Critical Thinking, reductionism, epistemology RI megathread

[justdrew]

it's not about "faith" which if you recall I said a long long time ago was non-determinative, in and of itself neutral. I really don't know why you think it's an issue. Anyway, EVEN IF I WERE somehow "frightened" of faith, it is most assuredly NOT up to you to sit here and pretend to conduct some kind of fucked up intervention. All on account of your fears for "progress" - all worried about those poor guys who loose their jobs for teaching bullshit in a science class. As if that were censorship, it isn't.

well I don't see what the point of that article was then... I assumed it wasn't just to say "look, Neo-Nazis are bad people" because you won't get any argument from me about that.

why did you post it?

I thought I'd answer your question about my "fears"

[Canadian_watcher]

well I don't see what the point of that article was then... I assumed it wasn't just to say "look, Neo-Nazis are bad people" because you won't get any argument from me about that.

why did you post it?

I thought I'd answer your question about my "fears"

But surely it goes deeper than that attack. Are you saying you fear race-based hatred? What would the root cause of that be?

[vanlose kid]

Phil Plait - Don't Be A Dick



*

[Laodicean]

Phil Plait - Don't Be A Dick



*

What was the question again?

[American Dream]

Is David Icke's narrative all literally true?

LiBrizzi's analysis gives us much to chew on which is relevant to topics suggested by this thread:

http://www.serendipity.li/eden/librizzi.htm

The Anunnaki, the Vampire and the Structure of Dissent

By Marcus LiBrizzi


The vampire, an archetypal figure who pops up in many myths from around the world, is most familiar to Western audiences in the form of Bram Stoker's Dracula and Anne Rice's Lestat — aristocratic bloodsucking immortals of unholy origin. In more paranoid circles, vampires have been re-imagined as a race of alien beings called the Anunnaki, who have traveled from beyond to control and colonize the planet Earth (in fact, they've been in control for quite a while now). Looking at the conspiracy theories of underground celebrity David Icke, Marcus LiBrizzi offers his own theory about the meaning of these horrific beings for a world caught in the grip of a grand economic reorganization. Linking these myths to the realities of transnational capital and the Network Society, LiBrizzi is able to craft his own compelling narrative about the horrors of the New World Order. [Editor's introduction to the previous publication.]


<1> The latest incarnation of the vampire — in the conspiracy theories of David Icke — reveals the critical, revolutionary heart of the vampire legend. Discourse on the vampire appears above all to provide a structure of dissent, a metaphorical means of representing and soliciting critiques of the social order. The Anunnaki form of the vampire — in its immersion in the constellation of contemporary conspiracy theories, in its reflection on global capitalism, and in its blurring of historical and fictional narratives — has moved this structure of dissent from the cloak of darkness to the light of day.

<2> Considered by some to be the reigning conspiracy theorist in the US, David Icke (who is British) formulates his theories of a worldwide, age-old conspiracy around an extraterrestrial race of beings called the Anunnaki. Self-styled the "most controversial author and speaker in the world," David Icke has been subject to much ridicule but has nonetheless become an industry, publishing eleven books, producing video and audiotapes, embarking on a worldwide lecture circuit, and creating a website that allegedly attracts 10,000 visitors a day (Canadian, Par. 13). A former soccer player from a working-class family, Icke became a household name in the UK as a national sports and news reporter for the BBC and as the spokesperson for the Green Party ("About", Par. 7-8). Starting a full-time writing career in the early 1990s, Icke began with New Age inspired works like Truth Vibrations (1991), which combines accounts of his self transformation with psychically-imparted warnings on the imminent destruction of the earth, from there moving towards conventional conspiracy theories, and finally, beginning with his 1999 book The Biggest Secret, focusing his conspiracy theories around the Anunnaki and their nefarious involvement in human history.

<3> The Anunnaki, whose name is Sumerian, meaning "Those who from Heaven to Earth Came" (Icke, p.5), are a reptilian race that originated from the legendary planet known as Nibiru (Planet X), or the place of the crossing, which has a 3,600 year elliptical orbit that takes it between Jupiter and Mars and then out into space (p.5). For the past 450,000 years, according to Icke, the Anunnaki have been ruling earth in different guises and from different dimensions. Through genetic engineering, the Anunnaki have manipulated the evolution of humans as a slave race. "[T]he Anunnaki created bloodlines to rule humanity on their behalf," he writes, "and these [...] are the families still in control of the world to this day" (p.9). The interbreeding of the rich and powerful (primarily, for Icke, the European aristocracy and the Eastern Establishment of the US) is not done for reasons of snobbery but rather "to hold a genetic structure that gives them certain abilities, especially the ability to 'shape-shift' and manifest in other forms" (p.9). Working with these crossbreeds are full-blooded Anunnaki, some physically present on earth, others influencing individuals and events psychically from what Icke calls "the lower fourth dimension" (p.25). Forming a "Brotherhood" or secret society network, the Anunnaki have effectively "hijack[ed] the planet" (p.46).

<4> The recurring motif in the discourse on the Anunnaki is vampirism. In fact, so strong is this component in their depiction that it's safe to say that Icke's work represents one of the most recent developments in the discourse of the vampire. "While vampire beliefs are varied," writes James Craig Holte, "certain elements of the vampire myth are consistent. The most important are the inability to experience death, the importance of blood, and the sexual connection between vampire and victim" (Holte, p.246). Other structural similarities between the traditional vampire and the Anunnaki include shape-shifting, hypnotism, and links to secret societies. After establishing the Anunnaki as a manifestation of the vampire, we'll unpack the implications of this figure, using the tools of a Marxist critical practice.

<5> The Anunnaki, like traditional vampires, enjoy eternal or extended life spans. Icke claims that "[t]he fourth dimensional reptilians wear their human bodies like a genetic overcoat and when one body dies the same reptilian 'moves house' to another body and continues the Agenda into another generation" (p.46). One type of creature Icke describes is a reptilian "inside" a human physical body; "it seems that [...] [the Anunnaki] need to occupy a very reptilian dominated genetic stream to do this, hence certain bloodlines always end up in the positions of power. Other less pure crossbreed human-reptilians are those bodies which are possessed by a reptilian consciousness from the fourth dimension and these are people whom psychics see as essentially human, but 'overshadowed' by a reptilian" (p.46). Crossbreeding to infuse reptilian genetics into human bloodlines, the Anunnaki gain the means to defy death, as we conceive it.

