This video is interesting and entertaining to say the least.  The producers certainly take a position but it is tough not to take a position on this issue; that American education is based on the Prussian model is undisputed.

“It is nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of intruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry.” – Albert Einstein

“Drop out of school before your mind rots from exposure to our mundane educational system… go to the library and educate yourself if you’ve got any guts.” – Frank Zappa

Via here

What a roguishly maverick character, eh?

The race for the White House is about McCain’s experience and Obama’s charisma and celebrity, or at least it was until Sarah Palin was put on the ticket.  By far the largest legitimate chink in Obama’s armor was his lack of experience.  McCain has found a way to make sure that this is not a campaign issue.  Obama can not attack McCain on his lack of celebrity without exposing the superficiality of his own campaign but McCain could use Obama’s inexperience against him, could that is until he tapped Palin to be his running mate.

Palin’s experience amounts to being governor of Alaska for a whopping 20 months.  Being governor of any state is a tough job but does that qualify you to be president?  Isn’t that like being the mayor of Denver with more parkland?  That’s good resume’ fluff if you want to be vice president of the Red Cross but we’re talking about being VP of the United States, one heartbeat from the White House!

I think Sarah Palin was chosen because McCain hopes she will be able to get people excited, that she will be a celebrity.  So, both candidates  tried to patch up their armor with their VP picks.  Its just that Biden’s experience helps Obama’s campaign and Palin’s inexperience helps Obama’s campaign.  I do give McCain some credit though, if all he wanted was a conservative Obama then he could have put Joel Osteen on the ticket.

Below is my rendition of Psalm 51 in English verse. The Psalms were originally written as poetry. I understand the need for accuracy in translations but I believe we lose so much when the aesthetic aspect of the verse is given such low priority. As always, comments, critiques, and charges of heresy are welcomed.

After your loving-kindness, Lord,
Have mercy upon me!
For your compassion great, blots out
All my iniquity.

Cleanse me from sin, and throughly wash
Off my depravity!
For my transgressions I confess;
My sin I ever see.

‘Gainst you, you alone, have I sinned,
In your sight done this ill;
That when you speak you may be just,
And clear in judging still.

Behold, I in iniquity
Was formed the womb within;
My mother conceived me also,
In guiltiness and sin.

With pure truth, you are delighted.
You see the hidden part.
And wisdom you shall cause me know,
Within my inner heart.

With perfume do, you sprinkle me,
I shall be cleansed so;
Yes, wash me please, and then I will
Be whiter than new snow!

Of merriment and joyfulness
Cause me to hear the voice;
So that these very bones which you
Have broken, might rejoice.

All my iniquities blot out,
Hide your face from my sin.
My Lord, a pure heart create, give
Me a right spirit within!

Cast me not from your sight, nor take
Your Holy Spirit away!
Restore me thy salvation’s joy;
May my spirit willing, stay.

Then will I teach your ways unto
Those that transgressions do;
And those that sinners are, will then
Turn their eyes unto you.

From guilt of shedding blood, free me,
Lord of my redemption!
Loosed at last; loud shall my tongue sing,
God, of your salvation!

My sealed lips, O Lord, by you
Let them be wide opened;
Then shall your praises by my mouth
Be broadly loud proclaimed.

For you desire not sacrifice,
Nor does burnt offering;
Supply you with good pleasure, were
It so, I’d bring these things.
(And bring them with good measure!)

A broken spirit is to God
The pleasing sacrifice:
A broken and repentant heart,
Lord, you will not despise.

Show favor, and do good, O Lord,
To Zion, your delight.
The walls of your Jerusalem
Build up as you see right.

Then, in just offerings you’ll please,
And offerings burnt, they
With whole bulls and young calves
Will on your alter lay.

This is the second article in my series on the philosophers of the ABC hit series, LOST. As promised, it is on John Locke. As most of you already know, John Locke is the name of a character on LOST, who has a very complex past and personality. He has a different times been the ally of and, polar opposite of, both Jack Shepard and Benjamin Linus. In the last episode of the season, Locke became the leader of the Others. The Others, of course where the original enemies of the survivors of oceanic flight 315. At the end of the last episode, we find out that John Locke has made it to Los Angeles, under the name of Jeremy Bentham. (Jeremy Bentham was a philosopher, whom I profiled previously.) And finally we find out that John Locke a.k.a. Jeremy Bentham is dead.

