The Perfect Drug: Our Modern-Day “Soma” and the Intellectual Decline of America

I recently read Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. It inspired me so much that I decided to write an entire essay about it, which I thought I’d share with you, my loyal readers. Suffice it to say that Postman states his points much better than I can (although perhaps not quite as succinctly), and I would highly recommend that you read it as well. Nevertheless, I hope you will find my paper an interesting read.

The Perfect Drug: Our Modern-Day “Soma” and the Intellectual Decline of America

“Two thousand pharmacologists and bio-chemists were subsidized. Six years later it was being produced commercially. The perfect drug. Euphoric, narcotic, pleasantly hallucinant. All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects. Take a holiday from reality whenever you like, and come back without so much as a headache.”
-Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

In 1932, Aldous Huxley published the chilling novel Brave New World. Full of dire predictions and sinister concepts, the novel has a tendency to strike a deep sense of foreboding and uneasiness. The picture of the future which Huxley paints for us stands in sharp contrast to other similar works to with which Brave New World is often compared. For example, while George Orwell’s 1984 portrays a dark, sinister regime in which the oppressed populous are controlled by propaganda, government surveillance, and most of all pain, Brave New World tells a story in which pleasure, not pain is used to control and manipulate. While Orwell feared a government which would hide the truth in order to maintain control; Huxley feared a world in which the truth would be shoved into obscurity by a sea of amusement and entertainment. According to Neil Postman in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death, “Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.” In today’s entertainment-centered world, it seems that perhaps Huxley, not Orwell, was right. Our culture is not controlled by censorship, but by pleasure. Although it may sound far-fetched and conspiratorial, I believe that television has assumed the qualities of an addictive drug, reducing our capacities to think rationally, and also altering the way we view reality and perceive the significance of information.

There are many chilling parallels between the picture of the world Huxley paints in Brave New World and our world today. In Huxley’s world, the population of the earth is permanently limited to two billion humans. The idea of the family is considered “pornographic” in Huxley’s world, with the state responsible for raising (and producing) children. Women are instructed to use contraceptives or have abortions to prevent unwanted pregnancies. Sexual promiscuity is encouraged; anyone who does not engage in promiscuous sex is looked down on as being anti-social. Parenthood, marriage, natural birth and pregnancy are all considered obscene. The idea of wanting to be an individual, or to spend time alone, is horrifying in the new society. People’s needs for solitude and spiritual communion are fulfilled with the use of “soma,” a ubiquitous, universally consumed hallucinogenic drug which takes users on enjoyable “holidays” from reality, with no hangover or otherwise negative after-effects (Orwell).

Although many of the characteristics of Huxley’s society can be seen in America today, perhaps most disturbing is our modern-day equivalent of “soma.” Our soma takes a different form than it did in Huxley’s world, but the results are strikingly similar. Our soma is ever enjoyable, never failing to induce a state of mindless pleasure. It allows its users to enter a nearly hypnotized state for multiple hours a day with no noticeable hangover. It is a constant source of companionship and comfort for nearly every American, fulfilling many if not most of our spiritual and emotional needs. Like soma, our modern-day equivalent is capable of altering thoughts and feelings and has the capacity to render its users nearly incapable of rational thought. Our modern day equivalent of soma is not so obvious as a drug, however. Our soma is not administered in a powder or by injection, but rather as a pattern of electromagnetic waves transferred to those small, unthreatening boxes which occupy a space in the living rooms of nearly every American family. Our soma is none other than the technological marvel of the 20th century: the television.

It may seem rather alarmist and Luddite to condemn the television as a drug on par with soma. How on earth could something as ubiquitous and seemingly harmless as the television be as bad as all that? The proposition that a large majority of humanity has been duped into whittling away their ability for rational thought in exchange for brief moments of entertainment sounds more like a cheap conspiracy theory than a serious proposal. However, if we critically analyze the content and nature of television and compare it to Orwell’s fictional hallucinogen, I believe it will become than evident that this is no exaggeration.

A study done in 1990 showed that the average person watched about two hours of television per day, while the set is typically on about eight hours per day (Horvath). More recently, a study performed by the Nielsen Group found that on average, Americans spend five hours and eleven minutes per day, or about 36 hours per week in front of the tube, watching either live broadcasts, recorded broadcasts or DVDs, or else playing video games (Nielsen). The only two activities which top television in terms of hours spent per day are sleeping and working. Watching television is the only socially acceptable activity in which one sits silently for hours on end, in a state of brain activity lower than that of a person staring at a blank wall. Television, whether by design or accident, is essentially a means of mass hypnosis, in which the participants willingly subject themselves to a prolonged period of temporary mental retardation (Krugman). The only other activity comparable to television in this sense is recreational drug usage.

Of course, one of the most important delineating factors between drugs and other commonly consumed products is the addictiveness of the substance. So to determine whether television is really comparable to drugs, it is helpful to examine the addictive nature of TV. The American Dictionary of the English Language defines “addict” as “to apply one’s self habitually; to devote time and attention by customary or constant practice” (Webster). While a scientific analysis of television as an addictive substance is difficult at best, and presents a variety of problems to researchers, sufficient studies have been performed which at least seem to indicate that television is psychologically equivalent to an addictive drug. There are few comprehensive studies on the topic of television as an addictive substance. However, in the few studies which have been performed, there are interesting results. One study showed that television meets the American Psychological Association’s qualifications as an addictive substance. In the study, the researchers adapted a method originally developed to measure alcohol dependence for use in measuring addiction to television. They found that although television is not chemically addictive, it is still capable of addicting its users (Horvath). Another study performed in 1998 found that roughly 70% of respondents believed that television was addictive: 10% of participants in the study where self-proclaimed television addicts. Based on these results, it seems it would not be an unfair assumption to say that more than 10% of people are addicted to television. Furthermore, most addicts are usually unwilling to admit their addiction, so the 10% of respondents who admitted addiction were likely only a slice of the total number of television addicts (McIlwraith). Additionally, the number of hours watched per day has grown significantly since 1998, which could possibly indicate that the number of people who would consider themselves television “addicts” has likely increased since this study was done. Although there is an understandable lack of rigorous academic studies on the topic of television addiction, it seems reasonable to state that television is addictive, and that there is a significant percentage of the population addicted to television.

To condemn television on the basis that the results of using it are similar to the results of drug usage would be rather naïve and simplistic. After all, simply because something has drug-like qualities does not mean it is necessarily a bad thing. Caffeine is widely viewed to be a recreational drug to which a large percentage of our population is addicted. Yet despite this fact, there is no public outcry against caffeine, largely because it is not known to cause serious problems to one’s health. A similar argument could be made about television. Although television does have drug-like qualities, one could argue that the similarities between drugs and television stop short of the negative effects of drugs. After all, television is not known to be detrimental to a person’s health (at least, not conclusively), and there are no known lasting side effects. It is worth noting that there are some common health problems associated with excessive television watching (for example, obesity), but these problems are not caused directly by television itself. Rather they are a symptom of habits which tend to accompany television viewing. In essence then, television is like a drug, without any of the bad side effects. Television relieves stress and anxiety, allowing its viewers to “take a holiday from reality whenever they like, and come back without so much as a headache.” Clearly, the fact that there are some similarities between television and drugs is not enough to condemn television as bad for society.

It is not television’s addictive qualities in themselves that make television so dangerous. Far more dangerous to society is the capacity of television to handicap a person’s ability for rational thought. In his book Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman argues that television as a medium is far more conducive to entertainment than to exposition. According to Postman, the printed word encourages critical, rational thought, while television encourages the exact opposite. An idea that is printed and published is open for analysis and critique. It remains, static and unmoving, on a page for anyone who wants to read, read, and reread it. Postman argues that a culture whose primary media is the printed word is a culture predisposed towards rational thought. Postman writes:

“In a culture dominated by print, public discourse tends to be characterized by a coherent, orderly arrangement of facts and ideas. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, print put forward a definition of intelligence that gave priority to the objective, rational use of the mind and at the same time encouraged forms of public discourse with serious, logically ordered content. It is no accident that the Age of Reason was coexistent with the growth of print culture, first in Europe and then in America.”

