One of the most significant things that make humans human is the ability to hold beliefs.  A lot of thinkers including Decartes, Dennet, Sagan, and others have proselytized that ideas should hold no sacredness.  I think this is probably the core of true thinking.  Why should any notion or concept be give special protection against scrutiny?  It seems that such a concept would promote the abandonment of reason and the promotion of dogma.

So here enters religion.  Any follower of any religion about which I know must confess, if they are honest, that they base their beliefs on faith.  I use the most derogatory definition of faith here.  Faith equals belief without proof in this definition. In the real world faith accounts for nothing.  The earth is not heated by the sun through faith.  Photons and other energetic particles leave our star and heat our world.  Faith does not power the very core of our existence.  There are rational, reasoned arguments to be made for of the natural processes on Earth.  And for those left unexplained, a “god of the gaps” is a poor excuse of the simple statement “we don’t know yet”.  The scientific method, it seems, really does work.

Science had proven to be an amazingly useful tool to further our understanding of the natural world.  Religion has not.  At all.  Let me be clear.  Religion, and in particular the Christian religion with which I am familiar, has done a horrible job explaining our universe.  So I find it disgusting and perverse when people of religion attempt to subvert reality in favor of their fantasies (religion), and on top of that perversion, declare their perverse beliefs sacred!

On top of these points, Christianity and other religions have done  a horrible job providing a moral framework for humans.  As it turns out, humans don’t really derive morality from religion anyway.  Study after study have shown that the true moral lessons are derived outside of religion.  However, this should not be construed that Christians are bad people; just that it does not take faith to make a good person.

An idea is an idea is an idea.  Every idea is available to the scrutiny of reasoning and intellect.  Whether the idea be string theory or the god hypothesis, the idea should be easily propped up or torn down based based on the the evidence available and sound reasoning.

Is this too much to ask?

I found this awesome comic today about The Atheist Apocalypse.  Its quite funny, and features the Four Horsemen: the eminent biologist Richard Dawkins, philosopher Daniel Dennett, science writer Sam Harris, and journalist Christopher Hitchens.

Today, December 21, is the shortest day of the year which is known as the Winter Solstice.  This date has had significance to human civilization for thousands of years.  When humans first became civilized, their civilizations (as they still are today) were based on agriculture.  The community would grow crops all spring and summer, and harvest and prepare for the winter all fall.  The winter brought hardship, and the Winter Solstice was seen as a time of celebration.  From this day on, every day is longer.

Ancient peoples based a number of religions around this and other astronomical dates on the calendar.  It should not be surprising that the Romans also based their holidays on these celestial dates, including the Winter Solstice.

In 46 BC Julius Caesar introduced the Julian Calendar.  This calendar was a refinement of the previous Roman Calendar. A year later it was officially adopted by the empire.  The Julian Calendar remained in place for much of the western world until 1582, when it was replaced by the Gregorian Calendar.  The Gregorian Calendar is what we use  today.

Under the Julian Calendar, the Winter Solstice was on December 25th.  This was a major holiday in the Roman Empire, just as it had been throughout much of the world spanning back perhaps three to four thousand years before Caesar.  The Romans celebrated this holiday for centuries before the adoption of the Julian Calendar, and for centuries after.

Somewhere between 200 and 350ish AD (on our Gregorian Calendar) a newly invented religion known as Christianity also placed one of its major holidays on the Winter Solstice.  This holiday, called Christmas, did what many other, previous religions had done and took traditions from previous religions.  Many of the things we today associate with Christmas are from so-called Pagan festivals.  Perhaps you have heard the saying “Yule-tide greetings!”  Yule-tide was/is a Pagan holiday that also took place on the Winter Solstice.  There are a number of other Winter Solstice artifacts from other religions and celebrations.  The Christmas Tree, gift-giving, lights, and increased charity all derive from pre-Christian traditions of various cultures celebrating their Winter Solstice festivals.

