I think it's a safe bet that almost no students, including those of us in this discussion group, have ever been exposed to Socratic reasoning in our earlier (K-12) educations. In fact, quite the opposite. We, as young children, assimilate the values of our parents, elementary school teachers, and what we're taught at church/synagogue/mosque. And that's understandable. We have to start somewhere. We're pretty much empty slates starting out.
Only an anomalously few children are going to embark on an "examined life" (or adults, for that matter). The mass of society believes what it is told. I propose that critical thinking only comes naturally to an elite few among them. And we, here in this Liberal Arts program, are a similarly elite number who will be given the formula, whether we choose to accept it or not.
Socrates was a rebel. All the great advances in thought and politics come from such. Early rebels challenged the idea that the earth was flat, or that it was the center of the universe. They suggested that life might have arisen spontaneously by evolution, instead of being "created" by some invisible deity. It happens on smaller scales all the time. Rosa Parks decided that blacks shouldn't have to sit on the back of the bus. The Beatles decided that a pop band could write their own songs.
We are fortunate to be given the opportunity to question our own beliefs. Would you rather go on thinking that the version of American history you learned as a child was true, with all its patriots and heroes... or to admit that we have behaved deplorably overall as a nation? Truth hurts. Cynicism is not for the faint-hearted. But it's only from taking the more painful road that we're ever going to correct our sins of the past.
I think there will always be certain sections of society that oppose critical thinking. When you think about it, Socratic reasoning is the opposite of faith, and therefore any faith-based "beliefs" are very sensitive to logical questioning- they simply don't hold up under scrutiny.
To question tradition is asking for trouble, and with a little empathy one can understand why. People don't appreciate being told they are wrong. Many conservatives, for example, still don't believe that global warming is happening, despite the evidence. Amazingly, Christians still fight the concept of evolution, which is a solid, irrefutable force at work on this planet.
I don't predict a time in the foreseeable future that the world's citizens will have even a majority of critical thinkers, much less that the traditionalists will ever be eradicated.
The good and bad sides of questioning have really hit home this week. My last surviving uncle passed away and I went to his funeral on Tuesday. My mother is at Wake Forest Medical Center as I write this, after having a cancerous kidney removed but finding that there was further cancer on her liver. These are the instances when you wish there was a higher power to receive those loved ones who have departed, and to heal those in trouble. If I had that faith, it would be a comfort, for sure. But ultimately, and far more important, my mother does. And right or wrong, that is where I have to concede that an "unexamined" belief can sometimes be a positive element in an individual's life. It's only when much larger groups exploit the same that things can start going bad.
I totally agree with Grayling's answer that this world no longer needs religious superstition. Unfortunately, getting rid of it is about as likely to happen as the "flying pigs" he mentions in his essay. Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism are entrenched all over the planet, and its adherents kept ignorant about science so these myths can continue to thrive.
I seriously believe that if this planet had been lucky enough to have avoided the pandemic mental disease known as faith, we would be millenia ahead in our technology now- we'd be traveling to the stars. Most diseases would have long since been cured. Religion has hampered progress on every front, keeping females submissive, punishing creative thinking, conducting genocides of entire cultures, and still fueling wars and terrorism. Religious based faith is a blight.
To make this very personal- in this past week, my last living uncle passed away, and my mother underwent cancer surgery that was only partially successful. I attended my uncle's funeral yesterday. He was a great man, served America in WWII, was a fireman for 20 years, and a wonderful father, husband, and friend. I found myself realizing, "If ever I wanted to believe in an afterlife, it's moments like this". But the hymns and the prayers left me cold. You hear dozens of people say "he's in Heaven now, he's in a better place". But we have zero evidence of that. Wasn't a life well lived enough? Why, as humans, do we greedily believe that we have the right to immortality? Even stars die; our own sun will in a few billion years... My own mother might be leaving this world very soon, and I love her very much and don't want to lose her. But I don't have to blindly believe there's some blissful afterlife awaiting her. She's been a wonderful human being, and when her time is done, that life is what I'll celebrate and cherish. Think about it- why would we want to live forever? Wouldn't that become unbearable after a few million years at best? And you wouldn't even be started...
(to Candace):
The evolutionary mechanism you propose is intriguing. Humans form very strong bonds, and have obviously struggled with death for many tens of thousands of years. When someone we love dies, we try to find a way for them to stay in our lives, to ease the loss. I don't think we're the only species that does this. There are a number of documentaries that show "lower" animals in great distress when one of their own dies (check out chimpanzees or elephants). I've even seen birds raising hell as their nests are attacked...