On the other hand, television as a means of communication has exactly the opposite effect of the printed word. In other words, while printing as a means of communication encourages rational thought, television discourages it. In the world of television, only the entertaining, attention grabbing shows survive. One has only to spend a few minute surfing television channels to find that this is true. Even the commercials, which most people regard as an annoyance, are visually and audibly pleasing. Perhaps the only television which would not be considered entertainment is C-SPAN, which is watched regularly by only about five percent of the population (Sanford). These numbers are small compared to the numbers for even a modestly successful television show, and when one remembers that C-SPAN is aired 24 hours a day, seven days a week, as opposed to the one hour per week of air time most television shows receive, the numbers look even worse for C-SPAN. It is no accident that the one program on television which consists strictly of educational, informative content with almost no entertainment value is one of the least watched programs on TV.

To say that television is entertaining does not really encompass its effects on society, however. Entertainment in itself is not a bad thing. The problem with television is not so much that it is entertaining, but that it forces into obscurity any form of communication which is not entertaining. This phenomenon can be seen in politics, religion, and education, just to name a few, especially when viewed from a historical perspective.

On October 16th, 1854, the citizens of Peoria, Illinois gathered for a debate between two famous men: Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas. The debate began with a three hour speech from Douglass to which Lincoln was to respond. When it was Lincoln’s turn to speak, he reminded the audience that it was already 5:00 PM. He informed his audience that he would need at least three hours to respond to Douglas’s speech, and suggested that the audience go home, eat dinner, and come back for the rest of the debate. The audience amiably agreed, left, and returned to hear another four hours of speaking (Postman).

This short story is an illustration of what was considered “normal” for a debate between politicians in the 1800s. In today’s culture, by comparison, anything that lasts longer than two hours is considered to be unreasonably lengthy. It is rare that a politician makes a speech over an hour in length. And every televised speech is necessarily accompanied by flashy, spinning graphics, animated waving American flags and flashy “Decision: 2010” graphics. This shift in focus from the content of the message to presentation is the effect that television has had, not just on American politics, but on society as a whole. Because television is conducive only to entertainment, anything of value must be entertaining. Education is another example of the entertainment mentality of today’s society. A teacher is not considered “good” unless he or she is entertaining. Learning has to be “fun” in order to entice students into wanting to be educated. These facts may seem underwhelming, but compared to the intellectual state of America in the 18th and 19th centuries, they are seriously condemning. Imagine how an eighteenth century child from a middle class family would laugh at the idea that education must be accompanied by fun puppets, catchy songs, and clever graphics in order to be worth-while. This is the result of television’s influence on society. The fundamental value of information is not judged based on content, but on entertainment value.

The dangers of an entertainment centric culture are many. Entertainment is almost always trivial and unimportant, and generally has no lasting significance. One might argue that a work of entertainment can convey deep meaning and have a lasting cultural significance. Admittedly, no one familiar with The Odyssey would write off the epic as a mere trivial bit of entertainment for the ancient Greek’s amusement. However, in today’s culture, entertainment is primarily designed to amuse rather than instruct or inform or inspire. So when news, politics or religion, take the form of entertainment, they usually become light, trivial, and devoid of genuine seriousness and meaning.

Televised news is a prime example of how even the most dire, catastrophic events are presented primarily for the amusement of the viewer. When a tragedy is depicted on national television, how often do the newscasters suggest a few minutes of silence with a blank screen for viewers to reflect on the tragedy? More to the point, why would newscasters do something so outrageous, knowing that the moment they temporarily cut transmission, the viewing audience would switch to the next channel to get more vivid, eye-popping footage accompanied by smooth, flowing dialogue from attractive anchors? Producers know that television shows must be light, amusing, and trivial in order to sell. And so those producers, who are far from stupid, are happy to oblige. Neil Postman accurately summarizes the situation:

“Entertainment is the supra-ideology of all discourse on television. No matter what is depicted or from what point of view, the overarching presumption is that it is there for our amusement and pleasure. That is why even on news shows which provide us daily with fragments of tragedy and barbarism, we are urged by the newscasters to ‘join them tomorrow.’ What for? One would think that several minutes of murder and mayhem would suffice as material for a month of sleepless nights. We accept the newscasters’ invitation because we know that the ‘news’ is not to be taken seriously, that it is all in fun, so to say. Everything about a news show tells us this—the good looks and amiability of the cast, their pleasant banter, the exciting music that opens and closes the show, the vivid film footage—all these and more suggest that what we have just seen is no cause for weeping. A news show, to put it plainly, is a format for entertainment, not for education, reflection or catharsis.”

Of course, one can hardly condemn newscasters or producers of such television. Only an idiot, or else a non-profit cooperation with external funding, would produce a television show designed to do anything but amuse the audience. It is not as though the producers are not intelligent enough to create a truly intellectual program. On the contrary, to produce news that is not entertaining would be the unintelligent thing to do. The problem lies not with the newscasters but with the medium itself. Television, particularly commercial television, is simply not conducive to messages which do not amuse and entertain. But this medium, which in itself seems harmless, has lead to the trivialization of truly important information, along with the gradual decline in intellectual ability of its viewers.

One of the founding principles of The United States was the right to freedom of expression, particularly freedom of the press and freedom of speech. Most Americans tend to be highly opposed to censorship by the government or any other organization. A common fear expressed by many 20th century writers is that the government will try to control people by censoring books and other forms of communication, and intellectuals feared that the banning or censoring of books and other media would result in the death of rational thought. This fear is embodied in George Orwell’s Brave New World. One look at communist China or Russia is enough to demonstrate that the censorship of information is a serious threat to freedom and civil liberty. But there is another equally chilling, while somewhat less obvious threat. As Aldous Huxley put it in Brave New World Revisited, those who are ever alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In Orwell’s world, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Huxley’s world, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In Orwell’s world, information is censored. In Huxley’s world, there is no need to censor information; it is drowned in a sea of irrelevant amusement. I believe that Huxley’s prediction of the future, not Orwell’s, was more accurate.

The difference between Orwell’s and Huxley’s envisioned destruction of humanity is something like the difference between a stick of dynamite and a flowing river. Both are capable of destruction, but in two very different ways. One is un-ignorable; the effects of the other are barely perceivable. But both can carve a chasm hundreds of feet deep. This is the difference between Orwell’s and Huxley’s predictions of the future. A government which rules by oppression is obvious, powerful, and destructive, but it can be resisted. No matter how absolutely a government controls its subjects, it cannot control their wills. But control through pleasure is much more difficult to identify or resist. There is no regime to fight, no dictators to oppose, no tyranny against which to rebel. There is only the slow, persistent, almost imperceptible erosion of the ability to think and critically analyze ideas. Such an assault against rational thought is difficult, if not impossible to combat. One might suggest that the problem could be solved by banning or regulating television, either forcing it to conform to some sort of standard or else prohibiting it all together. But government censorship would only move the country toward a different set of problems, the sort predicted by Orwell. Paradoxically, the only real, lasting solution to the problem which would not create more problems than it was designed to fix is awareness of the problem itself. This was the message which Huxley was trying to convey in Brave New World. Entertainment in itself is not bad. The problem comes not when we start laughing instead of thinking, but when we forget why we’re laughing and when we stopped thinking.

What happened on November 2nd? The Obama disaster, America’s stupidity, and the light at the end of the tunnel

It’s been two years since Obama was elected president of the United States. In less than two year since Obama’s inauguration, Obama’s approval rating has fallen from +21 with 44% of Americans strongly approving of Obama and only 23% strongly disapproving to a rating of -16, with 43% strongly disapproving, and just 27% strongly approving. And just two days ago, we saw the largest Republican turnover in congress since the end of World War II. Many people on the radio, TV, etc. are asking the same question: what happened? Where did Obama go wrong? How did such a wildly successful campaign in 2008 turn into the disaster it has become? I don’t think anyone believes that the nation has really undergone a mass conversion from liberalism to conservatism in the last two years. So how is it that just two years after the major democratic victories of 2008, democrats are now being thrown out of Washington in the largest numbers of most of our lifetimes?

The most common answer that I’ve heard is that “people are angry about the economy”. This may be partially true. But I highly doubt that the economy is really the main reason for this republican take-over. I think the main-stream media is blaming the economy for one reason: they still want to be able to blame Bush. Of course, the “it was Bush’s fault” platform has worn very, very thin over the last few years. Most people realize that with the Democrats controlling the house, senate, and the presidency, they really have no excuse for not getting done whatever is needed to correct whatever things they say Bush did wrong. But the blame-Bush platform is much better than the alternative.

What is the alternative that the liberal media doesn’t want to face? What are Americans really upset about? I don’t think it’s the economy. I think the nation is angry about the unbelievable wave of liberalism that’s swept the nation in the past two years. I think America is mad about congress ignoring the roughly 60% of Americans who were opposed to Obamacare and who still want it to be repealed. I think Americans are disgusted that we have such an incompetent, indulgent president. And I think most of all, Americans are finally being disillusioned about who Obama truly is.

