Jeff's Lunchbreak

I've once again used up my lunch breaks this week writing on Quora, so I'm going to recycle an answer for this blog entry. One Quora user posted the following question as a thought experiment, Pretend that the Triune God of the Bible actually exists in reality. What would such a Being owe you, and why? Below is my response, with a few edits from my original Quora answer.

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First of all, this is a bit difficult to answer because the God of the Bible isn't a totally consistent character. I mean, just in physical representation, he goes from a very anthropomorphic god with somewhat limited powers and knowledge in Genesis (he walked in the Garden of Eden and had to go physically visit Sodom to see for himself how the people were behaving), to more of a disembodied all powerful spirit in later books. He also exhibits different personality traits, sometimes being very vindictive and doling out group punishment for the sins of individuals (like the plagues of Egypt harming even the slaves, even though it was the Pharaoh who Yahweh had his disagreement with - not to mention the hardening of Pharaoh's heart to prolong the suffering), other times saying everyone will be punished or rewarded for their own actions, and other times saying it's only faith that determines our fate and not our actions at all. So, which 'God of the Bible' are we going with? And then, you have to figure out how much of God's actions/behaviors you're willing to accept as givens in answering this question.

So, let's just start out with creation (assuming a literal creation for this thought experiment). At that point, having created new sentient beings with no experiences of their own and no culture to guide them, Yahweh would have an obligation to help them get things set up. Just imagine it as a mad scientist on Earth creating artificial life and setting it loose on a deserted island. You'd expect him to teach that life how to survive, probably set them up with some shelter and tools, suggest some rules of ethics, maybe give them a constitution and some form of government, etc.

Then, I can see it going two ways, still using our mad scientist as an analogy. He could just step back and not interfere at all after that, owing them nothing, but also expecting nothing in return. He could leave these beings on their own, free to develop their society as they saw fit, modifying their laws and ethics as they developed themselves. Or, he could continue to give them a hand and advice in running things, since he has a lot more experience to draw from. But, he still shouldn't expect anything in return. These beings didn't ask to be created. He didn't do them a favor by creating them. He acted of his own accord to create them. He's the one that put them in the position of having to figure out how to live their lives.

Let's go along further with assuming that he is the intervening type. And further, that he's going to reward the people who follow the rules he laid down, and punish the people who don't. First, he would owe us ethical rules. No arbitrary rules like not wearing clothes with mixed fibers, and no cruel rules like ordering parents to stone disobedient children, or ordering communities to stone homosexuals. And the whole animal sacrifice thing would be out. (Note, read about the Euthyphro dilemma for a discussion of why gods can't dictate morality by fiat.) Second, he would owe us an unambiguous declaration of the rules he expects us to follow - nothing like the Bible with all its contradictions and translation/transmission errors. I mean, just imagine our mad scientist giving his created beings a hodge podge of rules as confusing as the Bible, written in a language other than their native language, and then going out and punishing the ones who made mistakes. It would be horrible.

Let's take this intervention further, and even though it shouldn't be the case in a fair universe, that he does expect worship, and that he's going to reward the people most faithful to him, and punish the people who don't worship him. In that case, I think he would at least owe a clear, unambiguous demonstration to every generation that he does actually exist so that we can be sure which religion to follow. If our mad scientist tried to demand worship, the first thing we'd do is consider him an amoral narcissist. But if he kept himself hidden entirely, and never made any personal appearances, or even television appearances or interviews, and then sent out secret police to find and torture citizens of his island nation who wondered whether he'd died since nobody ever saw him anymore, we'd think he was a monster.

For the last thing I'm going to consider, let's take this punishment further - not just the finite punishments of the Old Testament God, but the eternal damnation to Hell of the New Testament God. First of all, I'd say that we were owed not to have to worry about a punishment like that to begin with. It's barbaric. If our mad scientist wanted to pull out the nuclear option on his private island, banishment would seem to be enough, rather than actual torture. And there's no need for a dichotomy. If he wanted to reward especially good beings, he could give them special treatment without actually punishing all the rest. If God were real, and heaven were only for his most faithful, I think we'd be owed at least a third option in the afterlife of mere existence without the torture of Hell, or even a fourth option of simply ceasing to exist, which would still be preferrable to eternal torment. And why would a punishment have to be eternal, anyway? And like before, assuming this is all real, I think we'd be owed clear, unambiguous evidence that Hell is a possible fate awaiting us, not just some myth like so many other myths in human history (like trying to learn the trials described in the Egyptian Book of the Dead so we'll be prepared for that possible afterlife).

To sum up, if there actually were a creator god, once he (he and not she because it's the Biblical God) made sure society was up and running, I don't think he'd really owe us anything, but I don't think he could really expect people to owe him anything in return. Assuming he was going to demand worship and dole out rewards and punishments, especially a punishment as barbaric as Hell, I think he'd owe us clear evidence of his existence, and clear documentation of his expectations and rules. Basically, he should act like a decent, ethical being.

