Ping ([info]zestyping) wrote,
@ 2008-03-02 22:18:00
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Another world diagram, and an invitation.

Here's my picture now:

Forces for good:

I realize that everyone probably has different ideas about what should go on this picture, and what arrows should connect them. I think that's interesting — what you choose to put on the diagram says something about your worldview.

So: take a few minutes to draw your own diagram. Then take a picture of it and post it in a comment here, or post it on your blog/journal and leave a comment here.

I'm curious to see what will show up in everyone else's drawings.


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[info]threadwalker
2008-03-03 05:46 pm UTC (link)
I can't resist poking you, but you do know Galileo was a devout Catholic right? The church thing was an internal political squabble involving a scientific rival within the church. He not only sent his two daughters to become nuns, but wanted to be a monk himself as a young man. He wrote religious plays almost until he died. I think he'd be horrified to be teamed up with Dawkins.

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[info]amoken
2008-03-03 05:49 pm UTC (link)
Well, don't tell him, then.

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[info]threadwalker
2008-03-03 05:54 pm UTC (link)
I personally have great respect for Galileo, but it irks me when people try and frame his story as thought it was science vs. church and he was fighting (even rejecting) the church for science. Many badly researched books are written on the subject. If you read his letters the fact that he was devout comes through quite clearly- not just his letters to heads of state, but letters to his family members.

At his time, pretty much all the schools of note were religiously founded, the scientists were very often not just members of the church, but clergy. He made enemies by making other people look foolish. The pope who condemned him actually originally supported him (he was a lover of science and a fan of Galileo). The condemnation happened as a result of a scientific rival close to the pope convincing the pope that Galileo had tried to slip one by him (elements of a manuscript the previous pope had objected to and this pope had already approved without realizing that), discrediting his authority. A political mess.

Galileo couldn't get to Rome for a while to plead his case- or even send reliable letters or the copy of the manuscript to argue because the quarantine was going on due to plague. Packages were being burned in transit to avoid contamination. Even with the quarantine lifted, he had difficulty traveling because his health was in poor shape. Not only that, he doesn't seem to have realized how bad the gossip against him got until he got to Rome.

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[info]amoken
2008-03-03 05:49 pm UTC (link)
You know, I find it quite fascinating that you have money and poverty as separate nodes, but you don't make separate nodes for, say, ignorance/indifference or mortality. Perhaps you thought that one required more explicit treatment, but it's further interesting that money and poverty don't affect each other at all. Perhaps I don't know what you mean by "money".

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[info]zestyping
2008-03-03 09:47 pm UTC (link)
It is a little strange that "money" and "poverty" are separate, but it does makes sense to me in a way that is a bit hard to explain. If i can come up with a good way to articulate it i'll add another comment here.

But more interestingly, how would you draw it? I'd like to see your diagram.

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[info]amoken
2008-03-03 10:01 pm UTC (link)
I don't think I can. It's just so complicated, I'd have to have weighted edges with annotations or something, and even then it would be missing so much. :\ Maybe if I'm in a less serious, less perfectionist mood sometime I'll give it a go.

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[info]zestyping
2008-03-04 06:37 am UTC (link)
I'd have to have weighted edges with annotations or something

Now i'm really curious to see what you'd come up with. :) (Surely it can't possibly be as incomplete as my diagram.)

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[info]swestrup
2008-03-03 06:28 pm UTC (link)
I have to admit, that I look at this and I see a diagram, but I have no idea what its supposed to be a diagram OF.

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(Anonymous)
2008-03-03 06:33 pm UTC (link)
Is there any way you can keep this stuff from showing up in Planet Python? No offense, but I don't care to hear about your political affiliations or views.

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[info]zestyping
2008-03-03 09:01 pm UTC (link)
This is a personal journal — i didn't ask to make it part of Planet Python. I'll see what i can do about getting it removed.

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[info]akuchling
2008-03-06 04:20 pm UTC (link)
Removed.

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[info]zestyping
2008-03-07 02:04 am UTC (link)
Thanks!

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[info]janviere
2008-03-04 07:57 am UTC (link)

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I'm still appalled...
(Anonymous)
2008-03-04 11:50 am UTC (link)
...that you included Dawkins in the list of good guys. I thought you didn't like fundamentalism, even when it supports your religious leanings.

The stuff that I've read by him is just that. I mean, yes, he's rightly criticized religious thought and practice that is evil or just plain stupid. But he makes the same sweeping generalizations and emits the same smug self-righteousness that every Christian fundamentalist I've ever read does.

Which is annoying, no matter whom it's from.

Which makes me agree with this review of The God Delusion: http://www.shipoffools.com/Features/2006/dawkins.html

Clayton

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Re: I'm still appalled...
[info]zestyping
2008-03-04 08:18 pm UTC (link)
I suspect that you and i have rather different impressions of what Dawkins stands for. Of course i do not consider Dawkins a fundamentalist, which could mean that we disagree on Dawkins or we disagree on what a fundamentalist is. In any case, what matters is why i included him in that list: i support the elimination of harmful religious dogma.

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Re: I'm still appalled...
(Anonymous)
2008-03-05 03:01 pm UTC (link)
> i included him in that list: i support the elimination of harmful religious dogma.

Me too! But he's against religion as a whole (dismissing anyone who disagrees as silly), not just harmful dogma.

But having spent a few hours today reading up on Sam Harris, I have to reassign my appalled-ness. His arguments justifying torture are really a bit horrific; the Geneva Convention was such a step forward in ethics. And I cringe at his justification of the War on Terror and the anti-Islamic sentiments currently sweeping the nation to the south of me.

There are lots of good thinkers who decry the anti-intellectualism and church/state twining in the U.S. Why not pick from one of them?

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Re: I'm still appalled...
[info]zestyping
2008-03-05 05:52 pm UTC (link)
His arguments justifying torture are really a bit horrific

He does not argue that torture is an absolute good. He argues that the collateral damage of war is much worse than we often imagine; worse even than torture.
...if we are unwilling to torture, we should be unwilling to wage modern war.
I think he has a point about this inconsistency in how people typically think about war.

See this page for this and other clarifications.

Edited at 2008-03-05 06:16 pm UTC

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Re: I'm still appalled...
(Anonymous)
2008-03-05 07:22 pm UTC (link)
I did actually see his rebuttal before. Torture is never promoted by *anyone* as an absolute good, except maybe by crazy sadists. But he does justify it outright:

"Nevertheless, there are extreme circumstances in which I believe that practices like 'water-boarding' may not only be ethically justifiable, but ethically necessary."

Torture ethically necessary?? I agree that he has a point about inconsistency in civilian casualties, but he goes far, far beyond that.

The combination of an advocacy of torture (when 'needed'), preemptive war (which he doesn't back down from in the rebuttal), and his vicious anti-Islamicism are plain scary in light of what has happened since 9/11. It's in line with the very worst of neo-conservative thinking.

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