A study from the Barna Research Group, based on interviews with 3,854 adults in the lower 48 states, with a margin of error of 1 or 2%, finds the following:
Variation in divorce rates by religion:
Religion % have been divorced
Jews 30%
Born-again Christians 27%
Other Christians 24%
Atheists, Agnostics 21%
As an atheist who has been married to the same fellow-unbeliever for 29 years, I shouldn't be surprized at this, but I am. Like everyone else, I tend to believe what I am told, rather than what I see with my own eyes. I'll have to work on that...
By the way, notice what some church leaders are saying about this study: flat declarations that they will not believe it. In other words, for some people, the idea that religion has a positive effect on moral behavior ... is itself a religious tenet, insulated from scientific evidence.
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Saturday, October 07, 2006
Conspiracies Real and Imaginary
A Finnish individual, writing as "Nordic," posted an interesting comment on my original positing on conspiracy theories. Nordic points out that there have been many real conspiracies throughout history. This is undeniably true -- though I would deny one of Nordic's examples, the conspiracy that killed JFK. But many examples of perfectly real conspiracies come to mind. Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, not by a lone gunman, but by a conspiracy that was aimed at several members of his administration. The Watergate break-in and coverup was a real conspiracy. Heck, the 9/11 attacks themselves were the work of a conspiracy -- not a conpiracy of Israeli and American military organizations by of 19 religious nutcases. So conspiracies are real.
But given that my account of conspiracism holds that there is a sharp discontinuity between that sort of thinking and real theories, I probably have to find a difference between the conspiracies that conspiracists obsess about, and the conspiracies that exist in the real world that you and I actually live in. The alternative would be to say that conspiracism only differs from legitimate theoretical work in terms of it its methodology, and that might end up blurring my supposedly sharp distinction. The difference might then be at most a difference of degree: they are being less rigorous, etc., but they are really in the same business as the social scientist.
Note that a similar issue arises in the case of cryptozoology, the belief in creatures like yetti, sasquatch, and the Loch Ness monster. If cryptozoology is bunk, how is it that scientists find find new species, or ones thought extinct, all the time? What about the ceolocanth ("the living fossil") and the giant squid? Isn't the cryptozoologist just doing what the legitimate zoologist is doing all the time?
How, indeed, is the coelocanth different from Bigfoot? Answer: verifiable physical traces. They reeled in the coelocanth. They netted the giant squid. But they've never found a dead sasquatch, nor any traces from which dna can be extracted. No skeletons. No hair. No poop. Unlike bears, sasquatches do not shit in the woods. (Tip of the hat here to the wonderful "Penn and Teller: Bullshit!" episode on cryptozoology.)
What is the similar sharp difference between the infinitude of real conspiracies, and those that are products of conspiracist fantasy? I can think of several, but they all rest on a single one. Real conspirators are, like you and me, fallible. For that reason, real conspiracies tend to be, if they are successful, rather small and short-lived. The successful ones also tend to be very simple, in terms of the number and difficulty of the individual actions required to bring them off. The Reichstag fire, for instance was very simple indeed: just start a fire when nobody is looking. Real conspiracies in general have a marked tendency to come unraveled. The ones that are large and long-lasting are extremely well-known (the CIA, the Communist Party, etc.).
By contrast, the phony conpiracies of conspiracists have God-like powers, including an almost supernatural capacity to stay (unlike the CIA and the CP) virtually invisible to anyone but the conspiracy theorist. Just think how many hundreds of people would have to be involved in order to fake a moon landing or the 9/11 attacks. With no mistakes made by any, any of them, and no defectors, never a death-bed confession, etc. Truly, these were organizations of supermen! The conspiracy that killed JFK was a very, very different sort of thing from the one that killed Lincoln. The latter began to fall apart almost immediately. The former has remained airtight and without a single flaw or weakness for over 4 decades. Pretty interesting, don't you think?
Real conspiracies, I would claim, inhabit the world as it is understood by modern science or by common sense. This is a world of finite beings with finite powers. It is a world where ever gain has its cost, and every strength its Achilles' heel. It is a world of probabilities and degrees of rational certitude. The world of the conspiracist is not like this. It is a world inhabitied by fabulous superbeings with amazing superpowers. A world of absolutes and infallibilities. It is basically the world as apprehended by magical and religious ways of thinking. It is the world of faith, of what Eric Hoffer called the "True Believer."
