From way back in our primitive origins, humanity has always had holy men, swamis, gurus, mystics, seers, and various others who claimed knowledge of the supernatural — whatever that is — which they acquired by meditation, revelation, visions, etc. People accepted their teachings, obeyed them, and participated in their rituals. Why? Because they had only the simplest knowledge, and no way other than their limited observation to obtain information about the universe, so what their religious leaders said was unchallenged.
The priests had status and power, while their followers had — well, they had the comfort of believing that they benefited from the priests’ wisdom. Actually, there were benefits. The people were united by their common culture, and that was helpful in time of war. Those who scoffed or followed other teachings were severely punished. That is humanity’s intellectual past.
We’ve come a long way since then. The Renaissance restored the classical philosophy of the Greeks, and the Enlightenment provided new ways to think about economics, science, and politics. Our lives are incredibly better than those of our ancestors, and despite the claims of religious leaders, the advantages of our current age were not based on their ancient teachings — see Did Science Originate with Creationists?
Because of our insistence on freedom, those who still cling to the old ways are not only tolerated, their right to believe as they do is protected, and those who lead such activities are respected — as long as the believers are peaceful. The fact that many of their leaders are Elmer Gantry type charlatans doesn’t seem to interfere with the traditional status accorded to religious leaders and institutions — at least among their followers, and government benevolently assures them their freedom.
Which brings us to the subject matter of our humble blog. Prominent creationists are still behaving in the ancient way, preaching irrational nonsense, condemning unbelievers, and fleecing their ignorant followers. Fortunately, our laws prevent them from wielding governmental powers, so they can no longer torture and kill unbelievers. Their leaders no doubt find this frustrating, but as long as they can have influence with and extract money from their followers, they seem to be reasonably content. But they can’t fool us.
They long for the power their kind used to have. They imagine that if they could destroy science — which they see as their enemy — they could once again be respected as all-knowing, with the power of life and death their predecessors once had. This was discussed in one of our blog’s first posts: Discovery Institute: Enemies of the Enlightenment. It’s not just the Discoveroids. It’s all the other creationists too. If they had their way, they’d destroy Western Civilization and bring back the Dark Ages
All we can do is recognize them for what they are, ridicule them, and trust that the progress we have so recently made will not be lost. And we should never forget that the ancient ways are not gone, merely subdued. We must remain eternally vigilant, or we will lose all that we have gained.
Copyright © 2018. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.
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The Sensuous Curmudgeon 
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Yup.
Of course this also applies to superstitious worshippers of The Invisible Hand who enjoy minequoting Adam Smith and vote Donald the Clown into the White House. Thought I must admit that thus far Hillary Clinton very well might have done even a worse job. Thanks to dialectic processes Donald’s clowneries thus far have had some unexpected and unintentional benefits. So in his honour I present this picture from the other side of the small pond:
The Curmudgeon says “Because of our insistence on freedom, those who still cling to the old ways are not only tolerated, their right to believe as they do is protected, and those who lead such activities are respected — as long as the believers are peaceful. The fact that many of their leaders are Elmer Gantry type charlatans doesn’t seem to interfere with the traditional status accorded to religious leaders and institutions — at least among their followers, and government benevolently assures them their freedom.”
This is all true SC. “still cling” are the operative words in your observation because church attendance in america is, as I understand it, definitely on the decline. Which makes sense actually.
I think that the Elmer Gantry types actually do a good bit to move the groundswell change (reflected by reduced church attendance) towards logic and a fact based worldview. Personally, I have shaped a view of religion based on my childhood experiences with protestant church life that was moderate and realistic and which sustains me sometimes. Nostalgia? Or just a view that men need a creed or value system and it must have some basis.
Better that it be based on reality, than hocus pocus? Absolutely! My personal BS filter is based on my secular education. To me, a huge ongoing threat to secular education (that teaches students to use facts and logic), are the charter schools and any associated church schools using public tax dollars to teach religion. Buried deep in that environment, a lot of real non thinkers can be created. And there are, as you SC document and so intelligently comment on, still a lot of creationist science haters out there. Which of course, provides you with material ! Lucky You ! Ahem.
Creationists mostly don’t want to destroy science; they want to make it subject to their beliefs (which, whether they believe it or not, would in fact destroy science as we’ve known it for the past three hundred years).