Posted by Jeff on A, Jan 29 | Permalink | Comments (40) | TrackBacks (0)

The NSF has released their Science and Engineering Indicators report for 2016. It's a great report put out every two years documenting many aspects of Americans' relationship to science and engineering. For the past several reports (2004, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012, & 2014), I've made it a habit to examine one specific aspect - public understanding of science. In particular, I've examined the data on how many questions people can correctly answer on a short quiz of basic scientific questions, how that has changed over the years, and how the U.S. fares against other countries on those (mostly the) same questions.

For all of the tables I'm about to publish, note that I copied the data and notes from the NSF report, but I've formatted the tables to fit onto this blog. I made the graphs myself to help visualize the data, as these particular graphs weren't in the report.

First, here's the table showing how Americans fared on a question by question basis on some basic scientific facts. The table includes data from 1988 on up to the most recent poll in 2014.

Those results aren't particularly encouraging. I point this out nearly every time I cover this report, but around 1 in 4 Americans don't know that the Earth orbits the Sun, and around half of Americans don't know that electrons are smaller than atoms! Those are simple, basic, scientific facts.

To help visualize that data, especially the trends on how it changes over time, here it is plotted on a graph by year.

Americans' knowledge has remained largely steady over the past decade and a half, though there were a few changes. Americans' knowledge on antibiotics improved the most, but has kind of plateaued since around 2006. There does appear to be a recent trend of improvement on the questions concerning the Big Bang and human evolution. Hopefully that trend is real and continues on into the future.

Next, here's the table showing how the U.S. compared to other countries.

I played around with different ways of plotting that data, but there's just so much that it's too confusing to put it all on one graph. If you're interested in seeing a graph for each individual question, you can click on the thumbnail below to embiggen* the graphs.

However, I did come up with a way to do a comparison of sorts - I took an average of the percentage of people that correctly answered questions. As an example, if it was only two questions, and 100% of people answered the first question correctly, while only 50% answered the second question correctly, the average would by 75%. I did this average three ways - overall, the physical science questions, and the biological science questions. If a country didn't pose a certain question, it wasn't included in that country's average. I admit that this is a very rough way to do a comparison, but here's how each country fared.

The U.S. actually does rather well in this comparison. It's not number 1, but it's not too far off.

I also suspected that America's over-religiosity might be affecting those questions that contradict a literal young earth creationism interpretation of the Bible, so I redid all those averages exluding the Big Bang and evolution questions.

As suspected, this did improve America's performance. This is heartening, that creationism hasn't caused huge damage to Americans' scientific understanding overall.

One lesson from this that I've pointed out before, is to keep these results in mind every time you see a poll showing people's attitudes towards anything scientific. For example, every time you see a poll showing that the majority or plurality favor teaching creationism in public schools, or a poll showing high levels of skepticism towards global warming, remember that this is the same public where a quarter of all people think the Sun orbits the Earth, and where half of all people don't realize electrons are subatomic particles. How informed can they be on scientific issues when they don't even know such simple facts?

The other major lesson is that we need to do a lot better job of teaching science. When you live in a democracy and everyone has a say in the government (at least by way of voting for representatives), you really need a well educated populace for it to work effectively. This is especially true of science in the modern age, when so many pressing issues require accurate understanding of science.

I suppose that on the plus side, as much as alarmists decry the falling quality of American education, at least in this one area, the data shows that Americans' knowledge has stayed largely the same. There's definitely room for improvement, but at least we haven't gone backwards.

*'Embiggen' is a perfectly cromulent word.

Posted by Jeff on A, Jan 21 | Permalink | Comments (42) | TrackBacks (0)

If you're anything like me, you're probably tired of seeing a bunched of armed insurrectionists occupying the Malheur Wildlife Refuge up in Oregon. It's criminal, anti-American treason, bordering on terrorism. These thugs have taken over public land that belongs to all of us, recently vandalized portions of it, and there are even reports that they've been following local citizens to their homes and sitting outside their houses in cars to watch them. And they have the gall to call themselves Patriots. Granted, they're out in the middle of nowhere, and haven't yet done anything to endanger to the public, so escalating this into an armed conflict is probably taking it too far. But currently, these criminals can come and go with impunity, and the authorities haven't even cut their electricity, yet (source - NPR). If you'd like to send a message to the feds that it's time to do something about this, click on the link below to view and sign the petition:

Arrest Ammon Bundy and the armed occupiers of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge.

For reference, here's the text of the petition:

President Obama,

We respectfully request that you end the armed occupation of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge immediately. At the very least, you owe the American people an explanation as to why the area has not been isolated. Members of their organization can come and go as they please, members of the community can visit the occupied facility, and other right-wing extremist groups such as the Idaho III% can show their support.

Law enforcement inaction up to this point is an egregious violation of public safety and emboldens their erroneous assertions that the US Government has no Constitutional Authority.

Please end the siege of the refuge and arraign Ammon Bundy as soon as possible.

Posted by Jeff on A, Jan 12 | Permalink | Comments (41) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, I spent some time on Quora again this week, taking away my normal blog writing time, so I'm going to recycle a Quora answer here. The question someone asked this time is the title of this entry, If you were to build an advanced civilization optimized for economic and technological progress and growth, how would you go about it? They went on to add just a tiny bit of clarification, "How would you structure its government, economy, culture, etc.?" I put a little bit of thought into an answer, which I've copied below.

