Critical Thinking

In all likelihood I will never be a great singer. Such skills were either not part of my genetic makeup, or the critical time to learn the fundamentals of singing passed unseized.

Also, while I did well in high school football, the first attempting organized baseball at 11th grade proved too late.

Oh well. But how far can I apply this empirical axiom? There is a ‘critical window’* for language acquisition, but what about logic or critical thinking? For example, is it too late for your parents to realize that today’s civil rights movement involving gay and lesbian equality is no different than the 1970’s black/minority equality movement? I hope not. But I know plenty of examples from both camps: those that harbor anachronistic dogma, while others grow, adapting to a continually changing world. What accounts for this? Certainly the fear of collateral damage a new worldview entails plays a significant role.

Whatever the reason, everything from weight loss to smoking cessation to critical thinking, is easier with a support group. In fact, unlike typical New Year’s resolutions, critical thinking is impossible to come about in a vacuum. You cannot hone a dull blade against the meager resistance of air; likewise, critical thinking requires the dynamic resistance of conversation. We can have conversation with ourselves (introspective self-assessment), nature (Does empirical evidence buttress my beliefs?), and other humans (via books, blogs/forums, or most importantly flesh and blood interactions).

(I was reading Dawkin’s The Greatest Show on Earth and watching this video when this post epiphanized.)

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*Let us remember that only math and quantum mechanics deal with discreet, on/off, black/white variables. The rest of the universe is better understood with the spectrum or continuum concept.

1st Christmas Wish List

[Better late than never.]

Below is Malachy’s first (transcribed) Christmas wishlist for Santa. I don’t remember performing this ritual; trimming the Christmas tree must have taxed my parents enough. Therefore I’m not to blame that I incorrectly addressed the letter to “Santa, the North Pole”.

Unlike adults, no careful exegesis is required for a 3 year old.

(Yes, he got a battery train. No, he didn’t get a baby, real or otherwise.)

Man shall not live by bread alone

My son is famous.

Long story short, some guy apparently sold regular bread as gluten-free bread to countless people in the triangle, included my family. My 3 year old son, a presumed celiac since 18 months, broke out in a rash a day after first eating the bread, and had mucus in his stools for 4 weeks after his last bite. I swore for days the rash was chicken pox, yet the spots didn’t multiply as quickly as varicella does. I took pictures of the rash to keep track of its progression/regression. Little did I know that pitiful looking face would be the poster child against mislabeling gluten-free products.

The N&O, NBC-17, and my wife have documented the sordid affair. Unfortunately I can’t insert the word whole, as the case just went to court in Raleigh. To my knowledge this is the first time that a state has prosecuted anything regarding gluten-free labeling — the federal government prefers to take the more cautious approach of doing nothing.

Caveat emptor? Is it reasonable for a buyer to beware of something they cannot see, hear, smell, or taste?  The retort that responsible (a euphemism against the poor, black, or both) buyers educate themselves before purchasing seems laughable here. Only recently have over-the-internet gluten test strips become available, and at $10 a pop they must be used judiciously. What, then, do anti-oversight people suggest? Classes in clairvoyance?

The gross national product (GNP) is a funny thing. In order for it to go up, I must buy stuff, preferably not make (i.e. assemble) stuff, and definitely not grow stuff. Sixty-five years ago, growing your own vegetables was our patriotic duty; now any vegetables grown from viable seeds* add nothing to the GNP or the state’s sales tax coffer, and incrementally put economists who have nothing better to do than track ill-based metrics out of a job.

This experience has one silver lining: my wife has renewed her efforts to bake the perfect gluten-free loaf. Malachy’s palate isn’t jaded to the texture — flavor usually isn’t the problem — of gluten bread, so he loves everything mama bakes. But a good, gluten-free sandwich bread remains the holy grail of GFCF** baking.

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* Besides the fact that many varieties are engineered to be seedless, most genetically modified plants’ yield will plummet in successive generations.

** Gluten-Free, Casein-Free. Malachy is allergic to dairy protein (casein), too.

Caveat emptor

Nothing

Why do companies spend so much on marketing? Simple. Nothing is cheaper to produce than Something. A company’s warehouse never runs out of Nothing, nor does it have to estimate Nothing’s expected demand. Nothing lasts forever, with no maintenance. But Nothing has one problem– nobody needs it. Therefore Nothing relies exclusively on marketing to produce a psychological need. As such Nothing tends to go out of style, necessitating constant marketing. Nothing has various incarnations; insurance is one of them.

Insurance consists of 99% Nothing. Insurance has no tangible product, and the quality of its service is anecdotally deplorable. What does insurance provide? “Coverage.” Does this “coverage” fulfill a physical or psychological need? Well, thanks to cash-infused lobbyists, it fulfills mostly a legal need.

Insurance went above and beyond basic marketing, ensuring their product is legally necessary. Want to drive a car? Close on a house? Run a business? Insurance infects every facet of life, not just health. Calculating the cost insurance companies add to everyday products such as a loaf of bread or a routine health exam would prove an interesting exercise.