<6> In respect to blood drinking, Icke is very clear: The Anunnaki drink blood, which they need in order to exist in this dimension and hold a human form (p.288). Embedded in this need lies another parallel between the Anunnaki and the figure of the vampire — the power to shape-shift (from reptilian to human form for the Anunnaki, and usually from vampire form to that of bat or even mist for the traditional vampire). But the Anunnaki also feed off fear, aggression and other negative emotions. Thus, while blood is needed as a vital life force, the Anunnaki are also addicted to "adrenalchrome," a hormone released in the human body during periods of extreme terror (pp.290,331). Rather than sucking the blood directly from the necks of their victims, the Anunnaki apparently slash the throats of their victims from left to right and consume the blood out of goblets (p.303). Icke claims that the origin of the vampire stories are the blood drinking and "energy sucking" rituals of the Anunnaki (p.26). "In India," he writes, "it was called soma and in Greece it was ambrosia, some researchers suggest. This was said to be the nectar of the gods and it was — the reptilian gods who are genetic blood drinkers" (p.288).

<7> In the sexual connection between slayer and victim, the Anunnaki also share another similarity with the traditional vampire. However, depictions of the Anunnaki by Icke contain none of the erotic allure and seductiveness that distinguish many vampire texts. Instead, the sexual bond between the Anunnaki and their victims is characterized by violence — rape, murder, and Satanic ritual. "Satanism at its core is about the manipulation and theft of another person's energy and consciousness," writes Icke, who states that "Sex is so common in Satanic ritual because at the moment of orgasm, the body explodes with energy which the Satanists and the reptiles can capture and absorb" (p.295). For Icke, of course, the demons honored or appeased by satanic sex rituals are none other than the reptilian Anunnaki (p.34). Sex is also a fundamental tool of the Anunnaki mind control program and, more prosaically, it figures prominently as a means of blackmail. The picture that emerges is one involving vast networks of sexual abuse and ritual murder — graphic accounts of satanic practices at the playgrounds for world leaders, such as the Bohemian Grove, a 2,700 acre compound north of San Francisco — mass graves for victims drained of their blood and libidinal energies — and the cultivation of sexual crimes to create an energy field that nourishes these rapacious ETs.

<8> There are other shared traits between the traditional vampire and the Anunnaki, for example, the role of secret societies. One of Icke's chief contributions to the discourse on the vampire lies in his immersion of this figure into a vast web of clandestine organizations, from ancient mystery schools and cults like the Brotherhood of the Snake to the Knights Templar and the Masonic Order, from global entities like the UN, the Trilateral Commission, and the Council on Foreign Relations to drug cartels, satanic churches, and the Black Nobility. A keystone in this architecture of conspiracy is the Order of Draco, which conjures up the most famous of all vampires — Count Dracula — and underscores his demonic, draconian, and reptilian associations. "According to [Laurence] Gardner, the name Dracula means 'Son of Dracul' and was inspired by Prince Vlad III of Transylvania-Wallachia, a chancellor of the Court of the Dragon in the 15th century. This prince's father was called Dracul within the Court" (p.56). In their network of secret societies, of which the Order of Draco is but a single manifestation, the Anunnaki highlight the conspiratorial dimension of all vampires. Finally, the Anunnaki share with the traditional vampire the capacity to hypnotize: Icke writes that reptilian bloodlines "have the ability to produce an extremely powerful hypnotic stare, just like a snake hypnotizing its prey and this is the origin of giving someone the 'evil eye'" (p.42).

<9> Icke's paradigm displays more than the vitality, persistence, and adaptive qualities of the vampire legend. His theories reveal the dissident energies contained already in the vampire legacy.

<10> To begin with, Icke's work represents a major fusion of the vampire cult and the field of conspiracy theories. Richard Hofstadter, in his famous essay "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" (1963) claims that the "distinguishing thing about the paranoid style is not that its exponents see conspiracies or plots here and there in history, but that they regard a 'vast' [...] conspiracy as the motive force in historical events. History is a conspiracy" (p.29). Conspiracies, even when they're not construed as vast, over-arching plots, however, have an internal, integrative logic. In other words, there is a momentum in conspiracy theories to pull in all other theories, and finally to arrive at a state in which everything is connected. Part of Icke's popularity lies in his ability to integrate most contemporary American conspiracy theories into one over-arching framework. Situated squarely in the center of this design is the ancient figure of the vampire. Thus, the vampire (or, more specifically, the Anunnaki Vampire) has colonized the field of conspiracy theories — government-sponsored alien cover-ups, the New World Order, suspicious deaths, the secret government, suppressed research, the intrigues of the CIA, and the list goes on indefinitely.

<11> From a Marxist perspective, of course, this development is more than just a formal or aesthetic innovation, for many of the conspiracy theories now circulating in the cultural medium of the US contain, at their core, critical, dissenting, and rebellious points of view (encompassing both extreme right and left) that are articulated in opposition to the social, political, and cultural status quo. While Hofstadter claims that the US has no monopoly on conspiracism, other scholars like Peter Knight hold that conspiracy theories hold an indispensable place in American ideology formation, and that current "conspiracy theories can be read in part as panicked responses to the increasing multiculturalism and globalization of the present" (Knight, p.5). Revolutionary or reactionary, however, these theories are inimical to the governing elite and represent a tradition of oppositional practice. As Knight puts it, "conspiracy theory has become the lingua franca of a countercultural opposition that encompasses a vast spectrum of political thinking from the committed to the casual" (pp.6-7).

<12> An initial difficulty in seeing the vampire as a symbol of the ruling class — capitalist or otherwise — lies in the diverse variations taken on by vampires in different places and times. As Brian Frost puts it, "the vampire is a polymorphic phenomenon with a host of disparate guises to its credit" (Frost, p.1). Among the various legendary "guises" of the vampire inventoried by Frost are spirit vampires, astral vampires, psychic vampires, animal vampires, and real-life vampires who are "sadistic criminals [...] urged on by a physical craving for blood" (p.15). Complicating the picture is the fact that Bram Stoker's character of Count Dracula, who for many encapsulates the aristocratic ethos of the vampire, "lacks precisely what makes a man 'noble': servants. Dracula stoops to driving the carriage, cooking the meals, making the beds, cleaning the castle" (Moretti, p.90). Furthermore, in some of the earliest European vampire legends, the undead feed off the living members of their own families (Murgoci, p.18), which at first glance mitigates the social-class dynamic often conjured up in the image of aristocratic vampires draining the lifeblood of their locals.

