What is Leftism? Four historical phases

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Leftism is 'Anti' - it is not Pro- anything in particular; and this can be seen from the fact that the defining feature of Leftism throughout history has changed - at various points Leftism has been pro-individual freedom, productive work, equality of opportunity, equality of outcome, equality before the law -  now Leftism is strongly against all of these things. 

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Starting from the ideal of a Christian Theocracy - an aimed-at situation where all aspects of life would be harmoniously Christian (by choice), and no clear division between Church and State because everything is, in a sense, part of The Church - there are four main Anti phases, defining four progressive steps in Leftism.  

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Leftism 1. Anti-Theocracy

In favour of the separation of Church and State - with Church above State.

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Leftism 2. Anti-Christian

Initially Deism, later secularism of public discourse (public debate is not settled by Christian arguments, but requires secular justifications). In favour of separation of Church and State - but with State above Church.

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Leftism 3. Anti-Tradition

This was the Old Left/ Socialism - concerned with overturning the old social order. Anti- whatever traditional divisions variously of slavery, caste, class, sex, marital status, religious affiliation, race, nationality, employment, age and so on.

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Leftism 4. Anti-Natural Law/ -Common Sense/ -Spontaneous and Instinctive

This is the New Left (post-mid 1960s), also termed political correctness; and communism. This is the Leftism of inversion: what was bad is good (and vice versa); what was ugly is beautiful (and vice versa); what was false is true (and vice versa); what was high status is low (and vice versa)... and so on through all of society; and through each person's public discourse and private mind.

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Of course there are counter-movements, some places have been exempted certain stages; and the origins of these phases of Leftism typically have a lag of about a generation between their intellectual devising and the implementation by elites, and their popular acceptance. But in the long term, Leftism seems to be a slippery slope, and it seems hard to prevent down-sliding to the next phase - presumably because each successful step in Leftism further weakens opposition.

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What motivates creativity?

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http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/a-pygmalion-theory-of-creativity-love.html
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The social perspective trumps creativity (in most people, most of the time)

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http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/the-social-perspective-is-what-usually.html
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C.S Lewis's Trilemma as THE Christian moment

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In Mere Christianity, CS Lewis made a famous, perhaps notorious - and I believe profoundly true statement: 

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

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This is saying that Jesus intended to present Himself as someone who was either The Christ and Son of God; or else must be regarded as either insane or evil. A trilemma - a three way choice.

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For me, the shocking nature of Jesus's behaviour is very well brought out in this four minute dramatization of John 8: 12-58 - the 'I am the light of the world' section - especially the contrast between Jesus's calm and emphatic manner of speaking, and the response of the priests and of the crowd

http://tinyurl.com/ph342pc 

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Indeed, I think this is something of a key to Christianity, and to becoming a Christian.

We need to come to that point where we see that the claims of Christianity are - on the one hand - coherent, and that there is evidence to support them; but on the other hand that the evidence is not conclusive, nor compelling of assent - but rather that the claims are vast, shocking, extraordinary...

And that having come to this point, a point of balance - our free will has been brought to a moment of decision, of choice between two divergent paths, two contrasted world views.

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So it is not un-reasonable nor utterly counter-evidential to reject Christ, in the sense that the whole thing can be regarded as a tissue of falsehoods and misunderstandings and coincidences; a horrible scheme of exploitation.

In this sense, militant atheists are perfectly correct to regard Christianity as evil or insane - if it is not true, Christianity in an individual is either evil or stupid-insane; and long-term strategic organized Christianity (The Church), which cannot be regarded as insane, is therefore and necessarily evil: some kind of elaborate trick, disguise and conspiracy.

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Since we really are free agents, this point and no further is how far God can bring us: to the point of recognizing the necessity of a choice for which there is no safe default decision and for which we bear individual responsibility.

God can bring us to the Trilemma, and after that we are responsible for what happens. 

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This point of balance, of treble choice - Lewis's Trilemma - is something we feel if the strategy is has worked, if - that is - the circumstances or argument has succeeded in bringing us up to this point... but of course the attempt to bring people to this point may not work on any particular instance.

In which case the apologist must try again. 

But this is the proper goal of evangelism: not to bludgeon the potential convert into submission by pretending that Christianity is the one and only necessary sane consequence of irrefutable arguments and evidence; but to bring the potential convert to that point at which he sees Christianity as reasonable but extraordinary: and perceives the road branching ahead - and acknowledges that in this exact here-and-now, it is up to him and to nobody and nothing else.
 

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Being creative - the basic situation...

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http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/being-creative-is-not-seeking-novelty.html

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Spiritual pride and the necessity for theosis

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The sin of spiritual pride is a focus of the ascetic monastic tradition of Eastern Orthodoxy. It is also recognized by the Western Catholic tradition - although not given such prominence; and indeed by monastic Zen Buddhists.

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Spiritual pride is the particular sin of those who embark upon a personal quest for holiness, for sanctity (the path to Sainthood), for theosis (becoming more like God) - and the sin is something like regarding one's own will as if it were the divine will - or perhaps being deceived into regarding demonic promptings as if they were divine.

The particular problem of spiritual pride, is that the person who suffers it imagines they are at a higher spiritual level than those around them, and so becomes immune to advice, warning, criticism.

The Eastern Orthodox antidote is to embark on ascetic disciplines only under supervision of a spiritual Father - and initially in a monastic (group) setting, with the monks 'looking out for each other'.

The assumption is that the spiritual Father has attained a sufficiently high level of theosis that he can detect and help solve the problems in the apprentice; and the apprentice must, for his own good, submit to this authority. The religious life is thus transmitted from Master to apprentice in an unbroken chain - implicitly originating and emanating from the Apostles at the time of Christ. (

However, it seems that the chain of tradition has been broken in many or most places in the world, which means that this method of attaining theosis is no longer possible - at least for most people in most places.)

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My impression is that spiritual pride is especially a problem of spiritual ambition, when spiritual ambition is contaminated by the desire for one's own power and glory - e.g. the desire to make a 'successful career' of being a recognized Holy Man (rather like those fake 'gurus' of the 1960s), or simply the status of holiness - even purely the the self-satisfied 'smugness' of regarding oneself as of higher holiness than others.

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Yet of course spiritual ambition is in itself 'a good thing' - and very necessary in a world such as ours where spirituality is at a pitifully low ebb.

But it seems that an onslaught on spirituality, aided by fasting, many hours of prayer, vigils (staying awake all night to pray) is - while often effective - hazardous; and hazardous in a similar way to the 1960s use of psychedelic drugs to create spiritual experiences - selfish, evil, demonic experiences are mistaken for insights, miracles and divine revelations.

These smack of a very modern impatience, sensation-seeking, mere curiosity, desire for novelty and impressive, extreme, experiences which can be boasted about.