When Americans voted for Obama in 2008, I don’t think they were voting for Obamacare, a trillion dollars of stimulus spending, a liberal foreign policy, etc. I think they were voting for a black charismatic “rock-star” with a young face, good personality, and general appeal. It’s sad to think of the American people being this stupid, but I truly believe that Obama’s charisma and personality, along with his race are what got him elected. If that’s the case, it means that Americans are a bunch of stupid, gullible, racist idolizers who are just waiting to find some celebrity to bow down to and worship. I’m sorry to be so critical of America. But this is simply the only explanation I can see for the events of the past two years.

It shouldn’t come as any surprise, really. After all, we live in a culture that’s celebrity driven. Good looks and good personality are all that is required for fame, fortune and popularity in nearly every other area of American culture; why shouldn’t we expect to see exactly the same things in politics? American Idol, the TV show in which the general viewing audience is asked to call in their votes for the winners of a talent show, is currently the most watched TV series and is also one of the most popular television shows of all time. It’s interesting to note that in the eight season of American Idol, a total of 624 million votes were cast for various performers, while the voter turnout in the presidential election a year before was only 132 million. Granted, viewers of American Idol can vote as many times as they want in a given two hour period, but the point is still an interesting one. The most popular TV show is a show where viewers get to vote for their favorite celebrity based on their looks and talent. Obviously, our culture cares a great deal about celebrities. Why shouldn’t we expect to see a spillover of the celebrity mania from entertainment into politics?

It is sad when such historic events as the elections in the last two years have to be explained away as the result of a culture too stupid to see past good looks and personality when deciding who the next leader of our nation will be. But there is some hope. First, only 52.9% of voters voted for Obama, which means that for whatever reason, the other 46.1% weren’t swept along in the wave of celebrity worship which landed Obama in the White House. And among the 52.9% who did vote for Obama, a large majority of those voters would vote for any liberal, regardless of how charismatic he or she is. So that means that a relatively small number of Obama voters were motivated purely by Obama idolization. This gives some hope, though it’s also quite sobering because it shows what a lot of damage just a (relatively) few stupid people can do.

Something that offers just a little bit more hope is what happened last Tuesday. Apparently, the people who were swept to the polls by Obama’s wave of charisma eventually did see through the façade of personality and catchy slogans, at least enough to vote against Obama’s liberal agenda and all of Obama’s many stupid mistakes. Hopefully, this is an indicator that the nation as a whole is not too far gone, at least not yet.

The next two years are going to be very interesting to watch. There are a lot of things that could go wrong for Republicans between now and then. Republicans need to watch their step in congress. It is absolutely critical for a Republican victory in 2012 that the Republicans stick to their guns, do not compromise or moderate, and do what the American people sent them there to do: repeal healthcare (or at least do as much as they can to stop it, which may be tricky without control of the senate). With any luck, the celebrity worshipers who got carried away with Obama in 2008 have learned their lesson, and won’t be so easily fooled again by catchy slogans and young faces in 2012.

Deconstructing Deconstructionism: Exploring a philosophy that undermines itself

“The apple fell from the tree.” Do you think you know what that sentence means? Well think again. To most people, this sentence means that a pomaceous fruit produced by the flower of a tree belonging to the species Malus domestica was released from its stem and accelerated downward due to the force of gravity towards the earth’s center of mass until it was stopped by the ground. In other words, the sentence means exactly what it says: that the apple fell from the tree. But some people might disagree. According to them, this sentence could mean almost anything. While to some people it could mean what it seems to mean, to others, it might mean something completely different. To proud parents sending their son off to college, this sentence could metaphorically represent the natural process of releasing one’s offspring into the world. To those concerned about the direction our nation is headed politically, it could mean that the United States is on the verge of collapse. For some people, this sentence may be representative of the fact that European society has dominated the world primarily due to Newton’s discovery of the laws of motion. And for some people, this sentence might mean “yellow school bus”. And some people would tell you that all of those meanings are equally true, because in a sense, none of them are true. But if all meanings of a statement are true, and also at the same time untrue, where does that leave a reader trying to interpret a text? And furthermore, if two contradictory statements can be true at the same time, how are people supposed to interpret reality in general? These questions are answered by a school of thought known as deconstructionism, a philosophy with far reaching consequences in almost every area of society.

Deconstructionism is loosely defined as a style of literary criticism, but it is really more of a philosophy. Deconstructionism is built on a few simple ideas. The first is that every author writes from his or her own point of view. Of course, it doesn’t take much convincing to persuade someone of this fact. One has only to compare two editorial columns written in two separate newspapers about the exact same issue or event to see proof of this fact. The beliefs and ideals that the authors of the columns hold shape what they choose to write about, what details they choose to include or leave out, and how they decide to portray it. The result is that two columns in a newspaper describing the same event can convey two completely different messages. Obviously, this bias is not confined to editorial writing. In fact, according to deconstructionism, anything and everything that any author writes is shaped and molded by what the author believes.
The second tenant of deconstructionism is similar, but more extreme. In addition to believing that no writer is ever unbiased in his or her writing, deconstructionism also says that words have no absolute meaning. The classic illustration of this concept is that of the elephant. If I state that elephants are big, no one would argue with this fact. But they are small compared to the Empire State Building. Thus, the elephant is both big and small. How can something be both big and small at the same time? Simple. According to deconstructionism, a word by itself (the word “big” for example) has no absolute meaning. Words only have meanings when used with other words, so a word can be used to describe just about anything within the proper context.

If authors write with biases, and the words they use don’t have any real, absolute meaning in the first place, how should one go about reading and interpreting literature? Deconstructionism says that because of these ideas, each and every text has multiple meanings with multiple equally valid but also incompatible and contradictory interpretations. According to deconstructionism, when a person reads a piece of writing he must first deconstruct the piece, finding all the various possible interpretations. The reader must then reconstruct his own meaning by figuring out what the text means to him. So ten people may read the same text and come up with ten different meanings, which, according to deconstructionism, is a good thing. (Although according to some teachers, more often than not ten different students will come up with roughly the same interpretation.) Each independent interpretation is equally valid and true, while at the same time, none of them are ultimately true.

Deconstructionism may sound good in theory, but in practice it can have many negative consequences. Deconstructing the meaning of a piece of literature may indeed be fairly harmless, but this philosophy affects more than literature. Deconstructionism deconstructs all of reality, not only literature, and destroys the foundations for absolute truth. It serves to undermine truth in all of reality by depriving words of their absolute meanings.

Deconstructionism affects not only readers, but writers and artists. In previous centuries, art was an imitation of reality. Artists strove to transfer what they saw in reality onto a canvas or slab of marble. But the past century has seen an increasing amount of abstraction in literature, music, and artwork. Pablo Picasso’s impressionist artwork, “modern” music with no distinguishable melody, and Thomas Merton’s “A Festival of Rain” are all examples of deconstructionist artwork with no obvious meaning or purpose.

Some authors even go as far as to publish “non-fiction” books about events and stories that never actually happened. In her autobiographical novel, “I, Rigoberta Menchu”, Menchu tells the story of her child-hood in a poor Mayan family under oppression from western society. The novel gathered wide-spread attention, and was incorporated into the core civilization reading of many colleges. The novel even won Menchu a Nobel Prize. It wasn’t until ten years after publication that anthropologist David Stoll investigated many of the so-called “facts” about Menchu’s life and found them to be exaggerated or even fabricated in order to meet the publicity needs of the Marxist guerrilla movement. Based on over a hundred interviews with Menchu’s friends and neighbors, Stoll concluded that the accounts of poverty, deaths of siblings due to starvation and torture, lack of education, and extreme racism found in the book were either completely false or extremely exaggerated. According to a Guatemalan clerk who kept records during the time period in which Menchu’s book was to have taken place, the story was “one lie after another, and she knows it”. However, despite the evidence, the universities who had been so quick to incorporate her work did not remove the book from their curricula. Furthermore, Menchu refused to retract or revise certain clearly false parts of her book. When confronted with evidence showing that her brother had not been tortured with death by fire (an event which Menchu originally claimed to have witnessed), but had instead been executed by a firing squad, Menchu stated, “If someone will give me his body, I will change my view. My truth is that my brother Patrocinio was burned alive.” To Menchu, there is no one absolute truth. There is her personal truth, which may change from day to day, but there is not a universal truth. This may seem ridiculous, but from a deconstructionist perspective, it makes perfect sense. After all, deconstructionism says that everything is equally true, and at the same time nothing is really true. So “fiction” and “non-fiction” mean only what the author publishing the work decides they mean.