Perhaps insurance is an unfortunate by-product of credit. Yes, I am one of credit’s beneficiaries, buying (i.e. financing) big ticket items that I can’t truly afford (i.e. pay outright with cash). It is here where insurance complements credit. Credit is the economic fiction, saying you can afford something you can’t. Insurance is the legal fiction, saying you can reimburse the true owner of the product you “bought” if an accident happens, even when you can’t.

Years ago I attempted to trade-in my Ford Focus for a used truck. The second-level salesman told me that in order to receive financing with the terms I had agreed to with the first-level salesman, I would have to purchase “gap insurance” since my new/used truck would be worth less than what I owed once I drove it off the lot. That was on a Saturday, and since the banks were closed they let me drive off, leaving a signed bill of sale with no confirmed financing. Monday came, with nobody agreeing to finance the deal. Tuesday followed like a broken record. Finally, on Wednesday my spouse realized the dealership breached insurance laws by stating any insurance was a prerequisite towards financing, the deal was annulled, and I learned a lesson.

I don’t try to follow the federal health-care debate; I’ll find out the details if they pass something. Personally, the best way to reform health-care is to remove the middle-man: Insurance. Anything less would be inefficient from a dollar and personal health standpoint. And inefficiency is anti-capitalism.

Hallo-thanks-mas

Malachy (my 3 year old son): “Mary and Joseph went trick-or-treating.”

Me: “What did they dress up as?”

Malachy: “Turkeys.”

War on Climate Change

As the first major winter storm of the season passes through, governors across the east coast will declare a state of emergency in response to nature’s fury. Given the increasing frequency of state of emergency declarations following natural disasters, and the relatively few terrorist induced state of emergencies, one would think state and federal governments should appropriate more money fighting climate change than the War on Terror.

Perhaps it’s a marketing problem. Maybe environmentalists should re-brand global warming as the War on Climate Change? Hell, life as we know it is at stake; sounds like a good reason to declare war. Remember, there is no need to go through the United Nations, wasting time with sanctions– those parliamentary niceties are only for recognized countries. Declaring war on drugs, terror, or climate change is not hamstringed by outdated, appeasement-oriented rules of order. Also, deciding our (current) enemy is conveniently arbitrary. If a country appears anti-democratic, it is a candidate for the axis of evil climate perturbers. The fact that a country has not excessively emitted greenhouse gases does not shield it from justice; intelligence need only prove the intent to pollute the skies for us to pretaliate. (Never-mind such action is tantamount to declaring war over thought-crime.)

There is one down side: The War on Drugs, the War on Terror, and the War on Climate Change are each impossible to win, as none exists to concede defeat. Therefore, the wars will never end. While the respective goals of these wars appear virtuous, the methods to procure said goals must also be weighed.

Darn. I guess war isn’t always a viable last resort.

Jesus Goes to Timeout

My spouse Rebecca and I enrolled our 3 year old son Malachy last August at a local preschool for 2 half-days a week. This was a giant step for me, as I felt I was outsourcing my role of parenting. I guess technically I am. But when most of Malachy’s playmates entered preschool, the lack of play-dates and the subsequent vacuum of consistent social interactions prevailed.

While not formally an atheist when Malachy enrolled, I was close enough to not want the Bible-belt infecting him. Decent secular preschools, however, are prohibitively expensive in Raleigh, so Rebecca and I surveyed the parochial options. A local United Methodist church/preschool had an outstanding allergy policy– Malachy cannot eat gluten or casein (wheat or dairy)– earning the school a gold star and a monthly tuition check.

Now neither of us were ever UMs, so we asked what religious education students receive. The director replied that chapel consisted of mostly virtue lessons and songs. “Easter is difficult, however,” she added. “We tell the young ones that Jesus went to timeout.”

Another gold star!

(I suppose 3 whole days– 4,320 minutes– in timeout is traumatic enough for a 3 year old.)

Last night my spouse and I were gleening info from Malachy concerning the extent of his external religious indoctrination. Knowing today’s lesson concerned angels, Rebecca asked Malachy if angels are real or pretend. “Hmm,” Malachy pondered. “I think they are like birds… but with no beaks!”

Three gold stars! We have a winner!

This example should not be over-extended; I don’t plan to shelter my children from religion like sterotypical home-schoolers cloister their offspring from reality. While I have never agreed that America was at one point a “Christian nation,” I do not pretend that it’s not the Christmas season. What “Christmas season” actually means– Jesus was born of an ever-virgin (one of Catholicism’s more logic-stretching tenets)* or binge-consumerism– varies. As such I have no intentions of shielding my offspring from Christian mythology anymore than Greek mythology, but I do admit I need help in discerning the line between information and indoctrination. For such guidance I plan to (eventually) read Dale McGowan’s Parenting Beyond Belief.

*Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 499:

The deepening of faith in the virginal motherhood led the Church to confess Mary’s real and perpetual virginity even in the act of giving birth to the Son of God made man. In fact, Christ’s birth “did not diminish his mother’s virginal integrity but sanctified it.” And so the liturgy of the Church celebrates Mary as Aeiparthenos, the “Ever-virgin”.

In other words, Jesus’s first miracle was to ethereally pass through Mary’s hymen.

Bad Connection

Previously I wrote about my own realization (that countless others have discovered before) that god is simply an extension of a believer’s societal or personal beliefs– a personification of the values held. Such is probably why gods have traditionally been male, especially when tribal survival or expansion necessitated hand-to-hand violence. The fact that ‘god’ literally varies from person to person would be the simplest explanation as to why there are divergent views on important issues such as capital punishment or eternal security (of one’s soul).

Thankfully science has come through again*. Dr. Nicholas Epley, professor of behavior science at the University of Chicago, performed a series of studies concerning exactly who Christians are channeling when inferring god’s will.

Not surprisingly the Christian’s stance on issues such as abortion or homosexuality mirrors what they state is god’s position, yet differed from their surmised viewpoint of the “average” American. Brain scans physically confirmed this pattern, with the same brain regions lighting up whether the participant was stating their beliefs or god’s. The assumptions of the “average” American’s position lit up different regions.

The study was limited to self-identified Christian Americans, so we do not yet know how far humanity’s egocentricity spreads.

But we can make an educated guess.

* Read the 2006 efficacy of prayer studies here and here.

God or god?

Many atheist writings use lower case bible and god instead of upper case Bible and God. I don’t know what justifies the use of lower case bible; Bible is the title of an anthology, hence requiring capitalization (and italicizing, though I’m guilty of neglect in that area).  I assume most atheists capitalize The Quran or a Miss Manners book; I’m simply trying to be as consistent as possible.

God/god is trickier. I respect the use of lower case god, yet I almost always use upper case God. This is not done to avoid offending Christians. For me upper case God equates to Yahweh or God the father; it refers to a specific, singular entity. The fact that I don’t believe in said entity’s existence is of no consequence. I don’t believe in Santa Claus, yet I capitalize his name. I reserve lower case god for the placeholder of an omnipresent, omniscient, and/or omnipotent being or essence. However, it is and will forever be hard for me to picture god in such a generic sense. Therefore when I use upper case God, I am referring to the concept of the Christian God.

I will not, however, capitalize pronouns referring to God (or Jesus or the Holy Spirit or Thor); such would betray my religious and grammatical beliefs. Incidentally I was initially surprised when, as a new Catholic, I discovered the church does not capitalize deitic pronouns. I guess Catholics realized there are more pressing matters to focus their energy.

Christianity 2.0

When I was young I wondered why Sunday sermons at my Baptist church were almost always from the New Testament (NT), when it only comprises 1/3 of the Bible.

I never pursued that thought. But now that I see the irreconcilable atrocities committed under God’s direct command, meticulously chronicled in the Old Testament (OT), I wondered if there is a Christian denomination that explicitly rejects the OT, claiming only the NT (perhaps also tossing out John’s Revelation) as the complete and closed canon. My Googling found none.

Too bad. I think a NTOCC (New Testament Only Christian Church) would be very successful on many levels. It has name recognition (Christian and Jesus). It is pro social justice and inclusive (relative to the OT and parts of the deep south), attracting the wealthy who feel a need to help their fellow humans. Its life applicable, parable format meshes with today’s poll/opinion-based news and reality tv. Plus, a NT is easier to carry around!

In truth I believe many “contemporary” Protestant churches are NTOCC de facto. Many OT passages have no place in the 21st century, and sections that don’t elicit censoring– How many Sunday school teachers read the true climax of Daniel in the lion’s den?– are often hard to relate to everyday life.

“How could you remove the OT when Jesus quotes passages from it?”  Both Jude and 2 Peter reference the Book of Enoch, yet the entirety of that book is not deemed scripture by mainstream Christians. Likewise, infallible inspiration would extend only to the specific words Jesus quotes. Problem solved.

Martin Luther, the father of the Protestant Revolution (I have yet to see what he reformed), wanted to remove not only the Pope but also the book of James, or as he referred to it, “an epistle of straw”. I assume Luther didn’t like chapter 2 verse 24: “You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone.” Eventually Luther realized that it is best to not draw attention to explicit doctrinal contradictions. Ignore it, and it will go away, so they say.

Better yet, remove it, then ignore the fact that you removed it!

Implementing this practice will take care of NTOCC’s main problem: the word Bible. People are less comfortable with change. “Take out your New Testaments…” does not have the same ring as, “Take out your Bibles…”  Once again, do not to draw attention to the matter; simply re-define Bible by referring to the NT as the Bible. Actions supposedly speak louder than words, but in this case words, i.e. a concise and lucid explanation of what you are doing, can be very damaging. Explaining invites thinking; thinking precipitates independence; independence provides alternatives. Instead, follow Nike’s lead and “just do it.”