We’ve been here before. Well, not the U.S., but Germany, which under the Nazis tried to throw out “Jewish science” (ironically slowing their A-bomb project, to the great good fortune of the world), and the Soviet Union, which made a bad agricultural system worse by applying (at Stalin’s command) the quack neo-Lamarckism of Trofim Lysenko, who had convinced the scientifically illiterate dictator that his ideas would dramatically improve food production.
As those examples indicate, trumping reason with ideology does not lead to happy outcomes. This won’t stop creationists, though; they’ll insist that their case is different because, by golly, their ideas are rooted in the Bible. (Well, maybe “scientific” creationists will dance around that a bit; there were sincere believers in “Aryan physics”–including some once-reputable scientists–and Lysenkoism, too.)
They imagine that if they could destroy science — which they see as their enemy — they could once again be respected as all-knowing, with the power of life and death their predecessors once had.
Total power, if you belong to the right group, and wealth beyond their wildest dreams would they accumulate. To top it off, any and all laws allowing dissent would be stricken and no questions regarding their legitimacy allowed.
It always makes me think that people like Penn and Teller would make a bomb at Pharaoh’s court – far more spectacular tricks than turning staffs to snakes. On the other hand, probably Pharaoh’s practitioners had more than that, too. On the third hand, over in Babylon, they could tell you when the sun or the moon were going to go dark, and that’s a really neat trick, done by priests, not scientists. Oh… wait…
Damn! Sometimes I just can’t believe it’s 2018. I’m too often gobsmacked by what some seemingly intelligent people say under the influence of their religion or whatever persuasion. I’m becoming pessimistic for the first time in my life. Hopefully that’s just me ageing – and unwarranted!
It is not only creationists who wish to destroy science. The EPA directorate has been doing all it can to hobble climate science, while the Free Market superstition holds sway in numerous economics departments and will no doubt hold sway in more as the Koch Foundation continues to fund professorships.
Paul Braterman says: “the Free Market superstition”
Yeah, we can’t allow economic freedom, can we? See The Folly of Economic Creationism.
There’s a curious irony here, of sorts, because Christian nationalists in the US, whether it’s traditional Protestant evangelicals, or the burgeoning alt-right, act as if they’re besieged on all fronts. They believe they’re actually the ones defending Western Civilization – which they equate with Christianity- from their perceived enemies.
Those enemies include all the usual suspects i.e. people like us, and the sorts of values and ideas espoused at this website.
Incredibly, some of the alt-righters appear to long for another civil war on US soil. Whether they’re aiming for some kind of personal reckoning, or they’ve merged with the crackpot end-of-dayer’s and think it’s the prelude to Armageddon, I have no idea. It’s all too crazy to fathom.
Ultimately, though, it may all just boil down to pitched cultural battles over who gets to own- or impose- a particular preferred narrative of the West.
Excellent example of creationist logic, dear SC. When it comes to your beloved superstition you are exactly as fond of logical fallacies – this time the false dilemma combined with suggestive question.
That’s how science killers fare. Like you, this time.
Free Market superstition results in three different postmen for three different companies delivering post in the same neighborhood in The Netherlands. That’s so much more efficient that governmental regulation – what you call economic creation. Using that term of course is the same trick as darwinism, which Ol’Hambo and Klinkleclapper are so fond of.
And of course you “forget” to point out that Wall Street stock market is one of the heaviest regulated ones of t he world, ie a fine example of “economic creation”. So is the prohibition of child labour. If you favour this you favour “economic design”.
Thanks for unvoluntarily confirming that your worship of the Invisible hand is a superstition like creacrap indeed. You will spare no effort to make sure that your beloved country will do worst on all most all social indices in the First World.
Like I wrote above you even manage to abuse your own Messias.
“The necessaries of life occasion the great expense of the poor. They find it difficult to get food, and the greater part of their little revenue is spent in getting it. The luxuries and vanities of life occasion the principal expense of the rich; and a magnificent house embellishes and sets off to the best advantage all the other luxuries and vanities which they possess. A taks upon house-rents, therefor, would generally fall upon the rich; and in this sort of inequality there would not, perhaps, be anything very unreasonable. It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense,. not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.”
Hint: this quote is not by Karl Marx.
That link of yours also betrays anti-scientific methodology. It belongs to the category “forget the facts because they contradict my favourite superstition.” Or as some reactionary Italian astronomer told Galilei when asked to look through his telescope: “No – it should not be, so it cannot be, so it isn’t.”