That is I suppose its greatest attraction.
But given that my account of conspiracism holds that there is a sharp discontinuity between that sort of thinking and real theories, I probably have to find a difference between the conspiracies that conspiracists obsess about, and the conspiracies that exist in the real world that you and I actually live in. The alternative would be to say that conspiracism only differs from legitimate theoretical work in terms of it its methodology, and that might end up blurring my supposedly sharp distinction. The difference might then be at most a difference of degree: they are being less rigorous, etc., but they are really in the same business as the social scientist.
Note that a similar issue arises in the case of cryptozoology, the belief in creatures like yetti, sasquatch, and the Loch Ness monster. If cryptozoology is bunk, how is it that scientists find find new species, or ones thought extinct, all the time? What about the ceolocanth ("the living fossil") and the giant squid? Isn't the cryptozoologist just doing what the legitimate zoologist is doing all the time?
How, indeed, is the coelocanth different from Bigfoot? Answer: verifiable physical traces. They reeled in the coelocanth. They netted the giant squid. But they've never found a dead sasquatch, nor any traces from which dna can be extracted. No skeletons. No hair. No poop. Unlike bears, sasquatches do not shit in the woods. (Tip of the hat here to the wonderful "Penn and Teller: Bullshit!" episode on cryptozoology.)
What is the similar sharp difference between the infinitude of real conspiracies, and those that are products of conspiracist fantasy? I can think of several, but they all rest on a single one. Real conspirators are, like you and me, fallible. For that reason, real conspiracies tend to be, if they are successful, rather small and short-lived. The successful ones also tend to be very simple, in terms of the number and difficulty of the individual actions required to bring them off. The Reichstag fire, for instance was very simple indeed: just start a fire when nobody is looking. Real conspiracies in general have a marked tendency to come unraveled. The ones that are large and long-lasting are extremely well-known (the CIA, the Communist Party, etc.).
By contrast, the phony conpiracies of conspiracists have God-like powers, including an almost supernatural capacity to stay (unlike the CIA and the CP) virtually invisible to anyone but the conspiracy theorist. Just think how many hundreds of people would have to be involved in order to fake a moon landing or the 9/11 attacks. With no mistakes made by any, any of them, and no defectors, never a death-bed confession, etc. Truly, these were organizations of supermen! The conspiracy that killed JFK was a very, very different sort of thing from the one that killed Lincoln. The latter began to fall apart almost immediately. The former has remained airtight and without a single flaw or weakness for over 4 decades. Pretty interesting, don't you think?
Real conspiracies, I would claim, inhabit the world as it is understood by modern science or by common sense. This is a world of finite beings with finite powers. It is a world where ever gain has its cost, and every strength its Achilles' heel. It is a world of probabilities and degrees of rational certitude. The world of the conspiracist is not like this. It is a world inhabitied by fabulous superbeings with amazing superpowers. A world of absolutes and infallibilities. It is basically the world as apprehended by magical and religious ways of thinking. It is the world of faith, of what Eric Hoffer called the "True Believer."
That is I suppose its greatest attraction.
Are Conspiracists Really Enemies of Authority as Such?
I've been thinking about Edward Feser's conservative take on conspiracy theories: that they are really a case of the Enlightenment spirit taken to its logical limit, with the individualistic "theorist" rejecting tradition and authority in favor of the judgement of his (it always is a "he") own mind. It's an application, he says, of the "skim milk principle," so named after the Sir Arthur Sullivan lines "Things are seldom what they seem/Skim milk maskerades as cream."
I should probably point out first of all that my own account and Feser's have something in common. They are both basically epistemological accounts of cospiracism. That is, they both interpret it as a knowledge claim and assess it in terms of whether its methodology is competent to (or seriously meant to) support claims to knowledge.
However, within the wide parameters of epistemological accounts of conspiracism, my view is virtually opposite of Feser's. Connspiracy "theories" are not really theories at all. They are, as Plato would say, not logos but mythos, stories that deliver the subjective satisfaction (the drug-like high) of theories without the difficulty, discipline, or rigor of doing actual theoretical work.
As I said below, Feser's account does admittedly explain something that my own account seemingly cannot: namely, that conspiracists tend to be individualists who are "agin the guvmint." I should add something to my account. But what?