This lack of absolute truth affects every aspect of lives, from ethics to history to politics. History is open to interpretation, and one person’s interpretation of historical events is just as valid as anyone else’s, as in the case of Menchu. If the ideas found in deconstructionism are true, then our poor philosophers, whose main focus is to seek truth, are all out of a job, since in reality there is no truth. Of course, the United States Constitution is fair game for anyone who wants to decide what it means and how it applies, and one person’s interpretation is just as good as another’s. This can be seen in the U.S. Supreme Court’s ever liberal interpretations of phrases in the Bill of Rights. The phrase “the right to keep and bear arms” certainly seems to have absolute meaning, and yet depending upon the political views a person holds, that phrase can mean a myriad of things. And of course, the words “right” and “wrong” are not above other words; they too have no absolute meaning. So what is “right” and what is “wrong” also become open to interpretation. And since each interpretation is equally valid, according to deconstructionism a serial killer’s interpretations of “right” and “wrong” are every bit as valid as a priest’s. The result of this relativism is that everyone does what they feel is right rather then what is right. Taken a step further, this philosophy results in those who are in power arbitrarily deciding what is “right” based on what they feel is right. “Right” to Adolph Hitler may have meant that it was right to kill Jews. And since Hitler happened to be the person in power, he got to enforce his ideas of “right” and “wrong” on millions of innocent people. Ironically, not only does deconstructionism undermine the very purpose of many different studies (such as philosophy), but it also undermines the very reasons for studying literature. If the ultimate goal of reading literature is to construct one’s own personal meaning from another author’s work, then what is the point in reading what the author has to say in the first place? If all the reader is really after is what the reader brings to a text, then why bother reading the text to begin with?

Although deconstructionism may sound good in theory to some, it clearly has some very negative, far-reaching consequences. Unfortunately, deconstructionism as an idea has become so engrained in our culture that many people accept it as simply the way things ought to be (few people have a second thought when they are told to decide what a text “means to them”). Proponents of a deconstructionist philosophy ought to consider very carefully whether or not they are ready to face the complete ramifications of their theory. And while they’re at it, those who support the idea of deconstructionism might wish to consider the fact that their theory is self refuting. The statement “In reality, there is no truth” is completely contradictory (if there is no truth, there is no “reality”), so deconstructionism as a philosophy really destroys the foundations upon which it is built. Of course, the stalwart and steadfast amongst the deconstructionist movement ought to be perfectly thrilled about the fact that their philosophy is riddled with contradictions, since this falls right in line with their way of thinking, which states that all writing contains contradictions. In reality, most deconstructionists are not so happy when opponents of deconstructionism set out to criticize, (or “deconstruct”, so to speak), their philosophy. But, in theory at least, nothing would make a true deconstructionist happier than a literature student pondering what the question “What does this mean to you?” means to them.

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List of sources:
Derrida, J., 1983. “The time of a thesis: punctuations” from Philosophy in France Today ed. Alan Montefiore. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. p.40
TARNISHED LAUREATE: A special report.; Nobel Winner Finds Her Story Challenged by Larry Rohter, New York Times, Published December 15, 1998
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/12/15/world/tarnished-laureate-a-special-report-nobel-winner-finds-her-story-challenged.html?scp=7&sq=rigoberta menchu&st=cse&pagewanted=1
Guatemala Laureate Defends ‘My Truth’ By Julia Preston, New York Times, Published January 21, 1999

http://www.nytimes.com/1999/01/21/world/guatemala-laureate-defends-my-truth.html?scp=5&sq=rigoberta%20menchu&st=cse

My truth

College ‘n stuff

I visited my beloved blog today, and was quite sad to realize just how long I’d gone without posting a single thing. And yet according to my blog tracker, people still visit my blog almost daily. So, if you’re one of the people who has come to this page seeking a bit of enlightenment (okay, not really… I’m not THAT smart), I want to apologize for being so tardy in posting anything of interest for you to read. Basically… I’m blaming every bit of lateness that occurs in my life on college, and I will continue to do so now. What can I say… the life of a college student is a busy one. I sometimes have difficulty making time even for my closest friends between cranking out integrals, solving problems about spherical cows, writing papers….

Wait a minute… writing papers! Yes, as an English 101 student, I’m expected to crank out a great piece of writing approximately once every other week. Now, unlike some people, I actually put a lot of love and care into each and every paper that I write, and to me it seems a waste to pour all that time into a piece that only my teacher will get to read. So, I’ve decided that for at least the rest of this semester, I’ll be sharing with you all some of my assignments which I deem entertaining and relevant to the subject matter of this blog. Hopefully, you’ll enjoy them. And to all you English 101 students out there using the “Allyn and Bacon Guide to Writing” who get the brilliant idea that they could possibly plagiarize my work for their own papers, let me caution you. Not only will you be BREAKING THE LAW in doing so (and yes, Big Brother IS watching you), but I will also carefully neglect to tell you what sort of grades I received on these papers. So copy at your own risk.

A Legal Adult

So, I was posting the essay I wrote a month ago on my blog, and just sorta poking around, as I have not spent much time on my blog lately. As I was browsing, I realized that the lil’ green text under “The Right Perspective” is no longer accurate, since I am now eighteen years old. I went to change this mistake, but as I did, I began thinking about how this would make a great topic for another post. So, briefly, while I have a bit of time to kill, I want to share with you, my loyal readers, a little bit about what it means to be an eighteen year old white male in the United States.

On the one hand, being a legal adult comes with many privileges. For the first time in my life, I can actually go use the internet at the local library without having to have my parents’ permission. I could go to an “R” rated movie without permission if I wanted to, and I could get a driver’s license without going to classes (if I didn’t already have one). I could legally move out on my own, go into a bar, or buy cigarettes if I were so inclined.

But at the same time, being eighteen comes with a lot of responsibility. I am a legally responsible individual, and if I commit a crime, it will go on my permanent record. I’m also legally responsible for anything I sign.

Now, so far, this is all well and good. I don’t have any complaints about the responsibilities, and while I don’t think I’ll really use any of my new privileges, it’s nice to know that I have them. So far, so good. But then comes the problem. As a male, I am required to register for the draft. Which is okay… I’m all for serving the country if we are at war. But what irks me to no end is that since I am under 21, I’m not allowed to buy liquor, or carry a concealed handgun. I have all the responsibilities of an adult… I, and every other male between 18 and 21 like me, SHOULD have the right to buy alcohol and carry a concealed weapon. After all… if we can be trusted to march through Afghanistan with machine guns, shouldn’t we ALSO be trusted to be responsible enough to not drink and drive, or carry a concealed handgun? The system is ridiculously imbalanced against young male adults.

There’s another thing about the draft. Women aren’t required to register for it. Which is okay, in my opinion… women should not be forced to serve in the military. But now I’m gonna say something which may offend a lot of people out there: If women can’t be drafted, they shouldn’t be allowed to serve in the military at all. And here’s why I say that. Serving in the military is a privilege and an honor. And for men, the privilege of getting to serve in the military comes with a responsibility: men who DON’T want to serve in the military may end up being FORCED to serve in the military, instead of pursuing the career they want. Women, on the other hand, have no such responsibility. A woman may, if she wants, serve in the military. But she will never be FORCED to. So, women will always get to do whatever they want, while men will not. Again, this is unbalanced and unfair to all the young men in our country who are being unfairly discriminated against.

Of course, this is just one of the many ways that men are discriminated against in our culture. Crack a joke about a Hispanic, and you’ll be called a racist. But you can get away with saying that white men are all stupid, irresponsible idiots, without anyone really caring or getting upset one way or another. A white male can be denied employment in favor of a Pacific Islander with an identical resume, just because he is white. And a white male can be excluded from scholarships and other educational opportunities that an American Indian woman gets to take advantage of. Everywhere you look in society, the white male is discriminated against. But of course, no one can do anything about it, since if they tried to, they’d get accused of being racist. So, for the time being at least, it seems that white men are doomed to get discriminated against and made fun of, while being told to shut up, go to work, be honest citizens and pay taxes to help fund government scholarships for poor, underprivileged minorities. So much for liberty.

The Importance of Free Speech in Academia

An essay I wrote for a contest a month ago…

The right to free speech is almost universally accepted as a basic, essential right of man. From the ancient Greek philosophy that the right to free speech is critical to a free society, to today’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognizing freedom of expression as a right of every human being, the right to free speech has been acknowledged by almost every culture of every era. Besides a few notable exceptions, freedom of speech is protected, at least in name, by every country around the world.

