The Obama/Romney debate that actually means something

The 3^rd US presidential debate takes place tonight.  It is intended to focus on foreign policy, therefore it is the only presidential debate of actual significance. This is not because economic policy is unimportant, but because the US president does not and cannot determine US economic policy. That is done by the US Congress over which the president has no control.   

Article 2 of the US Constitution vests the president with executive powers (the power to take certain actions), but not legislative powers (the power to make laws). The president’s executive powers include the power to enter into foreign treaties, to appoint foreign ambassadors and to act as Commander-in-Chief of the US armed forces.

The fiery debates about economic policy cast a lot of heat, but no light, on what sort of presidency each candidate can actually offer. Tonight’s debate is therefore the most meaningful indicator the world will get as to whom should command the world’s biggest military for the next four years.

Dawkins' Delusion

I recently purchased a copy of “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins. I had been considering reading it for some time.  The blurb on the cover by Ian McEwan: “A very important book, especially in these times… a magnificent book, lucid and wise, truly magisterial” certainly heightened my enthusiasm.

Unfortunately, the book was a magnificent disappointment. Though it is entertaining, it is certainly not important, Ian McEwan's views notwithstanding.

The essence of Dawkins’ book is this: old, religious concepts of God are wrong.  Thank you, Richard, for taking 420 pages to point that out.

Dawkins defines the “God Hypothesis” as follows: there exists a superhuman, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us. He then argues that “God, in the sense defined, is a delusion” and spends the rest of his book ridiculing the ridiculous.

The problem with defining God in such specific and limiting terms upfront is that what masquerades as an argument against theism is not an argument against theism at all, but merely some forms of theism, and already discredited ones at that.

Whether it is delusional to conceive of God as a responsive form of systemic consciousness is not something that Dawkins appears to want to consider. He argues, evasively, that to even begin to reconceptualise God is to commit intellectual heresy, because God has historically come to mean a certain thing and we should not permit the term to drift towards any newer meaning.

This is disappointing coming from an avowed evolutionist.

Why does he run from truly considering a more evolved concept of God, perhaps by pondering, even briefly, why Steven Hawkins ends his “Brief History of Time” with the words “For then we shall truly know the mind of God”?

Dawkins, by contrast, ends his book with an appendix entitled “A partial list of friendly addresses, for individuals needing support in escaping from religion.”

His book is not a genuine work of philosophy, but a political piece penned by an atheist activist.  He seeks to discredit traditional religion in the hope that he might undermine theism itself. Dawkins knows this is a non-sequitur, but he seems to have been incapable of resisting a devilishly easy chance to commit it.

Instead of expending his energy rebutting religion, Dawkins would better serve the cause of philosophy if he attempted a rebuttal of newer formulations of our oldest beliefs, such as are summarised in the Simunye Hypothesis, and left the “God Hypothesis” to the dark ages, where it probably best belongs.

The Myth of Cultural Overrun

People opposed to supra-national political integration often cite a “threat against national culture” as their primary reason.

A classical Marxist response is that “national culture” is a political construct designed to protect a ruling social class, rather than a cultural heritage. 

Fortunately, once every four years, a far simpler rebuttal to those fearing political integration presents itself.

Tonight Spain plays Italy in the final of the Euro championship hosted in Kiev, Ukraine.  Spain and Italy are both members of the European Union, with a shared supranational constitution and an open border policy.

Yet anyone in attendance at the Olympic stadium tonight will be under no illusion that cultural distinctiveness between the nations is alive and well. There may be a common passion for football, but diversity in language, music and cuisine remains along with a strong sense of national pride.

In fact, cultures seem to strengthen and grow from exposure to other cultures. As MK Ghandi said “No culture can live if it attempts to be exclusive”.

Like all things, cultures need to evolve to survive and evolution requires pools of diversity from which newer and better cultural practices can emerge.

Even the cultural explosion of the Renaissance was, in large part, the result of a rising merchant class in Italy stimulating demand for art at the same time as the West established significant contact with the East and global trade lanes expanded.

The belief that "they" will overrun us, or even turn us into "them" is a fear shared by two groups: the ruling class, who want to preserve the status quo, and members of the working class who have been taught to fear change by the ruling class.

Is a United States of Earth Possible?

The process for forming an international union of states is a well-established one in history.
 
Leaders of states come together with a common purpose to negotiate a treaty and a framework of governance (constitution) for their new union. They then take the concept back to their electorates and hold referenda to let citizens decide whether they wish to ratify the treaty, join the union and adopt the contents of the proposed constitution.

Citizen referenda are under-utilized instruments of democracy. While historically, it was possible in small, localized communities for each member to have a direct say in the affairs of their community, across larger communities and distances, it was more practical to elect representatives to meet and decide on issues at a centralized point of government.

However, this traditional justification for indirect representation has been substantially eroded by the ease with which online surveys and polls can efficiently canvass the views of huge numbers of people across great distances.

These new polling tools have been emphatically embraced by the private sector to support relatively trivial decision-making processes, like whether contestant A or contestant B should progress to the next round of a reality television show. Unfortunately, major policy decisions very seldom put to a direct citizen vote. In fact, in some cases, citizen referenda are not even legally permitted, including in the case of the United States of America, when voting on decisions to go to war.

However, the United States of America remains the prime example of the successful formation of a union that arose from thirteen formerly colonial states uniting on the 4th of July 1776 behind a truth they held to be self-evident: that all persons are created equal and with unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The process of negotiating and concluding an international treaty for the constitution of a United States of Earth seems likely to be a long and challenging one but it is a process that will surely follow from increased population and demand for more equitable access to the planet’s shrinking natural resources.

5 Minutes to Midnight

A few years ago, astronomer Martin Rees published a book called “Our Final Hour”.  In it, he estimated a 50% chance that humanity will be extinct by 2100.  (Why he did not call the book “Our Final Century” I do not know). Terror inducing title aside, his forecast was based on an assessment of the probability of either a malicious or accidental release of hugely destructive technology during the 21st century.

His views gave rise to a second theory: that we Earthlings have not come into contact with populations from other planets simply because any such society would first develop the capability to destroy itself and then accidentally or intentionally do precisely that in the long period before it develops any means to safely travel to other solar systems or galaxies.

Given that there appear to many, many, MANY more planets in our universe than we previously thought (the latest estimates exceed 160 billion in our Milky Way alone) it strikes as increasingly unlikely that life should only have evolved on planet Earth and nowhere else.  If global warming is inconveniently true, then Rees’ theories are uncomfortably plausible.

Giving further credence to Reece’s assessment is the the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists who this month moved the minute hand on their doomsday clock one minute forward to 5 minutes to midnight.  The symbolic clock was first set up in 1945 by University of Chicago scientists who had worked on the Manhattan project to develop the first atomic weapons.  The current group of scientists running the project, which includes a list of Nobel laureates, released a statement last week saying: “Two years ago, it appeared that world leaders might address the truly global threats that we face. In many cases, that trend has not continued or been reversed."

Given that North Korea now appears to be run by a trust fund kid, not to mention the political grandstanding of republican party candidates in describing exactly what sort of commander-in-chief they would be if elected later this year, perhaps these scientists and, more astoundingly, the Mayans, might be right after all.

It’s getting INSANE, I know. Let it not be true.