Somewhere around 62 percent of Americans believe in the devil, according to this article. (It’s an old article. The numbers may not be exactly right any more, but it’s probably close.)

But I don’t think that’s the big issue. I think voters are looking for a candidate who actually believes in something and stands for principle. I can’t say if Santorum is that guy or not, but he’s coming across as that guy, and I think it helps him. I don’t think he should backtrack or make apologies.

On the other hand, we don’t want some delusional kook in the White House.

There are haters out there who will hate him no matter what. He’s not going to win those people. The question is, how does this play with middle America?

Very broadly, there are two versions of the “first cause” argument. The more common argument we hear today is the “who knocked over the first domino” version. IOW, way back in the recesses of time, somebody had to start things going. The idea that the universe began with the Big Bang is often cited as a fact in favor of this argument. IOW, the universe had a beginning, so what caused the beginning?

It’s an interesting question, but it is not the classical “first cause” argument, which has to do with the origin of causes right here and now. I’ll explain that further in a minute.

The time-based argument is analogous to a series of dominos. One domino falls, then another falls, then another falls, etc., so you wonder why the first one fell.

In a modern setting, we might ask “who caused the Big Bang?” But a problem with this version of the argument is there’s no clear reason why there had to be a first domino, or why there wasn’t some other cause before the Big Bang — either in the form of pre-existing “natural law,” or with an oscillating universe, or whatever.

An unending temporal sequence is kinda vaguely uncomfortable, but there’s nothing inherently illogical about it.

However, there is a kind of illogic going on in popular representations of this kind of “first cause.” One example is when physicists say (or someone reports them to have said) they’ve come up with a scheme where the universe could have begun “from nothing.”

This is nonsense. They don’t really mean “nothing.” They may mean “no physical things,” but they certainly don’t mean “nothing.” They rely on mathematics, for example, and rules that govern the way things interact. That’s not “nothing.”

You can’t start with nothing and get something.

By contrast, the classical “first cause” argument is a very different thing. It’s analogous to a musician playing an instrument. It’s not that the musician plays and then there is music. The musician is causing the music as it happens. If the musician stops playing, the music stops.

In this case we’re not tracing causes back in time, we’re tracing them back logically. What causes the sound to come from the flute? The flutist blowing on the mouthpiece. And what causes the flutist to blow on the mouthpiece? The compression of his diaphragm. And what causes the compression of his diaphragm? The state of his brain. And what causes the state of his brain? … And so on.

The analogy isn’t perfect, but the point is that you have a series of causes all going on at the same time. If the flutist stops blowing, the music stops. But if you trace these causes back — not in time, but causally — you get to the electro-chemical impulses in the brain, and then you wonder what causes chemicals to work that way, and then you wonder why the laws of physics work the way they do, and on and on. It’s a different sort of argument, and it doesn’t depend on Big Bangs or first dominos or any of that.

A time-based sequence could conceivably have no beginning. But the argument from the “first cause” is that the other kind of sequence (I can’t think of a better phrase for it than a “causal sequence”) has to have a first element in the series.

So the “first cause” argument is not about some being who wound up the universe 15 billion years ago. It’s not about how the universe may have come from pre-existing natural law (or not). It’s about what’s causing things to happen right now.

I personally don’t find it a very compelling argument for the simple reason that I don’t feel qualified to be all that certain about “causes.” But it bothers me when the argument is brutally misrepresented.

[Okay, I should clarify here re: "brutality" that it bothers me when people who should know better brutally misrepresent it. Like when editors for newspapers, magazines, books, etc., don't even go to Wikipedia to make sure they've got the basic idea.]

I enjoyed both of these.

Sex, Lies and Rick Santorum — The politics of the double standard on social issues

Goldberg: Mr. Right eludes the GOP

Then there’s these, which are also very good.

No Need to Panic About Global Warming

And the follow-up …

Concerned Scientists Reply on Global Warming

You may or may not agree with their read on the facts. Fine. But these are highly qualified scientists who work in the field, and the number of dissenters from the alleged “consensus” grows all the time. Which is why the left has to start inventing silly words for the doubters and pound a little harder on the table. (You know the old joke, “point weak here, pound on table.”)