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First off, I wouldn't want to optimize civilization for 'economic and technological progress and growth'. I'd want to optimize it for the maximum welfare of the people. And while economic and technological progress and growth are certainly part of that, they're a means to an end, not the goal itself, and shouldn't take precedence over the ultimate goal of maximum well-being.

And to be honest, while I have plenty of gripes over specific issues with government, I'd still follow the general pattern of the U.S. and the world's other prosperous democracies. First off, it would be a democracy (or more accurately, a representative democracy or republic) to ensure that laws were based on the will of the people. And even though individuals don't always know best, the Wisdom of the crowd phenomenon shows that group decisions are often very good. But, to protect against the tyranny of the majority, I'd have something like the Bill of Rights to ensure that basic rights for everybody are encoded right into the structure of government. I'd also want separate branches of government, all with equal power, to provide oversight to keep any one branch from becoming too strong.

As far as the economy, it should be a mix of a well-regulated free market and public institutions. Free markets are great at optimizing a good many things, but unregulated free markets lead to situations like a Charles Dickens novel or the robber barons of the 19th century U.S. Even well regulated free markets don't always produce the results we want for society at large, so robust public funding for basic research is also essential for long term progress. Just consider the current failure of the free market economy to produce new antibiotics. We, as a society, would really like those medicines to combat disease, but they're just not profitable enough for drug companies, so there's very little private research into new antibiotics. This is where public funding through the government should come into play, either funding research directly, or providing strong incentives for the private sector. As another example of the interaction between the public and private sector, consider GPS. The required satellite system was a huge investment, and probably wouldn't have been undertaken by any private company. But now that the satellites are in place, private industry and the free market have found many, many innovative ways to use that system.

To promote technological progress in the private sector, a patent system is essential. It's the best way to reward innovation, giving the incentive for people to come up with new ideas, knowing how much they could profit from it, and that the idea can't just by copied by anybody.

Education is critical, both for citizens to make well informed decisions when voting, and also if you want a work force of intellectuals who can drive your economic and technological progress and growth. I would structure education slightly differently that it's currently done in the U.S., mainly on funding (but not so different from other nations). I'd fund schools on the national level, not the local level as is currently done, since the current system puts the most money into rich areas where many students are already advantaged, and the least money into poor areas where many students are already disadvantaged. At the least, spending per pupil should be equal for all students, but it should probably even be skewed to put more funding into poor areas to help overcome disadvantages and get them on a more equal footing with rich areas. How much untapped potential is there in the current system?

For higher ed, I'd make it at least cheap enough to where a person could work to pay their way through school, without incurring a huge debt in the process. Even better would be free university education. It's an investment in the future intellectual workforce of the country.

So, I guess the short answer is that I'd go with pretty much what already exists in the prosperous democracies.

Image Source: A cropped portion of Robert McCall's mural,The Prologue and the Promise, downloaded from ImagineeringDisney.com

Posted by Jeff on A, Jan 8 | Permalink | Comments (41) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm back from the holidays (other than a short weekend trip to San Antonio, I didn't 'leave' - I just took some time off from work and so didn't have lunch breaks to work on this blog), and with the end of the year, it's time to look at the server logs for December to see what pages were most popular on the site. The list was mostly the same pages that have been popular for the last few months, but there were two surprises. The entry, Response to E-mail: One Nation Under Wal-Mart?, made the list for only the second time. It's kind of old, written back in 2013, but maybe with the upcoming election season the chain mail I was responded to has started making the rounds again. Similarly, the entry, Response to Another E-mail on U.N. Arms Trade Treaty, made it for the first time ever. It's another entry from 2013 that I can only guess is popular because of recent politics (though December was too early for Obama's recent series of executive actions designed to curb gun violence to have had any effect on traffic on this site).

There were not big surprises this time. Every page that made the list had made it before, though it had been a little while for one of the pages (What's the Point of Intercessory Prayer?).

Overall traffic was in line with the rest of the year, and up just a bit from the past couple months. In fact, by two metrics, Visits and Pages, it was the busiest month of the year, though by other metrics, like Unique Visitors, Hits, and Bandwidth, a few other months did better.

Anyway, here's the list for December.

Top 10 for December 2015

1. Origin of Arabic Numerals - Was It Really for Counting Angles?
2. Email Debunking - 1895 8th Grade Final Exam
3. Response to Rabbi Steven Pruzansky - Why Romney Didn't Get Enough Votes to Win
4. Retroactive Soapbox Entry- Fed Up with U.S. Public, Part II
5. Response to Global Warming Denialist E-mail - Volcanoes and Global Cooling
6. Obamacare Lives (A Discussion of the Individual Mandate)
7. The 2014 Texas Republican Platform
8. Obamacare Lives (A Discussion of the Individual Mandate)
9. Review of Ray Comfort's New Movie - Evolution vs. God, Part I
10. Response to E-mail: One Nation Under Wal-Mart?
11. Response to Another E-mail on U.N. Arms Trade Treaty

Posted by Jeff on A, Jan 8 | Permalink | Comments (40) | TrackBacks (0)