Liberal scientific atheism - Part II

Part I - Sam Harris's science fantasy.

Part II - Peter Foster's assessment of Harris's new book:

Sam Harris is one of the “New Atheists,” joining Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens as a bold slayer of mental viruses that prevent people from thinking straight. That is, like him.

... Like Richard Dawkins, himself a reflexive socialist, Mr. Harris believes that man can transcend himself (Mr. Hitchens is much less naïve). It doesn’t occur to him that the notion of self-transcendence might be the most dangerous, moralistic self-delusion of all. Meanwhile he fails to register that the greatest horrors of the past century have all been perpetrated in the name of “scientific” socialism, whose root is the “moral” rejection of capitalism. 


... Meanwhile it’s not just a mental illness, it’s a plot. “Because there are no easy remedies for social inequality, many scientists and public intellectuals also believe that the great masses of humanity are best kept sedated by pious delusions.” This is pure Marxist “opiate of the masses.” Meanwhile nowhere are these “scientists and public intellectuals” named.

... Mr. Harris makes only the most tangential reference to the mass murder and poverty brought about by the secular religion of Communism.

By contrast, his anti-business and anti-“conservative” bias is blatant, indeed sometimes hilarious.

... Science may help us better examine moral values, but only if attached to historical knowledge and philosophical wisdom. Mr. Harris might consider removing the beam from his own liberal eye before he pretends to deal with the conservative mote that he finds so annoying in the eyes of others.

Great stuff.

The great media climate climb-down has begun

Harold Ambler at WUWT:

Climbing down is seldom anything less than complicated.

... With regard to global warming, the major purveyors of news in the industrialized world will be climbing down from their various versions of frenzied alarmism. ... the climb-down will be sneaky. ...when the series of editorial re-positionings is visible to casual members of the public at all, it will be beyond awkward.

How do I know? Because the process has already begun....

... The rest ...

Science fantasy

Militant atheist Sam Harris has a new book out: "The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values".  An excerpt was published in today's Post.  I haven't read the book yet but from the excerpt, it appears that Harris has been engaging in some fanciful speculation that "science", neuro-science in particular, will someday be capable of producing objective answers to ethical and moral questions. Apparently the "correctness" of these answers would be produced based on their utility in improving (or otherwise) our "well-being". This sounds at least as dubious as the notion socialists fervently cling to, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that it is possible for governments to comprehend all the variables necessary to control ecomomic systems to the net benefit of human "well-being".

An atheist and Harris fan provides a particularly thoughtful review.  There's a good debate in the comments to his review too.

Of birds, oilsands and windmills

Environmentalists, the media, politicians and government agencies flocked to decry the accidental deaths of 1600 ducks in a Syncrude tailings pond.  Syncrude was vilified and fined $3.2 million.

Wind turbines, on the other hand, kill far, far more birds every year than were killed in the Syncrude event.  But the wind power lobby (along with the same crowd that protested against Syncrude) goes out of its way to defend wind turbines:

... [wind power] proponents such as the Canadian Wind Energy Association stress that far more birds — tens of millions annually — are felled by cats, cars, and collisions with skyscrapers. But if that is a sufficient defence, should not the wind farm lobby have flocked to defend Syncrude Canada Ltd. against prosecution for far fewer deaths than routinely occur at wind farms across the country?

Good question. It wasn't about birds, it was about oil sands.

Brad Wall's Saskatchewan: a new Banana Republic

Terence Corcoran:

Did we miss the constitutional change — the one that created the Peoples’ Republic of Saskatchewan, with Brad Wall as el presidente?

Sounding ever so much like the head of some mosquito-ridden developing country squeezing dollars out of a multinational mining giant, Mr. Wall has been running an aggressive campaign against BHP Billiton’s $38.6-billion plan to take over Potash Corp.

... Mr. Wall seems to think Potash is still a Crown corporation of some sort, and he’s the new socialist head of state.

... The banana republic comparison may seem a little harsh, but the idea comes from the widely reported news that Mr. Wall or his negotiating minions actually asked BHP to pay a billion dollars up front into government coffers.

... trying to get a multinational to pay a billion dollars in taxes in advance smacks of a Third World shakedown by a political leader looking for cash to distribute to voters.