<13> There is, nevertheless, a critical and even radical dimension to the figure of the vampire, who, as a parasite, circulates as a political metaphor. The word vampire has from the start been used in oppositional literature as a symbol of an exploiting class, government, industry, or institution. A decade "after the introduction of the word 'vampire' in an English publication in 1732, (an account of the investigation of Arnold Paul in Serbia) [...] [a] serious utilization of the vampire as a political metaphor occurred in Observations on the Revolution of 1688 ([...] published in 1741)" which identified foreign investors as "'Vampires of the Publick'" (Melton, p.538). Only "[a] few years later, in 1764, Voltaire, in his Philosophical Dictionary," refers to "vampires" as "'stock-jobbers, brokers, and men of business who sucked the blood of the people in broad daylight'" (p.538).

<14> But it was Marx who first suggested that the vampire can be interpreted as a metaphor of capitalism and who also implied a method for this interpretation. In volume one of Capital (1867), he writes that "Capital is dead labour, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks" (p.342). Extrapolating on this analogy, Franco Moretti provides a reading of Bram Stoker's Dracula, writing, "If the vampire is a metaphor for capital, then Stoker's vampire, who is of 1897, must be the capital of 1897" (Moretti, p.92). Accordingly, Moretti sees Count Dracula as the expression or figure of monopoly capitalism, which, to the 19th century bourgeoisie, could not be recognized as an emerging force but only as a relic of the past displaced into the present (p.93). Whether or not one agrees with Moretti's reading of the Count, it is his method that's of most value. As Rob Latham pus it, "Moretti stresses that, while the vampire is a perfect general image for the basic mechanism of capitalist development, individual vampire texts illuminate specifically the historical phases of capitalism in which they are produced" (Latham, p.129).

<15> Applying Moretti's method, we can perceive the Anunnaki as metaphorical of the unique forms capitalism has taken by the 21st Century. Certainly, Anunnaki vampires embody the market for genetic engineering as well as space exploration. These dimensions, in fact, are projected back into the origins of Anunnaki control over earth and its resources: travel from another planet, interdimensional traffic, and a crossbreeding agenda coterminous with the evolution of the human race. Anunnaki vampires also control finance, which was undergoing a tremendous transformation and development during the time when Icke was writing that, of all the spheres of Anunnaki domination, "The most important [...] in terms of control, is banking" (p.207). Electronic banking, credit, and the demediation of stock exchange through on-line trading are some of the key elements in the recent development of the finance industry (Castells, pp. 152-153). But we can go deeper than this kind of analysis, and discover in the discourse on the Anunnaki examples of remarkable changes, not in select markets, but rather in the very structure of the economy.

<16> In this, more significant, sense the Anunnaki are linked to present-day capitalism through their association with global control. Icke consistently depicts these alien bloodsuckers as monopolizing world leadership positions in government, finance, religion and the media. In this sense, Anunnaki vampires represent a demonized expression of the unique form capitalism has taken during the very period in which Icke's theories were formulated, published and popularized. The late 1990s issued in — for the first time in history — a global economy, defined by Manuel Castells as "an economy whose core components have the institutional, organizational, and technological capacity to work as a unit in real time, or in chosen time, on a planetary scale" (p.102). Thus, "this is a new brand of capitalism, technologically, organizationally, and institutionally distinct" (pp.160-161).

<17> The forces spearheading this change derive in part from key industries, notably information technology — centering on the Internet — finance and biotechnology (Castells, p.161). Other contributing factors in the formation of the global economy are government policies that restructured capitalism through laws deregulating and liberalizing economic activity (p.148). The global economy has, of course, catapulted the scale of capitalism; "for the first time in history the whole planet is capitalist or dependent on its connection to global capitalist networks" (pp.160-161). However, as Castells points out, the global economy "is not a planetary economy [...] [because] it does not embrace all economic processes in the planet, it does not include all territories, and it does not include all people in its workings, although it does affect directly or indirectly the livelihood of all humankind" (p.132). Thus the global economy is significant, not only for it inclusivity, but also for its significant and shifting exclusions, marginalizations and hidden bypasses fraught through its great grid or network of power relations.

<18> Anunnaki vampires are perfectly suited to, and a perfect representation of, a global economy in the scope of their engagement and their profile in emergent industries, but there are other ways as well. This is because their secret agenda has always already been the creation of a one-world government — a New World Order — bypassing nations and creating a system or web from which there is no escape. The New World Order figures prominently in conspiracy theories and in literature such as Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932) and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). But during the millennium and start of the 21st Century, demonstrations against globalism have been on the rise, responding to rapid developments in transnationalism. Another aspect of the Anunnaki relevant here is their multicultural image. The Anunnaki have been written retroactively into all mythological systems, making them true transnationals. For example, they people the pages of the Indian Vedas, Babylonian myths, as well as the books of the Bible, and they are at the heart of ancient snake-worshipping cults worldwide. Moreover, they are literally seeded into the human genome through the Anunnaki engineering of the race, interbreeding alien genetics into all peoples, symbolized, for example in Genesis, as the saliva Jehovah mixes with clay to form the first man.

<19> Not surprisingly, Anunnaki narratives have a lot to say in terms of the location, construction, and commodification of the self. Unlike traditional vampires who feed solely off a victim's blood or soul, the Anunnaki thrive on negative energies such as fear and aggression. These ETs drain individuals of their sense of wellbeing through the manipulation and absorption of libidinal energies and — ultimately — the theft of consciousness and agency. On the one hand, the location of the self that the Anunnaki attack seems closely linked to consumerist notions. For example, New Age self-actualization products as well as the market for energy drinks — even caffeine-enhanced water — not to mention designer drugs — are only a few of the new industries catering profitably to the very malady Icke derives from Anunnaki domination. And, of course, Icke's works themselves represent a (profitable) venture in a multi-million dollar market for conspiracy theories in American popular culture. On the other hand, discourse on the Anunnaki is not necessarily complicit with the capitalist system that produces such effects. A current line of cultural theory "has alleged that the modalities of consumer culture — and the forms of subjectivity they enable — do not necessarily integrate seamlessly into the capitalist society which has mobilized them but may instead be potentially subversive of its purposes" (Latham, p.132). The consumption of Icke's works — in fact, the growing market for conspiracism in the US — would seem to be a case in point here, disseminating and perpetuating an oppositional worldview, a "hermeneutics of suspicion," while contributing to the accumulation of capital.

