Lamentations on Chemistry

June 22, 2008, Santa Monica, California. Comedian and satirist George Carlin died sunday evening after checking into a Santa Monica hospital complaining of chest pains. He was 71.

Carlin was a brilliant social satirist and comic. He had the ability to look at ordinary things from a different angle and see the obvious obsurdity in things most of us accept as simple background noise. This is one of the key attributes of a successful satirist and comedian.

I think it’s the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately. 

The very existence of flamethrowers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, “You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I’m just not close enough to get the job done.”

I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, “Where’s the self-help section?” She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.

There’s no present. There’s only the immediate future and the recent past.

Not only do I not know what’s going on, I wouldn’t know what to do about it if I did.

-George Carlin

Carlin was a serial quipster who pushed the boundaries of social norms. His Seven Dirty Words ended up as the center of a 1978 Supreme Court ruling that affirmed the right of the state to bar ”indecent” of speech on the public airwaves.

While it is common for contemporary comedians to exploit “indecent” speech for shock value today, few seem to have the facility with language that Carlin had. He was able to reduce to a few short humorous sentences the dark uncertainties that many of us have with common subjects.  Carlin’s observations on taboo subjects put him well ahead of his time.

Just when I was getting used to the possibility of an epic Mormon Migration to the District of Columbia, Mitt Romney bails from the flaming cockpit of his campaign. At least for the next cycle, we will not see young missionaries in white shirt and tie parking their bicycles at the State Department or the CIA. That Ambassador-at-Large slot for Marie Osmond will have to wait and purveyors of caffeine and intoxicating liquors can rest at ease tonight. No temple garments hanging on the line back behind the White House either.

Utah is occupied by wholesome folk with a really odd theory of the universe. Eventually their time to decorate the Lincoln bedroom will come, but not in 2009.

Warning!! The following text contains links and declarative statements that may cause chafing or philosophical infarct.

The Richard Dawkins BBC programs “The Root of All Evil, Part 1 and Part 2“, are quite worth the time to view. It will no doubt be uncomfortable for some. Dawkins is very much a promoter of reason and doesn’t restrain his blunt questions at all. 

What is interesting to witness is Dawkins’ genuine surprise when a few characters respond with an absolute and even threatening rebuff to his reasoning.  I think he truly expected to move these people to see his point of view by the force of reason.  In many ways, this program portrays a world very hostile to the analysis of belief.

The whole notion of belief as an inviolable, sacrosanct capsule of ”vital essence” seems to be hardwired into our brains.  For many, the prospect of another person drilling into your personal theory of the universe (God or physics) is both profane and invasive.  Like most people, I am not keen on being “examined” like some analytical sample either. But in the end, a “theory of everything” that can’t survive scrutiny is not worth having.

Perhaps where Dawkins goes astray is at grasping the difference between being analytically correct and just being comfortable with an idea.  Few people have the overlap of both curiosity and the opportunity to cover some new ground in the scholarly examination of the Big Questions.  In fact, it seems that the methodical pursuit of novelty is not a universal trait in culture.  A great many people are perfectly happy to live and believe as the ancestors did. 

Dawkins is not shy about drilling into the bedrock of belief. I think between Dawkins, Harris, and Dennett, there is a growing realization that religion should be studied analytically as a natural phenomenon rather than exclusively as a subject of devotion. 

I suppose I have lost more frequently than I have won in my lifelong avocation of taking on sacred cows in the battle of wits.  But, truly, sacred cows make the very best hamburgers.  Pass the A1 …

Some new blogs have been given a place of honor in the blogroll.  Good writing and laser sharp insight are the keys to this ascendency. If the dear reader is conservative and prone to weeping or bed wetting, it is probably best to click along at this point.  

There is a hilarious post over at Lawyers, Guns, and Money called Birthday Girl.  Side note: A lawyer friend is fond of saying “Lawyers, guns, and money- pick any two”.  

And then, what can I say about Jesus’ General?  Read General JC’s letter to the Secret Service re Cheryl Crow.  If you are keen on some serious in-your-face-atheism, check out Hellbound Allee. Then there is one of the best Christian evangelical lampoons ever, Landover Baptist. 