Despite cultural, social and religious differences, free speech is almost universally recognized as a basic, inherent right of every human being, and is a crucial part of many aspects of our society today. Alexander Meiklejohn, former dean of Brown University and member of the National Committee of the ACLU, argued that democracy and freedom of speech are inseparable. He stated that democracy will not be true to its essential ideal if those who are in power are able to manipulate the masses by stifling freedom of expression. The English author, poet, and politician, John Milton, went further, saying that mankind as a whole can only find truth when we are allowed freedom of expression.

Clearly, freedom of speech is and always has been a basic, fundamental right of mankind. Even a rudimentary knowledge of world history demonstrates that the primary and most effective means of controlling large groups of people is through the suppression of free speech. Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia are two of the most familiar historical examples of people being controlled by governments that denied them the right to express their opinions. Joseph Stalin recognized the importance of freedom of ideas when he said, “Ideas are far more powerful than guns. We don’t allow our enemies to have guns, why should we allow them to have ideas?”

The battle for free speech is not confined to history books, however. There is battle raging today, not through bloody revolutions and violent confrontations, but in the calm and systematic suppression of free speech and free thought. This battle is not taking place in some far off country under a tyrannical dictator, but here, in our own country, where we are most vulnerable. It is not being fought in the halls of Congress, but on the campuses of universities throughout America.

Most Americans believe that we live in a free country, founded on the principles of liberty. In some areas, this is still true. But the average American would be shocked to discover that every day thousands of Americans are denied the right to free speech, not by the government, but by educational institutions all across the country. This discovery becomes even more shocking when we realize that the victims of this struggle are students, who are still in the process of forming their basic ideas and philosophies about the world, and that these rights are being taken by the very people who are supposed to be helping them form these ideas.

The Greek philosopher, Aristotle, recognized the great importance and influence of education when he said, “All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth.” Yet the very foundations of education are being undermined in college campuses all across America. Consider, for example, the mandatory year-long orientation program at the University of Delaware. In this program, students were instructed not only in what not to say, but what not to believe about a variety of social and moral issues. Standing alongside the orientation program as the enforcer of these policies was the university’s list of procedures for dealing with emergencies, which classified “oppressive” speech (any expression that is even perceived as being racist, sexist, anti-Semitic or homophobic) as an emergency warranting immediate notification of the staff, day or night. This policy declared so-called oppressive speech equal to a fire or rape in importance, and superseding in importance a physical fight. (Physical fights could be reported the next day.) No one in their right mind would say that words perceived as oppressive speech warranted such attention. The policy-makers at the University of Delaware were probably not acting out of concern for the safety and well-being of the students, but rather to make an ideological power-grab, forcing the students to believe and live by the personal moral and ethical beliefs of the administration. And this was not an isolated case. Blatantly unconstitutional speech codes and other oppressive limitations on free speech plague educational institutions all across America. This kind of mind control and censorship in the educational system can be devastating to society.

Higher education is supposed to provide an opportunity for students to learn how to think for themselves, develop their own opinions, and critically analyze the beliefs and ideas they encounter in life. Abraham Lincoln recognized the importance of the formative years of one’s education when he said, “The philosophy of the classroom today is the philosophy of the Government tomorrow.” Rather than promote critical, logical thinking, our institutions of higher learning are actively discouraging it, through unconstitutional policies and speech codes. This kind of coercion has multiple negative effects; not only does it force the students to accept the personal (and possibly wrong) beliefs of the current administration, but it also teaches students that it is wrong to question, challenge, and think for oneself. This systematic poisoning of the inherent human desire to challenge and question what we are told to believe has broad-spread catastrophic effects which can be difficult to comprehend.

When people are taught not to think for themselves, the very foundations on which democracy stands are undermined. Democracy relies on the common citizen to keep the government accountable. But when the people have been trained to mindlessly accept whatever they are told, the accountability system put in place by our founding fathers is ruined. Further, these individuals become susceptible to brain washing by anyone with a political or ideological agenda. When people accept what they are told without thinking, the door is open for dictators to come into power.

Furthermore, the consequences of such violations of the right to freedom of expression are not limited to politics. Most, if not all, of humanity’s greatest political, social, or scientific advances have been the result of men and women who were willing to challenge the accepted opinion and strive for something better. If the young people of our society are taught that it is wrong to disagree with those who are in authority, a generation of breakthroughs and discoveries will be sacrificed.

Fortunately, as serious as this problem is, it is fixable. While history speaks out about the importance of freedom of expression, it also presents a solution. Despite the monumental consequences of the suppression of free thought and individual expression, all that is necessary to counter-act these negative effects is a handful of committed, dedicated individuals who are willing to stand against the established authorities. The price for such opposition may be high, but when weighed against the cost of not standing up for our rights, there is no alternative.

Healthcare

Loyal readers/fans,

First of all, I want to apologize for such a long period of inactivity. Well, you all know how it is, I’m sure. You mean to write, but keep on putting it off and putting it off, until next thing you know, months have gone by since your last post. Well, that’s life.

I wanted to take some time tonight to talk about something Patrick Henry is quoted as saying: “Give me liberty or give me death.” Many people proudly quote this phrase and say that they too would have rather die than let their liberty be taken away. I’d like to see how this applies to a very front and center issue of today: health care.

Now, of course, our liberty has been being slowly disappearing over the last hundred years or so. But today, there is a very real, very serious threat to our liberty which endangers us all: socialized medicine. First of all, this is simply just a stupid idea. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that when the government runs an organization, quality goes down and cost goes up. And for that reason alone, I would think that the idea of socialized medicine would be almost universally laughed at. Unfortunately, due to the high levels of mass-stupidity which plague America today, there are many, many people who actually believe that a publically run health-care system is a good idea.

That’s bad enough, of course. But what makes it far worse are the provisions in the current health care bill which state that Americans will not be allowed to use a private health care option. Now, quite frankly, I find this terrifying. I am scared to death at the prospect of a government bureaucrat making my medical decisions for me. I don’t know of anyone who actually trusts the government to do a good job at anything. This, to me, makes the idea of mandatory government run healthcare seem completely, utterly absurd.

But beyond the seriousness, (and absurdity) of the situation, there’s a principle involved here that goes beyond the government doing a bad job at just about everything. A mandatory health-care system run by the government is quite possibly the most blatant disregard of individual liberty within the last hundred years in America. The right to control one’s own body; what medications go in, which treatments are used, etc. seems, to me at least, like an absolutely fundamental right that should NEVER be violated. And yet, we stand to lose that liberty if this current health care system proposed by President Obama becomes law.

So, I’d like to challenge you, my readers, on the issue of health care. Is it a fundamental right to control one’s own body? And if so, are we as Americans willing to stand behind Patrick Henry and join him in saying: Give me liberty, or give me death!

1000+ Hits!

Between finals for school, studying for and taking the SAT, and the internet going down for two plus weeks, I haven’t had much of an opportunity to write here. However, in the interim between posts, (yes, I am going to write the third part of that post on The God Delusion), I thought I’d take a moment to point out that this site has passed the one thousand hit mark! Which means that over one thousand individual people have visited this site, and gotten at least a glimpse of The Right Perspective! Thanks to everyone who visits this site!

Dawkins on Trial, Part 2

I know what you’re all thinking… “He’s never going to get to Part II of the post”. That’s what you were thinking, right? Go ahead and admit it. Okay… I flatter myself by even thinking that anyone reads this blog anyway. Well, never mind. It’s on to Part II of “Dawkins on Trial”.

In chapter four of “The God Delusion”, Dawkins sets out to prove conclusively, (or as conclusively as anything can be proven to not exist), that God as a personal, supernatural deity does not exist. His argument was, to say the least, weak. If I were a person with the tact (or lack of tact) of Dawkins, I would more likely call it something along the lines of stupid, sophomoric, childish, idiotic, small-minded, devoid of reason… well, that’s enough insulting adjectives for now. On to the real thing.

Before we launch in to the heart of Dawkins’s argument, let me first summarize the argument which Dawkins himself is attempting to answer. Dawkins refers to it as “The 747 Gambit”, an argument originally used by Intelligent Designers but which Dawkins supposedly turns on its head. It goes something like this.