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It might have been expected that, on theological grounds, the Mormon religion would be especially prone to spiritual pride - since it makes theosis (called exaltation) into a central tenet: we are God's children - hence of the same nature as the divine - in a much more literal sense than in mainstream Christianity; there is a different concept of The Fall, thus no Original Sin to 'worry about'; and there is at least a remote and theoretical potential of each human becoming a God (under God the Father, but of similar scope) - which would seem like a very direct invitation to arrogance, selfishness.

Furthermore, all Mormons are told to ask for and expect to receive personal divine revelations - direct communications from God - to guide them through life

And yet spiritual pride is not a particular feature of Mormons nor much of a problem in the LDS church.

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This apparent relative immunity to spiritual pride (at least, compared with other Christian traditions which emphasize theosis/ sanctification) may be related to the much more human ('anthropomorphic') understanding of God.

Mormons would tend to regard God the Father as a vast, almost infinite amplification of Man - i.e. starting from Man; while most mainstream Christian theology starts with abstract definitions of God, and tries to move towards Man - but typically cannot get very far with the comparison. It is a matter of starting at opposite ends.

Terryl and Fiona Givens - writing in The God Who Weeps - also suggest that the traditional Mormon emphasis has been much less on a God of infinite Power and Glory, and more on a God of infinite love and compassion (as depicted in the weeping God of Enoch's experience and depicted in the scripture Moses 7: http://www.lds.org/scriptures/pgp/moses/7?lang=eng).

To become ever more like a God the Father whose love is 'infinite' such that his suffering for the sins of the world is 'infinite' (like the mortal earthly Father of a vast family of deeply loved and profoundly suffering children) is not really the kind of goal likely to be provoking of spiritual pride.

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Another difference is that the Mormon spiritual life is ideally in a family context - not a monastery nor in solitude.This guards against the many problems of ascetic monasticism.

Indeed, the opposite problem of worldly busy-ness - too much social doing, and not enough solitude, contemplation and prayer - would seem to be the characteristic limitation of Mormon spirituality.

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Another difference is that for Mormons the path of theosis (exaltation) goes beyond death into the next life - and indeed stretches out into infinity.

Mormons may be aiming to become a God at some point in the unimaginably remote future, but in the meantime the main business is the hourly, daily, yearly business of living by the Commandments, working, serving, striving and so on - and this continues into the after life.

In other words, for Mormons there is not much sense of urgency about theosis - quite the reverse, since it stretches into an eternal future - exaltation it is mostly a matter for patience and endurance.

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This is in stark contrast to mainstream Christianity where sanctification/ theosis is urgent and the clock of mortality is ticking.

Protestants generally regard spiritual progress as stopping at the instant of death, at which point the possibilities of salvation are fixed.

Catholics acknowledge a short period of potential spiritual development after death (e.g. the forty days of Orthodoxy or Roman Catholic purgatory) during which salvation/ theosis may be affected - but this seems to be conceptualized as a period when the soul may be helped by the intercessions of others, rather than its own efforts.


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All this is very important stuff, to my understanding, since sanctification/ theosis/ exaltation is the main business of our continued experience of mortal life - it is what we ought to be focused on as our main business, day by day, hour by hour, year on year.

The main business of incarnate mortal life is - as the name implies - to experience 1. living in a body, and 2. dying. It is these which are the essence of this life we live - and these are experienced by everybody.

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Beyond that, human experience is very varied - some die in the womb, or as infants, others live for varying times and in varying circumstances. The question is, beyond the necessity of not-rejecting that salvation which Christ has given us - what should we do with our days?

The answer is theosis - so we are called-upon to be spiritually ambitious, to progress as far as we can towards divinity during incarnate mortal life.

Therefore (assuming the above reasoning is correct), theosis is a topic which deserves, which requires, a lot more consideration than it is given in most Christian traditions.

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What is your favourite Book of the Bible?

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If the Bible is fractal or holographic - such that each unit contains the whole - then it should not matter much which part is the focus (so long as the spirit is right).

But my favourite book of the Bible is and I think always has been the Gospel of St John (in the Authorized/ King James Version, of course) - a profoundly un-original preference, and indeed exactly what would be expected for the kind of person I am.

(Behind this would come the first Epistle and the last section of the other book by John: the Revelation or Apocalypse; and the Psalms.)

Why? It is, I think, a matter of connection - these are the parts of the Bible when I most often feel a connection flash across 2000 years; and then the feeling of warmth and yearning slow-burning in the heart.

And this, in turn, seems to be a matter of personal identification with John himself - to me the most love-able of the persons in the Bible; the one I would most wish to have known.

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How much stronger are men than women? (In terms of maximum muscular strength)

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Question: If an average man competes with a hundred random women in muscle strength tests - how many from that hundred would he expect to beat? 

Answer: All of them.


- Because only about one woman per thousand is stronger than the average man.

(Subject to caveats below)

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Until a few days ago, I did not realize that the difference between strength in men and women was quite so extreme, so qualitative.

I came across this fact referenced in a review-theory paper about sexual selection: "...less than 10% overlap between the male and female distributions, with 99.9% of females falling below the male mean."

WD Lassek, SJC Gaulin. Costs and benefits of fat-free muscle mass in men: relationship to mating success, dietary requirements, and native immunity. Evolution and Human Behaviour 2009; 30: 322-328.

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I checked out their main references. This paper was the most striking: 

RW Bohannon. Reference values for extremity muscle strength obtained by hand-held dynamometry from adults aged 20 to 79 years  Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation  1997; 78: 26-32.

This has tables of muscle strength, with force expressed in Newtons (N) for different movements, men and women, and different age bands, dominant versus non-dominant side.

If we look at the results for dominant arm elbow flexion ('biceps' strength, more or less) - mean force in Newtons plus standard deviation in brackets - we find:

Men        age 20-29 -  285 (38) 
Men        age 70-79 -  237 (40)

Women age 20-29 -   155 (21)
Women age 70-79 -   130 (27)

And similar results are found for other muscle groups.

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What is striking is that at 20-29 the difference in average strength is 285 - 155, which is 130 Newtons difference - or that, in round numbers, men are nearly twice as strong as women. (ie. 130 is nearly as big as 155)

And the standard deviation for women is just 21 - which means that there are about six standard deviations difference, which is a huge difference and means near zero chance of overlap in strengths between men and women.

Indeed, the Men aged 70-79 were much stronger than the women aged 20-29: 237 - 155 = 82 Newtons, which means old men are still roughly half as strong again as women (i.e. 82 is about half of 155) - or young women are only about two thirds as strong as old men.

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Now, these numbers are presented as reference values; but like almost all real-life reference values they are not truly representative of the general population, because they are (and this is clearly acknowledged in the methods section) based on a 'convenience sample' of 106 men and 125 women selected on the basis of different ages. And these subjects are not athletes in training, body-builders, or anything of that sort.

Since subjects had to go to a lab and perform strenuous tests - this sample would include only volunteers; and exclude those too ill to come to the lab or too lazy to make the exertions.

