Behaving Like Animals

The event* in Colorado was unspeakably tragic. There's simply not the words to adequately express the horror of such an action. Rubbing salt into the wound, though, are those who seek to capitalise the tragedy for their own agenda. Perhaps it's understandable when it's trying to highlight the plight of the mentally ill or to have a conversation about what role a society has with guns, as those conversations at least seem relevant. But there's Rick Warren, who was quick to point the blame at the teaching of evolution.


One could take issue with the cheap opportunism; that the convenient scapegoating has little to do with reality and only serves to push Warren's ideological agenda. But the sentiment seems quite in line with a narrative that fundamentalists have been pushing about evolution. One only needs to watch Expelled** to see the tight coupling of evolution and immorality. The biblical scholar Hector Avalos has gone so far as to say: "One understands nothing about creationism unless one understands that it is meant to be a system of ethics."

Evidentially, this is a hot-button issue among creationists. But however irritating the persistent associations between evolution and immorality are, the most irritating thing is how badly creationists miss the point. Of course we are going to behave like animals. We are animals, ergo we behave like animals.

What Rick Warren and others like him miss, is that there's nothing to preclude animal nature from having a moral component to it. It's an interesting question for biologists as to why it is that there's so much in the way of cooperative behaviour in nature***, but are we to see ourselves warning others of an impending danger to our own detriment as some angelic act, while dismissing the same in a prairie dog? Does our protection of the young have a nobility that a bear defending its young lacks?

Even if Rick Warren thinks that moral prescriptions are handed down from a deity, it doesn't mean that a view without a deity is simply how he sees the world minus what God adds to the framework. It's a failure to comprehend the view in question, which is what a good education system should work to alleviate. Perhaps if creationists weren't so busy trying to water down the teaching of evolution, they might at least understand what it is to be an animal.

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*The Dark Knight Rises shooting.
**Or not, it's a terrible film.
*** One interesting answer

The Righteous And The Oblivious: A Parable

There once was a person who saw a grave problem with the world. Everywhere they looked, they saw the problem perpetuate and persist. Yet this problem could have been resolved or minimised if only people would be aware that the problem existed. They decided to take up the righteous cause to help make the world a better place.

The righteous person encountered an oblivious person, one who didn't see there was a problem. The oblivious person couldn't understand where the righteous person was coming from, while the righteous person got mad at the oblivious person for being so oblivious. After all, how could the oblivious person not see the right that inspired the righteousness?

The oblivious person, on the other hand, couldn't see what the problem was. All that person saw was the righteous attitude that was being taken; that they were being preached to and belittled over something they couldn't see as a problem. After all, how could the righteous person expect the oblivious person to see they're right?

The oblivious person came to associate the cause of the righteous with the negativity of the message. The label came to be used in a derogatory manner, with the message lost behind the hostility of the messengers. A person sympathetic to the cause would distance themselves from the label, while the righteous would lambast the sympathist for either not taking the issue seriously enough or for undermining those who are speaking out.

An argument broke out between the righteous and the sympathist. The righteous saw the sympathist as not taking the problem seriously enough, and as being ineffectual. At the same time the sympathist saw the righteous person as exacerbating the problem by creating a negative image, and not getting through to the oblivious person.

In the end, the oblivious person remained oblivious, and the problem remained a problem. The righteous person remained outraged, while the sympathist lamented the lack of progress being made on both sides. The sympathist couldn't become righteous because the oblivious person would remain oblivious. The oblivious person couldn't become righteous because they could not see the problem. And the righteous person remained righteous as the problem persisted.

Thought Of The Day

If analogies were perfect, they would be examples.

Thought Of The Day

People in a movement based on knowledge have an obligation to argue their case on its merits, and to not let righteous indignation detract from that aim.

Won't Someone Please Think Of The Children?

With all the talk of online behaviour and whether or not any of it is acceptable, I do wonder how it is we could put the discussions into some perspective. My proposal:

A place would be out of hand if one couldn't take a transcript of the discussion and show it to a child on how we ought to resolve disagreements.

Even if we do take into account the odd individual who is there to bait, as well as the occasional angry tirade as being exceptions, what good are we doing if we cannot even begin to live up to what we would expect of our children? It's odd, to me at least, that there was more expected of me when I was 8 than in any dialogue as an adult.