I guess what I am inclined to add is a denial that the explanandum phenomenon, the thing to be explained, exists. True, we do think of the typical conspiracist as some weird guy who lives in his mom's garage and has a web site that reveals the key to human history. But that is a sort of illusion of perspective we get by looking only at the conspiracists immediately around us. Step back and look at the big picture.
Historically, conspiracism has often been a very nasty tool in the hands of authority, the worst and most authoritarian authorities. What was Nazi antisemitism but a giant conspiracy theory? Soviet Communism was rife with conspiracy theories. At the time he died (and it was just in time) Stalin was obsessed with The Doctors' Plot, a conspiracy theory that was to have served as the basis for massive arrests and killings. Just the other day, the dictator of Sudan used a conspiracy theory to deny responsibility for mass murder in the Darfur region and blame it all on Israel.
Again, Medieval witchraft hysteria had the most salient traits of conpiracism, inasmuch as it opposed a foe that was a) very powerful, b) very, very bad, and c) invisible (undetectable by ordinary common sense thinking).
Conspiracism is a wonderful excuse for doing terrible things to innocent people. A conspiracy theory would, if true, justify taking extraordinary means against people who look innocent because, don't you know, THEY are about to do terrible things to us, and they are very good at looking innocent. It's what they do!
As a non-conservative, I maintain that beating up on people in just this way is one thing that authority, throughout history, has shown a certain tendency to do. Lord Acton said it: Power corrupts.
I should probably point out first of all that my own account and Feser's have something in common. They are both basically epistemological accounts of cospiracism. That is, they both interpret it as a knowledge claim and assess it in terms of whether its methodology is competent to (or seriously meant to) support claims to knowledge.
However, within the wide parameters of epistemological accounts of conspiracism, my view is virtually opposite of Feser's. Connspiracy "theories" are not really theories at all. They are, as Plato would say, not logos but mythos, stories that deliver the subjective satisfaction (the drug-like high) of theories without the difficulty, discipline, or rigor of doing actual theoretical work.
As I said below, Feser's account does admittedly explain something that my own account seemingly cannot: namely, that conspiracists tend to be individualists who are "agin the guvmint." I should add something to my account. But what?
I guess what I am inclined to add is a denial that the explanandum phenomenon, the thing to be explained, exists. True, we do think of the typical conspiracist as some weird guy who lives in his mom's garage and has a web site that reveals the key to human history. But that is a sort of illusion of perspective we get by looking only at the conspiracists immediately around us. Step back and look at the big picture.
Historically, conspiracism has often been a very nasty tool in the hands of authority, the worst and most authoritarian authorities. What was Nazi antisemitism but a giant conspiracy theory? Soviet Communism was rife with conspiracy theories. At the time he died (and it was just in time) Stalin was obsessed with The Doctors' Plot, a conspiracy theory that was to have served as the basis for massive arrests and killings. Just the other day, the dictator of Sudan used a conspiracy theory to deny responsibility for mass murder in the Darfur region and blame it all on Israel.
Again, Medieval witchraft hysteria had the most salient traits of conpiracism, inasmuch as it opposed a foe that was a) very powerful, b) very, very bad, and c) invisible (undetectable by ordinary common sense thinking).
Conspiracism is a wonderful excuse for doing terrible things to innocent people. A conspiracy theory would, if true, justify taking extraordinary means against people who look innocent because, don't you know, THEY are about to do terrible things to us, and they are very good at looking innocent. It's what they do!
As a non-conservative, I maintain that beating up on people in just this way is one thing that authority, throughout history, has shown a certain tendency to do. Lord Acton said it: Power corrupts.
Exploding Bycicles Explained
My friend Valeria Ottonelli at the University of Genoa (I'll be seeing her at a conference in November, when she will teach me how to pronounce my blog's name) has explained to me the Critical Mass bycicle event (see below).
It's a worldwide network of people who stage events at which they try to get enough cyclists together in one place (hence the critical mass theme) to call attention to cycling as an alternative means of transportation.
I happen to agree that it is a good idea to avoid burning dinosaur fossils whenever you can, so here is a tiny increment of free publicity for them.
(I actually don't even own a bycicle, but I am a big walker, both with and without a backpack, with and without trekking poles, both town and country, etc. I guess that makes me even more of a Luddite in a way than these cycling advocates.)