This could be significant - for example, a high proportion of men aged 70-79 would be unable to do these tests (being too ill, demented, institutionalized, or whatever) - so the reference value at best refers to that subset of ambulant old men able and willing to do these lab tests.

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Nonetheless, the take-home message is clear: the statement "men are much stronger than women" is not just true on average, but is close to being true as a generalization (at least among un-trained subjects).

I have tried this fact out on a few people, men and women, and most - like me - were surprised at the high degree of difference in strength between men and women and especially the lack of overlap.

Since the average civilized men and women do not compete physically at full strength in the course of everyday life, and seldom go head to head on the kind of objective measures of strength being used here, the scale of sex differences in strength is consistently under-estimated - probably due to the factors discussed here:

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/sexual-dimorphism-between-men-and-women.html

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An evidence-free world

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In the 1990s there was a movement for 'evidence-based medicine' which was actually a movement for evidence-free medicine - since the assertion was that the only admissible 'evidence' for effectiveness of any treatment was restricted to large randomized controlled trials.

But large RCTs are funded only by large corporations and bureaucracies, and therefore medicine was reconfigured as a coalition of the Big Pharmaceutical Companies and the Health Service Administration who both conducted and 'officialy' interpreted RCTs.

So evidence-based medicine was in fact evidence-free medicine - since nothing could count as evidence against the official pronouncements of the bureaucrats.

No amount of personal experience, nothing that happened in the world, not even a pile of dead bodies, could count as evidence against 'the guidelines'.

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But this phenomenon is general in the modern world.

Evidence does not merely count for little, it counts for nothing at all.

If the ruling media and bureaucrats want something to happen, then they need no evidence for it (beyond somebody's assertion that it is good, or a made-up anecdote or two about the suffering it may prevent); but if they don't want something to be true, then no amount of evidence is ever enough to change their minds.

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In an evidence-free world, there is a complete, utter and absolute disconnection between what people believe and do - and what happens as a consequence.

Indeed, it is exactly consequence-iality which is denied - since the basis of being liberated from evidence is that we can never be sure about consequences therefore everything (and I mean everything) about what we do, depends on where we bestow the benefit of the doubt.   

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The evidence-free rulers always give themselves the benefit of the doubt.

If they want to do something, their opponents have to prove that no good can possibly come of it; if they don't want to do something, opponents have to prove that unless they did this precise things the result must necessarily be instant catastrophe.

If they want to assert a fact, opponents have to prove that it cannot be true under any possible combination of circumstances; if they don't want to acknowledge a fact, their opponents have to prove that there is no other possible explanation that could be devised.  

In sum, there is always doubt about causality, and doubt about lack of causality, therefore the conclusion depends upon the side where that doubt is bestowed as being most significant.

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When doubt is defined such as to be universal, and everything depends on which side gets the benefit of that doubt - then there is not room for evidence to play any role in decisions: we have an evidence-free world.

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The lesson for opponents to Leftism is to forget about evidence in relation to public discourse - because in an evidence-free world the only admissible evidence is evidence against you; and the benefit of the doubt is bestowed on your enemies.

In an evidence-free world where plausibility and common sense count for nothing whatsoever, enemies of the Left are called upon to prove their innocence, prove that they are stating the only conceivable truth and nothing but the state: and prove these beyond any possible, imaginable shadow of doubt.

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William Boyce: a third rate, derivative composer - I like him!

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William Boyce (1711-1779) was born 26 years after GF Handel, but wrote exactly as if he was Handel; I, at any rate, cannot distinguish the styles.

Boyce would only be placed in the third rank of composers, since he is neither one of the greats (e.g. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven); nor one of the rank below, who include many originators (e.g. Vivaldi, Haydn, Weber) - but he would be among the likes of Locatelli, JC Bach, and Hummel - that is to say composers who retain a lasting but minor place in the concert and recording repertoire.

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To be exact - the best of Boyce is as good as second rank Handel - which is very good indeed; but he cannot rise to the stratospheric heights of Handel, especially in lyrical mode (examples of the stratosphere: the slow movement of 'Oboe concerto' No. 3 in G min; the solo aria 'Ombra mai fu' from Xerxes; or the trio 'The flocks shall leave the mountains' from Acis and Galatea).

But, despite all this, I like Boyce very much - specifically his 'symphonies' and overtures; and listen to them often, with delight and without getting bored - something which certainly does not apply to the likes of JC Bach, Thomas Arne, or even Charles Avison (for whom I have a special and parochial affection as the best composer from Northumberland).

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Boyce therefore presents an interesting case study - as an example of just how good you can be when creating within the constraints of a great artist - almost as a pastiche; and the answer is very good indeed.

My preference would be for third rate composers to do what Boyce did, be unoriginal but very good - rather than trying, via formal innovations or 'novelties', to pass themselves off as 'great'/ first rank composers in the way of most 20th century classical musicians and also perhaps some of the earlier romantics such as Lizst, Mahler; or even Richard Strauss in his 'experimental' modes such as Salome, or Verdi in Falstaff.

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(Parenthetical Explanatory Note: I would put Strauss and Verdi in the second rank, except in their experimental work; when I would drop them down to the fourth rank, due to as acting as cleverly pretentious betrayers of their own genius!)

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The Gestalt or Essence of the Bible

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The Bible cannot legitimately be regarded as a set of inter-linked laws or regulations - but that is how many people read it. The implicit ideal is that a good Biblical Christian should know the whole Bible, sentence by sentence, and fully cross-referenced.

This is double nonsense - in the first place as requiring a cognitive capacity, time and resources grossly beyond the mass of humanity; but also because it is the wrong way to understand the Bible.

The Bible needs to be understood as a whole - that is, perhaps as a Gestalt (the sum being greater than its parts) or more helpfully as having an Essence - more helpfully because 'greater than the sum of its parts' still carries implications that all the parts must first be separately comprehended.

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If the Bible is regarded as having an Essence, this does not mean that the Essence can be defined: it cannot be defined.

What I mean is that the Christian relationship to the Bible should be one of Love - not of comprehension - the Bible should be loved in the same kind of way we love a person: Father, Mother, Brother, Sister, Son, Daughter, Husband, Wife or dear Friend.

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What do we Love about a person? We love their Essence - that is to say, we do not assemble our love of a person from the individual loves of each of their parts separately considered - but we love that person, love their soul.

Even when loving their Essence, we may not love their parts - we may not love their habits, the way they sniff loudly or snore; we may not love their diseases, their cancers; we do not love their sins - but we do love them.

We do not love their perfection-in-every-detail - nor do we comprehend them - 'other people' are an insoluble mystery.

But we love them in their essential being.

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That should be a Christian's attitude to the Bible, I think. He should love its Essence.

In this sense the Bible is something with which we seek a relationship - and a relationship is something that can be mentally grasped whole and in a moment.

We are not required to understanding each specific verse considered separately - how could we possibly do this anyway?