Santorum: All the right people hate him

I’m not endorsing Santorum or anything, I just think that would be an appropriate slogan for his campaign.

Of course that sounds like what we expect from prissy, demanding, spoiled stars. They just have to have things their way.

I heard on a radio station today there was a very practical reason for this.

The Van Halen stage show required careful setup. They were dealing with a lot of equipment that had to be just so to keep everybody safe, and to make sure the show was done right.

The M and Ms were a proxy. They figured that if they read the contract and followed the rules carefully, everything was going to be okay. But if they didn’t, they had to be extra careful.

Seeing brown M and Ms backstage meant that somebody wasn’t being careful.

Maybe they were just being childish and petty. But it sounds like sheer genius to me.

The guy in front of me got a call from his wife. She grilled him for several minutes on why he wasn’t first in line.

Didn’t you get there early? Why weren’t you waiting at the right door? Why didn’t you know which door they would open first? That was the plan we agreed to. That’s why you got there early, right? How long are you going to be? Why don’t they have enough people working there? (Like that was this guy’s fault.) You know you’re messing up my plans for this morning.

I actually could hear both sides of the conversation.

I wanted to take the phone from the guy and relieve his suffering.

Once she finally let him go, he looked like he’d been kicked in the groin.

Women (or at least some women) want to control men, and then they despise them for it.

A friend sent me this. (The following conversation is edited slightly.)

The country has had an economic crisis, growth problems, debt, the deficit, … two wars, terrorism, a belligerent and soon to be nuclear Iran, huge oil and gas discoveries in the USA that we are not using nearly as much as we should, Solyndra and about a dozen other phony “green enegy” political projects, and many other things, … and until January (here’s the “scam”) I wasn’t aware that America was in the middle of a contraception crisis!

Then, if you recall, on January 7th at a Presidential debate, George Stephanopoulos started badgering Romney with a series of questions about contraception and a state’s rights — seemingly out of “left field” (no pun intended) –

At the time, people were wondering what the in heck was going on.

Romney and the audience thought he was being ridiculous …. Then a few weeks later came the dispute between the Komin Breast Cancer Foundation and Planned Parenthood … and shortly thereafter came a ruling from HHS Secretary Sebeliius re the free contraception mandates for religious insitutions! — was all this a coincidence? Was there a White House Plan to toss “social issues” into the Republican Primary? Was George Stephanopolous part of a White House or “Media matters”/White House plan to Distract from Growth, debt, deficit, taxes, etc?

I am not a big believer in strange so-called “coincidences”

I responded to my friend as follows.

I have heard about the Stephanopoulos controversy, but I think there is another explanation. When debate “moderators” prepare, they look for gotchas for the various candidates. Since Santorum is an outspoken Catholic, this was an obvious opportunity for a gotcha.

The White House may have leaked it to him, but it’s also possible he came up with that independently.

However, after using Google News to look up a couple articles from right after the debate … the question was posed to Romney. Are Mormons against contraception?

What do you think? Was George prescient? Did he happen upon the up-and-coming debate? Or is he a pawn of the White House machine?

If someone were to say, “I don’t think random mutation is enough to get the job done. The odds are just too small.” Wouldn’t it be reasonable for a scientist to say, “It’s possible you’re right. There are other sources of genetic variation that we know of, and there might be more we haven’t discovered yet.”

But that’s not what usually happens. The idea that some other force may be necessary to provide the required changes is mocked and scorned. This is not because anybody has proven that random mutation does all the work. (How could they?) It’s simply because they’re scared to death that opening the door to some other factor may leave room for that guy upstairs.

The reaction prompts religious people to think that what’s really going on here isn’t science, but hatred of God. And they have a point. It often seems that’s the real motivation. But the similar reaction against any hint of Lamarchism undercuts that argument. It seems it’s really more of a “circle the wagons” kind of thing. Probably combined with poor social skills.