To get from the first living cell at the very bottom of the tree of life up to human, at least 600 changes had to occur in the genetic code. It’s probably more than just 600, but 600 is a nice, round number that’s easy to work with. Also, each of these changes must occur in order in order for them to do the organism any good.  Next, we assume that with each mutation, there is a 50% chance of making the right mutation.  Now, using statistics and the premises we just stated, we can conclude that the odds of a bacteria evolving into a human are approximately 4.1 times 10 to the 180th. In other words, one out of every 4.1 times 10 to the 80th bacteria will evolve into a human.

Now, to figure out the actual chances of this occurring in our universe, we take the number of particles in the universe, assume that each one of those particles is actually a cell, and assume that all those cells are mutating and reproducing at a rate of 10 to the 43rd times per second. Then, we take those numbers and multiply them by the supposed age of the earth, (15 billion years), and we get the total number of chances for a bacterium to mutate into a human. The answer is 10 to the 140th changes. Now, that seems like a huge number, but it isn’t nearly as huge as the number of chances necessary for life to evolve.

In the end, this argument concludes that the odds of life evolving anywhere in the universe are about 10 to the -30th. Now remember, we started out assuming that there were billions of little cells right at the beginning of time. We didn’t even calculate the odds of the first cell forming. (Actually, I have, and it bumps the number from 10 to the -30th to something like 10 to the -100th… some astronomical figure). So the intelligent design argument goes something like this: How can we conclude that life evolved against such incalculable odds driven merely by random chance? Sounds reasonable, right? Wait ‘till you hear Dawkins’s “brilliant” reply.

Dawkins’s argument basically boils down to this. He says that no matter how unlikely it is for humankind to have evolved from dirt and “primordial soup”, the chances of any being complex enough to have designed humans existing are even less.

Or, put another way, Dawkins says this. Human beings are complex. Fair enough. That means their chances of coming into existence are very slim. But then God must be more complex than human beings, because he created them. Therefore, the chances of God coming into existence are even slimmer! After all, if humans are complex enough to necessitate a designer to explain their existence, then surely the designer himself must be far more complex, and, as a result, must need its own designer even more than humans themselves. But then God’s creator must be even more complex than God, therefore God’s designer needs a designer. And so on and so forth, in a never ending chain of logic. This is the argument that Dawkins has termed “The Ultimate 747 Gambit”.

Now, I’m not sure if I even need to go through much logic to convince most of my readers how bad of an argument this is. I mean, it struck me as absurd from the time I first read it, and I have a hard time understanding how Dawkins ever got such nonsensical rubbish past his editors and publishers, etc. But obviously he did, which means that there are still some people out there who actually buy into Dawkins’s pathetic excuse for an argument. Therefore, I feel compelled to refute it for the sake of those who have had the colloquial wool pulled over their eyes by Mr. Dawkins.

I’m sure there are multiple, multiple ways to refute this argument. In fact, there have been whole books written purely as refutations of Dawkins’s book. I don’t intend to take an exhaustive look at all of them, firstly because I believe that for any logical and reasonable person, one really good argument should be enough to remove any acceptance of Dawkins’s faulty argument, and secondly because I simply don’t have the time to go through all the fallacies of Dawkins’s reasoning here and now. Rather, I will present the two arguments that first came to mind when I read this chapter.

The first argument is one of a simple nature that I’m sure many people like myself have thought of, but nevertheless is very sound. It goes something like this. If we are created beings, created by some sort of supernatural entity, then it stands to reason that our mental capacities should be far less than that of the entity that created us. Therefore, since we are so limited in our thinking, there are bound to be things about our creator that we are for all practical purposes incapable of understanding. In fact, we as created beings would be arrogant to presume that we should be able to understand all aspects of the very thing that created us. Since then, we know that there are things about our creator that we will never be able to comprehend; we should not be surprised that we do not understand how our creator came into existence. After all, we, compared with our hypothetical creator, are incredible feeble minded. We therefore should not expect to be able to understand all things about our creator, among which is how he came into existence.

This is such a simple argument that it hardly needs to be explicitly stated; nevertheless, Dawkins apparently overlooked it when he penned his book. Dawkins, when righting his book, seems to assume that we humans, with our feeble, pathetic (relatively speaking, of course), minds should be able to grasp every aspect of God and his nature. How arrogant and small minded! Can Dawkins not see that human beings should not necessarily be able to understand everything about the nature of our universe and creator?

As I said before, this is such a simple argument that I shouldn’t even need to state it explicitly. Nevertheless, it needs to be said because there are apparently those to whom it has not yet occurred. But there are those to whom this argument may not be totally convincing. After all, most of the atheists I have encountered are quite unwilling to accept the prospect that there are things in the universe that humans are incapable of understanding. This seems to be built right into the atheist frame of mind. So, as a result of this predisposition against anything beyond the human range of understanding, the above argument, logical as it may be, will most likely carry very little weight with most of the hardened atheists such as Dawkins. Therefore I believe that a second, auxiliary line of reasoning is in order.

For this second argument, I don’t intend to draw on any new logical principles. Rather, I would like to take Dawkins’s “Ultimate 747 Gambit” to its final logical conclusion, which turns out to be the death of truth and reality as we know it.

Let us now look at the world through Dawkins’s 747 glasses. That is, we now assume that anything we see in the world around us is more likely to have evolved or come about by random chance than to have been designed. Let us first look at, say, Stonehenge. Certainly, Stonehenge has the appearance of being designed. The circular arrangement of the stones clearly indicates that there was an intelligent agent behind its construction.

But now, let us look at Stonehenge through Dawkins’s 747 glasses. We are now forced to conclude something very different. “Yes,” Dawkins’s reasoning will tell us, “it looks as though Stonehenge was designed. But remember, the chances of Stonehenge coming about as a result of random chance, as slim as they may be, are much better than the chances of a designer having evolved. Therefore, we must conclude that Stonehenge is actually a result of random chance.”

We will get the same results if we look at the Easter Island heads. They look designed, but in reality they must have come about by random chance. After all, as unlikely as their creation at the hands of random chance may be, the chances of any intelligent agent existing to design them are far worse. Therefore, the Easter Island heads must also be the result of random wind, sandstorms, hurricanes, etc.

We can also reach the same conclusion if we look at the pyramids of Egypt, or the Great Wall of China. Yes, archeological evidence seems to say that those things were designed and built by intelligent, thinking beings, but the chances of those intelligent beings even existing are so low that it is more probable that the archeological evidence itself is a result of chance.

Now, if you are holding your sides with laughter or rolling your eyes at the absurdity of this argument, that’s good. It shows you’re thinking. What every logical person reading this post should be saying at this point is that my argument is absurd. Why? Well, we know that human beings exist, right? So as long as human beings exist, then we no longer have to worry about the issue of where the designer came from. Right?

Well, not so fast. Let’s take the trail of Dawkins’s logic further, and see where it leads. You probably interact with intelligent, thinking beings every day. Now, according to Dawkins’s reasoning, there are two possibilities to explain their existence. Possibility 1 is that they actually do in fact exist, and that they evolved by random chance. Possibility 2 is that they actually do not exist at all, but are rather simply the result of your imagination; random neurons in your brain firing in random patterns which cause you to perceive things which actually are not there. Now, which is more probable?

At first glance, you may start laughing or rolling your eyes again. After all, this is getting more absurd all the time. What are the chances that you actually imagine everything around you? Pretty slim, right? I mean, how on earth could your brain construct such a detailed reality, purely by random chance?

Well, here’s the bottom line. However slim the chances are that you are simply imagining all of reality, the chances that reality actually exists and evolved from random chance are much, much slimmer. Therefore, you, according to Dawkins’s reasoning, must conclude that you are the only thing in the universe that really exists. Everything else must be a construct of your imagination.

Now, while this may be an excellent lead-in to post-modernism, it is really a ridiculous proposition that people by and large are unwilling to accept because they know it to be false. Therefore, we must conclude that Dawkins’s argument, which led us to this absurd conclusion, is indeed flawed and therefore cannot be used to prove the non-existence of God. Reductio ad absurdum.

Of course, a logical exercise such as this will hardly be enough to convince most atheists, I’m sure. When reading an article such as this, the average atheist will undoubtedly hunker down in the bunker of Darwinian evolution or natural selection. In fact, Dawkins himself hides within the proverbial fortress of natural selection for the remainder of the chapter. I assume this is because he realizes how faulty his argument is. But whatever the reason, we shall see that logic can tear down the walls of the fortress of evolution, just as it tore down the artificial barrier of Dawkins’s “Ultimate 747 Gambit”.

