1. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc. were atheists, and they were terrible! Answer that!

Comment #81808 by Alison on October 25, 2007 at 8:18 am

Absolute power corrupts absolutely. The problems of Hitler, Stalin, Napoleon, The Inquisition, Nero and other monarchs or emperors all stem from unchecked and unconstrained power. These examples point to how wrong it is for, say, the United States to give more power to the executive branch, regardless of whether that branch is held by Family Bush or Family Clinton.

Religion is more of a problem in creating institutions of unchecked power precisely because of the emphasis on submission and obeisance to "a higher power", both in belief and ritual practice. Once that framework is in place it becomes much easier to sanctify authoritarian power structures which reflect the supposed "order" of "God's world."

Enlightenment and Renaissance values largely run against the establishment of institutions wielding unchecked power by emphasizing individual liberty and critical rational thinking, Hobbes notwithstanding. Morality comes from respecting the (socially constructed) human rights of other people, not by blind obedience to suspect dogmas which worship power and foster an in-group mentality intolerant to others.

2. Taking exception to Jake

Comment #72020 by Alison on September 20, 2007 at 6:50 am

The sky isn't blue, especially at night. The light that passes through the sky isn't blue either. The light that passes through the sky (of a certain wavelength) triggers certain receptors in the retina, sending signals to the brain which are then interpreted as blue - unless you suffer from achromotopsia, in which case you see everything in black and white.

As such, "blue" may not be a property of the universe per se, but rather a multiplace interactive property between the universe and our brains.

Mmmm, brains!

3. Orthodox Call on Sinners To Give Chickens a Fairer Shake

Comment #66787 by Alison on August 31, 2007 at 12:14 pm

Duff, yours is a much prettier ritual. Let's swap out the chickens, though, and use chicks instead! Newborns should have fewer accretions of sin than full grown birds, after all. Then again, they might not be able to absorb as many sins, being so small. So, scratch that. Use really, really old chickens?

4. A World of Eloquence in an Upturned Palm

Comment #66756 by Alison on August 31, 2007 at 8:19 am

The primatologists at Emory note that gestures are controlled by the same part of the brain that controls speech. But it is also possible, they said, that gestures and speech evolved jointly to create language, as suggested by David McNeill, a psychologist at the University of Chicago.

Synchronizing gestures and speech was essential, Dr. McNeill believes, because what we see humans do today could not have arisen from a system of gesture-first pantomime.

How do we learn words? Sitting in Mommy's lap, looking a book with pretty pictures. She points to the fuzzy orange shape and says "cat", and we repeat. Synchronizing gesture (pointing) and speech. And how interesting that gestures and language come from the same part of the brain.

No wonder that ritual plays such a central and powerful role in religion. It's tapping into an ancient, likely subconscious "communication center" in the brain.

5. Orthodox Call on Sinners To Give Chickens a Fairer Shake

Comment #66753 by Alison on August 31, 2007 at 8:09 am

How does swinging a chicken (or money, or fish) over one's head remove sin?

Ronald Grimes, building on the work of J.L. Austin, describes a number of ways in which ritual performances may become or be considered "infelicitous." Here is a rough taxonomy of infelicitous ritual performances:

1. Misfire (act purported but void)
~ 1.1. Misinvocation (act disallowed)
~~~ 1.11. Nonplay (lack of accepted conventional procedure)
~~~ 1.12. Misapplication (inappropriate persons or circumstances)
~ 1.2. Misexecutions (act vitiated)
~~~ 1.21. Flaw (incorrect, vague or inexplicit formula)
~~~ 1.22. Hitch (incomplete procedure)

2. Abuse (act professed but hollow)
~ 2.1. Insincerity (lack of requisite feelings, thoughts or intentions)
~ 2.2. Breach (failure to follow through)
~ 2.3. Gloss (procedures used to cover up problems)
~ 2.4. Flop (failure to produce appropriate mood or atmosphere)

3. Inffectuality (fails to precipitate anticipated empirical change)
4. Violation (act effective but demeaning)
5. Contagion (act leaps beyond proper boundaries)
6. Opacity (act unrecognizable or unintelligible)
7. Defeat (act discredits or invalidates other acts)
8. Omission (act not performed)
9. Misframe (genre of act misconstrued)

Let's apply some "ritual criticism" to the kapparot ritual and see how it fares.