Just as our love for a person is not affected by imperfections of incomprehension, love of the Bible should not be affected by an inability to make sense of or believe each bit of the Bible when it has been chopped up and presented for analysis.

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(...That would be somewhat like taking a camera and photographing each part of a wife's body at different levels of magnification down to the microscopic, and requiring that the husband not only recognize every photograph, but explain every detail of all of these pictures, and the inter-relationship of all of these pictures - and also regard every photograph as perfection, and that he must 'love' each and every one of them!)

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Fortunately that kind of thing is neither required, nor is it helpful.

I think we should read the Bible in the same spirit as we want to spend time with our loved ones. Of course we want to 'get to know them' better - but that isn't really the point, is it?

We want to spend time with them because we love them.

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The justice of damnation

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A Christian may well find himself asked to justify damnation in terms which are comprehensible and make sense according to human instincts (gut feelings) about what is just.

I believe this question ought to be answerable; and without recourse either to emphasizing divine incomprehensibility (which argument can be used to justify anything at all); or to doctrines about the utter depravity and undeservingness of Man (which are completely out of harmony with the whole tenor of the Bible, and rapidly lead to insoluble paradoxes).

(Man does not, of course, 'deserve' the marvellous gift and Good News of Christ's work - but it is not legitimate to make the whole matter of salvation/ damnation into the arbitrary workings of Grace - because that is to remove Christianity from the realms of justice and desert.)

Also, this question is so basic to Christianity, that if it cannot be answered truthfully and reasonably accurately, then this is a very serious flaw.

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So, how can it be just that someone be damned, with all that entails?

Ultimately, if the damned person chooses to put himself beyond the reach of salvation, then it is just that he be damned - not only just, but the possibility of damnation is a necessity for a being with free will: nobody can be forced to choose salvation.

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This argument has implications: there must be a very strong, indeed total, autonomy of human choice for damnation to be just: the choice to reject salvation must be independent of circumstance, otherwise it would not be fair to damn someone because they lived in bad circumstances.

And total autonomy of choice requires that Man be considerably more god-like than Man is depicted in some Christian traditions.

(Man cannot, as I suggested above, be regarded as utterly weak, utterly sinful - else  it would not be just to damn him for making the wrong choices.)

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If, by contrast, Man is regarded as utterly weak and depraved in his nature (his nature being given him by God); and if all good in Men comes from God; then such a miserable creature as this depiction of Man could not justly be allowed to choose damnation - so if Man is regarded as utterly vile in himself with all Goodness from God, then such a Man is having damnation forced-upon him: which would be unjust since he is punished for that which he cannot affect. 

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In sum - damnation is perfectly easily explicable in terms of Man being a creature with radical autonomy of will, with the intrinsic ability to choose or to reject salvation, which entails that Man has god-like attributes such as intrinsic goodness and judgement.

That makes sense; and is I believe harmonious with the general tenor, the overall spirit or essential core,  of Scripture.

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Parental choice determines mating/ marriage in most historical societies

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I have (belatedly) stumbled across the fascinating work of Menelaos Apostolou

http://www.menelaosapostolou.com/

which focuses on the evolutionary significance of the (apparent) fact that in most known historical societies (and indeed in much of the world today) it is parental choice (and not the wishes of participants)  that most strongly determines sexual access.

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For example in "Sexual selection under parental choice in agropastoral societies" Evolution and Human Behaviour  2010; 31; 39-47, he looks across the data on marriage for different types of society such as hunter-gatherer, animal husbandry (herding), agriculture and different mixtures of these - to discover whether marriage was purely arranged by parents, purely by courtship of prospective spouses - a mixture of parent approval confirmed or vetoed by courtship, or vice versa.

Paper available at: http://www.menelaosapostolou.com/papers

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In all types of societies, the parental choice was a stronger influence on women than men; and the proportion of marriages organized primarily by parental arrangement (with or without courtship) was 65% (agric), 82% (animal), 74% (agric-animal), 54% (mixed H&G) and 56% (H&G).

So, most marriages in all societies are mostly chosen by parents, but this is especially the case for the kind of post-hunter-gatherer, herding and agrarian societies which have increasingly dominated the world over the past ten thousand years, or so.

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This means there have been approximately 400 generations (at a rate of 4 generations per 100 years) for human evolution to be shaped by the selection factor of extremely significant parental choice - at least in those parts of the world which have experienced agriculture for the longest.

This in turn implies... well many things!

For a start that many of the signals of attractiveness which draw together men and women in the modern world of almost pure courtship (little influenced by parental preferences) are novel forms of selection.

Further, that humans are not 'well evolved' to choose mates for themselves - in the sense that it has apparently been usual to have marriage partners chosen by parents for as far back in human society as we have the capability to measure.

And finally (for now!) that - to put matters another way - it was the possession of physical and psychological traits that appealed to your future in-laws (and not to your future spouse) which was probably most important in the past; and which therefore shaped human physical and psychological evolution - especially over the past several thousand years.

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Note: Level of punishment for female adultery.

Apostolou also looked at the level of punishment when a woman is discovered to have committed adultery. Three levels were coded: No punishment or light punishment; moderate punishments including beating and divorce; severe punishment such as beating to death.

The results are pretty shocking: No punishment or light punishment were found in only 5 out of 54 of these agropastoral societies; while severe punishments for adultery were found in about two-thirds of these societies - a large majority of 35 out of 54.

It is therefore possible/ probable that significant aspects of heritable human psychology were formed in an evolutionary context with respect to female marital infidelity that was extremely different from now; and that contemporary behaviour may therefore be considered a 'mis-match' phenomenon - perhaps due to ancient psychology operating in a modern context for which it is plausibly functionally maladaptive?

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Sexual dimorphism between men and women is greater than generally believed - similar to gorillas!

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Extracted from a review article by David A Puts of Penn State University - "Beauty and the Beast: mechanisms of sexual selection in humans." Evolution and Human Behavior 2010; 31: 157-175. Words in square brackets [ ] are my editorial additions, three dots ... represents a cut. References are omitted. Bold emphases have been added.   

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Men are larger, stronger, faster, and more physically aggressive than women - and the degree of sexual dimorphism in these traits rivals that of species [such as gorillas and common chimpanzees] with intense male contests.

1. The relatively modest 8% stature [height] dimorphism  in humans... and a difference of about 15-20 % in body mass might suggest that male contests are reduced compared with our closest [primate] relatives. However... this is partly because women are unique among primates in having copious fat stores.

2. When fat-free mass is considered, men are 40% heavier... and have 60% more total lean muscle mass than women.

3. Men have 80% greater arm muscle mass and 50% more lower body muscle mass...

4. ...The sex difference in upper-body muscle mass in humans is similar to the sex difference in fat free mass in gorillas..., [which are] the most sexually dimorphic of all living primates. (...)