I find the Spanish Inquisition-like reactions self-defeating and unscientific. The first step in the quest for knowledge is to say “I don’t know.” Insisting that random mutation is good enough, and there’s no need to look for any other mechanisms, is at least as counterproductive as that cartoon where the guy inserts “then a miracle occurs” in his equation.

How do we know that the environment never affects heritable characteristics? How could we possibly know it?

The truth is that scientists have not ignored the possibility of other mechanisms. What I see repeatedly is that when they’re talking about science, they’re open to other ideas. Maybe the environment can affect heritable traits. Maybe the randomness of mutations goes beyond stuff like transcription errors. Sometimes other weird things are going on, like horizontal gene transfer.

I don’t pretend to understand everything being discussed in this article — A Biochemical Mechanism for Nonrandom Mutations and Evolution — but it’s clear that the author is trying to understand what’s going on, not trying to Defend Doctrine.

In the last couple decades some really cool stuff has surfaced. As you might expect, life is far more interesting and complicated than we thought. I’m convinced that in the next decade or two we’ll find mechanisms going on in our DNA that make all the theories from 30 years ago seem like medieval nonsense.

It seems inevitable. Scientists used to regard cells as little more than puddles of goo in a balloon. They had no concept of transcription errors, recombination, repair, or any of the stuff that’s common knowledge today, including the incredible molecular machinery. Scientists are only beginning to understand all the wacky stuff that goes on in there. I think it’s very unlikely that the old theories will remain unchanged.

Which is one of the reasons I have a hard time reading the science blogs. They need to add a double espresso dose of intellectual humility to their daily routine.

Is that really true?

St. Anselm of Canterbury would disagree. He said …

For I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand. For this I believe [--] that unless I believe, I should not understand.

I think there is some truth to both ideas. There’s a perspective you can’t get unless you doubt. Deb’s comment in a thread below about vestigial organs reminded me of this.

But there’s also a perspective you can’t get unless you believe. For example, when I listen to atheists talk about religion, there’s almost inevitably a point where I realize the atheist just doesn’t get it, and is probably never going to get it. He simply can’t see the issue the way the believer sees the issue.

The same is true in reverse. It can be incredibly frustrating talking to a true believer. They apply a completely different set of standards to things, and they don’t communicate very well with people who doubt.

Is there a way to cultivate both sides? Is it possible to see things the way a believer sees them, and to also see things the way the doubter sees them? Can you really say that you understand an issue until you see both sides?

(I’m reminded of the structure of the Summa, where Aquinas presents opposing views in their best possible light.)

Some people think they have achieved this by changing their minds. E.g., “I used to be a X, now I’m a non-X, so I can see it from both sides.”

This is usually a delusion. Somehow the transfer from X to non-X tends to erase a lot of the stuff you knew as an X.

I call it convert disease. You wouldn’t believe how many former whatevers I’ve met who say completely ridiculous things about their former allegiance.

For example, a Catholic becomes a Protestant, then tells people about Catholicism. He’s so wrong that all the Catholics think “you were never really a Catholic.”

The same thing happens with Protestants who become Catholic. I’m sure it also happens with ex-Mormons, ex-creationists, and so on. It certainly happens with people who change political views.

One possible explanation is that it’s only the people who don’t really understand X who would ever leave it. But I find that a very unlikely explanation — especially since the problem applies in all directions.

There’s something about the change in allegiance itself that affects the way you think about the issue. It even affects the way you remember how you used to think about the issue.

I think it would be interesting to take groups of people — doubters and believers — expose them to the very same material, and get their reactions.

It wouldn’t be enough to show that they would come away with different ideas. That goes without saying. The point would be to find the substantive difference in the way they process the information.

Humans Carry More Bacterial Cells than Human Ones: You are more bacteria than you are you, according to the latest body census

(Don’t worry too much. By volume you’re mostly human.)

Furthermore, these bacteria may drive evolution.

These studies are part of a growing consensus among evolutionary biologists that one can no longer separate an organism’s genes from those of its symbiotic bacteria. They are all part of a single “hologenome.”