So who was the real John Locke and how does he relate to the character? The real John Locke was an English philosopher who lived from 1632 to 1704. He was from a middle-class Puritan family and was educated at Oxford. He obtained a bachelor of medicine, which allowed him to practice as a medical doctor. While at Oxford, he made the acquaintance of Lord Anthony Cooper. If that name rings any bells it’s because Anthony Cooper is also the name of Locke’s father on LOST. Lord Cooper was a well-connected politician and rival to the king. He was at Oxford to seek treatment for liver problems. Locke and Cooper hit it off and became good friends, and Cooper eventually persuaded Locke to come live with him and be his private physician.

In his capacity as Lord Coopers physician Locke, persuaded him to undergo an operation to remove a cyst from his liver. Any sort of surgical operation was extremely dangerous in the 1600s. However, Lord Cooper survived the operation and credited Locke with saving his life. This is very similar to the way Locke saved Anthony Cooper’s life on LOST, by donating a kidney to him.

Lock did a lot of work in the field of epistemology that is, the study of what can be known and how it can be known. Locke is one of the fathers of the field of thought known as in empiricism. Empiricism is the idea that all knowledge comes from experience. This is in contrast to some who, especially in Locke’s day felt that all people were born with certain innate knowledge. Locke coined the term tabula rasa, or blank slate, for his theory that the mind of a baby was a blank slate with no innate knowledge.

Locke also worked in political philosophy. He opposed the divine right of kings to rule. This was very radical it in his day as essentially all nations were ruled by King’s. Locke said that governments exist in what he called, a social contract with the people. He said that the people had certain rights given to them by God. Government, to lock, was the people giving up a certain amount of their rights in order to be able to prosper in society. Locke believed that when the government failed to protect the rights of the people, then the people had the right and the responsibility to remove the government. If you think some of this sounds familiar. It’s probably because Locke had a great influence on the founding fathers of the United States and especially Thomas Jefferson.

These views did not make Locke very popular with the King. Eventually Locke, along with Lord Cooper, was implicated in a plot to assassinate the king. Locke was never put on trial for this, and little or no evidence was ever brought forth to show that he was part of the plot. But nonetheless, he was forced to flee England. He made his way to the Netherlands, and did not return to England until after the death of the king.

As mentioned earlier, Locke had a profound impact on the founding of the United States. His belief in the social contract, limited government, and private property have greatly influenced libertarian political philosophy, and the Libertarian party. He also had a lot of influence on a later philosopher by the name of David Hume. The producers of LOST named the character Desmond Hume after David Hume. The profile of David Hume is coming up, but next is Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

This is a public service announcement.  For the love of the blogosphere, please do not tag your blog post “philosophy” unless it’s about philosophy.  Philosophy does not mean undefined, general, random, opinionated, or whatever!  Believe it or not, there are some people who really do want to read blogs about philosophy, and it’s really difficult to find blogs about philosophy, when every third post is tagged, philosophy!  It seems like half the blogs out there are called something like, “Nina’s Thoughts on Breeding Ringtail Lemurs, and Philosophy.”  Come on, Nina, is that really necessary?  Phauxlosophy (or philosospam or spamosophy?) is the most prolific spam on the internet except for “natural anatomy enhancers!”

ABC’s hit sci-fi mystery series LOST, has many characters who are named after famous philosophers and intellectuals of the past. There has been a lot of speculation about the meaning of the characters names and their relationships to their namesakes. I admit that I have done a good deal of speculation on this topic myself. This has also led to a great deal of interest in philosophies and philosophers who most people have never heard of. Always one to cash in on an opportunity to educate and talk philosophy, this has inspired me to write a series of articles on the philosophers of lost.

Because Jeremy Bentham is the newest philosopher to make an appearance on the show, I’ve decided to start with him. After Bentham, I plan to do. John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, CS Lewis, Michael Faraday, David Hume, and Edmund Burke. There have been a few other noted intellectuals whose names have made appearances in LOST but these are the primary ones. If your favorite lost illuminati did not make the list, leave me a comment and subscribe to the feed. I will try to include an article about them also.