The very next section of the chapter is entitled “Natural Selection as a Consciousness-Raiser”. In it, along with the rest of the chapter, Dawkins’s sweet refrain is “Not chance, natural selection!” I would explain what he means by this, but I fear that those who have not read Dawkins’s book would be incredulous and not believe that he actually wrote such gibberish. So, instead of explaining Dawkins’s refrain, I will let Dawkins do it himself.

(Discussing the Venus’ Flower Basket) No indeed, chance is not the likely designer. That is one thing on which we can all agree. The statistical improbability of phenomena such as the Euplectella’s skeleton is the central problem that any theory of life must solve. The greater the statistical improbability, the less plausible is chance as a solution: that is what improbable means. But the candidate solutions to the riddle of improbability are not, as is falsely implied, design and chance. They are design and natural selection.

Design is not the only alternative to chance. Natural selection is always a better alternative.

See? I told you that you would be incredulous. I was too. Again, I can’t imagine how such garbage ever made it past the editors. But unfortunately, I find that many people are actually taken in by this deception, thus, I feel obliged to point out the obvious mistake in Dawkins’s reasoning.

Dawkins seems to think that chance and natural selection are two independent things. He presents natural selection as an alternative to random chance. Now, we all know what natural selection is, of course. It is the principle which Darwin developed that is the primary means of evolution. Basically it says that those who are more fit and able to survive in a given environment will survive, while those who are less fit will die off. Thus, the species as a whole will gradually become better and better as it becomes more fit to survive.

If you still do not see the glaring flaw in Dawkins’s argument, you are probably a hardened atheist for life, and I have my doubts that you will ever change. All the same, I again feel obligated to point out the glaring flaw in Dawkins’s argument. That is this: There is no natural selection without random chance!

Natural selection and random chance must necessarily go hand in hand with one another. Without random chance, there is no natural selection. Let me illustrate what I mean with an analogy.

Imagine a factory that produces bicycles. Now, in one part of the factory, you have the machinery that actually constructs and assembles the parts. Then, at the end of the assembly line, you have quality control. Quality control is there to ensure that no defective bicycles get shipped out to the distributors. Quality control, necessary as it may be, cannot create a working bicycle. It can only eliminate those that don’t work.

Now, let’s apply our analogy to evolution. In the grand scheme of evolutionary theory, natural selection is the “quality control” of life. It makes sure the defective products get thrown out, while the properly constructed products survive. But if natural selection is the quality control, what serves as the machinery that puts the product together? Enter random chance. Random chance is the machinery that puts together living organisms, while natural selection eliminates the ones that don’t work.

Now hopefully you can see why Dawkins’s reasoning is so utterly absurd. Natural selection, by itself is utterly incapable of creating anything. It must have random chance (or some other engine, I know of no others suggested by evolutionists), in order for it to have anything to naturally select! Natural selection, by its very name, implies that there must already be an organism to select. And the only way for evolution to produce those products is through random chance.

So as you see, natural selection is really no alternative at all. It is a means of eliminating faulty designs only. It cannot create, it can only destroy. Thus, we are still faced with the dilemma which Dawkins told us was faulty: chance or design? Dawkins himself admits that it is absurd to think that chance is responsible for the incredible complexity of life we see around us, therefore the only alternative left is in fact design.

As I said before, I am truly perplexed as to how such gibberish ever got past the editors. But Dawkins at least makes some effort to redeem himself later on in the chapter, although in reality he turns out looking more foolish than before. What I am referring to is his so-called explanation of how we got the first living cell.

Dawkins is at least not so foolish as to suggest that natural selection was responsible for the first living cell, (showing that he does in fact understand some aspects of natural selection after all). Rather, he employs the anthropic principle.

His argument is strung out over a number of pages, so unfortunately I will simply have to summarize rather than letting you read Dawkins’s own words. Basically, Dawkins argument goes like this:

We know that for life to exist, it has to be formed on a planet favorable to life, (e.g. it has liquid water, it is the right distance away from a star, etc.) Now, let us assume that the odds of a planet that is favorable to life existing are one in a billion. Staggering, right? Now, let’s assume that the odds of a cell spontaneously generating on such a planet are, again, one in a billion. Again, staggering. That means that as a whole, the odds of life forming on any given planet are one in a billion billion. How could this ever have happened by random chance? Well, hold on to your hats ladies and gentleman, because this will blow you away. It turns out that there are at least a billion billion planets in our universe! So therefore, statistically speaking, a cell will form on at least one of them! And earth happens to be the lucky planet! Ta-da!!! (Not actually taken from “The God Delusion”, but still an accurate summary.)

Again, I wish I didn’t even have to point out the glaring flaw in the argument. It makes me sad to see people actually buy in to such hog-wash. But unfortunately, people have, so I must do my best to show why Dawkins is wrong.

Dawkins says that the probability of life emerging on any given planet is one in a billion billion, or 10 to the -18th. But since there happens to be 10 to the 18th planets in the universe, everything all works out. Well, perhaps Mr. Dawkins should have done some research before opening his mouth.

It turns out that for the first cell to be formed, there had to be at least 250 proteins. Now, a protein is made up of a chain of hundreds or sometimes thousands of amino acids. There are about 20 amino acids that would be essential for building a protein, and they all must be arranged in exactly the right order for one protein to be formed. Let us assume that the first 250 proteins were fairly simple, say 100 amino acids each. Now remember, each of those amino acids must be arranged in just the right order. And with the addition of each amino acid, there is a one in 20 chance of getting the right amino acid, or put another way, a 19 in 20 chance of getting the wrong amino acid. If we run the numbers, we can actually calculate the odds of one protien forming as a result of random chance. It turns out that the odds of even one simple protein being formed by random chance are 20 to the 100th, or 1.26 times 10 to the 130th.

What does this number mean? Well, let me see if I can explain. Basically, in order for us to conclude, statistically speaking, that just one protein should be formed somewhere in the universe, there would have to be one quadrillion, quadrillion,  quadrillion,  quadrillion,  quadrillion, quadrillion, quadrillion, times as many planets as Dawkins supposed. And that is just for one protein to form, not 250.

I’m forced to wonder if Dawkins even realized how utterly foolish he sounded when he proudly declared that:

…My earlier calculation (referring to the one in a billion for a cell spontaneously generating) demonstrated that even a chemical model with odds of success as low as one in a billion would still predict that life would arise on a billion planets in the universe. And the beauty of the anthropic principle is that it tells us, against all intuition, that a chemical model need only predict that life will arise on one planet in a billion, billion to give us a good and entirely satisfying explanation for live here. I do not for a moment believe that the origin of life was anywhere near so improbably in practice.

Even accepting the most pessimistic estimate of the probability that life might spontaneously originate, this statistical argument completely demolishes any suggestion that we should postulate design to fill the gap.

Poor Mr. Dawkins! Do you not realize that your “pessimistic estimate” is so absurdly optimistic that you sound like a complete and total fool?!? The very notion that the odds of life spontaneously generating are one in a billion is so absurd, so naive, so ridiculously stupid, that I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

There’s more to the chapter than that, all filled with the same kind of rubbish. For example, Dawkins applies his beloved anthropic principle to the cosmos, and attempts to explain why our universe is so perfectly suited to life as it is. I didn’t consider any of the rest of it really worth repeating, because it is mostly speculation and so is impossible to refute with empirical evidence.

As you can hopefully see, Dawkins came absolutely no closer to proving that God does not exist. If anything, his supposition that the odds of life spontaneously emerging are as generous as a billion, billion to one did more to convince me utterly of the fact that the first life must have been designed, rather than convince me that life is a product of random chance.

The rest of Richard Dawkins’s book is built upon the “fact” that God does not exist, which is really rather unfortunate, as Dawkins has hardly offered so much as one semi-convincing argument against his existence. Even so, it may still be valuable to examine the rest of his book, regardless of the fact that we have already completely undermined in this post what the rest of the book us built upon. And that is what I intend to do in Part III of “Dawkins on Trial”.

Dawkins on Trial, Part 1

Inspired by a discussion about the existence of god, I decided to read Richard Dawkins’s “The God Delusion”. I have read many books about Intelligent Design and other topics akin to the subject, and had always found the arguments in those books utterly convincing. However, I always believe in listening to both sides of the argument, and felt an intellectual obligation to myself to see what kind of a case Richard Dawkins could build for atheism. After investing the time and effort to read the nearly 400 page volume, I feel the need to share with you, my loyal reader, my thoughts about some key principles in this book.

