Looking For Shortcuts

Because of factors like advances in technology, the increase of political freedoms, and the effects of capitalism on the world, people have more access to more information (through television, smartphones, and so on). The large majority of people don't want to make the changes needed to sort through that information responsibly (such as decreasing their time spent on less significant things and increasing their time spent on more significant things). They look for shortcuts. They become more dependent on emotions, intuitions, and such to sort through issues. They look more than they should for political leaders, social commentators, pastors, or other people to sort through the information for them, to fight their battles for them, and so forth. And it isn't just a problem with people looking for shortcuts too much. There's also a problem with poor judgments being made about which shortcuts to take. They're taking too many shortcuts, and they aren't even choosing the best ones.

It's been popular to criticize the political left in the United States for being overly emotional (style over substance, feelings over facts). Something that's occurred over time, especially in the most recent decades, is that the right (the political right, the religious right, etc.) has become more emotional.

You see it in Evangelical circles, even if it takes on a somewhat different form than it does elsewhere. I occasionally see hosts of Evangelical YouTube channels, for example, commenting in one way or another about what needs done now to get and keep a bigger audience. It's not good, and you can tell that a lot of the YouTube hosts don't like it. (Though that doesn't seem to keep many of them from doing it.) If a famous pastor gets involved in a controversy, people show a lot more interest in that than they show in a post or video about God, theology, the afterlife, or some other such topic. A tweet about a scandal pastor So-And-So is involved in will get hundreds of likes and comments, whereas something significant that's tweeted about God, apologetics, or church history will get much less of a response. A joke or family photograph will get more of a positive response than even the best theological or apologetic work. It happens in contexts as trivial as thumbnails. The first two parts of a three-part video series will have a much higher view count than the third part. The first two included an image of a famous person in the thumbnail, whereas the third didn't. What and who's popular in Evangelical circles seem to be determined by things like emotions and insignificant personality traits far more than they should be.

We should ask ourselves how we're being impacted by these things. Are we taking too many shortcuts, and are our judgments about our shortcuts as good as we like to think they are?

What should we make of UFOs?

The subject has been in the news lately. It deserves far more attention than it gets, in the news and elsewhere. That's partly the media's fault. It's more the fault of the average person, though, who's much less interested in such subjects than he should be. In a post shortly before his death, Steve Hays outlined some explanatory options for UFOs from a Christian perspective. I'll briefly summarize the view I currently hold, though UFOs aren't one of my main areas of study. Since the view I hold is unpopular and doesn't get much attention, I think it's worth bringing up and expanding upon as one of the explanatory options that should be considered. Steve mentions it in his post, but doesn't say much about it.

Christians Need To Be Far More Active On The Internet

It's common for people to object that Christians are behaving irresponsibly on Twitter, Facebook, and other online settings, especially in political contexts, but occasionally in other contexts as well. And it's popular to make derogatory comments about the internet and how unimportant it supposedly is (e.g., the popular dismissive comments about how it's allegedly ridiculous to be concerned that "somebody is wrong on the internet"). Supposedly, there's a major problem with people being unloving, arguing too much, and so forth, and that problem needs to frequently be addressed. But far less is said about the other end of the spectrum, the people who are much less involved than they should be with controversial issues, especially in religion, where it matters most. Yet, as I've documented many times, the percentage of people who are involved in these matters too little - far too little - vastly outnumbers the percentage who are involved too much or are involved in a way that's unloving, contentious, or some such thing.

So, when something like a small fraction of one percent of the population is highly involved in apologetics, while ninety-some percent are less involved than they should be - typically much less involved than they should be - why does the former group get so much more criticism than the latter? Probably largely because of the popularity of that latter group. Peer pressure, in other words. If you're a pastor or radio host, your audience doesn't want to be criticized for their neglect of apologetics, theology, ethics, politics, or whatever else. It's much easier to flatter the large majority of your audience while criticizing a small minority. It makes you more popular, keeps your paychecks coming, and so on.

