Fire and Knowledge

We’ve had HTML and websites for over a decade now, isn’t it about time we can start using tabs? There’s still no easy way to do this with HTML, which is why most websites have a space between each paragraph instead of a tab. There’s something backwards here. Let’s get a &tab;!

A corporation, essentially, is a pile of money to which a number of persons have sold their moral allegiance.

–Wendell Berry, “The Total Economy” in Citizenship Papers (2003), p. 69

[Berry is relentless here. A corporation is still made up of people. It’s not just a “pile of money.” People make and implement the decisions, so a corporation can be as careful or as careless as the people who make it up. In a good corporation, no one has “sold their moral allegiance.” Employees can speak their minds and change policies. In fact, with the right people, a corporation can benefit society far more than one solitary person through innovation, implementation, cost-saving, and philanthropy.

If a person has to give up their morality to work for an employer, they’re working at the wrong place.]

The law of competition implies that many competitors, competing on the “free market” without restraint, will ultimately and inevitably reduce the number of competitors to one. The law of competition, in short, is the law of war.

–Wendell Berry, “The Total Economy” in Citizenship Papers (2003), p. 68

[Berry is rhetorically winsome here, but I disagree with him. The law of competition is at work in nature, yet it rarely reduces the number of competitors to one. (And when it does, the winner loses.) It rarely reduces competitors to one in a free market, either. This may change with large technological companies because of the tremendous start-up costs and knowledge involved (notice that there are really only two big CPU manufacturers, Intel and AMD), but so far the American free market has not reduced all competitors to one, and it’s been going on for quite a while now.

What’s the alternative, anyway? Socialism isn’t any better – see any economic analysis on the Soviet Union. It was horrible. A free market lets scarce resources get to the most needed places at the right prices very quickly. I’m not aware of any other economic system that is comparably efficient.]

Anthony Flew was a defender of atheism for over 50 years. Then something amazing happened — he embraced deism in 2004. This was astounding news and celebrated by Christians: one of the most prominent academic defenders of atheism no longer disbelieved in God! The evidence for this first came in a video from May 2004, with Flew conversing with “the Orthodox Jewish physicist Gerald Schroeder and the Christian philosopher John Haldane”:

When at last Flew speaks, his diction is halting, in stark contrast to Schroeder and Haldane, both younger men, forceful and assured. Under their prodding, Flew concedes that the Big Bang could be described in Genesis; that the complexity of DNA strongly points to an “intelligence”; and that the existence of evil is not an insurmountable problem for the existence of God. In short, Flew retracts decades’ worth of conclusions on which he built his career. At one point, Haldane is noticeably smiling, embarrassed (or pleased) by Flew’s acquiesence. After one brief lecture from Schroeder, arguing that the origin of life can be seen as a form of revelation, Flew says, “I don’t see any way to meet that argument at the moment.”

In other words, it seems Flew might have embraced deism due to his declining mental facilities, not because of new arguments or insight. It would be similar to Billy Graham becoming an atheist today – we wouldn’t say it was because of a new mental clarity, but rather because of mental confusion from old age.

Flew’s new book has been ghostwritten on a number of levels by theist friends, and Flew cannot remember many of the names or ideas he cites throughout the book with his name on it:

In “There Is a God,” Flew quotes extensively from a conversation he had with Leftow, a professor at Oxford. So I asked Flew, “Do you know Brian Leftow?”

“No,” he said. “I don’t think I do.”

“Do you know the work of the philosopher John Leslie?” Leslie is discussed extensively in the book.

Flew paused, seeming unsure. “I think he’s quite good.” But he said he did not remember the specifics of Leslie’s work.

“Have you ever run across the philosopher Paul Davies?” In his book, Flew calls Paul Davies “arguably the most influential contemporary expositor of modern science.”

“I’m afraid this is a spectacle of my not remembering!”….

He didn’t remember talking with Paul Kurtz about his introduction to “God and Philosophy” just two years ago. There were words in his book, like “abiogenesis,” that now he could not define. When I asked about Gary Habermas, who told me that he and Flew had been friends for 22 years and exchanged “dozens” of letters, Flew said, “He and I met at a debate, I think.” I pointed out to him that in his earlier philosophical work he argued that the mere concept of God was incoherent, so if he was now a theist, he must reject huge chunks of his old philosophy. “Yes, maybe there’s a major inconsistency there,” he said, seeming grateful for my insight. And he seemed generally uninterested in the content of his book — he spent far more time talking about the dangers of unchecked Muslim immigration and his embrace of the anti-E.U. United Kingdom Independence Party.

As he himself conceded, he had not written his book.

