UnderAgeThinker

I recently heard an episode of “Culture Shock” on the BBC in which they were interviewing a Professor Gerd Gigerenzer (I’m not making that up) about his ideas on so called, intuition. His latest book Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious is on that very subject and the man is considered something of a leader in the field. What he claims to have verified through various studies is that decisions made through first reaction responses or gut reactions are often more accurate than those made through careful deliberations. This is something of a new idea though a trendy one, in 2005 another popular book, Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell, was published. It had a very similar premise.

I am constantly amazed at how often people cherry pick the facts to suit their own arguments.  I expect this from advertisements and unfortunately I have grown accustomed to spin in the news, but I am seeing it more and more from people who I would expect better from.  Many of these people are even arguing for positions I agree with, but do it through bad reasoning.  When you argue from poor reasoning you open yourself up to criticism and discredit the position you were arguing in favor of.  You better serve your position by keeping quiet than by deceptive and poor arguing tactics. 

The blogs are the worst about this.  The more I get into blogging, the more blogs I read and it seems that these otherwise intelligent and ethical people believe that they can misconstrue, misrepresent, misquote, and omit anything that is not supportive of their point.  The most common things to cherry pick from seem to be the Bible, the Constitution, the Quran, and now Me!  Oh well, I suppose that comes with the territory.  I honestly cannot understand how someone gets satisfaction from winning an argument or making a profound point when it is based on faulty reasoning.  It is beyond me.  I am behooved.   One of the most common places to find this fake arguing is under the philosophy tag.  I would like to point out that philosopher means lover of wisdom.  You cannot love wisdom if you do not first love truth. 

Another dishonest tactic that is getting more popular, is to make a statement and then cite some fact as support when the fact in reality has little or nothing to do with the statement made.  I am forced to conclude that many people are so blinded by their convictions that they cannot even defend them properly, so blinded that they can no longer see any logic in contrary positions and thus they, cannot make a logical argument against them.  When people get to this point, facts of little relevance become sound and insurmountable arguments to bolster their own position. 

If you truly believed in whatever position you were arguing for then you should be more than happy to bring all the facts to light as they should reveal the truth in your position.  When you feel that you must filter information then you must have very little faith  in your position.  If that is the case then the best that can be said of you is that you don’t know what you believe and the worst is that you are pushing a position which you believe to be false. 

The purpose of engaging in an argument should be to discover the truth, not to bolster your own ego and not to “win” at all costs.  This is especially true when the argument is one sided, as in a blog post (unless you get comments).

“People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on what they find attractive.” -Pascal

“For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions” 2 Timothy 4:3 ESV

Intelligent Design and its proponents have been accused of making a war on science.  However, most of the leading figures in the I.D. movement are themselves scientists.  It is not a matter of method; the methods of I.D. scientists are scientific.  They are more or less identical to those used in archeology and forensics.  The reason I.D. is denounced by the scientific community is the conclusion drawn.  According to Dr. William Dembski, I.D. is, “the study of patterns in nature that are best described as signs of intelligence.”  It is these signs of intelligence that have the conventional scientific community up in arms.  They take offence not because the conclusions are not logical and not because the methods are not scientific* but rather because, the materialist ideology that pervades in the scientific community does not allow for the possibility of intelligence.  Some scientists are willing to entertain the idea of a designing intelligence but not scientifically.  That kind of thing is in their view, for the church to deal with and not the scientific community.  These scientist believe that science is the study of what is natural and thus anything invoking the supernatural is by definition not science.  The I.D. scientists are fighting for a broader definition of science, one that would allow for the possibility of the supernatural when that is the most logical conclusion.  Thus, they are not fighting against science but rather to reform it.  Just as protestants did not fight against the church but to reform it and that era is now know as the Protestant Reformation.  What is being attempted by the I.D. proponents is a scientific reformation not a war on science. 

So this all comes down to who’s definition of what is scientific you accept.  Those who hold to the narrower view of science do not say that the I.D. researchers do not have a rightto do their research but that it is not scientific.  So if everyone is willing to live and let live, what is the big deal?  Why get hung up on who is scientific and who is not?  The answer is two fold, schooling and money.  If the broader definition of science is accepted then the I.D. proponents would be officially doing “science” and could apply for and get government grants.  These grants would then not go to the scientists who are today fighting for the narrower definition. 

If I.D. is accepted as science it would also be taught in the science class along side with and as a competing theory to evolution.  Evolution is the sacred cow of materialist ideology.  Richard Dawkins said, “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.”  For the materialists, teaching anything that competes with evolution in a science class is like teaching the Quran in Sunday school.  It simply cannot be done. 