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Percentage shares of world populations under political control of civilizations 1900-2025

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From the Clash of Civilizations by Samuel P Huntington, 1996.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_P._Huntington

Extracted from Table 4.3. 'Pop' refers to world population total in Billions rounded to one decimal place. Other numbers rounded to nearest integer. * refers to projections.


Year    Pop       West  Islam    Sinic   Afric

1900       1.6          44          4              19           0

1920        1.9         48           2              17           1

1971        3.7         14           13            23           6

1995        5.8         13           16           24           10

2025*      8.5         10           19           21           14

  
This Table had a profound influence on my thinking - a case of scales dropping from eyes...

Of course, since the book was written 18 years ago, the precise estimates for 2025 have changed - but the direction, speed and severity of changes in the size and composition of the world population over the past century are stunning - and presumably unprecedented in world history.

But, naturally, nobody talks about this stuff.

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The Left isn't winning by having good arguments - it wins because people are punished for arguing against the Left

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This is one of the things I find most frustrating, and increasingly frustrating: not so much that it happens, but that so many people cannot see that it is happening.

An example is research into intelligence, specifically into the combination of the inheritance of intelligence and group intelligence differences.

The FACT is that people presenting arguments or evidence to show differences in heritable intelligence between groups, have been severely punished by Leftists since the mid-1960s.

To put in mildly, this state of affairs severely distorts both research and public discourse, with incredibly far-reaching maladaptive consequences for social policies; yet, people do not take account of this distortion, or assume that they can readily correct for it.

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The same applies to arguments about sexual orientation, immigration, poverty, the redefinition of marriage...  the list is a long one.

Leftism has not won these arguments, the Left has simply punished those who argue on the other side: and when I say 'The Left' I mean particularly Leftist intellectuals in the mass media, public administration, the education system, and bureaucracies generally.

While at the same time denying that they are doing this! And being believed!!

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The consequence is on one side to sustain a truly deplorable state of dishonesty, and on the other side a near total lack of awareness of this state of dishonesty.

There have been plenty of examples of coercive repression of opposition, indeed something of the sort is necessary to stable government - yet has there ever before been a situation where so many people are unaware of the coercion, deny the coercion, or think that it doesn't make any significant difference, or that they personally can easily 'see through' the dense cloud of swirling lies which surrounds them?

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What can be concluded?

Our society is far more corrupt than people realize - why wouldn't it be? What's to stop it? But just how corrupt it is impossible to know, even approximately, since any 'evidence' consists of lies built upon lies.

Our society is far less smart than people realize, because good arguments are punished and demonized so bad arguments (or no arguments at all, but merely faked moral outrage/ scapegoat hatred) wins vital arguments by default.

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In sum, we live in a world ruled by dumb liars, who get dumber and more dishonest every day - who think they are smart reality-perceivers because they are talking so loud and fast, and because nobody argues against them except disgusting losers - and this continues because the dumb liars rule a world inhabited by short-termist secular hedonists who do not have any reason to care whether or not the above description is true; since they regard truth as whatever is expedient en route to happiness, and reality as something socially constructed and open-endedly re-definable.

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What is the Christian significance of Charles Williams' unrepented shenanigans?

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http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/charles-williams-marital-infidelity.html
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The 'turning' of heroic literature

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One of the primary functions of literature, of art generally, has been to priovide examples of heroism: of courage and endurance in a good cause.

One example is the Old Testament, which can function as a series of cameos of heroic virtue in the face of persecution, corruption and a multitude of disadvantages. The way I remember the OT from my childhood is, indeed, in exactly this way - David and Goliath, Sampson, Daniel... heroic figures. (There are better examples, of course, but these are the ones I remember.)

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The same applies to the Book of Mormon, and indeed this line of thought was stimulated by an e-mail from commenter 'MC' who is an active Mormon. He described how the BoM functions to provide a set of heroic examples upon which modern Mormons can model themselves.

When I again looked through the BoM, I could see that this was indeed something of a Key to understanding the special role or function of the BoM in the LDS church: more explicitly than the OT, and in greater number and with more variations on the theme, the Book of Mormon provides one account after another of individual courage and endurance in faith; in face of recurrent apostasy, decadence and violence - and thus a spectrum of hero models, from whom the modern Mormon may gain inspiration and resolution. 

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In the increasingly secular environment of the twentieth century, this role has devolved from scripture to fiction, and especially to the 'fantasy' genre of which Tolkien is the greatest exemplar.

I myself have used characters and situations from Lord of the Rings in order to model and clarify situations in life, and from whom to gain inspiration.

The Harry Potter series is a more recent example - and much of the appeal of HP comes from its many and vivid depictions of self-sacrificing heroism.

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Scripture and fantasy are traditional genres, and the atheistic, radical, progressive opposition can only parasitize upon heroic literature - as when the heroes of Carol Kendall's (excellent) Minnipins/ Gammage Cup story are depicted rather in the fashion of sixties counter-culturalists with their unconventional dress, poeticizing and abstract painting;  nonetheless, their heroism is in service of traditional 'goods' and made possible by the eccentric reactionary Walter the Earl.

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But despite its fundamental rootedness in the traditional, and despite its quasi-scriptural basis; heroic fantasy literature can be turned against traditional values, as happened when Tolkien was adopted by the sixties counter-culture, and interpreted to be in favour of drop-out drug culture, the sexual revolution, and extreme Leftist utopianism generally.

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The same has now happened with Harry Potter, but in a much nastier fashion given the modern environment of media-spun political correctness, with an organization called the Harry Potter Alliance - which bureaucratically harnesses Potter-mania to all the latest hot-button causes of modern Leftism, with Potterphiles deployed as funders of radical pressure groups - and thereby 'turns' heroic idealism from defence of tradition into subversion of The Good.

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As with the Left's appropriation of Tolkien, the HPA works by ignoring the deep Christian structure of the novels, and focusing on superficial aspects which can be channeled into 'supporting' a pre-existing agenda.

But the HP novels are much more ambivalent about tradition/ Leftism/ the sexual revolution than is Lord of the Rings.

With her post-Potter works and public persona, JK Rowling herself seems to have turned against the deep Christian and traditionalist structure of the Harry Potter books, and embraced all the distinctive concerns of modern Leftism.

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The turning of Harry Potter shows the way that Leftism works. It was made easier by the fact that the deep Christianity of the Harry Potter books is - while real and powerful, as depicted by John 'The Hogwarts Professor' Granger's analyses - covert and coded; while the more Leftist concerns are much more obvious: for instance the Nazi-like 'racism' of Voldemort and the 'pure blood' death eaters.

Thus makes it easier to invert the meaning of HP; but in fact, such is the power of the mass media to impose its own categories (by selection, emphasis, diversion, invention, shock) - that even real life personal experience can now be reframed to mean its opposite: this is a matter of daily, headline routine.

Modern people believe what they are told by the mass media; not what they know by experience: we are tabulae rasae, 'hollow men', the 'men without chests' - each night forgetting everything; each morning waiting to be re-filled by the latest media content.