A common example of this kind of thing is the handwringing we often see over the political atmosphere on Twitter. But what percentage of the population is involved in some kind of inappropriate behavior in Twitter exchanges? A tiny percentage. How many are involved in political discussions on Twitter in general, including discussions of a better nature? Few. The same Americans who tell pollsters and other people how concerned they are about how negative the political atmosphere of the nation is, how politically divided the nation is, etc. aren't involved much in politics themselves. After they hang up the phone with the pollster, they'll go sit in front of the television to watch some trivial (or worse) program, read a trivial book, do some cooking, go to a family gathering, or whatever, with little or no concern about politics. Americans aren't too political. They're too unpolitical.

Religion is more important than politics, and the level of neglect is worse with religion than with politics. But whether it's religion, politics, ethics, philosophy, the paranormal, or whatever other area of life that tends to be neglected, it's not difficult to figure out which side of the spectrum is more in need of correction. It's not the people who are highly involved or even the subset of those people who truly are unloving, contentious, or wrong in some other way. It's the large majority of the population who are more in need of correction, the large majority who are doing little or none of the relevant work and are so apathetic and contemptuous toward the people who are doing it. The people who should be criticized more are the ones who rarely or never try to persuade others about religious issues, make little or no use of the opportunities they have online, etc. Think of how many significant books on Amazon don't have any reviews from a Christian perspective, how frequently atheists and other groups who are smaller than Christians outnumber Christians in online discussions, how often ninety-some percent of the Christians who watch a good YouTube video won't even click the like button, how many Christians spend years online doing things like emailing relatives and posting family photographs on Facebook while doing little or nothing in contexts like theology and apologetics, etc.

There are billions of people in the world. You won't be interacting with the vast majority of those people face-to-face. The internet is the best tool most people have to reach a much larger audience (and a better audience, in the sense of being more interested, more informed, and so forth). It's good for people to also use television, books, radio, the telephone, and other tools to reach a bigger audience, but the internet is what's most efficient for most individuals. We don't need Christians to be less active online. We need them to be far more active online in the contexts that matter most.

What are you doing with the knowledge you have?

"I hold that it is unworthy of any man who possesses knowledge to keep his knowledge to himself, and rejoice in his own enlightenment, without making any effort to bring others to share in his privileges. Justly did the four lepers at the gate of Samaria feel their conscience smite them: 'We do not well; this is a day of good tidings, and we hold our peace.' [2 Kings 7:9] Had those to whom the light of Christianity was first given dealt so with our ancestors, we should still be lying in heathen darkness." (George Salmon, The Infallibility Of The Church [London, England: John Murray, 1914], 7)

Events Involving The Operation Of Machinery In The Enfield Case

(I'll be citing Maurice Grosse and Guy Playfair's Enfield tapes. I'll use "MG" to refer to a tape from Grosse's collection and "GP" to refer to one from Playfair's, so that MG22B refers to tape 22B in Grosse's collection, GP50B refers to 50B in Playfair's, etc.)

Some of the paranormal events in the Enfield case involved the operation of machinery of some type. I'm distinguishing between the involvement of machinery and the involvement of the operation of machinery. If a refrigerator is moved by a poltergeist, that has some value, but it isn't significantly different than the movement of some other large object that we wouldn't normally refer to as a machine, such as a bookcase. I want to include everything from the malfunctioning of equipment often reported in poltergeist and other paranormal cases to the detection of paranormal activity by means of various types of machinery. I'm including events like the throwing of a tape recorder, whereas I'm not including something like the moving of a refrigerator, since the former has a lot more potential to be connected to the function of the machinery in question. It may just be a coincidence that a tape recorder was thrown rather than some other object nearby, such as a plate. But there's substantially more potential that the moving of a tape recorder was related to the poltergeist's interest in the operation of that recorder. The operation of tape recorders seems to be of more interest to a poltergeist than the operation of refrigerators (e.g., a poltergeist's interest in whether and how its activities are recorded on tape), so a poltergeist's activities related to the former have more potential to be related to the operation of that sort of equipment. I'm not trying to be exhaustive here, but I want to include examples of a broad variety of phenomena that can be summarized as involving the operation of machines in some manner. I'll explain some of my reasons for framing things that way at the conclusion of this article.