Finally, your reference to "moving on quickly"- again brilliant. In nature there is predator and prey. When a lion takes down a gazelle, the rest of the herd keeps running; (even the mother or child of the victim). If not, they become vulnerable too. Is it better to have "faith" that a dead family member enters a place where we can reunite someday? Yes- it is, on the surface- it let's us move on.
There are many members of my family, as well as friends, that have left this world. I don't believe that I'll see them again in some afterlife. But that doesn't diminish my love for them at all. On the contrary- it makes this life matter all the more.
(to Erica):
Despite my initial post attacking faith, I have to concede that it is a major component in many people's lives such as yourself, and I would never want to rob anyone of that comfort. It just seems that on a societal or global level, faith often gets out of hand. Your personal faith in God helps you in your world. But that same faith, when multiplied collectively by millions, has done a great deal of harm in the course of history.Maybe it's not faith itself that is the major culprit, but organized religion's exploitation of it.
You have to remember that there are societies such as the Muslim militants whose faith is just as strong as Christians, and perhaps more so (you don't see many Christians becoming suicide bombers for Jesus, for example).Nussbaum is talking about all faiths, and not just Christianity. If you're saying that one faith is good, and theirs is not because they behead non-believers and commit other acts of terrorism- don't forget that Christians decimated the Native Americans, and burnt "witches". Christians have been terrorists too. Your personal faith is a positive thing. I believe Nussbaum was denouncing how faith sometimes is used by societies to their own selfish means.
Obviously in your own life and faith (from your earlier post) the good outweighs the bad for you. You should be proud of that. The individuals all over the planet that apply faith in their personal lives and get real meaning from it- you are the ones that keep faith going. And whether or not I happen to agree with you, I admire you for your beliefs. You get the true spirit of it.
Sometimes non-believers such as myself tend to get on the soap-box. My apologies. Although there have been "horrible things" done in the name of religion, the silent majority of believers such as you eclipse all of that. The good does outweigh the bad for all of you.
Thanks again for challenging my statements. Feel free to anytime- that's the essence of these discussions. I learned a valuable lesson from you. Take care...
(Philosophy Question 3) Pew in the Pews Did you find anything surprising in Wolfe’s analysis of the Pew Report? Where do you fit into the survey?
This link is for the PDF version of the article.
There was nothing overly surprising in Wolfe's analysis, and that seems to be the consensus so far among classmates, though it's still early. Only one thing jumped out at me, near the end, where Wolfe states, "The Pew study does contain methodological flaws, including a low response rate of 24 percent". What exactly does that mean? There were supposedly 35,000 interviews in the poll- 24 percent would only be 8400 of those. So that left me confused as to the validity of the findings.
A key observation Wolfe makes is in regard to the "fluidity of American belief", noting that almost half of Americans (44%) switch faiths sometimes in their lives. In many areas of the world, one is born into their faith and that's pretty much the end of it- here in our society religion is more of an "open market", as Wolfe states. That's an astute way of looking at it.
I was not surprised at all that the Catholic church appears to be on the decline. I feel that this body grows more and more irrelevant to the modern world. On a planet of 7 billion people, being against birth-control is just simply a bad idea. And the demand that priests remain celibate is both outmoded and psychologically dangerous; the suppression of this basic human need has manifested itself in all the sexual abuse of children. Married priests would have been far more unlikely to have channeled their sexual energy in such a deviant manner.
I was raised in a Southern Baptist church, and I'm equally not surprised that this denomination is losing numbers. Baptists are still on the fundamentalist side of Bible interpretation, and I think younger people have become too enlightened, or at least skeptical, to take the Bible this literally. I "lost" my Baptist/Christian faith in my mid-teens, if I ever had it at all- I was "saved" and baptized at age 10, and I guess I tried to embrace that. Since that ended, I have been agnostic, while trying to incorporate Zen Buddhism (more a philosophy) into my life.
(to Marissa): Zen Buddhism is definitely not a religion. There is no god to answer to. And although you can say it is a philosophy, ideally it is not that either. Here's the best personal definition I can give: the goal of Zen is to live each moment of life to the fullest, but try to remove the concept of "self" while you do so. As adults, we live in a fairly rigid world. There's work to do, bills to pay, and the gradual decline of our health as we age. Zen reminds us that we used to be toddlers, and experience the world without words or worries except the immediate moment. Staying in touch with that earliest part of ourselves, we can see the universe in perspective. Our share of it is momentary. You have to make the most of each moment while you're here.
I think you have an innate understanding of Zen, whether you realize it or not. For me, when I first came across it, it felt like "coming home". It supported all my skepticism, yet gave me an intriguing goal of being the best human I could be, for it's own sake. (It's all but impossible, by the way, to achieve what Zen gives as its aim).