So the potential benefits of heroic literature are quite simply turned-against their traditional and Christian basis.

Perhaps the LDS church has been fortunate that the Book of Mormon is off-the-radar, being considered as beneath the notice of the mainstream mass media culture; which has not therefore condescended to 'reframe' its stories of heroic virtue into meaning the opposite of their real meaning; a process which has, of course, long since happened with the Bible.

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Attitudes and the Thought Police: opponents of Leftism cannot be subversive

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New Leftism, post-mid-sixties Leftism, has been about shaping 'attitudes' - and this leads directly to the Thought Police

For Leftism it is not sufficient to go along with the ideology, because Leftists know from their own behaviour that this leaves the door wide-open to subversion.

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Leftists work strategically by feigning compliance to religion, to traditional morality, to beauty and truth; but their private attitudes conflict with with all these, and they work in a thousand - mostly indirect (hence deniable) - ways to subvert, mock, undermine, eventually invert religion, traditional morality, truth and beauty.

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This is what Leftists do - and they suppose that this is what their opponents do - and this is why Leftists always end-up adopting Thought Police tactics, and persecuting people on the basis of their inferred attitudes - but they are wrong.

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They are wrong because subversion is destruction, and destruction only works in one direction.

The opponents of Leftism - the true opponents - are constructive, not subversive; builders not destroyers; makers not wreckers. 

The opponents of Leftism cannot use subversion, because there is nothing in Leftism for them to subvert: or, rather, subverting actually-existing Leftism only leads to more extreme and abstract Leftism.

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So the true opponents of Leftism cannot be strategically and covertly subversive in the way of Leftists; and their private attitudes are irrelevant to their effectiveness; because (unlike subversion) the process of construction, building, making must be, can only be, explicit.

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This means that the Leftist focus on correct attitudes, and the use of Thought Police tactics to enforce the required attitudes, approaches fairly close to being pure evil - since it is unnecessary, ineffective, a projection - hence in practice an excuse for envy, hatred, cruelty and open-ended destruction of The Good, wherever it may be found or merely suspected to exist.

Of course, this does not in any way serve the interests of Leftists, since they will themselves be consumed by the chaos they foment: but that fact merely confirms (for a Christian) the demonic motivations of Leftism: a hatred of humanity which aims at nothing short of universal and permanent misery.

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The dangers of humility under modern conditions

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Humility is a necessary virtue for Christians, but cannot be a first step towards becoming a Christian.

Indeed humility in the absence of Christianity may be extremely dangerous under modern conditions.

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In a world of moral inversions, to be humble may mean to accept the world's evaluations - because to reject them would seem arrogant, prideful.

When the world's evaluations are evil, humility may accept evil, submit to evil - or at least go-along-with evil.

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Why? Because humility is relational - we can only be humble in relation to something, or to someone.

Whether humility is good or evil depends on who we are humble towards.

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So, it is dangerous, it is counter-productive, it is in effect anti-Christian to call for greater humility in the absence of Christian faith.

And humility cannot be the first step for a modern Christian convert. 

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The fictional history of The Notion Club Papers - Tolkien's coded declaration of how to read his work

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http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/provenance-of-notion-club-papers-both.html

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Deep apologetics: What blocks repentance? Need for a prior description of the basic story of human life

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Modern people feel guilty, but they do not repent - and if they do not repent, they cannot be Christian.

So, what blocks repentance?

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People cannot repent until they know what they should do, and that they are not doing it; and they cannot know what they should do, until they know the structure of reality: the human condition.

If so, it is futile trying to get people to repent when they do not know the structure of reality, and if they deny even that reality even has a structure.

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Most modern adults are alienated - cut off from reality - and this is experienced as negative emotions: misery, boredom, anger, anxiety, demotivation...

But they do not know what they are alienated from. Therefore nothing can be done about alienation - except distraction and intoxication to stop the feeling (but not the cause).

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Modern people are stuck. They feel bad and they not only do not know why they feel bad, but they also deny that there is any objective reason for feeling bad except for illness and a repressive 'society' - therefore a religion which tells modern people to repent is interpreted as deliberately making people who already feel bad, feel even worse. Which seems like a very nasty thing to do.

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So, what should be the first step in modern deep apologetics?

Whatever the first step in apologetics it will be incomplete, because it is the first step. Its main role is to provide what is necessary to back-reference when the further steps are added (IF things get even that far).

My present notion is that the first step should be to describe the basic set-up, the human condition and relation to God the Father and Jesus Christ - the story of the history of Man: where we came from and where we are going.

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This story must be truthful, of course! - and must also be inspiring - if it is to be useful.

But the truthfulness of the very first brief outline must be carefully considered, in the sense that any brief outline must omit mention of difficulties that cannot be dealt with without interrupting the story: this is just common sense about how to teach.

In teaching something difficult, you first of all give the whole thing, stated clearly and didactically in plain language (minimal jargon) without qualifications or quibbles  -  and only then, once people have 'got' that simple version, you go back over the story adding nuances, discussing difficulties or ambiguities, teasing out implications etc.

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The is what Christians need to do for the modern audience - each Christian denomination needs to reflect on this matter, and work on telling the story of Man and God for the first time: what to include as necessary for further building, what to leave-out as misleading, what to emphasize as interesting and inspiring.

If people understand the basic story of human life, they can then understand the nature of sin and why sin is (objectively) sin; because then they understand what they are sinning-against: only then can modern people repent.

**


Note: I recognized the need for this after reflecting on the content of the published manuals for Mormon missionaries - and the prominence given to The Plan of Salvation.

https://www.lds.org/manual/the-plan-of-salvation/the-plan-of-salvation?lang=eng

Here the LDS church sets out from its own perspective 'the basic story' of the human condition, God's relations with Man; describes it very clearly and in a way which is potentially both interesting and exciting/ inspiring. Once this basic story is understood, then more detailed discussions can be related back to it, and questions can be answered by reference to the overall Plan. 

I think other Christian denominations ought to be able to generate a comparably brief, simple, clear, and inspiring account of the basic story of Man and God, from their own perspective.

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Further note: I am not interested in publishing comments critical of the Mormon Missionary Manual, nor of Mormonism -  I am referencing this manual as a good example of the kind of thing which is needed, and to make clear that most Christian denominations do not provide anything half so useful for apologetics.

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Natural selection as a coherent religion also requires implicit Platonism plus covert moral assumptions

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Natural selection is  a common 'bottom line' religion for many people nowadays

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/natural-selection-as-religion.html

But, natural selection as a religion does not make any sense, I mean it is strictly incoherent, unless underpinned by other assumptions. And this is what we find.

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I know this from experience, because I tried very hard to have Natural Selection as my bottom line religion - but to do so requires adopting several non-obvious assumptions. The result is a version of systems theory, especially as formulated by Niklaus Luhmann

See Appendix to:

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/natural-selection-as-religion.html

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But systems theory is extremely abstract and unintuitive, and the most typical assumptions which underlie natural selection are implicit, and of a broadly Platonic type.