<20> Another revealing dimension of Anunnaki vampires lies in their collective depiction; unlike many accounts of the vampire, Icke's theories do not revolve around distinct Anunnaki individuals but rather focuses on them as a class or group; in this sense the Anunnaki do not convey the same individualistic focus so often encountered in vampire narratives. Even Anunnaki forms of consciousness are best described as a "groupthink" mentality. On this, Icke writes that "The reptilians seek [...] to influence everyone by stimulating the behavioral patterns of the reptile region of the brain — hierarchical thinking, aggression, conflict, division, lack of compassion and a need for ritual" (p.46). Symbolic of contemporary capitalism, this collective depiction of the Anunnaki reflects the rise of networks, and their decentering development, which have instrumentally caused — and are themselves produced by — the new global economy. The network supersedes the individual as the subject of the vampire narrative. Here Castells, speaking on the network society of global economics, is instructive: "For the first time in history, the basic unit of economic organization is not a subject, be it individual (such as the entrepreneur [...]) or collective (such as the capitalist class, the corporation, the state) [...] [Instead] the unit is the network, made up of a variety of subjects and organizations, relentlessly modified as networks adapt" (Castells, p.214).

<21> In their networked, post-subjective form of the vampire, the Anunnaki are metaphorical of the precise trajectory assumed by contemporary capitalism. Network is the same term Icke uses to describe the reptilian base of operations today, writing "After thousands of years of evolution, the reptilian network is now a vast and often unfathomable web of interconnecting secret societies, banks, businesses, political parties, security agencies, media owners, and so on" (Icke, p.259). Discourse on the Anunnaki vampire is in step with broader trends in American conspiracy theories, themselves responses to ideological crises associated with post-modernism and the growth of a network society. Writing on conspiracy theories in the postwar US, Timothy Melley points out that "the term 'conspiracy' rarely signifies a small, secret plot any more. Instead, it frequently refers to the workings of a large organization, technology, or system, a powerful and obscure entity so dispersed that it is the very antithesis of the traditional conspiracy" (Melley, p.59). Melley argues that conspiracy theories in the US have historically been an ideological means of validating individualism. And this new, impersonal breed of conspiracism reflects anxiety over the loss of individuality and agency and stands as both "an acknowledgment, and rejection, of postmodern subjectivity" (p.65).

<22> Perhaps most revealing of all is the dissolution of the boundary between fantasy and reality — the presentation of the vampire as an historical agent rather than a fictional character. Deeply ironic and radical, this slippage of fact and fantasy drives the vampire legacy much closer to its critical core. If the traditional vampire articulates dissent, it also distorts the representation of real relations, which are displaced into the realm of the imaginary. In the form of the Anunnaki, however, vampires have infiltrated the field of conspiracy theories, spilling from the page onto the pavement, as it were. Moving from metaphor to a kind of mimesis of the grotesque, the vampire legacy shape-shifts — its implicit charge evolving into an explosive critique.

Works Cited


"About David Icke, the Man, His Philosophy, and His Work." N.d. Online. Internet. 3 January 2003. Available http://www.davidicke.com/icke/about.html

Canadian Association for Free Expression. "David Icke's Telling the Truth Archives: Conspiracies, CoverUps, Truths, Facts, Oddities, Research: Dante's Infernal Guide to Human Rights and Wrongs." N.d. Online. Internet. 3 January 2003. Available http://mysite.users2.50megs.com/researc ... guide.html

Castells, Manuel. The Rise of the Network Society. 2nd ed. Vol. 1. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000.

Frost, Brian J. The Monster with a Thousand Faces: Guises of the Vampire in Myth and Literature. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State U Popular P, 1989.

Hofstadter, Richard. "The Paranoid Style in American Politics." In The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays. 1963. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1996.

Holte, James Craig. "The Vampire." Malcolm South, ed. Mythical and Fabulous Creatures: A Source Book and Research Guide. New York: Greenwood, 1987. 243-64.

Icke, David. The Biggest Secret: The Book That Will Change the World. Scottsdale, AZ: Bridge of Love, 1999.

Knight, Peter. "Introduction: A Nation of Conspiracy Theorists." In Conspiracy Nation: The Politics of Paranoia in Postwar America. Ed. Peter Knight. New York: New York UP, 2002. 1-17.

Latham, Rob. "Consuming Youth: The Lost Boys Cruise Mallworld." Blood Read: The Vampire as Metaphor in Contemporary Culture. Joan Gordon and Veronica Hollinger, eds. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1997. 129-47.

Marx, Karl. Capital. Vol. 1. 1867. Harmondworth, UK: Penguin, 1976.

Melley, Timothy. "Agency Panic and the Culture of Conspiracy." In Conspiracy Nation: The Politics of Paranoia in Postwar America. Ed. Peter Knight. New York: New York UP, 2002. 57-81.

Melton, J. Gordon. The Vampire Book: The Encyclopedia of the Undead. Detroit: Visible Ink, 1999.

Moretti, Franco. "The Dialectic of Fear." Signs Taken for Wonders: Essays in the Sociology of Literary Forms. 1983. New York: Verso, 1997. 83-108.

Murgoci, Agnes. "The Vampire in Roumania." Alan Dundes, ed. The Vampire: A Casebook. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1998. 12-34.


This article was previously published in the Fall 2000 edition of the online magazine reconstruction: studies in contemporary culture.

[Laodicean]

[stefano]

Those wars are fought for material reasons.

That is a ridiculously reductionist idea.

Not more reductionist than saying that religion is the only, or even primary reason. The religious tensions that supposedly do the most to drive those wars exist in other regions as well without leading to war, or have existed for ages in the places where there's fighting now without leading to full-scale war.

If you have to sum it up concisely I'd say the religious make good recruits, but the rage and hate that actually drive the fighting are based on power relations between groups based on tribe, clan or class. The line that religion explains everything is also often held by a Christopher Hitchens or Martin Amis, which is another reason to think a little more carefully about it. Terry Eagleton says it better than I can in this review of The God Delusion.

