A Reflection on the "Reality-Based Community"

It's distressing that so many persons of a certain ideological stripe claim for themselves the title of "the Reality-Based Community". I heard such claims most recently on news coverage of a rally for atheists in Washington, D.C., and in the reader comments following an article on The Harvard Crimson’s website. These people seem to be unaware of their failures to distinguish science from logic, and reason from empiricism. Convinced of their intellectual superiority, they fail to see the ironies of their position:

A position that simultaneously claims that everything about us is necessarily a predetermined outcome produced by blind chance, yet that the certainty they feel about the reliability of their own thought processes that led them to that conclusion is somehow…not.

A position that claims to be the only rational starting point from which to achieve a better society, while denying that there is any authoritative transcendent standard by which to judge “better” or “worse”.

A position that calls for beliefs to be justified by empirical evidence, but which fails to give empirical reasons for holding that position.

A position that claims to be enlightened, tolerant, and open-minded, while in a troubling number of instances calling for dissenters to be silenced and to undergo a forced re-education until their agreement is secured.

Perhaps you have encountered such people. Perhaps you would also agree with me that the Reality-Based Community seems excessive in its confidence. Without wishing be needlessly derogatory, this confidence seems, sadly, to be the result of an ignorance made more intractable by arrogance. Though hardly alone in having succumbed to the temptations of ideological puffery and blind faith, there is a difference between such people and the religious communities they so frequently charge with the identical crimes. Most religious people have a limiting principle –
the precepts of their faith – to ultimately curb whatever excesses they may be motivated to commit; while the “Reality-Based Community” has no inherent theoretical limit to its ambitions beyond the supposedly superior reasoning ability that, as I have argued, has already failed them.

All the more reason to be very cautious about granting the Reality-Based Community too much authority over our minds or our lives.

A Question for Bill Maher, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, et al

If there is no God, then why go to all the energy of writing books and producing movies to convince people of the fact? How could it possibly matter? Nothing would matter. Everything would be absurd. Valuing truth would be a random decision, as would valuing anything else. So why bother?

I actually have some idea of what they would say in response, but when it all gets down to brass tacks, they don't really have anything meaningful to say that doesn't depend on a God to make it coherent.

Do they really not see this?

There are Christians who hide from tough questions, and there are some tough questions for which clear and tidy answers are scarce. But to be anadvocate for atheism requires a blindness of sorts, and to be an atheist at all requires a blind leap of faith to believe that all that is apparently meaningful is in the end a temporary flash and noise in an empty room.

A Surprising Update From the Czechs

After my latest entry, I was surprised to see that the Czech President Vaclav Klaus has recently echoed Will's and Thatchers thoughts:

Klaus, an economist, said he opposed the "climate alarmism" perpetuated by environmentalism trying to impose their ideals, comparing it to the decades of communist rule he experienced growing up in Soviet-dominated Czechoslovakia.

"Like their (communist) predecessors, they will be certain that they have the right to sacrifice man and his freedom to make their idea reality," he said. "In the past, it was in the name of the Marxists or of the proletariat - this time, in the name of the planet," he added.
Klaus said a free market should be used to address environmental concerns and said he oppposed as unrealistic regulations or greenhouse gas capping systems designed to reduce the impact of climate change.

Full story at http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/208338,czech-president-klaus-ready-to-debate-gore-on-climate-change.html

Enviro-Tyrants

Shortly after Margaret Thatcher retired from office, I went to go hear her speak on the topic of what trends would take place over the next 10 or 20 years. Her prediction: an attempt by the left to undermine the legitimacy of the nation-state under the aegis of global regulation theoretically necessitated by environmental crisis.

Here is an excerpt from George Will's latest column, on the subject of government activism concerning polar bears and the larger global environmental political movement:

"What Friedrich Hayek called the "fatal conceit" -- the idea that government can know the future's possibilities and can and should control the future's unfolding -- is the left's agenda. The left exists to enlarge the state's supervision of life, narrowing individual choices in the name of collective goods. Hence the left's hostility to markets. And to automobiles -- people going wherever they want whenever they want.

Today's "green left" is the old "red left" revised. "

Baroness Maggie - right again. Let's clean up our air so we can breathe, let's get off our dependence on oil, but let's not live under enviro-tyranny.

A Dear John Letter

Dear Jonathan,

I am fairly sure that at this point you are the only who bothers to check this blog, since I haven't updated it in more than a month. Thus the title. I just caught up on the last week or so of entries on your blog. Very interesting and well done.

Here is a quick recap of my latest thoughts:

Ava's question of why she needs to know that stuff is an important one. I'm glad you took advantage of the moment. It concerns and saddens me that for so many young people (college students I've met), when they know any of our history at all, it's been "taught" to them in such a way as to dismiss the founders of our country as elite hypocrites whose value choices ("moral failures" would imply an enduring standard to which many of their critics would not subscribe) disqualify them from having anything meaningful to say to us today. Thus a generation - or several, as is more likely the case - has much that is wise, humane, and colorful stolen from it before they are perceptive enough to mentally chew on it and digest it. Here is my thought for Ava: the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is possibly the central idea of what America is all about. To make this idea practical in the governing of a free people, the Constitution was written. To make sure that we stuck to and at last fully lived out this idea, the Civil War was fought. To continue in our mission of spreading this idea, we have fought several wars against tyrants, some of whom wanted to enslave the world to their vicious ideas through a tremendous slaughter. Sometimes we've made mistakes (especially lately) but this has been our mission as a country. Some people don't believe in the principles of the Declaration anymore, and like the Confederate politicians back in the old days, they attack these principles. Right now, we are probably more divided on this issue than at any time since the Civil War. Our mission as a nation - or the question of whether we have one - depends on people like Ava. This is my opinion of why it's important to know this stuff.

Now it's late and I'm too tired to write any more thoughts.

Quote for the Day

Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.

- Groucho Marx

Electronic Sunshine

Looney Tunes are good for the soul.

The "Working Can Wait" song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuU65dMq1eg

The classic, hilarious Bugs Bunny hillbilly square dance:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieYzdiUM3N8