PETA argues that the ritual should be considered a type of "misinvocation", a disallowed act, and specifically a "nonplay". This is due to their consideration of the ritual as a "violation" - a demeaning act.

Some Jewish authorities consider the ritual "contagious" or "defeating", as the chickens used in the ritual, which are supposed to be eaten afterwards, may not actually be kosher, due to infelicitous handling of said chickens. Others think the ritual is a "misapplication", inappropriate due to its possibly pagan origins.

If you drop the chicken during the ritual, or fling it against the wall, it's probably a "hitch".

Dumping the chickens in the garbage would be a "breach", failing to follow through on the protocol of donating the carcass to a poor family. Substituting fish or money may be a "gloss", trying to cover up the problem of chicken-swinging, but then again you've entered the territory of "misapplication" - money or fish may be considered inappropriate to this ritual.

To outsiders like ourselves, we may find the ritual "opaque", unable to ascertain how in the world swining a chicken absolves one of sin. We may even be "misframing" it, but I doubt it. Sadly, we can't really call the ritual "ineffectual", since there's no way to empirically measure the absolving of sin in the first place - unless you're also a Scientologist.

Those who find themselves ashamed or strangely still sinful after the ritual may feel that way because they were "insincere" in performing the ritual in the first place. Or maybe snapping the necks of chickens leads to this "flop" in mood. Maybe it's better to just "omit" the ritual altogether.

6. The importance of doubt

Comment #66496 by Alison on August 30, 2007 at 6:12 am

...he simply does not get the point of pluralist societies under secular auspices.

Dawkins entirely "gets" the point of pluralist societies under secular auspices. The key phrase here is "under secular auspices". As opposed to "under religious auspices." Dawkins argues passionately for "secular auspices". The problem is that so many religious authorities refuse to submit to any other authority, like the authority of reason, for example.

Dawkins is as reluctant... to accept that much of the content of religious faith is metaphorical, poetic and symbolic rather than factual in a scientific sense.

The *only* value of religious faith is metaphorical, poetic and symbolic. "Much"? More like "most if not all." Religious faith has no merit in the factual, scientific sense. But religious leaders fail to maintain their authority on metaphor and symbolism. People want actual bread and actual wine and actual freedom. If religions presented themselves upfront as inherently metaphorical, and subject to "secular auspices", we would have far fewer problems with religion in our world.

7. Another view

Comment #66196 by Alison on August 29, 2007 at 8:16 am

Has anyone done a study to see if placebos are more effective if they cost more money?

8. Postmodernism Disrobed

Comment #29559 by Alison on April 3, 2007 at 12:08 pm

Bonzai writes: "Nothing wrong with parsing metaphores as it is a legitimate scholarly past time."

It may turn out to be more than a pastime. I think conceptual metaphors and metaphorical thinking may be a hallmark of human intelligence. We use conceptual metaphor all the time, usually without being aware of it. Metaphor plays a huge role in language and in thought, and some argue that we wouldn't really understand important abstractions without metaphors that relate them back to our embodied experiences.

Another reason to examine metaphors and identify them in our thought processes is that we don't want to mistake our metaphors for literals. Well, unless we want to start passing laws that make it a crime to steal time.

9. Postmodernism Disrobed

Comment #29556 by Alison on April 3, 2007 at 11:57 am

nine9s:

Oh dude, how I totally wished I was actually, like, on some drugs or something when I wrote that. But I wasn't. Rats.

But I hope you didn't miss my real point, which is not so much a defense of postmodernism as it an attempt to explain how extending the entailments of any metaphorical conceptual system too far can yield gibberish. Relativism has some validity; Postmodernism takes it to the extreme and shows it isn't apt in every arena. Is this an earth-shattering revelation, worthy of miles of scholarship? I say no.