Are you able to accept that some groups are bad and some are good but these things do not depend whether or not they have faith?

Actually that's exactly what it depends on. What makes some groups bad? The metaphyscial things they believe? I'm pretty sure those neo-Nazis have some kind of religious justification for their racism. Support for the occupation of Palestine in conservative circles very often rests on faith that the Bible is true, and that Genesis 26 therefore resolves the question of land rights. And yes, that is the same kind of faith as the faith of the harmless old lady talking to her departed husband at the graveyard. "Conviction of things unseen". If you're convinced of things unseen you're a potential fool, and you're an actual fool when things seen contradict your conviction.

I sometimes think that old Constantine knew exactly what he was doing when he made the council adopt the Nicene creed: by forcing Christians to say out loud that they "believe" impossible things he changed the definition of "believe", to the point where, if you subscribe to that definition of belief, it's as valid to "believe in" a young Earth as in an old one. Teach both sides!

Now I'm not an atheist, but that's just because of experiences I've had. I believe in as much Godness as I've experienced, which is a thoroughly rational position.

[vanlose kid]

...

Are you able to accept that some groups are bad and some are good but these things do not depend whether or not they have faith?

Actually that's exactly what it depends on. What makes some groups bad? The metaphyscial things they believe? I'm pretty sure those neo-Nazis have some kind of religious justification for their racism. Support for the occupation of Palestine in conservative circles very often rests on faith that the Bible is true, and that Genesis 26 therefore resolves the question of land rights. And yes, that is the same kind of faith as the faith of the harmless old lady talking to her departed husband at the graveyard. "Conviction of things unseen". If you're convinced of things unseen you're a potential fool, and you're an actual fool when things seen contradict your conviction.

...

kind of like belief in progress, the future, a coming socialist state, winning the lottery, graduating cum lauda, that there is a world behind the door you open and step out of in the morning, that every human head contains a brain, that food will still hunger, that the sun will rise tomorrow, that winter will be followed by spring...

*

[vanlose kid]

Wittgenstein: On Certainty


1. If you do know that here is one hand, we'll grant you all the rest.
When one says that such and such a proposition can't be proved, of course that does not mean that it can't be derived from other propositions; any proposition can be derived from other ones. But they may be no more certain than it is itself. (On this a curious remark by H.Newman.)

2. From its seeming to me - or to everyone - to be so, it doesn't follow that it is so.
What we can ask is whether it can make sense to doubt it.

3. If e.g. someone says "I don't know if there's a hand here" he might be told "Look closer". - This possibility of satisfying oneself is part of the language-game. Is one of its essential features.

4. "I know that I am a human being." In order to see how unclear the sense of this proposition is, consider its negation. At most it might be taken to mean "I know I have the organs of a human". (E.g. a brain which, after all, no one has ever yet seen.) But what about such a proposition as "I know I have a brain"? Can I doubt it? Grounds for doubt are lacking! Everything speaks in its favour, nothing against it. Nevertheless it is imaginable that my skull should turn out empty when it was operated on.

5. Whether a proposition can turn out false after all depends on what I make count as determinants for that proposition.

6. Now, can one enumerate what one knows (like Moore)? Straight off like that, I believe not. - For otherwise the expression "I know" gets misused. And through this misuse a queer and extremely important mental state seems to be revealed.

7. My life shows that I know or am certain that there is a chair over there, or a door, and so on. - I tell a friend e.g. "Take that chair over there", "Shut the door", etc. etc.

8. The difference between the concept of 'knowing' and the concept of 'being certain' isn't of any great importance at all, except where "I know" is meant to mean: I can't be wrong. In a law-court, for example, "I am certain" could replace "I know" in every piece of testimony. We might even imagine its being forbidden to say "I know" there. [A passage in "Wilhelm Meister", where "You know" or "You knew" is used in the sense "You were certain", the facts being different from what he knew.]

9. Now do I, in the course of my life, make sure I know that here is a hand - my own hand, that is?

10. I know that a sick man is lying here? Nonsense! I am sitting at his bedside, I am looking attentively into his face. - So I don't know, then, that there is a sick man lying here? Neither the question nor the assertion makes sense. Any more than the assertion "I am here", which I might yet use at any moment, if suitable occasion presented itself. - Then is "2x2=4" nonsense in the same way, and not a proposition of arithmetic, apart from particular occasions? "2x2=4" is a true proposition of arithmetic - not "on particular occasions" nor "always" - but the spoken or written sentence "2x2=4" in Chinese might have a different meaning or be out and out nonsense, and from this is seen that it is only in use that the proposition has its sense. And "I know that there's a sick man lying here", used in an unsuitable situation, seems not to be nonsense but rather seems matter-of-course, only because one can fairly easily imagine a situation to fit it, and one thinks that the words "I know that..." are always in place where there is no doubt, and hence even where the expression of doubt would unintelligible.

11. We just do not see how very specialized the use of "I know" is.

12. - For "I know" seems to describe a state of affairs which guarantees what is known, guarantees it as a fact. One always forgets the expression "I thought I knew".

13. For it is not as though the proposition "It is so" could be inferred from someone else's utterance: "I know it is so". Nor from the utterance together with its not being a lie. - But can't I infer "It is so" from my own utterance "I know etc."? Yes; and also "There is a hand there" follows from the proposition "He knows that there's a hand there". But from his utterance "I know..." it does not follow that he does know it.

14. That he does know remains to be shown.

15. It needs to be shown that no mistake was possible. Giving the assurance "I know" doesn't suffice. For it is after all only an assurance that I can't be making a mistake, and it needs to be objectively established that I am not making a mistake about that.

16. "If I know something, then I also know that I know it, etc." amounts to: "I know that" means "I am incapable of being wrong about that." But whether I am so must admit of being established objectively.

17. Suppose now I say "I'm incapable of being wrong about this: that is a book" while I point to an object. What would a mistake here be like? And have I any clear idea of it?

18. "I know" often means: I have the proper grounds for my statement. So if the other person is acquainted with the language-game, he would admit that I know. The other, if he is acquainted with the language-game, must be able to imagine how one may know something of the kind.

