cheaper than a buffalo? (ZMP gods)

It would seem:

At upwards of US$500, the cost of slaughtering a buffalo to revive a relative condemned to ill-health by the spirits has pushed the Jarai indigenous minority residents of Somkul village in Ratanakkiri to a more affordable religious option: Christianity.

In the village in O’Yadav district’s Som Thom commune, about 80 per cent of the community have given up on spirits and ghosts in favour of Sunday sermons and modern medicine.

Sev Chel, 38, said she made the switch because when she used to get sick, it could cost her hundreds of dollars to appease the gods with a sacrificial package that might include a cow or buffalo, a chicken, bananas, incense and rice wine.

“So if I sold that buffalo and took the money to pay for medicine, it is about 30,000 riel to 40,000 riel [for them to] get better, so we are strong believers in Jesus,” she said. “If I did not believe in Jesus, maybe at this time I would still be poor and not know anything besides my community.”

A small wooden church has emerged in Somkul commune where the word of Jesus Christ, or “Yesu Yang” to the Jarai, is preached instead of the mixture of animism and Theravada Buddhism they have traditionally followed.

Kralan Don, 60, said he and the four other members of his family began attending the church about five years ago because of their poor standard of living.

“We believe in Christianity because we are poor; we don’t have money to buy buffaloes, chickens and pigs to pray for the spirits of the god of land or the god of water when those gods make us get sick,” he said.

Klan Ly, 56, said she had completely abandoned her fears of black magic after making the conversion.

For the pointer I thank WK.

*The Great Divide: Nature and Human Nature in the Old World and the New*

That is the new book by the very active and very smart Peter Watson, due out soon but I bought a copy in the UK.

Why has the New World been so different from the Old World?  What a splendid seventeenth and eighteenth century question.  Imagine Jared Diamond — and with comparable scope — yet with shamans, peyote, and El Niño playing a role in the argument.  I recommend it to everyone who can keep in mind how speculative the argument will be.

If we had to sum up what has gone before and describe in a few words the main features shaping early life in the Old World, those words would be: the weakening monsoon, cereals (grain), domesticated mammals and pastoralism, the plough and the traction complex, riding, megaliths, milk, alcohol.  One way to highlight the differences between the two worlds is to perform the same summing-up exercise for the Americas…For the New World the crucial and equivalent words would be: El Niño, volcanoes, earthquakes, maize (corn), the potato, hallucinogens, tobacco, chocolate, rubber, the jaguar, and the bison.

Unlike Diamond, this book assigns ideology a central role in the story.  Europe and the Middle East generate the ideas of the shepherd, the New World the ideas of the shaman, some of which may have been picked up or carried from the Chukchi of Siberia.  Perhaps my favorite point in the book is the observation that the Old World had a greater diversity of ideologies.

Watson touches on many Hansonian themes about the differences between gatherers and foragers.  Here is a Guardian review.  Here is an Independent review.  Here is a Matthew Price review.

This is an easy book to criticize, see the reviews or for instance take this passage:

…artwork was not developed [in the early stages of the New World] because there was no need to establish either dedicated territories or tribal identities.  And/or food was in such plentiful supply that they had no need to keep records that assisted their memory of animal habits.

One really does have to take this book as a scenario, not as science.  It is nonetheless interesting if used with care.

A new age of religious “austerity”

In an announcement posted Feb. 15 on the government’s website, Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti said he would seek legislation requiring the church to pay taxes on all its commercial holdings. About one-third of the 100,000 properties owned by the church in Italy are used for commercial ventures, according to Italy’s Radical Party, which has long campaigned against the tax exemption.

Here is more, and for the pointer I thank Mark Thorson.

*Peter Singer and Christian Ethics*

The author is Charles C. Camosy and the subtitle is Beyond Polarization, you can buy it here.

Most philosophies draw heavily from religion, as Ross Douthat suggested recently.  Peter Singer is no exception, as Camosy ably demonstrates.  There should be more books like this.

My new question for visitors to the lunch table is: “What is it you really believe in?”

Why they hate Santa (the culture that is Scotland?)

The poster, which features a slightly demonic looking Father Christmas looming over a small boy, is part of the art student’s campaign to put an end to the commercialisation of Christmas and to launch an attack on the advertising industry’s targeting of children. “Santa gives more to rich kids than poor kids,” declares the poster, which will be on Glasgow’s Balmore Road.

“Santa Claus is a lie that teaches kids that products will make them happy. Before they’re old enough to think for themselves, the story of Santa has already got them hooked on consumerism. I think that’s more immoral than this billboard,” said Mr Cullen, who spent four years studying advertising before becoming disenchanted with the industry and switching to Glasgow School of Art’s environmental art course.

Here is more, and for the pointer I thank Jeremy Davis.

The first saintly economist?

ROME — Giuseppe Toniolo, a renowned late 19th and early 20th century lay Italian economist and political theorist, was beatified on Sunday in Rome’s Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, the final step before a formal declaration of sainthood. Among other claims to fame, Toniolo is now the first economist ever beatified by the Catholic church.

Of course many of the early Church fathers, some of whom have become saints, also can be considered to have been economists.  In any case, here is the story, and this piece sets him in the context of the German economists of the late 19th century.

For the pointer I thank Patrick Molloy.  Here is my earlier blog post, Who are the Catholic Economists?