I started out, contrary to my traditional habits, by reading the author’s preface. In it the author detailed the purpose of the book, as well as briefly outlining what the various chapters in the book deal with. Dawkins then goes on to explain and defend his lack of traditional respect for religion. He then makes a comment which I find somewhat fascinating and at the same time troubling. At the beginning of a paragraph Dawkins states:

If this book works as I intend, religious readers who open it will be atheists when they put it down.

He then goes on to, in effect, admit that the book will in fact not work as well as he intends.

What presumptuous optimism! Of course, dyed-in-the-wool faith-heads are immune to argument, their resistance built up over a number of years of childhood indoctrination using methods that took centuries to mature.

This statement worries me, not merely for its demeaning insults. “Immune to argument”? Apparently, Dawkins believes that it is impossible to convince a “faith-head” that they are wrong using logic and reason. Now, I take this as basically a disclaimer from Dawkins. What he is saying is that the arguments he presents in his book are so completely and utterly convincing to any objective reader that the only reason anyone could read his book and not become an atheist is that they are so indoctrinated, brainwashed and biased that reasoning of any kind is impossible. Because of this, I will take extra precautions to leave my biases behind as much as possible (of course, no one can ever be completely bias free), and look at “The God Delusion” from a purely objective standpoint.

The author begins the book by explaining what kind of god and religion he does not mean to discredit. He talks about what he calls “The Deeply Religious Non Believer”. Basically, the people to whom Dawkins is referring are scientists who talk about “god” at some point or another, but who actually mean some abstract concept, such as the laws of gravity or something like that. Dawkins says that while he can find no fault in that kind of respect of the laws of nature, he does not think it is a good idea for scientists to refer to god in this way because of the confusion it may cause. Simultaneously, the author very neatly discounts the theological beliefs of many scientists who may actually believe in a real god, but are unwilling to state it only indirectly due to fear of persecution by the likes of Dawkins. Whether or not this was intentional or if Dawkins really believes that all modern scientists are atheists is a mystery to me, and I shall make no guesses as to his real intentions.

Next, Dawkins goes through great pains in discussing the special treatment that religion is accorded, especially in the United States, and then with great outrage tells the reader that religion deserves no more special treatment than political opinions or any other belief. He lists example after example of things being allowed for “religious” purposes that would otherwise never be allowed in our society, and with each example decrying the special favors that religion is granted as unfair and unjust. In so doing, Dawkins also predisposes the reader to subconsciously dislike religion for getting special favors, rather than judging the governments which hand them out. Again, whether or not this is intentional or accidental I cannot say.

The end conclusion of the chapter is stated by Dawkins as follows:

It is in the light of the unparalleled presumption of respect for religion that I make my own disclaimer for this book. I shall not go out of my way to offend, but nor shall I don kid gloves to handle religion any more gently than I would handle anything else.

Now, perhaps Dawkins is telling the truth, and he handles everything else with the same lack of care and concern that he handled the very foundation on which many people’s lives are buil. In fact, I have heard rumors that Richard Dawkins is not particularly likable in person. And if this is the case, then all I can say is that I pity any man with such an obvious and glaring lack of tact. For it seems to me, (and apparently even to some of Dawkins’s fellow atheists), that Dawkins could not possibly have handled the subject of religion with less care than he did in “The God Delusion”. Nevertheless, I am willing to give Dawkins the benefit of the doubt and believe that he truly did treat religion with the exact same lack of care with which he treats anything else.

Chapter 2 opens with Dawkins stating that “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all of fiction”. He then spends forty pages telling us just exactly who and what the god he’s trying to disprove is, and why we should treat God just like a scientific hypothesis. I won’t bore you with the details, but rather, tell you as briefly as I can what I felt Dawkins was trying to get across.

The overarching theme of Chapter 2, as far as I could tell, is that God should in fact be treated like a scientific hypothesis. In other words, if God exists, we should be able to prove scientifically that it is so. To prove this, he brings up several points, some better than others. One of the worse arguments goes like this: If we were to find some sort of evidence that, say, Jesus did in fact have no biological father, do you think the Christians would disown it and stick to their reasoning that God is outside of science? No, of course not! Therefore, if we can prove that God does exist through science, we should also be able to prove that he doesn’t exist using science. I’m not sure I need to point out what bad logic this is, but I will anyway. If a god does exist, it needn’t be the God of the Bible. Why couldn’t god be a being that created the world and never interfered with it again? Surely, we wouldn’t be able to disprove this god with science, right? Dawkins answers the above point like this:

…it may not be so easy in practice to distinguish one kind of universe (a universe with a god such as I described above) from another (a universe with no such god). Nevertheless, there is something utterly special about the hypothesis of ultimate design: and equally special about the alternative… They are close to being irreconcilably different. Like nothing else, evolution really does provide an explanation for the existence of entities whose improbability would otherwise, for practical purposes, rule them out.

How vague! How non-descript and non-committal! If, say, a god placed earth in its ideal orbit around its ideal sun, gave it its ideal conditions, planted a cell on that earth, then left for good, what would be the practical discernable difference between that universe and the universe which Dawkins claims we are now in? What would be so “irreconcilably different” between the two universes?

Despite Dawkins’s faulty reasoning, he does raise some good points about the idea of the Christian God being a scientific hypothesis. After all, says Dawkins, even if God exists outside of the realm of science, he certainly interferes enough (according to the Bible) with affairs on earth. And certainly we should be able to scientifically examine at least these interferences, right? And in answer to this, I would say that we of course can scientifically examine the interferences. That is, we can examine the scientific evidence (or lack thereof) or a world-wide flood, the creation of man, and the parting of the Red Sea. All these are supposed acts of God that manifest themselves physically. Thus, it is perfectly within the realm of science to examine them.

Note that it does not follow, however, that we should be able to scientifically investigate the existence of God himself. This is a fallacy which Dawkins commits later on in the book, as we will see.

Chapter 3 deals with the “arguments” for god’s existence. I put that in quotes because the arguments that he presents for god’s existence are, by and large, some of the worst that I have ever heard. There are a few decent arguments among them, and one really good one, but as a general rule they are, quite simply, pathetic. It was almost as though Richard Dawkins spent several hours trolling the internet for the worst possible arguments he could find off of wing-nut websites and other such obscure corners of the internet in order to find them, just to make religion sound bad. But again, we are giving Dawkins the benefit of the doubt that he actually did treat religion as gently as he treats everything else, so I will drop that line of questions here and now.

The one really good argument is the argument by (or at least attributed to) C.S. Lewis. It is referred to here in America as the “Liar, Lunatic or Lord” argument (apparently in the UK it is referred to as “Mad Bad or God”, I’ve never heard it called that). Basically it goes like this. Since Jesus claimed to be God, he was either a liar, a lunatic, or God. We know he wasn’t a lunatic; he gave some of the most famous and powerful speeches in history, and gave moral advice that, according to Dawkins “anticipated Gandhi and Martin Luther King by two thousand years”. We don’t think he was a liar; who would die for a lie? That leaves the last remaining possibility; that he truly was God.

Dawkins cannot really deny the solid logic behind the argument. Indeed, his only reply to the logic itself was to ask whether Jesus really thought he was God (which, of course, would bump him into the lunatic category, which we ruled out). Instead, Dawkins takes a different angle of attack. Instead of attacking the reasoning itself, Dawkins claims that the New Testament gospels have been mutated over time, and that since they disagree with each other, they can’t really be trusted. (And yes, he asks the typical village atheist question: “Why do the genealogies in Matthew and Luke disagree?” I was truly shocked; I would have thought that he would have done at least some research before sitting down to write.)

I don’t think I need to detail for you the numerous ways the Bible is one of the most historically accurate ancient documents in existence. The fact that it has remained literally unchanged for thousands of years, its historical accuracy, its scientific knowledge far ahead of the authors’ time should all serve as testimony to the Bible’s historical accuracy as to the existence and life as Jesus, (yes, he even goes so far to suggest that Jesus might not have existed), if not its direct philosophical and theological claims. Apparently, however, Dawkins did not bother to do his homework on the reliability of the Bible.

What is very conspicuously missing from Dawkins’s chapter on arguments for the existence of God is the argument of intelligent design. But never fear, Dawkins saves this for the next chapter: “Why There Almost Certainly is No God”. Unfortunately, I have neither the time nor the mental energy at the present to delve into the next chapter which is most certainly the real heart of Dawkins’s book. I also have no desire to see if there is a word limit on blog posts. So I will leave it for you, my intelligent audience, to think about until I get around to writing the next part of this discussion on Richard Dawkins’s “The God Delusion”.