19. The statement "I know that here is a hand" may then be continued: "for it's my hand that I'm looking at." Then a reasonable man will not doubt that I know. - Nor will the idealist; rather he will say that he was not dealing with the practical doubt which is being dismissed, but there is a further doubt behind that one. - That this is an illusion has to be shown in a different way.

20. "Doubting the existence of the external world" does not mean for example doubting the existence of a planet, which later observations proved to exist. - Or does Moore want to say that knowing that here is his hand is different in kind from knowing the existence of the planet Saturn? Otherwise it would be possible to point out the discovery of the planet Saturn to the doubters and say that its existence has been proved, and hence the existence of the external world as well.

21. Moore's view really comes down to this: the concept 'know' is analogous to the concepts 'believe', 'surmise', 'doubt', 'be convinced' in that the statement "I know..." can't be a mistake. And if that is so, then there can be an inference from such an utterance to the truth of an assertion. And here the form "I thought I knew" is being overlooked. - But if this latter is inadmissible, then a mistake in the assertion must be logically impossible too. And anyone who is acquainted with the language-game must realize this - an assurance from a reliable man that he knows cannot contribute anything.

22. It would surely be remarkable if we had to believe the reliable person who says "I can't be wrong"; or who says "I am not wrong".

23. If I don't know whether someone has two hands (say, whether they have been amputated or not) I shall believe his assurance that he has two hands, if he is trustworthy. And if he says he knows it, that can only signify to me that he has been able to make sure, and hence that his arms are e.g. not still concealed by coverings and bandages, etc.etc. My believing the trustworthy man stems from my admitting that it is possible for him to make sure. But someone who says that perhaps there are no physical objects makes no such admission.

24. The idealist's question would be something like: "What right have I not to doubt the existence of my hands?" (And to that the answer can't be: I know that they exist.) But someone who asks such a question is overlooking the fact that a doubt about existence only works in a language-game. Hence, that we should first have to ask: what would such a doubt be like?, and don't understand this straight off.

25. One may be wrong even about "there being a hand here". Only in particular circumstances is it impossible. - "Even in a calculation one can be wrong - only in certain circumstances one can't."

26. But can it be seen from a rule what circumstances logically exclude a mistake in the employment of rules of calculation?
What use is a rule to us here? Mightn't we (in turn) go wrong in applying it?

27. If, however, one wanted to give something like a rule here, then it would contain the expression "in normal circumstances". And we recognize normal circumstances but cannot precisely describe them. At most, we can describe a range of abnormal ones.

28. What is 'learning a rule'? - This.
What is 'making a mistake in applying it'? - This. And what is pointed to here is something indeterminate.

29. Practice in the use of the rule also shows what is a mistake in its employment.

30. When someone has made sure of something, he says: "Yes, the calculation is right", but he did not infer that from his condition of certainty. One does not infer how things are from one's own certainty.
Certainty is as it were a tone of voice in which one declares how things are, but one does not infer from the tone of voice that one is justified.

31. The propositions which one comes back to again and again as if bewitched - these I should like to expunge from philosophical language.

32. It's not a matter of Moore's knowing that there's a hand there, but rather we should not understand him if he were to say "Of course I may be wrong about this." We should ask "What is it like to make such a mistake as that?" - e.g. what's it like to discover that it was a mistake?

33. Thus we expunge the sentences that don't get us any further.

34. If someone is taught to calculate, is he also taught that he can rely on a calculation of his teacher's? But these explanations must after all sometime come to an end. Will he also be taught that he can trust his senses - since he is indeed told in many cases that in such and such a special case you cannot trust them? -
Rule and exception.

35. But can't it be imagined that there should be no physical objects? I don't know. And yet "There are physical objects" is nonsense. Is it supposed to be an empirical proposition? -
And is this an empirical proposition: "There seem to be physical objects"?

36. "A is a physical object" is a piece of instruction which we give only to someone who doesn't yet understand either what "A" means, or what "physical object" means. Thus it is instruction about the use of words, and "physical object" is a logical concept. (Like colour, quantity,...) And that is why no such proposition as: "There are physical objects" can be formulated.
Yet we encounter such unsuccessful shots at every turn.

...

83. The truth of certain empirical propositions belongs to our frame of reference.

84. Moore says he knows that the earth existed long before his birth. And put like that it seems to be a personal statement about him, even if it is in addition a statement about the physical world. Now it is philosophically uninteresting whether Moore knows this or that, but it is interesting that, and how, it can be known. If Moore had informed us that he knew the distance separating certain stars, we might conclude from that that he had made some special investigations, and we shall want to know what these were. But Moore chooses precisely a case in which we all seem to know the same as he, and without being able to say how. I believe e.g. that I know as much about this matter (the existence of the earth) as Moore does, and if he knows that it is as he says, then I know it too. For it isn't, either, as if he had arrived at this proposition by pursuing some line of thought which, while it is open to me, I have not in fact pursued.

85. And what goes into someone's knowing this? Knowledge of history, say? He must know what it means to say: the earth has already existed for such and such a length of time. For not any intelligent adult must know that. We see men building and demolishing houses, and are led to ask:"How long has this house been here?" But how does one come on the idea of asking this about a mountain, for example? And have all men the notion of the earth as a body, which may come into being and pass away? Why shouldn't I think of the earth as flat, but extending without end in every direction (including depth)? But in that case one might still say "I know that this mountain existed long before my birth." - But suppose I met a man who didn't believe that?

86. Suppose I replaced Moore's "I know" by "I am of the unshakeable conviction"?

87. Can't an assertoric sentence, which was capable of functioning as an hypothesis, also be used as a foundation for research and action? I.e. can't it simply be isolated from doubt, though not according to any explicit rule? It simply gets assumed as a truism, never called in question, perhaps not even ever formulated.

88. It may be for example that all enquiry on our part is set so as to exempt certain propositions from doubt, if they were ever formulated. They lie apart from the route travelled by enquiry.

89. One would like to say: "Everything speaks for, and nothing against the earth's having existed long before..."
Yet might I not believe the contrary after all? But the question is: What would the practical effects of this belief be? - Perhaps someone says: "That's not the point. A belief is what it is whether it has any practical effects or not." One thinks: It is the same adjustment of the human mind anyway.

...

118. Now would it be correct to say: So far no one has opened my skull in order to see whether there is a brain inside; but everything speaks for, and nothing against, its being what they would find there?