In the last episode of LOST this season, we learn that the character, Locke (named for another philosopher whom I will be featuring next) has been going by the name of Jeremy Bentham. We also learn that he is dead, but that’s of little importance to this exercise. So who is, or rather was this Jeremy Bentham? Jeremy Bentham was an English philosopher born in 1748, he died in 1832. Bentham was one of the true geniuses of history, he studied Latin at age 8 (according to some it was age 3). He entered college at a very early age, eventually becoming a lawyer, though he practiced law little if any at all during his life. Bentham was a wide thinker and was influential in many fields.

Bentham was well-known in his own day and had the ear of many world leaders. He proposed constitutions for countries across the globe. None of his constitutions were accepted, to my knowledge at least. He also levied unsuccessfully to have the colonial powers give up their colonies. In short, he was a major thorn in the side of Kings everywhere.

He was one of the first people to champion animal rights. Bentham argued that people had a moral responsibility to animals because animals have the ability to suffer. This is in contrast to many people, who argue that there is no moral responsibility to animals because they lack the ability to reason.

Bentham is credited as being the first person in the English world to argue that homosexuality should not be a criminal offense. He believed, and argued strongly that homosexual acts are immoral and detrimental to those who practice them. However, he did not believe that the government should be prosecuting homosexuals. In Bentham’s time, homosexuals were often executed so, his views were considered extremely radical. They were so radical, in fact, that they were not published until after his death.

Bentham was also one of the first to argue that education should be open to people of all classes, races, and religious persuasion. At this time, you had to be a member of the Church of England to be excepted to Oxford or Cambridge. Also, tuition was so high that only the upper class could afford to go. Bentham’s views on education, indirectly led to the founding of University College London.

All this is impressive enough, but what the history books remember Bentham for is his work in ethics. Bentham espoused an ethical theory known as utilitarianism. Utilitarianism belongs to a family of ethical theories known as consequentialist. This is because under utilitarianism, what makes an action morally right or wrong are the consequences of that action. Utilitarianism is also a form of hedonism, because the consequences of an action are judged by how much happiness they produce. Jeremy Bentham did not come up with a theory of utilitarianism, consequentialism, or hedonism; all of these go back to ancient Greek times. What Bentham did was move utilitarianism into the mainstream.

There are many forms of utilitarianism but, what they all share is the idea that an action is to be judged morally right if it produces more pleasure than pain (Bentham added, for more people). If it produces more pain than pleasure overall, than it is morally wrong. There are several problems with this, but one of the largest is how to measure pleasure and pain. Bentham believed they could in fact be measured.

Some people argue that pleasures can vary in their quality. For example, many people would say that the pleasure of going to a ballet is a higher-quality than the pleasure of smoking a cigarette, even if they can be said to be of the same quantity. Bentham rejected this. For him, the quality of a pleasure was of no consequence and probably did not exist at all. However, the quantity of pleasure and pain was of the utmost importance. Bentham invented the Hedonistic Calculus a.k.a. the Calculus of Felicity. using the Calculus of Felicity, Bentham rated the pleasure and pain of actions on a seven point sliding scale. He rated pleasure and pain on intensity, duration, certainty, proximity, fecundity, purity, and extent. I’ll save you the details of what all that means. Suffice it to say that, Bentham believed that his calculus of Felicity would eventually become second nature to most people. He expected people to be able to intuitively calculate the exact amount of pleasure and pain that their actions would produce.

One major criticism of utilitarianism as Bentham proposed it, is that in theory, an individual or a small minority could be subjected to persecution of some sort and if this would in some way bring more pleasure to the masses, it would be deemed morally good. Ursula K. Le Guin drove this point home in her short story, “Those Who Walked Away from Omelas.” Omelas is a utopian city, but it has a dark side. The utopian bliss is maintained at the expense of a child who has to be tortured in a dark cell. No explanation is given as to how this works, that’s not the point.

It is probably not fair to say that Bentham would have supported such a system, he is known to have supported the rule of law, and one can assume that he expected laws to prevent things that society as a whole took offense to, such as rape and torture. However, it is interesting to note that this is very similar to the way LOST’s Jeremy Bentham (a.k.a. John Locke) arranged for his father to be killed for the good of the Others. We also know that for some reason he dies, is it possible that he kills himself or allows himself to be killed for some utilitarian good?