It's a worldwide network of people who stage events at which they try to get enough cyclists together in one place (hence the critical mass theme) to call attention to cycling as an alternative means of transportation.
I happen to agree that it is a good idea to avoid burning dinosaur fossils whenever you can, so here is a tiny increment of free publicity for them.
(I actually don't even own a bycicle, but I am a big walker, both with and without a backpack, with and without trekking poles, both town and country, etc. I guess that makes me even more of a Luddite in a way than these cycling advocates.)
Thursday, October 05, 2006
My New Name
Well, when I started this little blog in February I called it Critical Mass. I liked the idea of announcing up front that I would be offering some critical thinking, and I liked the suggestion that critique can be explosive. I was being teddibly clevah.
Or maybe not. There are now two or three other blogs with the same name -- on the Blogger server alone! One of them is a blog for book reviewers (get it? critical). There is also (and I really do not get this) some kind of bycicle race called Critical Mass. (What the Hell?) Anyway, the idea must have been pretty obvious.
I trust that my new name is sufficiently obscure to protect it against becoming popular. But of course only time will tell.
What the heck does it mean, you ask? Ayn Rand says somewhere that she thought that Galileo was right to lie to the Inquisition. Indeed, she thought his delibarate lie to these pious thugs was a noble symbol of the fact that though you can force a body, you cannot force a mind. I've always thought she was right about this. The story is also a perfect symbol of the objectivity of the truth: how no amount of talking, opining, browbeating, or bullying is going to change it. We might as well try to find out what it is, before we trip over it in the night. Such are the thoughts behind my new name.
Or maybe not. There are now two or three other blogs with the same name -- on the Blogger server alone! One of them is a blog for book reviewers (get it? critical). There is also (and I really do not get this) some kind of bycicle race called Critical Mass. (What the Hell?) Anyway, the idea must have been pretty obvious.
I trust that my new name is sufficiently obscure to protect it against becoming popular. But of course only time will tell.
What the heck does it mean, you ask? Ayn Rand says somewhere that she thought that Galileo was right to lie to the Inquisition. Indeed, she thought his delibarate lie to these pious thugs was a noble symbol of the fact that though you can force a body, you cannot force a mind. I've always thought she was right about this. The story is also a perfect symbol of the objectivity of the truth: how no amount of talking, opining, browbeating, or bullying is going to change it. We might as well try to find out what it is, before we trip over it in the night. Such are the thoughts behind my new name.
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
Why Conspiracism Persists: Another Take
There is a very interesting article on why conspiracism is so pervasive and popular, despite its obvious stupidity, here at TCS Daily
Interestingly, the author, Edward Feser, a conservative professor of philosophy, gives an explanation that is virtually the opposite of mine. I see these "theories" (which aren't real theories at all, as I've said) as offering all the comforts and advantages of irrationality, while he seems to see them as the product of an over-reliance on -- reason! He points out the the intellectual posture of the conspiracist is inevitably that of the lone skeptic, casting aside "the official story" and thus overthrowing the power of authority, to which the masses have uncritically submitted. The governing myth, in his view, is that of the Enlightenment: truth is on the side of the lone intellect, while custom, tradition, and authority represent nothing but illusion.
As a matter of history, I think Feser's Enlightenment-run-amok theory is plainly wrong. Modern conspiracism begins with the Abbe Agustin Baruel's writings about the Bavarian Illuminati. The Illuminati -- the bad guys in this conspiracist yarn -- are Enlightenment extremists, free-thinking foes of both king and church who sought to establish a new regime of freedom and reason on the ruins of all traditional institutions. The first thing the Illuminati did, according to Baruel, was to cause the French Revolution. (How? I guess they pulled some of those "strings" you've heard about.) The arch conspiracy theorist of my own lifetime, Robert Welch, the founder of the John Birch Society, believed the the Illuminati were the ones at the bottom of all the other conspiracies. The Commies were just one part of it.
Anyway, Baruel's conspiracy "theories" were apparently the product of a profoundly reactionary hatred of the Enlightenment, not the reverse.
I have to admit, though, that Feser's view does explain something that mine so far does not: that conspiracism tends to have an anti-authoritarian slant. The conspiracist is usually, like Huck Finn's Pap, "agin the guvmint." Or in some cases, the Church. (Da Vinci Code, anyone?)