Not Aliens Or Demons

Since UFOs are in the news, I'll post some comments I made in an email exchange earlier this year:

I've read the book on UFOs by Ross, et al., and I've occasionally looked into the subject briefly in other contexts, but I haven't studied it much. One of the general parameters I would set down is that, as with other paranormal phenomena, it's important to include some explanatory options that Christians often neglect. I mentioned some of those options briefly in the fourth paragraph of my recent post about miracles on video (http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2020/02/miracles-on-video-some-examples.html). The demonic hypothesis shouldn't be taken off the table, but it should be accompanied by a much larger number and variety of other options than Christians typically consider. When UFOs accommodate current human expectations regarding how aliens would behave, for example, that could be because demons are accommodating those expectations, but it could also be because the phenomena are coming from human psi and are being shaped by the human imagination (consciously or unconsciously). The problem isn't that Christians lack explanatory options for UFO phenomena. It's that we have so many options to choose from and not much to go by in choosing among the options. That could and should change over time as more research is done.

Something I keep coming back to in thinking about UFO phenomena is how events of a similar nature are known to occur on a smaller scale, such as in poltergeist cases (e.g., objects much smaller than a UFO moving around a house in "impossible maneuvers", as you put it). If something like human psi or the spirit of a deceased human could do that in a context like a poltergeist, why not also in a UFO context with a larger object? (I think it was Guy Playfair I heard talking about a poltergeist case in Brazil that involved the throwing of an automobile across a long distance. The objects that are moved aren't always small, though they usually are.) Demons exist, and it would be surprising if they didn't sometimes manifest themselves in the modern world, but the demonic hypothesis is just one option among others. And there could be all sorts of creatures we don't know about or don't know much about, like the unusual creatures referred to in some portions of scripture (e.g., Revelation).

A good first step would be to explain to people why an alien hypothesis for UFOs is highly unlikely, for reasons like the ones you've referred to. Then, we can explain what other options are available and cite examples, like poltergeist phenomena that are similar to UFO phenomena, though on a smaller scale. Once people realize how unlikely the alien hypothesis is, how many other options there are, and how similar UFO phenomena are to other kinds of phenomena, that should significantly change their perspective. It's good to get people less focused on aliens and more focused on more likely explanations….

UFO phenomena are different than poltergeist phenomena and more impressive in some ways, but there are significant similarities as well. In the Enfield case, the large majority of the apports occurred in the house, such as rocks or coins appearing near a ceiling and dropping down. There was a series of outdoor apports on May 30, 1978, however, involving objects like rocks, bottles, and clumps of earth moving around outside, including objects falling from the sky. You could say that the May 30 events were a sort of escalation of the previous events inside the house. If such events could move from within the house to the immediate atmosphere outside the house, why couldn't they occur further away as well, where UFO phenomena usually happen?

As far as I recall, almost every apport object I'm familiar with that's been tested has produced normal results in terms of the composition of the object. It seems like the sort of material we encounter under normal circumstances. The rocks, coins, and such seem normal. But they're abnormal in other ways, such as where and how they first appear, how they move, and their temperature (e.g., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jc_TV6KmSZk).

Deaf to reason

There are many other similar cases on YouTube of people hearing for the first time thanks to medical science and technology (e.g. cochlear implants).

However, what if I were to take the extreme skepticism of some cessationists and apply it to such cases?

I could say the video has been doctored.

I could say it's a conspiracy by physicians, nurses, audiologists, and even the mainstream news to fake the evidence. After all, we know all about fake news in politics, so why couldn't there be tons of fake news everywhere? A faked moon landing! A flat earth! Deep fakes of all sorts of people!

I could say they're all just actors hired to play a part. I could say they're still actors hired to play a part years after the fact. And even if we were to meet them in person and ask them, we can't believe them, because their own testimonies could be doubted.