119. But can it also be said: Everything speaks for, and nothing against the table's still being there when no one sees it? For what does speak for it?

120. But if anyone were to doubt it, how would his doubt come out in practice? And couldn't we peacefully leave him to doubt it, since it makes no difference at all?

121. Can one say: "Where there is no doubt there is no knowledge either"?

122. Doesn't one need grounds for doubt?

123. Wherever I look, I find no ground for doubting that...

124. I want to say: We use judgments as principles of judgment.

125. If a blind man were to ask me "Have you got two hands?" I should not make sure by looking. If I were to have any doubt of it, then I don't know why I should trust my eyes. For why shouldn't I test my eyes by looking to find out whether I see my two hands? What is to be tested by what? (Who decides what stands fast?)
And what does it mean to say that such and such stands fast?

126. I am not more certain of the meaning of my words that I am of certain judgments. Can I doubt that this colour is called "blue"?
(My) doubts form a system.

127. For how do I know that someone is in doubt? How do I know that he uses the words "I doubt it" as I do?

128. From a child up I learnt to judge like this. This is judging.

129. This is how I learned to judge; this I got to know as judgment.

130. But isn't it experience that teaches us to judge like this, that is to say, that it is correct to judge like this? But how does experience teach us, then? We may derive it from experience, but experience does not direct us to derive anything from experience. If it is the ground for our judging like this, and not just the cause, still we do not have a ground for seeing this in turn as a ground.

131. No, experience is not the ground for our game of judging. Nor is its outstanding success.

132. Men have judged that a king can make rain; we say this contradicts all experience. Today they judge that aeroplanes and the radio etc. are means for the closer contact of peoples and the spread of culture.

133. Under ordinary circumstances I do not satisfy myself that I have two hands by seeing how it looks. Why not? Has experience shown it to be unnecessary? Or (again): Have we in some way learnt a universal law of induction, and do we trust it here too? - But why should we have learnt one universal law first, and not the special one straight away?

134. After putting a book in a drawer, I assume it is there, unless... "Experience always proves me right. There is no well attested case of a book's (simply) disappearing." It has often happened that a book has never turned up again, although we thought we knew for certain where it was. - But experience does really teach that a book, say, does not vanish away. (E.g. gradually evaporates.) But is it this experience with books etc. that leads us to assume that such a book has not vanished away? Well, suppose we were to find that under particular novel circumstances books did vanish away. - Shouldn't we alter our assumption? Can one give the lie to the effect of experience on our system of assumption?

135. But do we not simply follow the principle that what has always happened will happen again (or something like it)? What does it mean to follow this principle? Do we really introduce it into our reasoning? Or is it merely the natural law which our inferring apparently follows? This latter it may be. It is not an item in our considerations.

136. When Moore says he knows such and such, he is really enumerating a lot of empirical propositions which we affirm without special testing; propositions, that is, which have a peculiar logical role in the system of our empirical propositions.

137. Even if the most trustworthy of men assures me that he knows things are thus and so, this by itself cannot satisfy me that he does know. Only that he believes he knows. That is why Moore's assurance that he knows... does not interest us. The propositions, however, which Moore retails as examples of such known truths are indeed interesting. Not because anyone knows their truth, or believes he knows them, but because they all have a similar role in the system of our empirical judgments.

138. We don't, for example, arrive at any of them as a result of investigation.
There are e.g. historical investigations and investigations into the shape and also the age of the earth, but not into whether the earth has existed during the last hundred years. Of course many of us have information about this period from our parents and grandparents; but maynt' they be wrong? - "Nonsense!" one will say. "How should all these people be wrong?" - But is that an argument? Is it not simply the rejection of an idea? And perhaps the determination of a concept? For if I speak of a possible mistake here, this changes the role of "mistake" and "truth" in our lives.

139. Not only rules, but also examples are needed for establishing a practice. Our rules leave loop-holes open, and the practice has to speak for itself.

140. We do not learn the practice of making empirical judgments by learning rules: we are taught judgments and their connexion with other judgments. A totality of judgments is made plausible to us.

141. When we first begin to believe anything, what we believe is not a single proposition, it is a whole system of propositions. (Light dawns gradually over the whole.)

...

287. The squirrel does not infer by induction that it is going to need stores next winter as well. And no more do we need a law of induction to justify our actions or our predictions.

288. I know, not just that the earth existed long before my birth, but also that it is a large body, that this has been established, that I and the rest of mankind have forebears, that there are books about all this, that such books don't lie, etc. etc. etc. And I know all this? I believe it. This body of knowledge has been handed on to me and I have no grounds for doubting it, but, on the contrary, all sorts of confirmation.
And why shouldn't I say that I know all this? Isn't that what one does say?
But not only I know, or believe, all that, but the others do too. Or rather, I believe that they believe it.

289. I am firmly convinced that others believe, believe they know, that all that is in fact so.

290. I myself wrote in my book that children learn to understand a word in such and such a way. Do I know that, or do I believe it? Why in such a case do I write not "I believe etc." but simply the indicative sentence?

291. We know that the earth is round. We have definitively ascertained that it is round.
We shall stick to this opinion, unless our whole way of seeing nature changes. "How do you know that?" - I believe it.

292. Further experiments cannot give the lie to our earlier ones, at most they may change our whole way of looking at things.

293. Similarly with the sentence "water boils at 100 C".

294. This is how we acquire conviction, this is called "being rightly convinced".

295. So hasn't one, in this sense, a proof of the proposition? But that the same thing has happened again is not a proof of it; though we do say that it gives us a right to assume it.

296. This is what we call an "empirical foundation" for our assumptions.

297. For we learn, not just that such and such experiments had those and those results, but also the conclusion which is drawn. And of course there is nothing wrong in our doing so. For this inferred proposition is an instrument for a definitive use.

298. 'We are quite sure of it' does not mean just that every single person is certain of it, but that we belong to a community which is bound together by science and education.

299. We are satisfied that the earth is round. [In English]

...

http://budni.by.ru/oncertainty.html

*

[stefano]

kind of like belief in progress, the future, a coming socialist state, winning the lottery, graduating cum lauda, that there is a world behind the door you open and step out of in the morning, that every human head contains a brain, that food will still hunger, that the sun will rise tomorrow, that winter will be followed by spring...