While I haven’t thought of a way to solve the first dilemma accept for the government to stop giving out research grants altogether (and stop taxing us for them!).  I believe I can solve the problem of the competing theories in the classroom and it seems only logical.  Aristotle. 

That’s it.  Aristotle solved this problem way way back when.  You see today what is known as the theory of evolution is said (by mainstream scientists) to be a scientific fact.  Michael Ruse famously said, “Evolution is fact, Fact, FACT!”  I suspect that some I.D. proponents would say (though they are not as loud) that intelligent design theory is a scientific fact.  Both of these “scientific facts” are called theories, even by their supporters.  This is because no one alive today witnessed the dawn of the universe (or of life), no one wrote down what happened (religious texts aside), and no photographs of the event survive.  So no matter the volume of evidence that is collected to support any particular theory, it will all be circumstantial and thus subject to interpretation and not of sufficient quality to be proof beyond any doubt. 

So what does Aristotle have to do with all of this?  Aristotle distinguished between general knowledge and scientific knowledge.  The scientists who hold to the narrower view of science and still believe in the supernatural are making a distinction between kinds of knowledge as well.  Another example of this distinction is demonstrated by the difference in the phrases, “beyond reasonable doubt” and “beyond the shadow of a doubt.”  Aristotle said that for any knowledge to qualify as scientific knowledge required demonstration.  What is meant by demonstration, is that not only do we know something, but we know that it must necessarily be, and cannot not be.  This is the criteria that I propose we use in determining what is a scientific fact.  The very fact that there is debate about I.D. and evolution excludes both of them.  So neither need be or should be in a science class. 

*I am obviously not saying that mainline scientists accept the claims of I.D.  They do however give de facto recognition to both the logic and the methods through their acceptance of archeology, forensics, and the like as legitimate scientific fields of study. 

This is an issue I’ve put quite a bit of thought into and the more I think about it, the more I think it is a good idea.  Oil exporting countries have formed a cartel that can set the price of oil with essentially no opposition, it only makes sense to form a cartel of oil importing countries that would be powerful enough to negotiate with OPEC and lower the price of oil.  It seems like a no-brainer.  There is so much to this that I should be writing a book instead of a blog post but this will have to do for now. 

If the major oil importers bound themselves together and were willing the bare the initial and inevitable embargo from OPEC, the rewards that they would reap would be enormous.  Today oil is at nearly $100 a barrel, in 1999 it was around $10 a barrel.  Don’t believe me?  Just imagine what it would do for our economy if oil suddenly dropped to, say $20 a barrel.  That is not an unreasonable figure provided someone like OPIC was negotiating the price for us. 

Here is one example of how something like OPIC could work.  Representatives from the U.S., China, Canada, the E.U., Japan, Australia, and other Oil importing countries meet in Geneva and decide that they will pay $40 a barrel for oil.  The various countries refuse to buy any oil for any more than that.  At this point OPEC is almost certain to react by refusing to sell any oil at all.  Then the game of chicken begins.  It would all depend on who blinks first.  If OPIC could stomach gasoline rations and high prices long enough then OPEC would give in.  If OPEC would not agree to OPIC’s price then at least they might open up to negotiations on the price.  Another possibility is that the OPEC cartel would break.  Saudi Arabia, replete with cash, might be willing to hold out longer than some of the other OPEC members but, as soon as one OPEC country broke and started to sell two things would happen, the price of oil would start to drop thereby giving relief to the OPIC countries and the other OPEC members would begin to follow suit.  The former OPEC countries would have to compete to sell oil on the open market.  OPIC might even be able to shutter the windows.  One thing that makes me think a strategy like this could work is that OPEC does not control all the world’s oil.  This means that during the stand off the OPIC nations would not run completely out of oil. 

One objection that might arise to the idea of OPIC is that it isn’t very capitalistic.  This however, is not the case.  What is more capitalistic than leveraging all the power you have to negotiate a better price for a product?  OPIC would be a great expression of capitalism.  Labor unions and monopolies are both capitalistic in the same way.  The problem with them both is that they could potentially hurt the economy as a whole.  However OPIC would be working to help the economy. 

It is at least food for thought.  We can’t go on like this, especially with so much of the Islamic terrorism being funded by petro-dollars.  If the price of oil does in the next 9 years what it did in the previous 9 years then in 2017 we will be paying close to $1,000 a barrel.  That would be $30 or $40 a gallon at the pump!  Organisation of Petroleum Importing Countries, it has a nice ring to it doesn’t it? 

Often times people use the statement “there is no controversy” when engaged in a debate. It has enjoyed wide usage recently in the Evolution and Intelligent Design debates.