Questioning the conventional wisdom
The daily prompt asks “How do you build loyal subscribers?”
Quite simply, I have not concerned myself with that. I write for myself. I write because it is a good exercise that forces me to think things through. And I post so that it is open for all to read.
My wish is that my readers be loyal to themselves. I have no need for their personal loyalty.
I often notice religious people talking about materialism, but I’m never sure what they mean.
Back in the days of the now-defunct “Uncommon Descent” blog, people often assumed (falsely) that I am a materialist. Presumably this was because I supported the ideas of biological evolution, while the UD blog was clearly opposed to that.
Yesterday, I came across a blog post at the Discovery Institute blog. They recently renamed that blog as “Science and Culture.” The recent blog post has the title “In a Materialistic Universe, Literature Doesn’t Make Sense.” The author of the blog post is Peter Biles.
I do understand the idea of “a material universe”, though I cannot tell whether the universe we are in would fit that description. But what is a materialistic universe? As I see it, “materialism” is an attitude, not a description. And, as far as I know, universes don’t have attitudes. So the expression “materialistic universe” does not seem to make sense.
Biles begins his final paragraph with “However, if materialism is false”. But what does it mean to say that materialism is false? Again, I see “materialism” as an attitude, not a description. Whether a person has a particular attitude could be true or false. But the attitude itself is neither true nor false.
From a post on Frank Schaeffer’s blog:
White evangelicals take note: If Trump is president because of “God’s will,” then your God must be a white trash, philandering, money-laundering, Putin-stooge, hate-filled, racist liar, too.
Well, no, I am not planning to have a daily “quote of the day” feature. But this stood out as worth repeating.
They voted, as a block, to elect a moral monster as president.
They own the actions of that president.
Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. (Matt 25:40).
Trump has been in office as president for barely one week. Yet it is already overwhelmingly clear that this is a failed presidency.
Don’t get me wrong. He is still president, and he can still do considerable damage to the nation. But his presidency is a failure, nonetheless. His campaign slogan was “make America great again.” But it will be up to his successor to attempt to repair the damage that he has done and will continue to do.
In 2000, George W. Bush (“dubya”) became president with a narrow win and a disputed election. Yet many of those who voted against him (self included) accepted that he was president. For sure, they criticized him and his decisions. But they still accepted him as president.
That has not happened with Trump. I think many were ready to accept him as president, and give him the benefit of the doubt. I certainly was ready.
Your 8 years as president have come to an end.
It was a good 8 years. You came into office with the economy failing, and with the nation in two foolish wars. You end your office with the economy in pretty good shape, and with the wars at least greatly calmed down. And all of this with an opposition party attempting to sabotage everything you tried to do.
So thank you, president Obama. You will be missed
This is about the case in the news, where Apple is refusing to comply with an FBI request to help them access an iPhone.
I side with Apple on this, and that’s the main thrust of this post.
I described what I see as the technical issues in a post on my technical blog.
When I was growing up, everybody knew everybody. The shopkeeper knew what kind of food we normally purchased. The neighborhood butcher knew what kind of meat we purchased. In some sense, there wasn’t a lot of privacy. However, what they knew was not written down. The cash register receipt listed only the amount paid. It did not list the items purchased. It would have been very difficult for anybody to use that knowledge to construct a detailed dossier on our family.
Today, we are in a very different world. Everything thing is record, and some records are archived where they will be available for long periods of time. My relation with the shopkeeper (really, the supermarked manager) is far more impersonal. But he has recorded data about the items that I have purchased with my credit card. I probably should pay cash, to make it hard to identify me from the recorded data.
Today, it is far easier to build a detailed dossier. And identity thieves do just that, as a way of stealing identities and then using the stolen identity to steal from bank accounts.
Wheaton College is around a 30 minute drive from where I live. I have long respected it as a religious college which did a pretty good job of living up to the expectation of academia. Many years ago, as a graduate student in mathematics, one of my classmates had graduated from Wheaton, and that’s probably where I first learned something about this school.
Unfortunately, recent events at Wheaton have been disquieting. I have lost my former respect for that school.
It is almost a month since I first heard of the problems, with a blog post by Fred Clark:
In the last couple of days, there have been many reaction to the move by Wheaton, toward firing Larycia Hawkins, a tenured professor. Here are some of the posts that I have seen:
The “problem” started when Larycia Hawkins said that she would start wearing a hijab, in support of her muslim neighbors. This was a reaction to the negative statements that we have been hearing about muslims from politicians (particularly in the Republican primary race) and from some evangelical Christian leaders.
To me, what Dr. Hawkins did seemed like a wonderful example the Christian teaching to “love thy neighbor”. For Hawkins, this was not just a theoretical principle, but was something to be put into practice.
To me, the reaction of the Wheaton College administration seems very anti-Christian. I am left wondering whether there is anything Christian about American conservative Christianity.
In a recent post:
Jerry Coyne bemoans the fact that a high percentage of Americans believe such things as that baby Jesus was laid in a manger (81%).
But here’s the thing. If I were asked in a poll, whether Professor Moriarty were the arch rival of Sherlock Holmes, I would assent to that belief. I would assent even though I am fully aware that both are fictional characters. And I suspect that many Sherlock Holmes fans would do likewise. If you hear people talking about popular movies, you will hear them expressing beliefs that are true only in the context of the movie plot.
What we believe, and what we hold to be true, is sensitive to context. And we often pick up the context from the way the question is asked or from earlier parts of the conversation.
I think Jerry is taking that Pew poll too seriously. Given the time of the year, I’m inclined to see it as a “feel good about Christmas” poll.
I’m perhaps a bit late here. I have been discussing these case in other forums, so I thought I would summarize my view here.
I’ll start by reminding the reader that I am not a lawyer. But I am a citizen of the USA, and that should be enough to entitle me to express an opinion.
While this was an important case, it is difficult to understand why there was a case at all. This was the case where some people took a very literalist view of the ACA legislation, and claimed that it excluded subsidies to people in states with federally run exchanges.
In my opinion, this was a completely bogus issue from the start. It was clear enough what was intended by those who drew up the legislation.
The Supreme Court had little choice in taking up the issue, because a lower court had ruled in favor of that bogus reading of the law. And, thankfully, the supreme court reached the sensible decision.
The Heretical Philosopher 