tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9479398.post3563396510235340051..comments2024-03-28T11:33:16.271-05:00Comments on Adventus: The fascination with what's heilegeUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9479398.post-28394297877922889612014-08-05T11:04:46.463-05:002014-08-05T11:04:46.463-05:00My first response to your comment is to think of t...My first response to your comment is to think of that lovely British class of people, the "lucky sperm club."<br /><br />Having had much more experience with aristocracy and class and privilege, the Brits sometimes manage to understand it far better than we do. It's not a perfect way to state the issue, but it goes a long way toward dispelling the idea that some are deserving, others are not.Rmjhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06811456254443706479noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9479398.post-76329772001981811582014-08-05T11:04:30.356-05:002014-08-05T11:04:30.356-05:00Pardon the (deleted) first attempt at a post and t...Pardon the (deleted) first attempt at a post and the fact that I rambled so long in the post above, I didn't have room to make the point I make below. I had a food challenge yesterday to see if I was really no longer allergic to milk, but it turns out that I am still allergic, so I am still in a bit of a haze between the allergy and the anti-histamine to relieve the symptoms of said allergy. Anyway ...<br /><br />Of course, for Koheleth, it sometimes seems that his appreciation of the role of luck led him to increase his belief that economic disparities were the natural order of things and that interfering with that order was itself problematic. So, an appreciation of the role of luck in fitness is not sufficient to ensure an appreciation for the need to redistribute wealth from the economy's "winners" to its "losers", but I would argue it may very well be a necessary condition. And that necessary appreciation of that lesson of Koheleth strikes me as something both the new atheist crowd and the intelligent design crowd lack.alberichhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03852752646926946626noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9479398.post-44322073573578181882014-08-05T11:01:56.926-05:002014-08-05T11:01:56.926-05:00Secondly, survival doesn't rest on being bette...<i>Secondly, <b>survival doesn't rest on being better than your competitors</b> [emphasis added], predators, or prey. Mostly it involves being in the right place at the right time, or not in the wrong place at the wrong time.</i><br /><br />This is something (although not in your eloquent and pithy wording ... can I use it?) I emphasize with my biochemistry students. AFAIC, people can believe whatever they want (it's a free country, yadda, yadda, yadda) but beliefs do have consequences. I am very much concerned about the political consequences of both "new atheism" and "intelligent design" because both belief systems put to much faith (and I do use that term* purposefully here) in evolution, the former because in denying God's existence, natural processes such as evolution must explain everything and the latter because evolution must create intelligently designed results. For both groups (as for the social Darwinists which are the intellectual forefathers of both groups) the fittest -- the survivors -- must be the best.<br /><br />The problem is the political consequences of believing the fittest are the best and failing to appreciate the role of luck: i.e. they pay too much attention to the post-hoc ergo proper hoc logic of Deuteronomy 4:4 and not enough to Ecclesiastes 9:11-12. If your belief system skews that way, then what do you care of the poor or even the middle classes, whose real share of the economic pie is decreasing? They are "losers" and "unfit" after all, which means they must have done something right whereas the "fittest", the "winners" deserve what they have. So why should society as a whole, via government, just reward losers and the unfit? Why shouldn't that just be left up to the "winners" to support the "losers" for the moral benefit of the winners who deserve that moral benefit as a complement to their deserved wealth?<br /><br />OTOH, if you have a full appreciation that the race does not always go to the swift, you might realize that the economy's "losers" don't deserve to loose and that the "fit" shouldn't be left to care for the "unfit" as a matter of charity that further benefits the fit (by providing the fit with additional moral superiority) but rather that the moral duty of helping the "unfit" is a societal obligation, although the economy's winners, as the beneficiaries of society, ought to fund this assistance, not merely as a matter of charity, but out of duty toward their fellow man. Indeed, from an evolutionary point of view, one can argue that human social compassion, that enables the "unfit" as well as the "fit" to propagate their genes, is what makes humanity ultimately so well-adapted: as you point out, fitness is itself environment and time bound as a concept: the stone rejected by the builders may become the cornerstone (Psalms 118:22), what is not fit in early 21st century America may be very fit in an only slightly different time and place. Indeed, the personality needed to start a business is oftentimes very different than the personality needed to maintain a business; the personality that thrives in the 'burbs may be very different than that which thrives in the big city, etc. But if you don't allow the so-called "unfit" access to resources or if you only do so out of "charity" in order to provide yourself with a sense of moral superiority, how do you know where or in what way they will thrive and benefit humanity as a whole?<br /><br />* my daughter's name is Faith. I shouldn't show my comment to her. She gets upset when people take her name in vain ;)<br />alberichhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03852752646926946626noreply@blogger.com