If this is true, it is disturbing. Is Flew being exploited in his old age by his theist friends? Read the article and decide for yourself.

Update: Roy Varghese responds to the Oppenheimer article in a comment on Christian Today’s blog.

Here’s a comment I made on Justin Taylor’s blog about whether atheists can trust their reasoning abilities or not. It was in response to an Alvin Plantinga lecture arguing that atheists could not trust them.

Plantinga argues in the last talk that a naturalist cannot trust his own mental facilities. That might be true, but that is why methods like the scientific method exist and are used — it takes something out of the mind in order to test if something is really predictable and testable (and thus, scientifically “true”).

So even if we doubt our facilities, the fact is, we can test our deductions. That will help us determine if our minds our reliable in their deductive abilities. It doesn’t matter whether it is probable or not that we can trust them — the question is, can we?

For instance, we may hypothesize that every time we drop a large stone, on earth, under normal conditions, it will fall. We could doubt that it is true – our minds could be tricking us – but that is why we test it. And we find that every time we test it, it happens. So that would lead us, after thousands of years of testing and theorizing and philosophizing, that our faculties are not all that bad after all, which allows us to put more trust in ourselves for higher levels of thinking. (And thus understand and debate on the concepts of mind and reason and truth!)

So I think the naturalist/atheist has every right to trust their mental faculties just as much as a theist. Both the theist and the atheist can be mentally tricked and lead astray, and both have explanations on why that can happen. And both recognize that and seek to minimize it through methods.

In the end, the theist believes that man is able to reason. So does the atheist. And the atheist believes the theist can reason, and the theist believes the atheist can reason. So, ultimately, they can start at the same place to begin building methods, which is why theists and atheists can both (for instance) be scientists and come to the exact same conclusions when running the same test. (And why they are able to argue about it if they come to different conclusions!)

For most people who are serious about learning, anything over a B. A. is a waste of time and money — unless it is needed for a career. In a world of cheap books, public libraries, easy recommendations, digital lectures, meetups, and the internet, self-education is easier and cheaper than ever.

That’s why when I saw The Personal MBA Manifesto, I couldn’t help but pass it along. Why spend 3-4 years and $100,000+ working on an MBA? I have no idea. I owned and sold a business and worked as a freelance web designer without an MBA. My mom owned, sold and started another business without any college education. Many of my friends have, too. It’s done all the time.

So for those who are considering starting a business or “advancing their career” and thus considering an MBA or similar degree, consider reading the books on your own time — and budget — instead of making 4 years of your life (and your family’s life!) miserable by going into debt and squeezing in night classes.

If you need accountability, join or create a club for those who are doing something similar. Or if you are a aural or visual learner, consider listening or watching lectures from The Teaching Company, where they have some of the best professors around the country teaching a wide range of subjects.

You’ll learn quite a bit — maybe even more than those cramming for exams — quickly, cheaply, and at your own pace.

I rediscovered the public library last weekend. I used to go quite a bit as a kid, but as I got older I always preferred to purchase books instead. But I’m slowly realizing the futility and expense of that, so my new plan is to only purchase books I know I will re-read or use often for reference. The rest I will check out from the library.

(In my battle for simplicity, I went through my personal library and weeded out over 150 books and donated them to a thrift store. Two months ago I would have rather donated my fingers.)

Though there were quite a few people at the library, few were there for the books. Most were there for the computers, which they had everywhere. Naturally being a busybody, I walked around to see what was so interesting.

The first thing I saw was a half-naked man and teenage girls chuckling. Then there were small kids browsing rap artist websites. After that was another kid playing an online game. The rest were browsing either myspace or facebook, with the obligatory half-naked photo of their online buddy and tiled backgrounds that make you want to tear your eyes out. (Or is it just me?)

That doesn’t seem like what library internet access is for. Isn’t library internet for research and email? Why isn’t there a filter on it that blocks myspace and facebook and games? Kids can browse those websites at home. The library is for reading and research, not online social networking and electronic games.

Or maybe I’m just old-fashioned and think libraries have something to do with public education.

Every tax paper tells us it has been “furnished to the IRS.” Why furnished — instead of say, sent or given — is unknown to me, but it got me thinking: if all our records are provided to the IRS, why doesn’t the IRS provide a website where we can login and make use of it? Then we could add our other income and deductions and be done with taxes quickly. Taxes would be simple and accurate. Our information would transfer from last year, and there would be less of a chance that any numbers would be inputted incorrectly (as they would already be there).

Instead, we enter all of our records so that they can be verified with the same records that were “furnished” to the IRS. Pretty inefficient for the 21st century.