These include the idea that Mathematics and the Laws of Physics are close approximations for being basic attributes of the universe.

Within this implicit structure, natural selection is assumed to operate. Thus (implicitly) natural selection is not truly the bottom line of reality, but Maths and Physics are.

(In this kind of evolution-as-religion, Maths and Physics, the 'laws of nature' are assumed not to evolve by natural selection - but to consist of eternal and necessary truths.)

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But even this does not describe the range of assumptions implicit among those who have natural selection as their religion: in addition to this is a set of (again implicit) moral imperatives which assert that it is the duty of humans to work with the grain of Nature; to cooperate with the workings of natural selection - that is, humans are assumed to have a duty to believe in natural selection, and to make choices primarily to promote their own genetic selection (and secondarily the selection of their genetic relatives: family, tribe, race).

In a nutshell, the morality is that reproductive success is good, while extinction is evil.

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So, this is an outline of the religion of natural selection -

1. Explicitly natural selection, plus

2. Implicitly an underlying Platonism, plus

3. An implicit moral system based on the goodness of reproductive success.

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The combination of all these aspects does indeed make a coherent religion of natural selection - coherent enough for living purposes; but a religion that is arbitrary, nihilistic, alienating; and lacking in any human appeal beyond being a rationalization for selfishness: selfishness at various levels and on various scales between short-termist attempts to spread one's own genes in the here and now, via familial or tribal expansionism, up to the long-termism of racial nationalism.

**

So this is the traditional form of natural selection as religion - Social Darwinism - which is a Right Wing type of atheistic progressivism.

And naturally this has led to a leftist reactionary elaboration, which I first saw explicitly characterized in Keith E Stanovich's book The Robot's Rebellion - but the book was describing an established situation, and Leftist Natural Selection can be seen all over the place in academia among those who reject the Rightist implications of natural selection: it is indeed mainstream.

Leftist natural selection is the same as the religion described above, except for the assumed morality - Leftists replace the morality of increasing reproductive success with the usual (supposed) Leftist morality of increasing happiness/ reducing misery.

So Leftist natural selection is hedonic and not based on reproductive success.

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Hedonic for whom? - since what makes one animal happy may make another miserable (or dead), and what makes one animal miserable may make another happy?

In theory, hedonic for 'everybody' - in practice, the test is an inversion of Rightist natural selection: hedonic for non-genetically related persons, for 'others'.

So, Leftist natural selection is a universalist kind of religion - in theory. In practice, since universal happiness maximization is nonsense, it is an inversion of Social Darwinism: whatever Social Darwinism says is good is bad, and vice versa, and by this Leftists demonstrate to themselves and like minded persons that they have transcended Social Darwinism.

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The basis for doing this is that humans are presumed to have transcended the imperatives of lower animals, or rather that humans should transcend the imperatives of lower animals (that 'should' is adding yet another undefended assumption), and therefore that humans have transcended the moral imperative of Social Darwinism to increase reproductive success - or indeed to take any notice of reproductive success whatsoever.

(Note: the idea that reproductive success is morally good is an assumption of Social Darwinism. An assumption, not a discovery.)

Hence the modern, typical, mainstream religion of Leftist natural selection is incoherent and dishonest; since in practice it is simply Leftism capturing natural selection, Platonism and everything else which contradicts its universalist, fake-hedonic imperative.

So Leftist Natural Selection is not a viable or coherent religion of natural selection, because it has in practice rejected the application of natural selection to humans, and replaced natural selection explanations with 'whatever is the current Leftist consensus'.

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In conclusion - the religion of natural selection is made possible by adding two sets of assumptions - a Platonic metaphysical framework of transcendental physical laws within which natural selection can operate, and a moral assumption which relates humans to the system so-described by giving life a direction, a system of evaluation; and this is typically the moral assumption that reproduction is good, growth in genetic representation is good.

This is the religion of Social Darwinism, but it has few modern adherents because it contradicts the mainstream religion of secular Leftism, or Political Correctness.

Attempts to make Social Darwinism compatible with modern Leftism simply subordinate natural selection to political correctness, which results in incoherence covered-up by dishonesty.

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What to think of Seamus Heaney?

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I hear that the writer Seamus Heaney has died - someone who won the Nobel Prize for literature, and who was regarded by some as a great writer.

My tutor at Durham University was Dr DKC Todd, and he had taught Heaney at Queens University, Belfast - and the apocryphal story went around the department that the undergraduate Heaney had shown him some poems, but after reading them Dr Todd had advised him not to bother continuing on that line...

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Well, the joke was understood to be mostly about how hard it was to discern promise in apprentice work, and how judgment may come back to bite us - but I have to admit that I do not regard Heaney as a poet.

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It's not that he was a bad poet, but that he just wasn't a poet at all - I have read quite a lot of his stuff over the years, and so far as I understand poetry, this isn't it.

That sort of reaction only really became possible from the mid-twentieth century; until than there was no problem about who was a poet, but only about how good a poet.

But now, by my judgement, someone can be the most respected poet in the world - but not a poet...

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Negativity of a young creative genius - the example of Wordsworth

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http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/the-unfortunate-but-necessary.html

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If Jehovah is Jesus, then the incarnation may explain differences between Old and New Testaments

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The title says it all, pretty much.

Another delayed insight follows:

If it is indeed true that Jesus is Jehovah

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/jesus-is-jehovah-yhwh-god-of-old.html

then it seems to follow that the apparent differences between the behaviour of Jehovah and Jesus, as depicted on the Old and New Testaments - these differences are perhaps a consequence of the incarnation; are perhaps a consequence of the effect of Jesus becoming Man, inhabiting a mortal body.

Much (not all) of the differences between Old and New Testaments would therefore seem to be a consequence of this difference in God the Son, the story of whose relationship with his chosen people these books record.

To save us, to atone for our sins, God the Son needed to become mortal Man - and this, presumably, had an effect on Him, as well as its effect on us - one effect perhaps being seen in the differences between the 'personality' of the Old and New Testament God.

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Given that there are grounds for doubt, what should tip the balance between faith and unbelief?

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From Lightning out of Heaven by Terryl Givens

http://magazine.byu.edu/?act=view&a=1851


Some people seem born with faith. And many people die with a full complement.

My own grandmother spent her last months pining for death because she was the last of her generation, she “missed her people” to an excruciating degree, and she grew more and more disconnected from a world she saw as simply irrelevant. Faith did not seem a choice for her. It descended upon her as naturally and irresistibly and encompassingly as the heavy snowfalls on her upstate New York farm.

But such a gift I have not found to be common. And it would seem that among those who are committed to the scholarly pursuit of knowledge and rational inquiry, faith is as often a casualty as it is a product.

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The call to faith is a summons to engage the heart... with principles and values and ideals that we devoutly hope are true and have reasonable, but not certain, grounds for believing to be true.

