Month: January 2009

A reader writes:

I’m an avid reader who’s never written you before, but as a philosophy major and not much else, this is probably the first time I’ve felt (vaguely) qualified.  And the sudden phenomenon of assertive atheism has me concerned too.

What the defenders of the Flying Spaghetti Monster thesis’ commensurability with actual theism fail to recognize is that belief in God generally doesn’t have anything so "concrete" as its substance. It’s not the particulars of God — the "invisible man in the sky" imagery and such — that matter.  In some sense these particulars aren’t the content of theist belief at all; it’s the "consequences" of God — moral compunction, cultural taboo, social phenomena that amount to a de facto eschatology, etc. — that actually constitute theism. And when measured by adherence to behaviors consistent with this belief, atheism suddenly appears much rarer. 

Nietzsche recognized this; it’s the reason why an insistence on overcoming Judeo-Christian ethics comes right alongside his proclamation of the death of God.

These two things are one and the same for him, as they must be for anyone who claims to be an "atheist."

Summed in another way: the evidence for God that your last commentator finds lacking is the same kind of evidence which can’t be found to support the existence of morality.  Does he really believe that morality doesn’t exist, that moral propositions have no objective truth value?  Perhaps he does, but the point here is that many who find the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) commensurate with God might hesitate to follow him into such positivist territory. One last way to express this idea, calling on anthropology to aid philosophy: if belief in God is merely a testament to humanity’s desire to believe, would belief in a flying spaghetti monster have arisen in history for the same reason?  Shouldn’t we see today just as many people lining up to worship the FSM as we find pointing out its absurdity?  One might argue that people don’t do this because they already adhere to a faith so popular that it overwhelms the rival FSM religion: but then, of course, we must admit we’ve come full circle.

Manzi speaks the truth:

American consumers are awash in debt, drowning in it. This is the fundamental issue with the stimulus proposal. We’re trying to borrow our way out of debt. Unfortunately, we need a recession. That is, consumption must decline because for some time we have been consuming more than we produce or have reasonable prospects of producing. Monetary policy has been used to inflate a series of bubbles to avoid the consequences of excess debt, and the more we try to hold it off, the worse it’s going to be. Bourbon works as a hangover cure, but only for a while.

The planet might appreciate a small pause in the consumption as well, no?

(By the way, the "business vertical" Megan has put together for the Atlantic is as lively as it is essential in these confusing times. I remain, of course, your ever-horizontal servant.)

Beacon, New York,  12 pm.

Newt Gingrich said a few days ago that the gang war in Mexico is a bigger threat than Afghanistan and Iraq. Christian Brose analyzes the situation and says the hyperbole isn’t warranted – yet:

The gangs have no political agenda; their main goal remains selling dope. They are not providing basic services to Mexico’s citizens, nor are they trying to create a parallel system of political order to rival the Mexican state and erode its legitimacy in the eyes of the people. In fact, even if most Mexicans think the gangs are winning, they by all accounts still hate them and what they are doing to the country.

Because of reports like this:

The nation’s current recession is likely to be the longest since World War II, and by some measures could be the worst since the Great Depression, a new Congressional Budget Office forecast said Tuesday. Without a major economic stimulus plan, “the shortfall in the nation’s output relative to its potential would be the largest — in terms of both length and depth — since the Depression of the 1930s,” said new CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf in testimony prepared for the House Budget Committee.

The politics are as brutal for the GOP as the economics:

Obama has done everything reasonable, and more, to move toward non-P-partisanship.  The overwhelming impression he’s leaving for voters is one of reasonableness and accommodation. The public is clamoring for Washington to do something, anything. How’d you like to be a Republican member from Michigan or Indiana or Ohio?

That’s why my advice is for the GOP to propose real entitlement reform. That’s the real fiscal prize – even as they oppose the stimulus.

"We did too much deficit spending during the last six years when we were in the majority. And now the Democrats are doing the same thing … When we elected a president who promised change, I really hoped we were going to have change and get away from the deficit spending of the last eight years. But instead of getting change, with the original [Democratic] bill here we are getting much, much, much, much more of the same," – Congressman Louie Gohmert (R., Tex).

The GOP’s nuls points for the new president might make him less liable to talk to them in the future. But I hope he doesn’t give up on them. Hilzoy is, as usual, shrewd on this. Obama’s public and sincere attempt to win many over, his early inclusion of more tax cuts than many Democrats wanted, his outreach to the House GOP, which Bush merely dictated to: these are all good things. More to the point: the public will see them as good things. Obama seems like the reasonable future at this point. The GOP seems like a very ideological past.

But one fears that the logic of the election means that many Republicans who might otherwise have been open to a real compromise – or at least less partisan rhetoric – are no longer in the Congress. The remaining rump will seek ideological purity and attack the president from the get-go. Having ransacked the Treasury for eight years, I guess they have to earn back their fiscal cred somehow.

He will not prejudge possible prosecutions for war crimes under Bush. How could he? He’s the attorney-general. War crimes are among the gravest crimes under the law.

Bishop Bernard Fellay, superior of SSPX and one of the other Bishops who was ex-ex-communicated, silences Holocaust denier Williamson:

The affirmations of Bishop Williamson do not reflect in any sense the position of our Fraternity. For this reason I have prohibited him, pending any new orders, from taking any public positions on political or historical questions.

But the resistance to the Second Vatican Council is inextricable from the Jewish question. It was the Council’s clear and vital renunciation of my Church’s ancient and shameful invention of anti-Semitism – a toxin invention eventually worked its way through history from first century Christians to the unique evil of the Shoah – that was central to the SSPX dissent. Their anti-Semitism is so deep they do not even see it. And it is another moment of pain to see Benedict reach out to these creeps even as he cannot countenance discussion of issues and questions that tear at the mind and soul of modern Catholics. Not surprising. But soooo depressing.