Some really important words tend to become more vague and generalized to the point where they don’t mean what they used to.  A lot of times that’s fine – doesn’t create a lot of problems.  Other times, it makes it hard for us to know what each of us is talking about.  Or it makes it easy to use a word as a tool, on the assumption that people will not know that it doesn’t mean what it used to. I showed how that is true of the terms “consciousness,” and “socialism” in the previous post.  Now I turn to a term that is far more fraught on a number of levels:  “antisemitism.” It’s a term that once had, can have, and should have, a specific meaning, and most people don’t know it.  When used with precision, the term does not refer to opposition to Jews for their religious practices and culture, to Judaism as a whole, to the modern state of Israel, or to the policies and practices of any particular Israeli government and [...]

I’m not a professional linguist, but it does seem to me that language tends to get more casual, sloppy, and imprecise over time, that words that once had a very specific meaning often become more generalized and widely applied to things that are similar but not actually the same. On one level that’s probably fine – it’s just naturally what happens when millions of people in different contexts use words and phrases billions of times.  But the downside is that without some modicum of precision we can’t communicate well and are more easily misunderstood; people often think we mean something we actually don’t. Most of the time that don’t signify, but sometimes it does. I’ll illustrate with three terms that I’ve been thinking a lot about lately, for different reasons: consciousness, socialism, and antisemitism – the first two in this post and the third in the next.    ****************************** For the past twenty years or so I’ve been interested in the problem of consciousness, how it is that we as material beings [...]

In the 1960s my grandmother was a big believer in faith-healer (and later prosperity-preacher) Oral Roberts.  Like many millions of others, she watched him on television and listened to him on radio, fully convinced he had the power of God to heal the sick. My father was dubious and found her faith a bit frustrating.  He asked her, “Mom, if you think he can heal you, why don’t you go get healed?”  She had very serious rheumatoid arthritis and was confined to a chair for the last seven years of her life.  I never heard her respond. But even as a boy I thought my dad had a reasonable point.  Roberts claimed even to be able to heal people long distance – just touch the TV screen or put your hand over your hearts while I pray for you.  Newspapers claimed instances of incredible success.  She could have been healed in the privacy of her own living room. As with many other Pentecostal faith healers in the early and mid-20th century, Roberts eventually shifted his [...]

In my previous post I began to argue that an economic system is not inherently good or evil.  Like other things (wine, automobiles, guns, computer games), systems can be used in ways the produce very good consequences and truly awful ones.  It’s a point I want to emphasize because most people I know outside of academic circles think that Marxism and even socialism are inherently evil, and most people I know within academic circles think that capitalism is.  (Damn intellectuals…) Here I’m focusing on capitalism since, well, like it or not, it’s the system we and virtually everyone else in the world has. So, to reiterate, the problem with capitalism is that there are capitalists and there are capitalists, and the system itself – even though it is based on a principle of self-interest -- is not necessarily the problem.  It’s the people who are the problem.  And an argument can indeed be made that capitalism is good for people of faith (not just Christian, of course, but I’m focusing on the Christian [...]

It is dead easy to attack the fundamental principles and historical practices of capitalism on religious, and particularly Christian, grounds.  A system that thrives on self-interest and personal gain, that leads to massive exploitation, to the subjection of entire indigenous populations to colonial powers, to enormous economic and social inequalities, that celebrates greed and focuses entirely on wealth and power – is this anything like the teachings of Jesus?  The Jesus who told his followers not even to be concerned even about what to eat and drink, to sell what they have and give to the poor, to bypass material comforts now for eternal life in God’s glorious kingdom later, to serve others instead of dominate them, to give rather than receive, to be willing to lay down their lives for those in need? Among the various shifts in my life, toward the end of college and on into seminary I moved away from the conservative social/political perspectives I was raised with to embrace far more liberal views – the need for social [...]