(I find that incredibly amusing for other reasons, but … maybe in another post.)

So the fact that gut bacteria can influence our evolution doesn’t take you to the Star Wars midichlorian stuff, but it sets the stage. And then when you read this sort of weird thing — Learning from Bacteria about Social Networks — You can see where Lucas may have gotten his ideas.

Okay, now let’s get really silly. What if a colony of bacteria could be self-aware?

Being domesticated by humans is a pretty good evolutionary strategy. By sheer numbers, sheep are far better off now than they were before we got our hands on them. Of course that just begs for the kinds of jokes you hear about pets. Who’s really in charge, the pet or the owner?

What if some odd behavior, or disease, was in the best interests of our gut bacteria? There are cases in the insect world where a parasite causes the host to do things for the benefit of the parasite.

So here’s your movie plot — The zombie apocalypse may be caused by socially networked bacteria!

Unfortunately, the heroes would be geeks creating and administering antibiotics, not rednecks in pickup trucks with shotguns.

I thought of that when I read this today.

The difference between the mid-wit and the genuinely intelligent is usually fairly easy to identify. The mid-witted individual tends to compare himself to those below the average and concludes that because he isn’t like them, he must be a genius. The genuinely intelligent individual compares himself to the great minds of the past — with which he is familiar, having experienced many of their works — and concludes that for all his intellectual superiority to the great mass of relative retards presently surrounding him — he is nothing particularly special. (From The tragedy of the mid-witted)

Another reason to read old books, I guess.

It’s hard to imagine where he could go that wouldn’t be a step up.

I’m convinced there are lots of benefits to religious belief that go beyond better marriages and sex lives, longer life expectancy, and the sorts of things the sociologists measure.

One of them is the tendency to point the finger back at yourself.

For example, I get frustrated with the way pedestrians behave in the city. They don’t follow the traffic rules, and it messes things up for everybody else. So when I see somebody crossing against the light, I’m tempted to utter a malediction.

But as soon as I think that, I immediately ask myself if I’m guiltless on the subject. Do I follow all the rules all the time? Of course I don’t. So all I’m really doing is exchanging my estimate on when you should follow the rules with somebody else’s. I’m not on the moral high ground I would like to think.

There’s nothing inherently religious about developing that kind of mental habit. But it’s the sort of thing religions emphasize and press on you, and I would be willing to bet that religious people have that mental habit to a higher degree than non-religious people.

The Separation of Church and State is Impossible

A simple summary of the point of the article might be that you can’t draw a bright line between religion and politics because the political invariably assumes some religious point of view.

Even secularism itself, Critchley maintains, is a religious myth, based as it is on a belief in progress. “The very idea of progress, that the future will be better than the past — which is the basic premise of American life — is a translation of the Christian idea of providence,” Critchley told me. “Most societies, for most of history, thought that history had a cyclical path, whereas Western society is defined by a linear idea of history, which really begins with Judaism and then finds its rearticulation in Christianity.” It’s a myth Obama drew on when he said that “we’re the ones we’ve been waiting for,” or that it’s possible to be on “the wrong side of history” — and, in doing so, gave American liberals their own shortlived moment of political hope (otherwise known as faith). …

Liberal democracy, Critchley argues, is simply the political form of deism. Natural law and natural rights, so central to the American creed, are fundamentally theological concepts.

I’ve been told that it’s only us moderns who believe in this idea of a political system separate from a religious system. Historically, religion and politics were always entwined. It was just a question of which religion, or collection of religions, or meta-religion, or whatever. There have been nations that tolerated religious diversity, but only under within a larger, essentially religious context.

We’re all being pulled along by the cultural current we live in, and we don’t even feel that current. We have to learn to challenge the assumptions of our own culture (e.g., by reading old books) to notice and question those assumptions.

…religious rhetoric isn’t necessarily something an otherwise secular government indulges in opportunistically or by rote — it’s an essential part of how government actually works.

I don’t agree with everything in the article, but he makes some good points.