Science Is Not The Answer

In lieu of Class, which resumes after summer, I present the tune that is knockin’ ‘em dead in swing joints all across the once United States. Plus, I don’t know about you, but I’m thrilled this style of music, none of which sounds like a robot factory gone bad, is making a come back. Oh the scientists are publishin’, crankin’ out those papers fast. They got a tiny pee-value, think they made it at long last.

The late Wolfgang Smith was fond of quoting St Thomas Aquinas from Summa Contra Gentiles (Book II, ch. 3): It is absolutely false to maintain, with reference to the truths of our faith, that what we believe regarding the creation is of no consequence, so long as one has an exact conception of God; because an error regarding the nature of creation always gives rise to a false idea concerning God. In other words, if we get Science wrong, we get God wrong, too.

I have to hand it to the trio of “doctors” who wrote the peer-reviewed NEJM paper “Contextualizing the Dead Donor Rule in an Era of Voluntary Euthanasia“. They didn’t seek refuge in a hoary euphemism and instead called the cutting open a living person to steal his organs exactly what it is: “death by organ donation”. Only they are not exactly against it. The trio is, and I quote, “Carter Winberg, M.D., Ian Ball, M.D., and Robert D. Truog, M.D.”.

Let’s take something silly and turn it into something shiny. And, in doing so, relearn the invaluable lesson that nothing has a probability. Somebody posted this receipt from a sale at a 7/11 in Jacksonville, Florida, and I was asked to comment on it. I’m only showing the meat of the receipt here, but the fellow who owned it had the whole thing framed because of its peculiar coincidence of numbers. As you can see, the receipt was for $7.11, made on 7/11 at 7:11 PM, and at a 7/11.

One thing I didn’t take precaution against was my own stupidity. A marvelous and constant, menacing thing you would think that, if anybody, I would have been ready for. You would have been wrong. In the interview below, I had forgot to record Jaap’s audio, only my own. Yet his words still came through my speakers and were picked up by my mic; his voice was barely there, down so many dBs in the mud that when I told an audio engineer about what had happened, he fainted.

Next time you slide a Pringle over your tonsils, blame God. It was your unhealthy attitude to religion that made you crave that Oreo. Your inability to think proper thoughts about a meaningless random universe, and not gluttony, is why tossed that frozen pizza into the oven. Our peer-reviewed paper is “God’s Presence in the Aisle: How God Salience Encourages Preference for Ultra-Processed Foods” by Ali Gohary and Hean Tat Keh in Psychology & Marketing.

You will have heard that David Hume claimed ethical oughts cannot be derived from any factual is (empirical observation). This is called Hume’s Guillotine, presumably for the great number of people who lost their heads thinking about it. Many other authors, such as Kant and Kierkegaard, follow on Hume. There are two important consequences of Hume’s Guillotine: (1) it is true, and (2) it does not mean much. It certainly does not mean that there are not any objectively true ethical (moral) statements.

Before we get to our story, my deep and profound thanks to readers for getting us higher in the ranks. I am most grateful. I logged on Saturday and saw this message. Let’s get to #1! Subscribe below (free if you like, or donate if you can) if you haven’t already. During the covid panic, and looking for any good excuse to DIE (Diversity Inclusion Equity), the University of California system dissauded applicants from submitting SAT and ACT scores (I’ll just say SAT below).

Here is a picture that does not seem to matter much: They are all well known rulers of various localities (I almost said nations). The modern ones in the bottom tier are dressed poorly. Note carefully I did not say cheaply. It is as a ruler expensive to dress “down”, pretending to be clothed in common raiment. They (in the bottom tier) all wear “designer” clothes. Since every garment is designed by someone, the word merely means expensive.

Forgive me, I beg, the odd, breezy posting schedule this week. I reasoned that many would still be on vacation and wanted to save the (for a word) denser material for next week. Like the article on deriving objective morality: not simple, not short, not easy. So I took this week to finish what I could of the second edition of a book that did surprisingly well (at least I thought so; it sold about 5,000 copies). Working title: Son of Everything You Believe Is Wrong.