When the Gregorian Calendar was adopted Christmas stayed tied to its December 25 time-slot, and the Winter Solstice became December 21 (and sometimes December 22).  This effectively moved Christmas.  You can move the calendar, but the Winter Solstice is based on the length of the day and so cannot be moved.

With this knowledge of the deep history and importance of the day, I wish everyone a happy Winter Solstice!

For Veteran’s Day I just donated again to the USO. You can too!

Click Here.

Wirth1000.com has a nice Photoshop contest of Disney/Marvel Mashups.  Here is my favorite:

Throughout geekdom yesterday a panic spread over the purchase of Marvel by Disney.  Would we soon see IronMan and the Seven Dwarfs or The Little Mer-Hulk?  Artist Jeffrey Thomas takes a different approach.  What if Disney is influenced by Marvel the same way they have got a good swift kick in the butt by clearly superior animators Pixar?

This is my favorite, his new Marvelized rendition of Beauty and the Beast.  Click through for more, excellent art work.

Introduction

I have been putting a lot of thought into what defines my personal morality for some time now.  I came up with an idea a few years back, and I think it has survived the test of time and personal scrutiny.  It has also passed the scrutiny of several friends with whom I have discussed it.  For me all morality boils down to one rule with one caveat.

Rule and Caveat

Rule: Don’t do anything to another person that they consider harmful.

Caveat: Certain individuals (children, mentally incapable, etc) can be deemed by society as having that choice handled by others.

I have come to the conclusion that this statement covers everything I believe in.  The rule covers all major crimes that have some type of strict codification: murder, rape, theft, assault, kidnapping, etc.  It also means that I cannot force my beliefs on someone else.  And importantly, it means that if my dying friend needs help to leave this life, I can provide that help and it isn’t murder because he didn’t consider it harmful.

The caveat covers the case where the person in question is deemed to not have adequate judgment to tell what is harmful.  Society already makes this distinction, and so do I.  A child doesn’t know some things are bad or doesn’t yet have the maturity or experience to make that decision, so we as a society make it for them.  Children aren’t allowed to smoke or drink.  There are any number of other restrictions on children.  The same points can be applied to aging members of society with dementia, and those members of our society with mental health issues.  But we do give some choices to children.  And the choices that are handled by the children vs. family or society are determined by various criteria.  This caveat is not a hard line drawn in the sand.  Its a principle to be followed with judgment.

Justification

My justification seems to follow from the principle that we are self-aware beings.  We have choice and free will, or at least the illusion of such.  If you define being human in terms of being self-away and having free will, then it naturally follows that anything that constrains this is anti-human.  This is where I would squeeze in my idea of morality.  I have a free will and you have a free will; if we get in each others way then that is the point of conflict and the only possible point of morality.  Why follow any other artificial constructs?

Application of Personal Morality

All laws that do not agree with these moral principles are against them.  This is fundamental to the first (and only) rule of my morality.   For example, a law that limits two adult gay people from having a relationship is immoral.  If these two people are consenting, then their relationship isn’t breaking this moral rule.  But a law against it is.  This law is forcing onto these two people some other person’s belief systems.  These two people do not deem their relationship to be harmful to them, but they do deem this unwarranted intrusion harmful, so the law is immoral.

I think my morality boils down to this: freedom.  Pure and simple, freedom from everything and anything unless that anything is harmful to someone else.  Should I be able to smoke?  Yes.  Should I be able to smoke in a crowded restaurant where second hand smoke can cause other people harm?  No.  Should I be able to worship any deity I choose?  Yes.  Should I be able to make laws based on those religious beliefs that impact others? No.

Social Impact

Of course absolute rules of morality break down in a society where we have to share some resources for the good of all.  And if you carefully read my caveat, I am actually stating that I believe society or family needs some say over who gets full control of their own free will.  I am quite aware of the contradiction here.  This is a kind of recursive definition; I think if you exam many things in life you will find this type of self-referencing structure.  To be blunt I am not sure how to boil this down to a simpler explanation.  At some point society has to make a determination about others in that society.  I believe that determination should be as liberal as possible.  That is to say, that society should try to err on the side of free will as opposed to the side of enforcing restriction.  But the line has to be drawn somewhere.  And there are obvious barriers that should not be crossed.