A true Zen Buddhist would never claim to be so. Talking it about it negates the whole idea- enlightenment has no words. Their best analogy- when you start thinking in words, you're like someone who sees somebody else pointing at the moon... if you are relying on the words, it's like seeing the pointing finger but missing the moon itself.
(Philosophy Question 4) The Kindest Cut. What do you make of the case studies that MacFarquhar discusses in her article? Do you find the idea of donating a kidney to a stranger noble? Or freakish?
Click here to open the article.
The case studies in The Kindest Cut were very compelling, and I think MacFarquahar did an excellent job of showing the range of conflicting emotions that both donors and recipients face, as well as the opinions of family, friends, and the public. I'm a little amazed at the generosity of donors like Paul Wagner (first profiled) and Melissa Stephens (third story)- and I don't believe many of us would go that far to help a stranger. In both cases, they seemed to set a very high, maybe unreasonable, standard of ethics for themselves (both had quit jobs due to moral conflicts) and that may be a factor. Maybe there's some deep-seated self-esteem issue, and they're trying to prove something.
I find it somewhere between noble and freakish. The idea is a little of both, for me. First of all, I wouldn't do it. I have a brother and a son, may have grandchildren some day, and my organs would go to a family member first. If I gave a kidney to a stranger, and five years later a grandchild needed one, I couldn't live with that. Then there's the chance that my other kidney would get injured- I would not want to find myself in the ironic situation of having given away one kidney and then desperately needing it back (too late).
My parents are both 84. This kidney issue recently became especially poignant to me and my family- this past week my mother had a cancerous kidney removed. Her remaining one, so far, is doing fine. Needless to say, if it were to fail, I would consider myself a potential donor. But things get fuzzy there, too. At 84, and a limited amount of years left, I'm not sure if she or my father would accept the offer. How do you weigh things like that? If I needed a kidney, I would feel very guilty accepting one from my son who's 30 years younger than me- he has more years to lose. The answer, for me, is that all healthy citizens need to be potential organ donors in the event of death. Thousands of people die in this country every day, of all ages. If the majority of them had already made the legal decision to surrender viable organs, there wouldn't be a shortage. One more area of promise, though it presents some ethical issues of its own, would be the cloning of organs. I don't think the technology is not quite there yet, but close. Once the cost was reasonable, a person could have "spare" organs, (guaranteed to be a match because they're cloned), waiting in hold, as a kind of health insurance plan.
I'm aware of the stem-cell potential, and of how controversial it is. I hope we're all agreed that we wouldn't want to keep a clone of ourselves on-hand, in a sort of limbo, to harvest organs from as needed. That would be the ultimate travesty- to have a version of ourselves in storage/slavery for "spare parts". But let's be real- would certain affluent members of society do it? Absolutely. And as the technology and cost "trickled down", would we be tempted to do the same? I don't even want to go there. But we know the answer, don't we?
I don't think there's any disputing that donating an organ is equally heroic to any other method of saving a life. The problem is in our perception. When someone is trapped in a burning building, or pulled out into the ocean by an undertow- that is an immediate threat that has to be dealt with in seconds, or that person will die. The potential "hero" has to make a very quick decision, and we judge them accordingly.
But unless it's a family member or friend that needs an organ, an otherwise stranger waiting for a donation becomes a more abstract, faceless issue- and we don't have as urgent a window of time in which to act.
I came across an interesting idea that advocates are pushing for- simply changing the US organ donor program into an opt-out policy. You currently have to volunteer (opt-in) to be a donor- the change would assume that everyone's a donor unless they decide not to be. Big difference.
Despite the potential for corruption, I have to say that it should be legal to sell an organ- with a few caveats. The person selling an organ should be counseled, just like a free donor would be, and perhaps more intensely. The selling price should be "fair", based on the recipient's income level (in other words, George Clooney could ask more from his buddy Brad Pitt for an organ than he would from me); and the seller has to forfeit (obviously) any future claim to the organ, or further compensation once the original deal is struck. Does that give an unfair advantage to the wealthy? Yes- but what else is new?
I'm well aware of the ethical "shadowy ground" here. But let's put it into the perspective of an older adult, like myself, who has no stable retirement plan as of yet (and it's getting late in the game). If I could sell a kidney for tens of thousands of dollars, and then put that into a trust for mine and my wife's retirement, or better yet an inheritance for my son- I have to admit I'd be very tempted- especially being an older gentleman with less to lose. I realize that defies my earlier stand on keeping an organ for family, but different situations call for improvisation. It's all a gamble- something the insurance brokers have realized and exploited for centuries. Do you live for today and for yourself, or put future generations (related or not) as the priority? Sad as it it may seem, the less prosperous of us have to make the either/or choice.
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