I'm not sure if you're arguing with or against me here... by one reading you're agreeing with what I said about the definition of the verb "believe", that it is used in a number of very different contexts and isn't the right word in each. Obviously believing in winning the lottery isn't the same as believing that there's a world behind the door. For future contexts the word "believe" doesn't sound quite right to me; I'd rather use "anticipate", and one anticipates future events with varying degrees of certainty. I believe that there is a world behind the door, that every human head contains a brain, that food will still hunger, that the sun will rise tomorrow, and that winter will be followed by spring because I have convincing evidence of all these things. I have some evidence of progress, but my belief in it is a lot more mutable and conditional than my belief in sunrises.

[Canadian_watcher]

Are you able to accept that some groups are bad and some are good but these things do not depend whether or not they have faith?

Actually that's exactly what it depends on. What makes some groups bad? The metaphyscial things they believe?

Q. What makes some groups bad?
A. Their bad actions.

Do our beliefs inform our actions - I would guess so. But lots of people believe lots of things that they never act upon.
The answer to your question appears to be more rooted in the thing that moves people from belief into action.

I'm pretty sure those neo-Nazis have some kind of religious justification for their racism.

If you're pretty sure of it it's probably true to you and it's up to you to find out if you're right or not. It's also interesting to think about whether or not those beliefs themselves caused the bad actions the neo-Nazi's took.

Support for the occupation of Palestine in conservative circles very often rests on faith that the Bible is true, and that Genesis 26 therefore resolves the question of land rights. And yes, that is the same kind of faith as the faith of the harmless old lady talking to her departed husband at the graveyard.

But one takes bad actions and one does not.. why? They are 'the same kind of faith' according to the way you see it.

If you're convinced of things unseen you're a potential fool, and you're an actual fool when things seen contradict your conviction.

It's a good thing that some people are willing to endure moments of being revealed as fools. After all, we are all fools underneath. It takes willingness to expose that part of ourselves in order to learn. And besides that, foolishness is really a concept external to oneself - a label.

Teach both sides!

quite right. More than that, really. Teach all sides!

Now I'm not an atheist, but that's just because of experiences I've had. I believe in as much Godness as I've experienced, which is a thoroughly rational position.

same here. But you wouldn't know it to hear the accusations thrown at me, would you?

[crikkett]

You're such a star trek nerd, but yah... male pattern baldness. What's up with that oh intelligent designer?

Even Q suffered the malady

[Wombaticus Rex]

Yes, only idiots want complete freedom to read and write and say and listen to and publish and draw and film what they want to. What if the 'idiot crowd' went about screaming that they loved chocolate? would you have to hate chocolate? And who are these idiots, anyway? What do they have to do with us?

Idiots often equate "censorship" with "nobody wants to hear about this" or "nobody is taking me seriously." Prison Planet isn't censored, but Alex Jones froths about it every 30 days like clockwork. Nobody's censoring the Westboro Baptist Church, but Christ almighty, they can't stop talking about it. Likewise, Intelligent Design isn't getting censored anywhere and is in fact an extremely well-funded and professionally run PR campaign -- but hot damn, ID advocates sure do talk about censorship a lot.

And good question, CW -- what does chocolate have to do with this?

quite right. More than that, really. Teach all sides!

I'm not a fan of Rockefeller-designed social conditioning centers, but here's the reason educators are so emotional and fucking exhausted with the charade of Intelligent Design "debate" -- because they're having a hard enough time teach them one "side" ... you know, actual science.

This brings up an important question about the utility of school. Should we be teaching kids the Christian Scientist version of Why People Get Sick, simply because it exists? Should we be teaching people the David Irving version of the Holocaust right after the official version -- or right before it?

Speaking of teaching all sides -- why isn't Henry Makow's research exposing the NWO origins and hateful plans of Feminism being taught in school? Why is he being censored like that?

[stefano]

If you're pretty sure of it it's probably true to you

No, it isn't. That's not what true means; truth isn't subjective (if it's subjective it's not truth). My statement isn't true to me; it's plausible, or makes sense. The only way of proving its truth is actually asking those two specific people, which none of us is in a position to do. I think it's plausible because I've had some surreal experiences with racists who believe that blacks are the sons of Ham, which supposedly explains everything. But maybe these neo-Nazis don't know those verses; maybe they're Odinists or irreligious. They still have an opinion about races, a belief they took from someone else, which motivates their actions.

But one takes bad actions and one does not.. why? They are 'the same kind of faith' according to the way you see it.

Faith isn't the sole or prime driver of human action, as I said to barracuda. That doesn't mean that we should assign equal validity to bullshit and proven fact. Particularly not in schools.

Teach both sides!

quite right. More than that, really. Teach all sides!

Sorry, that was sarcasm. Obviously it is not as reasonable to believe in a young Earth as in an old one. There is a mass of evidence on the one hand and an old story on the other. If you honestly think every creation myth of every culture in human history ought to be taught to kids who ask "where do we come from", when we have a theory of where we come from that explains almost everything we know, then I'm not surprised you're able to redefine truth as like, just someone's opinion.

Where do you go with this slippery Platonism? Do you think it was "probably true to" Colin Powell in New York that Saddam Hussein had uranium? Because it wasn't really true, was it? It was a lie, and Powell's subjective opinions made no difference. Do you at least believe that some things are true and some things are not true?

Posting a Tim Kreider cartoon in the sincere (but pragmatic and flexible) belief that it's not shite:

[barracuda]

Those wars are fought for material reasons.

That is a ridiculously reductionist idea.

Not more reductionist than saying that religion is the only, or even primary reason. The religious tensions that supposedly do the most to drive those wars exist in other regions as well without leading to war, or have existed for ages in the places where there's fighting now without leading to full-scale war.

My point was that while there have been innumerous wars fought under the auspices of religion in one form or another, I have yet to see a war ostensibly fought under the banner of critical thinking or scientific orthodoxy. "Long Live The Evolution!!" makes a lousy battle-cry, apparently.

Support for the occupation of Palestine in conservative circles very often rests on faith that the Bible is true, and that Genesis 26 therefore resolves the question of land rights. And yes, that is the same kind of faith as the faith of the harmless old lady talking to her departed husband at the graveyard.

Absolutely.

Teach all sides!

Please, no.

But you wouldn't know it to hear the accusations thrown at me, would you?

Or me.