*Bad Religion*

The author is Ross Douthat and the subtitle is How We Became a Nation of Heretics.  It is a very good and very serious book arguing that America needs better religious thinking and practice, excerpt:

The entire media-entertainment complex, meanwhile, was almost shamelessly pro-Catholic.  If a stranger to American life had only the movies, television, and popular journalism from which to draw inferences, he probably would have concluded  that midcentury America was a Catholic-majority country — its military populated by the sturdy Irishmen of The Fighting 69th (1948) and The Fighting Sullivans (1944); its children educated and its orphans rescued by the heroic priests and nuns celebrated in Boys Town (1938), The Bells of Saint Mary’s (1945), and Fighting Father Dunne (1948); its civic life dominated by urban potentates like Francis Cardinal Spellman of New York and Denis Dougherty of Philadelphia; its everyday life infused with Catholic kitsch, from the 1950s hit single “Our Lady of Fatima” to the “win one for the Gipper” cult of Notre Dame football.

My main question is what could have become of most organized religion in an era of newly found television penetration — a competing source of ideas about right and wrong — and the birth control pill and sexual liberation of women?  Not to mention gay rights.  The recent evolution of American religion may not be optimal, but it is endogenous to some fairly fundamental forces.  Non-religious thinking seems to offer especially high returns to successful people these days, and while American religion certainly has survived that impact (unlike in the UK?), what is left will seem quite alienating to much of the intelligentsia, Ross included.

For most mainstream religions, for most urban and suburban intellectuals circa 2012, it is hard to live a religiously observant life during the ages of say 17-25.  American religion is left with late convert intellectuals and proponents of various enthusiasms, all filtered through the lens of America’s rural-tinged mass culture.  Where is the indigenous and recent highbrow Christian culture of the United States?

Ross’s close comes off as voluntarist (“That quest begins with a single step…”), but in an economic model which change might nudge the United States back toward a more intellectual Christianity?  Your suggestions are welcome.

The Grand Gameshow

Chris Brunk, an all-too-loyal MR reader, writes to me:

I developed a thought experiment that I wanted to share with you.  I call it “The Grand Gameshow”.

In this thought experiment you are a contestant on a gameshow.  The host of the gameshow (let’s call him Alex) has a notecard that says whether or not god exists and to what extent he is involved in the affairs of mankind.   You start with $1,000,000 that you must allocate across five possible categories:

  • Category 1 – Scriptural literalism.  Bet into this category if you believe that one of the religious texts is precisely accurate.
  • Category 2 – God is omnipresent.  Bet into this category if you believe that god is everywhere and intimately involved in our lives.
  • Category 3 – God as a guide.  Bet into this category if you believe that god is only there for the major turning points in life and/or when we reach out in prayer.
  • Category 4 – God as a watchmaker.  Bet into this category if you believe that god set the universe in motion but is no longer around.
  • Category 5 – Atheism.  Bet into this category if you believe that god does not exist.

You can distribute the money however you like (e.g. all $1,000,000 in one category or $200,000 in each).  After you’ve allocated your $1,000,000 Alex flips over the notecard and reveals which of the five categories is correct.  You keep any money that you’ve allocated into the correct category.

Some footnotes.  For the purposes of playing this gameshow assume that your financial situation is that of a farmhand in Mexico.  You earn about $4,000 per year and have no substantial savings or degrees.  I classify simulism as being category 4.

I would be very interested to hear how you’d allocate your funds versus say, Russ Roberts or Robin Hanson.

How about this?: the true “solution” to the universe would be to our minds incredibly complex, although within the theoretical framework of a (non-existent) omniscient being it would be simple.  If we had more knowledge about the true theory, however, though without reaching omniscience, many of us would not agree as to whether it involved a God or not.  The knowledge-enhanced me would think it did not.  The books don’t enter into it, nor do the book trucks, sadly.

For Russ or Robin I would not pretend to speak.  Robin has papers and blog posts on simulism, so at the very least he is interested in that topic but I will leave it to him to describe his stance.

Will Arab Spring lead to democracy?

A new BPEA paper by Eric Chaney (pdf) suggests maybe not:

Will the Arab Spring lead to long-lasting democratic change? To explore this question I examine the determinants of the Arab world’s democratic defi…cit in 2010. I …find that the percent of a country’s landmass that was conquered by Arab armies following the death of the prophet Muhammad statistically accounts for this defi…cit. Using history as a guide, I hypothesize that this pattern reflects the long-run influence of control structures developed under Islamic empires in the pre-modern era and …and that the available evidence is consistent with this interpretation. I also investigate the determinants of the recent uprisings. When taken in unison, the results cast doubt on claims that the Arab-Israeli conflict or Arab/Muslim culture are systematic obstacles to democratic change in the region and point instead to the legacy of the region’s historical institutional framework.

Here is a good sentence:

…the fact that the Arab world’s democratic defi…cit is shared by 10 non-Arab countries that were conquered by Arab armies casts doubt on the importance of the role of Arab culture in perpetuating the democratic defi…cit.

And this:

Once one accounts for the 28 countries conquered by Arab armies, the evolution of democracy in the remaining 15
Muslim-majority countries since 1960 largely mirrors that of the rest of the developing world.

How to raise your child, or yourself, an atheist

That is a discussion from Justin L. Barrett’s new and interesting Born Believers: The Science of Children’s Religious Belief.  He gives more than equal time to how to raise your child to be religious, but we’re already pretty good at that.  Here are his atheism tips, noting that I am excerpting and paraphrasing:

1. Have less-than-average fluency in reasoning about minds.

2. Do not have children.

3. Stay safe.

4. Get in the habit of crediting or blaming humans for whatever you can.

5. Learn to like pseudoagents (including abstractions).

6. Take time to reflect.

7. Add to these factors indoctrination of the young against religion.

The key theme of Barrett’s book is HADD — Hypersensitive Agency Detection Device, and how pronounced it is in most human beings.