Perhaps Bentham’s greatest influence came through the work of his pupil, John Stuart Mill. JS Mill was another super genius English philosopher and utilitarian. Though, Mill’s utilitarianism would go in a very different direction than Bentham’s. He was the son of Bentham’s good friend James Mill, and early in his life Bentham and Senior Mill recognized his potential and began an intensive education. John Stuart Mill was studying Greek at age 3!

On a final note, before he died, Jeremy Bentham arranged for the construction of what he called his auto icon. The auto icon is a wooden cabinet with a glass front. Bentham arranged for his body to be embalmed and placed in the auto icon, upright sitting in a chair. Today, Jeremy Bentham, in his auto icon sits on the board of University College London, and can be seen by visitors. How
‘s that for weird?

Stay tuned, John Locke is next.

In an earlier post I wrote that I had been using Dragon NaturallySpeaking speech recognition software. I praised it and harped on it but alas, I have found the Dragon’s weak underbelly. Dragon cannot spell Arauca bomb, Arauca mama, Morocco bomb, aaaahhhh B.A.R.A.C.K. O.B.A.M.A. Dragon can’t spell the name of that new dynamic politician. For your amusement, I have kept a running tally of all the various things Dragon has called For Rocco Momma. Complete with commentary

Brock of Mama I’m at a loss on this one. A Bonus a bonus sounds good, I think. All Ballmer he did play baseball. We’ll Bomb I doubt it, he’s more of a talker than a fighter. whoObote, ask the neighbors to the north. A Bomb On this seems to be a recurring theme. A Ball And balls and bombs, what’s up with this guy? Old Drama Its getting there quickly. Overall My…What? Over all your what? A Ball and, A Bomb Oh dear. Oh Bottle Oh yes! Morocco Bomber No, Kenyan, Kenyan Bomber. Ab Rocco Bomba, in his first appearance with Secret Squirrel! COBOL An ancient and secret organization of intellectual elites! And last but not least, Will Mamma, what choo talkin ’bout Will Momma for?

I went to see the Golden Compass yesterday, as I said I would.  I thought it was a good movie overall and I expect that the book is much better.  It did suffer from what I call Lord of the Rings syndrome,or LOTRS for short.  LOTRS occurs when a production team attempts to fit a long and complex story into a movie.  The LOTR all told, was at least nine hours long and an incredible movie but it did not do the story justice at all.  It was like a condensed children’s version of the story but, to do it right they would have had to at least double the length.  No one wants to sit through that so, they did the best they could.  I suspect the Golden Compassis the same way, though I still have not read it.  They had to tell the story, introduce the audience to a foreign universe, introduce new characters, and get the audience emotionally invested in the characters’ individual plights all in less than two hours.  Still it is more than worth the price of a movie ticket.  The polar bear fight is worth the price of a movie ticket. 

So what is my fundamentalist Christian take on the movie?  Well, one of the primary reasons I wanted to see the movie was to see if they could make a entertaining good v. evil story, without it being an allegory for Christ.  They could not.  I think this is telling.  It was (and is, it is a trilogy so the story is not over) a beautiful messiah narrative.  The Christian undertones where at least as strong as the Chronicles of Narnia. C.S. Lewis would have been proud to call it his own. 

I find it interesting that the Magisterium, the organization that represents the church or religion and evil looks more like a secular anti-religious organization than a church.  The truththat the Magisterium is attempting to stamp out is a world filled with the supernatural and the mystical.  The most poignant example of this is the daemons.  In Pullman’s universe, the souls of humans walk beside them at all times in the form of animals, known as daemons.  They are like the person’s spirit.  They are part of what makes a person who they are.  The Magisterium preforms experiments to deprive children of their daemons, that is their souls.  So, the Magisterium is working to rid the world of the spiritual.  That does not sound like any religion that I know of. 

The heroes of the story are attempting to preserve the truth and the villains are persecuting them, in an attempt to smother the truth.  This is exactly the story of the early church and persecution by the Roman Empire and others.  It is the story of the protestant revolution and persecution by the Vatican.  It is a Christian story. 

I still await the day when some one will have the creativity to make a good and evil story with out paralleling reality. 