The Huffington Post is a recent find and is a treasure trove of political blogging at its finest- well, if you are a liberal.  Read the open letter to Rudy Giuliani by my fellow Coloradoan, Gary Hart. 

Then there is the Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society.  The post on the Do-Nothing Machine is particularly amusing.  The reader may recall Th’ Gaussing’s previous post on the Katzenklavier. 

Finally, The Agonist has some interesting insights into politics and is well written. I also like Goosing the Antithesis for its skeptical stand against belief in the supernatural.

It is easy to be lulled into the notion that the USA has reached a transcendent state of modernism; a place where people have come to adopt pluralism and tolerance. When you drive along the highways and fly the skyways of the USA, when you navigate the streets lined with familiar businesses and institutions there is this comforting though superficial vibe that you are in an advanced culture that is fairly progressive and forward thinking.

American culture has produced some of the most stunning changes in the history of life on earth.  Electricity, drug design, advanced materials, aerospace, computers, semiconductors, and on and on. Yet, there is this underlying ache, a subterranean twinge out there that is disturbing in it’s potential.

While I cannot accept the cosmology of supernatural beings or the physics of miracles, I have been known to attend a meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) on a social basis. It is soothing to sit in silence and meditate in a group setting with highly civilized people like the Quakers. I remember some years ago at a Friends Meeting in Boulder, CO, listening to Kenneth Boulding (now deceased) make a comment during the meeting.  It was in another context, but the thrust of it is relevant nonetheless.  He pointed out that a few miles below the serenity of the nearby mountains there exists magma that, if given the chance, will flow to the surface and erupt. He observed that below the surface people also have raw and violent forces that sometimes escape. His point was more of a lyrical acceptance of this human frailty than one of condemnation. Examples of this condition are too numerous to count.

I was reminded of this comment of Boulding when I encountered some commentary on a recent editorial from the Wall Street Journal.  I can’t afford to subscribe to the WJS- I found it in the popular blog Pharyngula. The author of this exceptional blog has added commentary and I won’t spoil it for the reader. It is worth linking over there to read it.  Beneath the surface of consciousness of many, many people is the need to strike out at those have a different view of things. 

Few points of view will evoke as vigorous a negative response as atheism does from believers in the Big 3 religions that originated in the middle east.  To these people, atheism is a kind of poke in the eye. The very presence of atheism seems to be a kind of pestilence or a corrosive influence on society itself. Believers in a supernatural being are convinced that without a diety, there can be no moral frame of reference. 

It is much like the number line with its positive numbers, it’s negative numbers, and, importantly, zero.  To theists, God is the zero of the moral number line. It represents the demarcation of the positive and the negative realms.  As the theists would assert, without a frame of reference anchored from a higher plane, man is hopelessly absent a moral compass. 

One thing is certain. I’m not going to solve this matter tonight.  I do know that civilization is one millimeter thick and there are plenty of places on earth where it has worn off to reveal the troubled underlayment of our species. This week, in the land of Nebukanezzar and the gardens of Babylon, many good people have died for no good reason. 

This link shows the closing scene of Dr. Strangelove.  Why are atomic bomb blasts so fascinating to watch? Of course, the movie was a satire.

But when you see the next one, it becomes much more sobering.  It is a clip from a BBC documentary with CGI enhancement on Hiroshima. Part of the responsibility of having civilian control over military forces in the USA entails that at least some fraction of the civilian population retain a bit of knowledge of topics like this.

I think that when queried, most people will think of an atomic bomb blast as primarily a nuclear radiation calamity. To be sure, there is a healthy gamma pulse and the dispersal of a large variety of troublesome radionuclides, with long lasting contamination issues.  But much of the prompt destructive effect is from the immense heat pulse followed by the blast wave. 

Mutual assured destruction (MAD) as a nuclear strategy was arguably successful because parties on both the NATO and Soviet blocks were more desirous of long life than of the need for the delivery of nuclear hellfire at any cost.  The cold war was a time of opposing political and economic doctrines. MAD was essentially a secular concept.

In the present era of religious theatre, movements citing supernatural endorsement of earthly doctrines are in ascendancy.  The calculus of MAD fails when parties practice nuclear policy under the influence of supernatural euphoria.