More than anything, I hope you didn't miss my jab at metaphysical objectivism. There is no God; there is no God's eye view of the universe.

Bonzai:

You make a better point than I do, and I agree. The profusion of pseudoscholarship grates like the proliferation of pseudoscience, and I love how Richard takes to task these fraudulant heirs to academia. The humanities really do need to return to the human, and especially the human body.

10. Religion useless to Dawkins

Comment #29546 by Alison on April 3, 2007 at 11:09 am

Whether religion is useful or useless depends on your intents and purposes, doesn't it? If I want a projectile to travel a certain distance along a certain trajectory, science will give me much better results than prayer. On the other hand, if I want to encourage myself to find a better job, performing certain rites of prayer may change my consciousness sufficiently to focus on the task at hand. To that end, I'd say it has everything to do with ritual and its effects on the human brain, not to any supernatural influence.

One *can* be atheist and religious, as long as one takes the religion with a metaphorical grain of salt.

11. Postmodernism Disrobed

Comment #29537 by Alison on April 3, 2007 at 10:41 am

Time flies by, or crawls by slowly. The time for argument has long passed. Time is an object moving in relation to us.

We are on time. We are close to Easter. I left at 10 o'clock. Time is a place, and we move in relation to it.

I've used up all my time, but you've got some left. We wasted an afternoon talking about postmodernism. It took too much time to come to a conclusion. Time is a resource.

Already in modern English, we use at least three different metaphorical systems for understanding time, yet have we come to an understanding of time "objectively"? Perhaps time, like many abstract concepts, only becomes understandable through metaphors grounded in our bodily experiences.

Which metaphor is privileged? All have their weaknesses. Time is not a moving object, and we cannot stop it as much as we'd like to. If we really believe time is a place, it's easy to believe you can travel backwards in it. The time is a resource metaphor gives us the unfortunate entailment that it can be stolen, which in America we're reminded of during the Super Bowl week and March Madness spectacle.

So how do we choose which metaphor to use? Which metaphor is privileged? This is the crux of postmodernism as I see it. But, like the metaphors above, extending the entailments of postmodernism out too far yields gibberish. Science (but not objectivism) regains its footing in the presence of intents and purposes. If I want to schedule an appointment with Richard, I would choose Time is a Place and mark down my calendar for 3 o'clock. If I want to make sure I also get my laundry done, I'll invoke Time is a Resource and schedule the appointment to take only one hour. And to express my delight in actually meeting Richard, I'll take Time is a Moving Object and say that our conversation was so good that the time simply flew by.

12. Snake Oil and Holy Water

Comment #28250 by Alison on March 28, 2007 at 2:08 pm

"I haven't found a book on quantum feminism, quantum financial management, or Afro-quantum theory, but give it time."

What about Kjell Enhager's creative "Quantum Golf"?

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Science describes the world as literally as possible; some metaphor is necessary because of our human limitations. Religion describes the world as metaphorically as possible; some literalism is necessary to pay for the candles.

13. For the God Question, a Biological Perspective

Comment #25634 by Alison on March 14, 2007 at 12:01 pm

I don't understand why religious people trumpet literalism over metaphoricalism. The real power and inspiration of religion comes from its metaphorical applications, not its literal ones. Christians especially should disdain literalism, given their abhorence for the material compared to the spiritual.

Oh wait, I remember now. Religions are all about power and money these days. Now it all makes sense.

14. Why Children Love Their Security Blankets

Comment #24777 by Alison on March 8, 2007 at 1:54 pm

I think many people apply the same reasoning to individuals. For example, a warrior is considered to "have courage", as if "courage" was some sort of essence which when possessed confers some sort of power to overcome fear. I think whenever we talk about the "nature" or "essence" of a person, the same kind of thinking is involved, and it's likely the source for notions like Spirit and Soul.