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I am convinced that there must be grounds for doubt as well as belief in order to render the choice more truly a choice, and, therefore, the more deliberate and laden with personal vulnerability and investment.

The option to believe must appear on one’s personal horizon like the fruit of paradise, perched precariously between sets of demands held in dynamic tension.

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We are... always provided with sufficient materials out of which to fashion a life of credible conviction or dismissive denial.

We are acted upon... by appeals to our personal values, our yearnings, our fears, our appetites, and our ego.

What we choose to embrace, to be responsive to, is the purest reflection of who we are and what we love.

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That is why faith, the choice to believe, is in the final analysis an action that is positively laden with moral significance.

Men and women are confronted with a world in which there are appealing arguments for God as a childish projection...

But there is also compelling evidence that a glorious divinity presides over the cosmos...

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There is something to tip the scale, however.

There is something to predispose us to a life of faith or a life of unbelief.

There is a heart that in these conditions of equilibrium and balance—and only in these conditions of equilibrium and balance, ... is truly free to choose belief or cynicism, faith or faithlessness.


http://magazine.byu.edu/?act=view&a=1851

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Note:

It is possible for someone to remain in a state of agnostic balance - poised between belief and unbelief, unable or unwilling to choose - for a long time: for years, decades, until overtaken by death...

This is better than embracing the secular mainstream of hedonic nihilism, but is seriously deficient, because it is to commit to weakness - because it is to reject any possibility of spiritual progress. 

Certainty may come after choosing, but certainty does not compel choice - not in this world.

To wait for certainty before choosing faith is therefore a significant and substantial moral defect - itself a negative decision in the face of the human condition.

To fail to choose is a failure to engage the heart: it is a failure which is both self-revealing and self-defining. 

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Natural selection as religion

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One problem with using natural selection as an explanation for a phenomenon is that the applicability of NS to any particular instance is a metaphysical assumption, not an empirical discovery.

That is, in trying to explain some biological phenomenon (such as why the giraffe has a long neck) then it is not a matter of discovering by research that natural selection was in fact the explanation for the specific phenomenon - this is impossible; rather it is first a matter of assuming that natural selection was the explanation, then doing science on that basis ...

(Roughly speaking, 'doing science' by making hypotheses about how 'this' could have happened, then planning observations and experiments to test these hypotheses of how it could have happened - by seeing whether observations and experiments are consistent with the hypotheses. Essentially, the process of science works by checking for coherence and consistency in a domain according to a specified set of causes.)

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The assumption that natural selection was the cause of a specific phenomenon is something that is not, and cannot be, tested - because this assumption is outside science, comes before science, structures scientific investigations.

Paradoxically, it is the metaphysical - hence extra-scientific - nature of the concept of natural selection which enables it to serve as a kind of substitute for religion.

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This is because natural selection is assumed to be the explanation for phenomena in general - therefore once this metaphysical assumption has been made, once natural selection has been accepted as universally valid, then all further experiences and investigations are structured by this assumption.

Therefore the 'truth' of natural selection is, apparently, reinforced by anything and everything which happens from that point onwards; natural selection can never fail to explain anything, because all valid explanations are required to conform to natural selection.

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The problem is that those who accept natural selection as a universal explanation also typically do not acknowledge the fact that natural selection is a metaphysical assumption; instead they want (somehow) to say that natural selection is a product of science - while, at the same time, having the property of structuring science...

They typically want to assert that natural selection is not just an assumption with universal applicability, but that this assumption is necessary - that it is irrational to reject this assumption.

They want to argue that any rational and informed person is compelled by 'evidence' to accept the universal validity of natural selection.

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So they are actually assuming the universal truth of natural selection, but falsely believe that they have instead been compelled by evidence to accept the universal truth of natural selection - 'because' everything they regard as valid evidence apparently fits-in with the theory of natural selection.

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Hence natural selection functions, among those who regard it as inevitably universal, as their religion - that is, the bottom-line explanation of reality; while at the same time such people deny that natural selection is a religion - precisely because it is a metaphysical assumption outside science which nonetheless regards itself as an empirical discovery within science.

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Natural selection is regarded as the epitome of truth and validity, precisely because of this error of classification.

For those who come to treat it as the fundamental reality, natural selection disguises its true nature as a structuring assumption and instead masquerades as a multiply-validated discovery.

Consequently, universal natural selection feels like an objectively factual yet also un-dis-proveable religion - the perfect religion! - necessarily correct and the master key to explaining everything! 

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Scientific geniuses enabled the destruction of Christianity via economics

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There is a neglected sense in which science and technology enabled the destruction of Christianity.

Most people argue that the antagonism was in the realm of explanations and beliefs, but an indirect and perhaps more powerful mechanism was via economics.

The argument involves several assumptions I have defended elsewhere, but it is quite simple.

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The main social and historical effect of science has been at the level of 'breakthroughs' or revolutionary science - especially those breakthroughs which lead to technological improvements in functional effectiveness and (especially) efficiency - improved efficiency equals the same function for less resources or more functionality for the same input.

Only breakthroughs really matter, because only breakthroughs can overcome the adverse societal factors which are present, and indeed tend to accumulate - thus the model of economic growth is something like Schumpeter's creative destruction: periodic revolutions, rather than incremental improvements.

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Breakthroughs are a product of creative genius: that is specific individual people characterized by a combination of high intelligence and high creativity (plus some other factors, including luck) - this it was the high concentration of creative geniuses in North Western Europe which underpinned the Agrarian then Industrial Revolution.

The Agrarian/Industrial revolution continued for a couple of centuries approximately, as breakthrough followed breakthrough - overwhelming the economically parasitic counter forces - which include Leftism, bureaucracy, and the mass media - and the consequent decadence and moral corruption which used to be regarded as an outcome of 'luxury'.

Genius enabled breakthroughs caused efficiency enabled growth of parasites.

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The state of permanent social revolution triggered by the Agrarian/ Industrial revolution was certainly a stress for Christianity in the West, but it was the long term and massive growth of economically parasitic counter forces which have brought Christianity to its present desperate state.

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But the whole process of breakthroughs-revolutions-parasitism depends on the breakthroughs of a small proportion of individual geniuses - and breakthroughs have dried up as the supply of geniuses has dried up.

(The reasons for the supply of geniuses drying up are multiple - and the topic of another blog: http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk and a book http://corruption-of-science.blogspot.co.uk.) 

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We are now seeing the process in reverse. Geniuses are now too rare, breakthroughs too few and infrequent, therefore economic efficiency is necessarily declining; but at present the economically parasitic counter forces still remain in-power - and of course they hasten these trends both by deliberate destructive policy and by their continued efficiency-sapping parasitic growth.

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So, the conditions which led to the destruction of Christianity have reversed, and religion will return to the West.

'Religion' will return, but not necessarily nor even probably Christianity - because, of course, Christianity must be chosen, and there are rivals.

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