See also my previous post on the Golden Compass, The Compass and the Cross

I hope you have enjoyed reading my previous two posts entitled, The Barnyard Dialogues, “Part I, Two Chickens Take on the Problem of Evil” and “Part II, Two Chickens Take another Swipe at the Problem of Evil.”  .  If you have not then, click the links and enjoy them. 

If you have read them then I’m sure you are aware that they are written as satire and not merely for entertainment value.  I want to present here a partial explanation of what was meant by the stories.  I want to say here, what I meant to say there, only this time without any talking chickens.  So here goes.

As the subtitles say, the story is about the problem of evil.  For those of you who are not familiar with the problem of evil, I have placed the “Logical Problem of Evil” below.  It is taken from Wikipedia.

Logical problem of evil

1. God exists. (premise)
2. God is omnipotent and omniscient. (premise — or true by definition of the word “God”)
3. God is all-benevolent. (premise — or true by definition)
4. All-benevolent beings are opposed to all evil. (premise — or true by definition)
5. All-benevolent beings who can eliminate evil will do so immediately when they become aware of it. (premise)
6. God is opposed to all evil. (conclusion from 3 and 4)
7. God can eliminate evil completely and immediately. (conclusion from 2)
   1. Whatever the end result of suffering is, God can bring it about by ways that do not include suffering. (conclusion from 2)
   2. God has no reason not to eliminate evil. (conclusion from 7.1)
   3. God has no reason not to act immediately. (conclusion from 5)
8. God will eliminate evil completely and immediately. (conclusion from 6, 7.2 and 7.3)
9. Evil exists, has existed, and probably will always exist. (premise)
10. Items 8 and 9 are contradictory; therefore, one or more of the premises is false: either God does not exist, evil does not exist, or God is not simultaneously omnipotent, omniscient, and all-benevolent (i.e. God is omnipotent and omniscient but not all-benevolent, omnipotent and all-benevolent but not omniscient, or omniscient and all-benevolent but not omnipotent).

To be simplistic and brief, the problem of evil says that a good god and evil cannot co-exist, therefore one or the other must not exist.  Because most people have experienced evil in some form, it is used to make a case against the existence of god.  A solution to the problem of evil is called a “theodicy”.  Though many different theodicies exist, what I have tried to demonstrate through the Barnyard Dialogues is a particular theodicy based on semantics.  I suspect that others have noticed it before me and, I believe that this should only lend credence to it.  I will explain it below.

Evil is not an entity that exists on its own merit.  Evil exists as a parasite to good.  In the absolute absence of good there could be no evil.  The opposite is not true, good does not require evil in order to be good.  Something is good when it fulfills the purpose it was meant to serve.  Something lacks goodness when it fails to fulfill the purpose it was meant for.  Something is evil when it fulfills a purpose contrary to what it was meant for.  Therefore, having a good purpose is a prerequisite for being evil. 

So in order to call something evil someone, must first give it a purpose for it to pervert.  So Evil must be defined in relation to somebody.  The vast majority of the time evil is defined in relation to either man or to God. 

In the first illustration with the chickens, Clare defines Evil (missing eggs) by chickens (man).  She then comes to the conclusion that because evil exists, the farmer (God) must not.  She sees this as a mistake when she learns that the farmer is the one taking the eggs for his own good purpose.  In the Problem of Evil, it is a mistake to define evil on man’s terms and then apply it to God.  God is by definition a greater being than man, just as the farmer in the story, is a greater being than the chickens. 

In Part II, Clare defines evil in terms of the farmer (God) but this also is a mistake as it presupposes that the farmer does in fact exist.  If evil as defined by God exists then, God must exist.  If God does not exist, then neither does evil as defined by God and the whole argument falls apart as, evil must exist in order to be a problem. 

It seems to me that the problem of evil is that it cannot be defined in terms that would cast doubt on the existence of God. 

Click for Barnyard Dialogues Part 1 

The Scene: Two Chickens in nesting boxes at night.

Clare: You still awake, Marsha?

Marsha:

Clare: Marsha!

Marsha: Hu! What?

Clare: I’ve been doing some figuring again

Marsha: The kind you do with your toes, or the kind you do with your brain?

Clare: The brain kind.

Marsha: Clare, the last time you did brain figures, you set my rheumatoids off into a scuttle and I laid pear shaped eggs for three weeks!  Besides, I talked to Herman the Goat, and he told me all about the eggs.