... If all this is true —and there has been no government denial to date —it paints a dark picture of the political culture in Saskatchewan —and Canada....

So much for Wall's strong support of free markets.  Populist politics trump principles, again. 

Update (or maybe it's backdate): Here are some interesting thoughts from Norm Park of the Estevan Mercury (The People's Paper Since 1903) last September:

... Why doesn't Potash Corp team up with Agrium and Mosaic and buy out BHP?

Certainly they've heard of reverse takeovers, haven't they? Maybe they're not interested in staying in business though.
 
Or maybe the head of Potash Corp, Mr. Doyle, really does want to cash out his $500,000,000 in shares and severance payments and head home to Chicago. This is where he is apparently running Potash Corp from anyway.
 
... And as far as protecting the province's resource interests … didn't we once have an oil company known as SaskOil that begot Wascana that begot Nexen that kinda got dismantled and moved to Calgary? What happened there?

Anybody heard of Ipsco? Something called Evraz now owns it and no Saskatchewan-based corporate presence of note can be found there, at least not since Roger Phillips retired.
 
If we can't build a head office base here in Saskatchewan after 120 years of trying, then maybe we just have to accept our fate and be happy with royalty payments, decent payrolls and strong employment figures while the profits and decision making head elsewhere.
 
... Sherritt Coal and oil companies like Penn West and many others don't sweat the fact that their major administrative decisions are made in places other than Saskatchewan. SaskPower doesn't mind shifting management decisions to an Ontario corporation … it's all part of the never-ending game, especially in the resource sector....

Meanwhile, Stephen Harper backs up Norm Park saying Potash Corp is 'American-controlled' anyway.

Upperdate: Brad Wall responds to Corcoran.

Free speech versus cowardice and political correctness

An interesting week, so far:

(1) The people who run the London (Ontario) Conference Centre pulled their venue for an event featuring a talk by Mark Steyn.  An organizer at Strictly Right, said:

On Tuesday, I received a phone call from the LCC telling us that our venue had been pulled, and that Mark Steyn would not be permitted to speak there. The reason offered by the LCC was that they had received pressure from local Islamic groups, and they didn’t want to alienate their Muslim clients. 

In another report it is claimed the cancellation was because of security risks and fears of rowdy protesters. Either way the LCC are a bunch of pc wimps. Blazing Cat Fur says it's War! But, whatever, there's no such thing as bad publicity.

Update: Blazing Cat Fur: "Who’s telling the truth about Mark Steyn cancellation at London Convention Centre?"

(2) Meanwhile south of the border liberal National Public Radio news analyst and Fox News contributor, Juan Williams was fired by NPR for saying (on the O'Reilly Factor):

"... when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous."

Which should be contrasted with with the non-firing of NPR commentator Andrei Codrescu after this:

[He] reported that some Christians believe in a "rapture" and 4 million believers will ascend to Heaven immediately. He continued, "The evaporation of 4 million who believe this crap would leave the world an instantly better place."

Another poster-boy for the death penalty

The video confessions of serial killer Col Russell Williams were replayed in the media today.

Last summer in a CP story (via CTV) it was suggested “... allegations ... could only heap more tarnish on the military, which also faced heavy criticism last winter for not spotting, among the myriad of psychological tests, potential problems with Col. Russ Williams.” And Mark at small dead animals opined on similar hare-brained musings from various experts and pundits like the Rideau Institute’s Steven Staples and the Globe’s John Ibbitson.

Today in the National Post letters page one William Perry echoed the same tripe:

There is much to be learnt here, not just for psychiatrists, profilers and criminologists. The Canadian Forces can use the data to ensure the checks and balances are there.

... So as the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) moves to assure Canadians by stripping Williams of his rank and throwing him out of the military as a dishonoured civilian, the CDS must also take some level of responsibility for the overall failing. Someone must have seen signs.

All utter bullcrap. The Williams case is the most bizarre case ever in the CF (or anywhere else for that matter) and will likely never happen again. So what useful lessons can the military possibly learn?

The main lesson from this case is one the justice system should have learned by now. Williams is one more poster-boy for putting the death penalty back on the books.