Obesity and Abstinence

A very interesting post by Crude over at Crude Ideas.

Clearly I'm a bit stupid but the comparison hadn't really struck me before. Yes, Society demands high levels of will-power and abstinence for people who can't manage their desire for one biological necessity but thinks that it is wildly impractical, not to say bordering on pathologically repressed to demand it of another.

Of course, I suspect that when we have a magic pill to eradicate weight gain and the reduce costs associated with obesity, all this emphasis on healthy eating and exercise will go by the board and we'll be back to belittling the idea that any form of self discipline is something for which we should strive. Expecting self-control from people, especially young people, is just so unrealistic...

Busy Month

Well, it's been a busy month but it has seen some interesting stuff out there within my blogosphere light-cone.

The Maverick Philosopher has had an entertaining series of posts on the difference between fictional and impossible entities. Much of the technical discussion eluded me but I did like the characterisation of fictional as incomplete although I am not completely convinced by his critique of the "story operator".

Mike Flynn has also had a lot of fun in a series of posts on the Christian origins of the Scientific Revolution. He also brought to wider attention the fact that much of the US think that zombies would run their country better than the current Federal Government.

Over at Ed Feser's blog, there was a very interesting discussion about the AT conception of the soul and how it purports to avoid the interaction problem. This was particularly useful because it quoted Bill Vallicella articulating what I think is the most difficult thing to understand about the Thomistic line of reasoning, namely how it is that a form can interact with matter, and by interact he means as an efficient cause rather than a formal or final cause. I'm still not sure I understand the reply but I suspect that that is due to my poor understanding of the Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics.

Brandon Watson at Siris echoes what I'm sure a lot of us are feeling when he takes Disney to task for its crass revisionism in the case of "Maleficent". Aside from the lamentably bad premise on which the new film appears to be based, the witlessness of this situation reminds me of the recent TV advert in which a CGI Audrey Hepburn, dazzling in her youth and vitality, rises from a scene in the film "Roman Holiday"... to appear in a chocolate commercial. I seem to recall something similar happened in the last episode of Bablyon 5, and that didn't turn out well either. The members of the Hepburn estate, moneygrabbing philistines that they are, apparently see nothing wrong with it but to me the commercial is a shibboleth which divides those who have an aesthetic sense from those who don't.

Crude, over at Crude Ideas, continues to fight the good fight against the Cult of Gnu. One of the best thing for those of limited intelligence like me is the sight of clever people discussing substantive issues on Faith, Science and Philosophy, e.g. on Feser's blog, but I must also confess to enjoying seeing fish shot in a barrel, and no-one does this better than Crude. I look forward to his new website.

Heuristics from the Citadel Library continues to provide more "beam me up, Scotty" moments and documents that there is nothing new under the sun.

And finally, a hilarious story about Richard Dawkins from Shadow to Light.

Facts Don't Dispel Belief in Creation Myths...

James Chastek's post on Science and Creation Myths on his ever interesting Just Thomism blog has been picked up by some of the big guns in the philosophy of science and religion blogs that I read (for example, Mike Flynn has a nice response here).  Something quite interesting happened in the comments of the original article: we were treated to a number of rather scientifically-questionable assertions by one overreaching commentator (... population genetics has proved the story of Adam and Eve to be false, original sin, etc, etc, etc) which is the standard, if mathematically illiterate, response of certain so-called gnu-atheists, as well as the usual disclaimer that scientism is a straw-man because no-one holds those views. This was followed by a very entertaining take-down of these views by one of Ed Feser's regularly commentators, a (Mr?) Crude.

Basically, it is a call-out of atheistic psychological projection and I can't do better than to quote some of it:

"Now, here’s where things really get interesting. Everything I just told you absolutely undercuts one myth – the one you’re propagating. It does so demonstrably, and it’s not even an exhaustive list of why you’re wrong. No, population genetics does not undercut a literal, historical fall. Not of Adam and Eve, and not generally. No, there are a variety of reasons that you’re utterly wrong about your claims on this topic, and a variety of ways to maintain a real and literal fall given our scientific knowledge.

But I have a prediction: You will not sacrifice your myth.

It’s too important to you, and really, that importance is just one facet of the scientism you claim does not exist, and is not actually a problem. You need, absolutely need, science to have put a stake through the heart of this religious claim – or, at the very least, it has to be capable of doing it in principle (preferably ‘any year now!’). Because if it doesn’t – if science really is not just limited, but limited in such a way that makes it incapable of giving you the intellectual certainty (and with it, authority) you desperately want it to… well, what a tremendous disappointment that would be. It’s so disappointing, that it’s an understanding that simply cannot be accepted."

This seems to me to be the underlying motivation for a lot of the new atheist rant about religion.

Update: Brandon Watson from Siris performs a clinical dismantling of the argument here and here.

What to say...in the subsequent posts, our new atheist friend retreats to an implicit fideism characterised by a refusal to engage with the arguments or withdraw statements which are shown to be false. I presume this is what geologists get when they talk to Young Earth Creationists. There's a curious symmetry about it. In any case, the rest of the commentary follows exactly the progression presicted by Crude who also gives a nice summary of the situation here.