So I have to add something to my explanation. But what? I'll have to think about that.
Interestingly, the author, Edward Feser, a conservative professor of philosophy, gives an explanation that is virtually the opposite of mine. I see these "theories" (which aren't real theories at all, as I've said) as offering all the comforts and advantages of irrationality, while he seems to see them as the product of an over-reliance on -- reason! He points out the the intellectual posture of the conspiracist is inevitably that of the lone skeptic, casting aside "the official story" and thus overthrowing the power of authority, to which the masses have uncritically submitted. The governing myth, in his view, is that of the Enlightenment: truth is on the side of the lone intellect, while custom, tradition, and authority represent nothing but illusion.
As a matter of history, I think Feser's Enlightenment-run-amok theory is plainly wrong. Modern conspiracism begins with the Abbe Agustin Baruel's writings about the Bavarian Illuminati. The Illuminati -- the bad guys in this conspiracist yarn -- are Enlightenment extremists, free-thinking foes of both king and church who sought to establish a new regime of freedom and reason on the ruins of all traditional institutions. The first thing the Illuminati did, according to Baruel, was to cause the French Revolution. (How? I guess they pulled some of those "strings" you've heard about.) The arch conspiracy theorist of my own lifetime, Robert Welch, the founder of the John Birch Society, believed the the Illuminati were the ones at the bottom of all the other conspiracies. The Commies were just one part of it.
Anyway, Baruel's conspiracy "theories" were apparently the product of a profoundly reactionary hatred of the Enlightenment, not the reverse.
I have to admit, though, that Feser's view does explain something that mine so far does not: that conspiracism tends to have an anti-authoritarian slant. The conspiracist is usually, like Huck Finn's Pap, "agin the guvmint." Or in some cases, the Church. (Da Vinci Code, anyone?)
So I have to add something to my explanation. But what? I'll have to think about that.
Monday, October 02, 2006
Yet Another Conspiracy Theory: Lower Gas Prices
The day before yesterday I wrote the posting immediately below. One of the examples of conspiracy theories I cited was the "capitalist plot" explanation of rising oil prices. Since the middle of the summer, as you probably know, gas prices have been sliding downward. And what do we see in the press and on the net but a conspiracist explanation of dropping oil prices. There is simply no end and no limit!
There is an interesting piece on this by one Dan Gainor at Human Events. Okay, Human Events is a right wing publication and Gainor's charming essay is an attack some talking head at CNN (which unlike him I do not watch) who has been purveying this particular "theory." As a matter of fact, as a recent USA Today and Gallup poll shows, some 42% of Americans believe some form of this idea, so unfortunately we can't blame it all on those pointy-headed liberals at CNN. The appeal of conspiracism is very, very broad. This is the one thing that makes it, in all its irrational stupidity, worth thinking about. Something is going on there that tells us a lot about what makes most people tick.
On thing that just amazes me about this is how little responsibilty conspiracists feel to explain how THEY are supposed to be able to bring off the spectacular effects that conspiracists attribute to THEM. What is the source and nature of their mysterious super-powers? USA reports, from a knucklead-on-the-street interview, some guy in LA saying "I'm sure there's some sort of string-pulling going on." That's it. THEY are doing this to us. How? Somehow. End of story.
There is an interesting piece on this by one Dan Gainor at Human Events. Okay, Human Events is a right wing publication and Gainor's charming essay is an attack some talking head at CNN (which unlike him I do not watch) who has been purveying this particular "theory." As a matter of fact, as a recent USA Today and Gallup poll shows, some 42% of Americans believe some form of this idea, so unfortunately we can't blame it all on those pointy-headed liberals at CNN. The appeal of conspiracism is very, very broad. This is the one thing that makes it, in all its irrational stupidity, worth thinking about. Something is going on there that tells us a lot about what makes most people tick.
On thing that just amazes me about this is how little responsibilty conspiracists feel to explain how THEY are supposed to be able to bring off the spectacular effects that conspiracists attribute to THEM. What is the source and nature of their mysterious super-powers? USA reports, from a knucklead-on-the-street interview, some guy in LA saying "I'm sure there's some sort of string-pulling going on." That's it. THEY are doing this to us. How? Somehow. End of story.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