What sacrifices to my own free will should I be willing to make to gain the benefits of society?  What do I contribute so that I have security and a better life in general?  Where do we force upon others these same sacrifices?  I live in a country (United States) where I am forced to pay taxes for a number of things I will never use myself, but can be argued help society as a whole.  A lot of it I would argue doesn’t help at all or actually hurts us.  I think this is where personal morality starts to run into social morality as stated above.  Should  we have a big military to protect us or a small military, or should the defense of our nation simply be up to individuals?  Should we have a central health care system or should health care be the responsibility of each citizen?  Where do we draw these social lines?  I don’t know where my moral principle draws a line on these issues, or if it even can.  This is the one place it really fails me.  But that is built in to the rule and caveat.  Its OK that it fails here.

Conclusion

In my personal life I think this morality has began to really serve me well.  I feel I am less judgmental of some  people, that I am more open minded.  I feel more at peace with my beliefs and the way they shape the way I live my life.  I feel less trouble trying to justify myself.  And I also feel that if I make a bad decision that I have the flexibility and freedom to change, to say what I did was immoral and change my opinion or my actions.  Carying around the luggage of a strict religious doctrine makes this much more difficult.  Carrying around a simple, derived from the nature of existence system seems unencumbering yet fair.

I don’t personally like the politics behind Cash for Clunkers.  I believe in small government and free markets.  I mean, really believe in them, not just as a political slogan the way the GOP does.  Having said that, I find the numbers interesting:

• $1 billion dollars in the initial government investment
• $3500 to $4500 offered for a clunker depending on various criteria
• To date the cars being purchased are averaging about 10 mpg better than those they are replacing.  Specifically, the average of those traded in is 15.8 mpg and the replacements is 25.4 mpg.
• The national average for a gallon of gas is currently $2.57
• The federal government estimates the average car drives around 15k miles per year
• The federal government estimates US drivers in total will use 345 million gallons per day in 2009.

Let’s guesstimate that the average money given to a consumer is $4k per car.  When the initial $1bn is used up (most likely sometime this week) about 250k cars will have been sold.  If we assume that these cars are being driven 15k miles a year (both the car being replaced and the new car) and the average of those autos went from 15.8 mpg to 25.4 mpg then we are taking 359 million gallons of consumption per year off the market.  In contrast if we took $1bn and just bought gas we could afford about 389 million gallons of gas.  This program will break even in a year and a week.  These are obviously very rough numbers.  And when one considers that we use about 345 million gallons per day, we have only removed one day of usage from the road per year for the $1 billion spent.  Obviously this trend cannot continue forever.  We cannot spend $36.5 billion and reduce our gasoline consumption by 10%.  If we could, it would be an easy sell.  Right now we have removed almost 0.3% of gasoline demand.

Each of these consumers will save about $922 a year with their new car in reduced fuel consumption.  It amazes me that people weren’t already upgrading on their own.   Many of these clunkers would probably get some minimal trade in value, say $1k.  These individuals would have seen a benefit in 4 years in reduced fuel consumption.  Of course all of this is neglecting both the benefits of less environmental impact and less reliance on foreign oil, but we haven’t made a huge dent in either.  That is not to say we should not try.  Of course we can pay for those 250k deals with the cutting of seven unneeded F 22 fighters.

Its also worth noting that 10 MPG is a big change, but when you think of the actual mileages involved its actually a 61% increase in efficiency.

From a free markets perspective, I don’t really like this program.  Its taking our tax dollars and rewarding specific consumers and specific businesses.  From a pragmatic perspective, it seems like it has done remarkably well so far.  I would like to see this also offered with more stringent MPG requirements for used cars as well, if they are going to continue the program.

Sources:

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1914602,00.html

http://www.eia.doe.gov/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/wrgp/mogas_home_page.html

http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/04/ford-focus-tops-rebate-purchases/?nl=wheels&emc=wheelsa1