Civil Commotion

Politifact awards the title to … The Donald.

I’ve been telling y’all for years that any properly-educated seminarian knows perfectly well that the traditional Christian/Christmas narrative is nonsense; so far as Biblical scholars are concerned, that’s a settled fact.

What do you know? Jerry Coyne is on the same page.

Sophisticated Theologians™ tell us all the time that only Biblical literalists or fundamentalists believe the stories in the Bible. God is, they say, much more “nuanced,” and most believers are closer to Kierkegaard than to Ken Ham.

Well, I call bullshit on that.

Read the entire thing. The distance between the pews, and the truth that is well-known to their pastors, is indecent.

No Winter Solstice ever passes but that I find myself imagining what must have been the experience of that first person who recognized that there is regularity in the cosmos.

What triggered the insight? What set of circumstances caused the caveman Poogah to realize that the stars were aligned just like now when the days were last cold just like now and the game had moved south just like now? How staggering it must have been to realize that he lived in the middle of a giant clock.

How long did he wait to speak of it? Did he watch carefully for two or three years before telling the rest of his tribe what he had recognized, in order to be certain, or did he share that insight at once? And what words did he use, when the words had never before been needed to explain a thought that nobody had ever had?

Did the local Holy Man, with responsibility for teasing blessings from a random and hostile universe, condemn him for impiety?

Whatever happened, it must be counted one of the great moments of human history, for afterward the world became predictable and perhaps manageable. There are ancient observatories all over the earth, and always it can be seen that the stones were arranged to point toward the rising sun on this day of least daylight, signifying that on the morrow the day would be longer and soon the game would return and the fields would freshen. We know our ancient forebears attached great importance to the day, because the work of building the observatories was huge and construction of the observatories would have required years.

Thus were science and engineering born.

Nowadays, of course, it hardly matters. The passing of the seasons has nothing to do with whether or not there will be food to eat, and the greatest part of mankind will probably not pause to remark the solstice at all or even, if only vaguely, wonder why there are so many religious observances at just about the same time the seasons change. Indeed, some people are so ignorant that they are offended by the idea that their Holy Day has pagan origins.

Meantime, the great clock ticks on.

When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.

Sinclair Lewis (attr.)

When extremists are white and typically wrapping themselves in religion and the American flag, far too many Americans simply turn a blind eye and give the hate merchants and demagogues a pass. I agree with Parker that truly patriotic Americans have an obligation to loudly condemn our own extremists. Sadly, the concept is lost on most Republicans and the self-congratulatory “godly folk.”

Michael Hamar

I imagine my own thoughts on all of this are too well-known to need reprising, so I won’t elaborate.

Scientists and engineers live lives governed by the reality principle: Get the variables wrong, the experiment will fail, even if this seems insensitive; do the math wrong, the equation will tell you, even if that hurts your feelings. Reality does not similarly regulate the production of Marxist interpretations of “Middlemarch” or turgid monographs on the false consciousness of Parisian street sweepers in 1714. Literature professors “deconstructing” Herman Melville cause nothing worse than excruciating boredom in their students. If engineers ignore reality, reality deconstructs their bridges.

George Will

YES!! Engineering is the reality profession — no fantasists or fabulists allowed.

Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing … look around. You will not see one thing, one activity, that isn’t somehow influenced by the work of scientists and, especially, engineers. And yet, in all likelihood, you never think about that — which is a source of pride to most engineers; myself, certainly.

That’s because the ‘materialist epistemology’ that Holy Men and nitwit seminary students sneer at … is trustworthy; it works; it keeps people safe. When an engineer sits down to analyze a set of facts, he or she relies upon a tested, proved, established pedigree of actual knowledge. That’s why you have to worry about what some fool influenced by some idiot Holy Man might do next, but you never give a thought to the engineers who give you so many comforts.