Your defense of Enlightenment is very, very selective.
To support my conclusion: in the past our dear SC has strongly objected to Obamacare. The facts:
https://www.businessinsider.nl/an-american-uses-britain-nhs-2015-1/?international=true&r=US
https://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/02/23/16799/socialized-or-not-britains-health-care-system-superior
Our dear SC can refute my conclusion by publicly admitting that he was wrong here. But that would of course embrace “economic creation” and hence goes against his Free Market superstition. So I predict he won’t.
FrankB again refers to my “Free Market superstition.”
You probably know that I don’t debate with creationists. I don’t debate with those who oppose economic freedom either. I stated my position eight years ago in Creationism or Socialism: Which is Dumber? That’s all I have to say on the subject, so let’s move on.
FrankB – Just think of the Curmudgeon as a cute, horny Catholic girl who likes borrowing her dad’s Corvette* and spending the weekends with you at their cabin in the mountains. Do you really want to bring up the cracker thing?
OK, I can’t either, but still…..
* Age adjusted for metaphoric purposes. Audi RS5 just doesn’t scan as well.
och will – “‘still cling’ are the operative words in your observation because church attendance in america is, as I understand it, definitely on the decline.”
I’m not sure I take as much comfort in that stat as I used to. The integration of religion and politics into the festering sewer of tribalism currently controlling electoral politics in the U.S. suggests that the actual *practice* of religion may not be particularly relevant to its influence.
I’ve always been of the conviction that there is a large spectrum of economic models between unbridled free-market libertarianism and outright socialism. Like, for example, the model that most successful European countries have been following for a long time where companies have to meet certain standards in treating their employees and need to pay their taxes for the common good.
If socialism is the opposite of the free market, and the free market depends on the free movement of labor, goods, and capital, where does that put the current US administration and party in power?
Asking for a friend.
Free-market capitalism versus state socialism is as gross a false dichotomy as Young Earth creationism versus amoral atheism.
All regulations, from laws against murder down to driving codes, are restrictions on freedom. It does not follow that all regulations are bad, although it does follow that all regulations need to be justified.
Free-market economics is an idealisation. it is useful to the extent that its premises are valid, and these premises include equal access to markets, neglect of disparities of power and information, and neglect of the costs of negotiating. Trying to apply free market models to the reality of advanced economies is as futile as trying to apply the ideal gas equation to a gas at the substance’s boiling point.
There is no clearer example of the failure of market economics than the US health system, which delivers mediocre results for twice the cost of what other advanced countries pay, while that most capitalist of institutions, Morningstar, values companies precisely to the extent that they possess (to use their term) a moat, to protect them from the discipline that the free market is said by its protagonists to impose.
That summarises my position. I will not lay it out here again.
Paul Braterman says “The EPA directorate has been doing all it can to hobble climate science” There is no doubt that the agenda at the EPA under this administration is to roll back climate regulations and requirements. I have seen some commenters elsewhere suggest that actually erasing the laws and regulations the EPA has in place is going to be a long legal process for the current crop of climate deniers in the EPA under Trump. The latest news is that they’re looking at a rollback on car mileage requirements. Or at least an attempt at it. The new temporary EPA director is worse than Pruitt actually because rather than a holier than thou ignoramus and bully, now the EPA has someone who actually knows something about environmental law and how to undo it potentially. Hope not.
@FrankB
There are few problems with using the Netherlands as your economic milestone
First, it’s a tiny country. 17M people is a large metropolitan area, not a country. If you want to make those kind of comparisons, my neighborhood probably has a higher
mediummedian income per household and lower unemployment that the Netherlands. Size does matter.Second, the Netherlands economy doesn’t exist in a vacuum. “The Netherlands is the third largest exporter in the Euro Area and derives more than two-thirds of its GDP from merchandise trade.”
If you want to make a comparison, try combining all of Europe including Greece, Albania, Romania and the other countries you don’t financially support and then average out how well Europe does on the same scale.
All US states support Louisiana, Alabama, Kansas….. Most of the US economy comes from the workforce in highly populated metro areas.
Sure, we can and should do better, but the EU doesn’t support anyone that can’t pony up.
A free market free-for-all doesn’t work, and neither does socialism without the support of the free market.
Medium = Median
The worst part is that I probably wouldn’t have caught it with a pre-post edit. Sometimes you brain reads what it thinks you wrote.