Clare: You spoke with Herman the Goat?  What did he say?

Marsha: He said that you’re just an afarmerist and he’s seen your kind before.  And he told me what really happens to our eggs.

Clare: Well out with it!  What did he say?

Marsha: Well, you’re not going to believe this but… I didn’t believe it either when Herman the Goat first told me but…

Clare: Marsha!

Marsha: OK. Herman the Goat said that what really happens to the eggs is that… that the farmer takes em!

Clare: What?!  What would the farmer want with our eggs?

Marsha: He takes them in the house so that his wife can sit on them.  Herman the Goat says that she can’t lay eggs.  It has something to do with the blue jean overalls getting the way, but he reckons that a woman of her girth could sit on at least three dozen at a time!

Clare: Well I’ll be!  If I had teeth, I’d whistle through em!  How did Herman the Goat get to be so smart?

Marsha: The beard and the trash.

Clare: What?

Marsha:Its the beard and the trash.  That’s what makes him so smart.  Just think about it for a second.  The beard is what Herman the Goat has that no other animal has.

Clare: Hmmm.  Makes sense, but what about the trash?

Marsha: Well, important documents and manuscripts and such get put in the trash.  Herman the Goat, he eats the trash, see?  Well when he finds an important manuscript, he doesn’t eat it straight away. 

Clare: He doesn’t?

Marsha: Nope, he reads it first.  Then he eats it.

Clare: He never ceases to amaze.

Marsha: And you know the farmer’s wife tells him important stuff too.  Just the other day, she had to tell him something so important that she yelled it out the kitchen window instead of walking outside to tell him.

Clare: What was it?

Marsha: “Herman, zen tha turn up patcha gin!”  And do you know what he did?

Clare: What?

Marsha: He kicked up his hoofs and ran off as fast as he could to take care of whatever emergency it was that she told him about!

Clare: What a trooper!

Marsha: So, the point is that, the farmer takes the eggs so that his wife can sit on them.  That is not evil and, that should be the end of your nonsense about the farmer not existing.

 Clare: Oh, but that is what I was going to tell you.

Marsha: What?

Clare: I have another theory about the farmer.  This one has nothing to do with eggs.

Marsha: What is it this time?

Clare: Its Old Stella.

Marsha: What about her?

Clare: Well, didn’t you hear?

Marsha: No?  I don’t think so?

Clare: She finally kicked the bucket!

Marsha: No! You don’t say!

Clare: Yep, she just up and keeled over, by the windmill yesterday mornin’.

Marsha: Was it the droppsies?

Clare: I heard it was cold feet, but of course I can’t be sure.

Marsha: Well that’s a shame.  She was a good hen.

Clare: That’s my point.

Marsha: What’s your point?

Clare: That she was a good hen.  She was a prize layer.  The farmer paid sixteen dollars for her at the fair.

Marsha: Sixteen!

Clare: Yes, sixteen.  Least-ways, that’s what Thelma told me.  So, my theory about the farmer and the eggs didn’t work…

Marsha: No, it sure didn’t.  The farmer exists and he is the one taking the eggs, so its not an evil after all.

Clare: Well I’m still not convinced.

Marsha: Oh Clare!  Give it a rest!

Clare: Just hear me out.

Marsha: Remember my rheumatoids.

Clare: The farmer needs chickens, right?  Its part of being a farmer, right?

Marsha: Makes sense.

Clare: So, Old Stella, being what she is…

Marsha: MmmmHmmm.

Clare: Well that’s an evil that even the farmer would see.  He’s out sixteen dollars!  He’s got to replace Stella!

Marsha: Clare, I’m starting to get goose-pimply again.

Clare:  How could the farmer allow such a thing to happen?

Marsha: Clare.

Clare: The farmer cannot exist!

Marsha: Clare!

Clare: At last! I have proved it!

Marsha: Oh oh! I just don’t know what to think!  Now you’ve got me thinking like an afarmerist!

Clare: Yeah?  How’s it feel?

Marsha:  Oh, My feathers are all in a tizzle!  I need to talk to Herman the Goat about this.  I’m sure he’s got an expla –Ploop– You’ve made me go and lay an egg!

Clare: Is it pear-shaped?

Marsha: No. Its more like a potato! 

Clare: Well, the truth can be difficult to swallow at first.