Does the reality of "life" (living creatures) require "intelligent design" (since life cannot emerge from non-life)?  Some random thoughts of a complete non-expert in any of the requisite fields: chemistry,  biology, statistics, and, well, others.  But I’d be interested in your thoughts. I’m reading Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything, 2.0.  I had read the first edition that came out in 2003 and was mesmerized by it.  This one is even better.  He’s a genius at taking something complicated and explaining it in terms that even science neanderthals like me can understand (I’ve loved everything of his I’ve read, I A Walk in the Woods, which is hilarious, Home, and The Body). One chapter in Short History is on the “The Rise of Life” (how life came out of non-life).  The science shows how incredibly unlikely it is for life to have emerged on the planet, given what it takes not just to generate amino acids but even more to get them to form proteins, etc. etc.  But not impossible.  In fact, [...]

Some years ago Sarah and I were in England celebrating Christmas with her brother in Saffron-Walden, a market town just south of Cambridge.  After a lovely Christmas eve dinner, Sarah decided she wanted to go to the midnight service at the local Anglican Church.  We, both of us agnostics, decided to go with her. I had always had a soft spot for Christmas eve services.  All the way through high school in Lawrence Kansas I had served as an acolyte in the Episcopal church, which held a very moving candlelight service that I always regarded as the most deeply profound service of the year.  But I hadn’t been to a service in years and thought I would really like to go. As we were walking through the streets to the service we passed a number of pubs packed mainly with young folk.  Religion has not fared will in England for years now, and the idea of going to a Christmas Eve service (let alone a regular ole Sunday service) is the farthest thing [...]

Yesterday I shared one of the thoughts that crept into and dominated my mind for a few minutes while watching a glorious sunrise from the comforts of a nice chair in front of a big window while drinking a cup of coffee.  Here now is my second. We have some bird feeders out on the deck and I was watching not only the dawning of the day but also the birds coming out to break their fast.  Chickadees, Titmice, and Juncos for the most part.  They love the seed. And it occurred to me: these birds have no idea of my existence.  If I moved toward them they would instinctively fly away, so they do recognize the reality of threat.  But do they understand that I’m a human, that I have a mind with thoughts and organs and limbs that make me function, that I have the abilities to analyze and reason, that I have a career and possessions, that I think about lots of issues both academic and quotidian.  Do they have any conception [...]

I have been thinking a lot lately about the relationship of AI to human consciousness.  I'm obviously not an an expert, but hey, at least I can think.  Can AI think?  That, of course, is a major question constantly being raised.  And one on which almost everyone seems to have an opinion.  (In contrast to, say, religion….)  Is AI really that different from I?  Am I a different mode of existence? The people I talk with usually argue that real thinking cannot happen without consciousness, and machines cannot be conscious the way humans are.  OK, fair enough.  I agree.  It doesn’t seem like it.  It seems like I myself am conscious, have free will, can make personal and intellectual decisions on grounds other than data themselves (often bad decisions), can emote, can sense the world, and so on.   I say it “seems” like because, well, what’s it even mean that I can do and experience these things in the mechanistic world that I personally believe in?  How am “I” at the most fundamental [...]

This is now my 40th year of teaching at a university, 36 of the years at UNC Chapel Hill and 4 before that at Rutgers as a 28 year old.  It very nearly didn't happen at all.  Life is so strange. I was on the job market while I was writing my dissertation.. And even though there were job openings, I couldn’t get an interview to save my soul. Part of the problem was that my PhD was from a theological seminary, and a lot of the jobs were at secular institutions – state universities, private colleges, and the like. Most places simply don’t want to take a chance on someone who has been trained in a theological environment. Especially someone like me at the time. I had never set foot in a secular setting since high school! Starting when I was 17, I was at Moody Bible Institute (3 years), (Christian evangelical) Wheaton College (2 years), and then (Presbyterian ministerial training ground) Princeton Theological Seminary (7 years). Yikes! Even theological schools and Christian colleges [...]