I could say the medical documentation and their medical history has been fabricated.

I could discount the possibility of hearing by physicians, researchers, and other medical experts, because they're part of "Big Ear". For one thing, they stand to gain financially by doing surgical procedures.

I could say they're all shady people so why should we trust shady people? Cf. John 9:16.

I could say, how do we know the deaf person was really deaf in the first place? Maybe they could hear the entire time! It's not as if I can literally see any physical changes in the ears! Furthermore, medical imaging and lab tests can be counterfeited.

Of course, all this would be quite unreasonable, to say the least. But that's the kind of standard some cessationists would apply to medical evidence and testimonies involving miracles.

I'm not at all suggesting we move to the other extreme. It'd be naive if we always accepted every single report at face value. At best, we'd be gullible dupes. However, there's a reasonable middle ground to be found.

The Magician's Nephew

The 50 cent army

"Twitter shuts down 200,000 Chinese accounts for spreading disinformation about Hong Kong protests"

1. I wonder how many people are aware of China's 50 cent army: "The 50 Cent Party, or 50 Cent Army (Chinese: 五毛党), is the colloquial term for internet commentators (Chinese: 网络评论员) which are hired by Chinese authorities in an attempt to manipulate public opinion to the benefit of the Chinese Communist Party [CCP]."

2. The fact that the CCP is able to create 200,000 fake accounts on Twitter (that we know about) to try to influence Western public opinion should be disconcerting to say the least.

3. It's also interesting because Twitter is supposed to be banned in China! Welp, I guess Twitter is banned for the Chinese people, not for the CCP.

4. Not to suggest I trust Twitter (e.g. Twitter has censured political conservatives), but in this case I think Twitter made the right call against communist China and for pro-democracy Hong Kong.

5. On a related note, there's the added problem of celebrities who shill for communist China. For example, Jackie Chan is beloved in the West, but he has long been disliked by his own fellow Hong Kongers precisely because Jackie Chan has supported communist China over and against his own people and his own native city of Hong Kong for years.

   Likewise Liu Yifei stars as Mulan in the upcoming live action Mulan film from Disney. However she recently made a comment supporting police brutality against pro-democracy Hong Kong protesters when she said "I support the Hong Kong Police. You can beat me up now....what a shame for Hong Kong" on Chinese social media (Weibo). The Hong Kong police work for the Hong Kong government, but the Hong Kong government is full of toadies for communist China. Hence many people around the world are calling to ban Mulan. That includes other Asians living in democratic nations like South Korea and Taiwan.

6. If the 21st century is supposed to be the Asian century, then I'd prefer it to be a century of pro-democracy Asian nations like Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea, not pro-communist or other tyrannical Asian nations like mainland China.

Googleopoly

I've heard the argument made that free market forces, tech startups, and/or the open source movement will whittle away and eventually significantly curtail tech giants like Google, YouTube, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, Apple, and others without the need for the federal government to intervene.

The mark of the Beast!

The mark of the Beast has been scientifically diagnosed:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/06/20/horns-are-growing-young-peoples-skulls-phone-use-is-blame-research-suggests/

Cellphone addiction is literally devilish!

The Meg formula

I watched the movie The Meg on Netflix. I thought it was supposed to be campy, which might have made it fun, but it was mostly serious, which made it boring. Then it got worse. Midway through the film I started rooting for the megalodon shark to eat everyone. It was a bad movie, but not bad so it's good (e.g. Plan 9 from Outer Space). Just plain bad.

However, maybe my low opinion of the film is due to being American. By contrast, the movie was a success abroad. It seemed primarily catered to the mainland Chinese. It mainly takes place in a super hi-tech underwater research center off the coast of China. Shanghai as I recall. The main scientist in charge of the lab is Chinese. The main love interest is Chinese. She has a cute little daughter. China and the Chinese are positively depicted for the most part. It looks like The Meg made approximately $145 million domestically. Its production budget was $130 million so it would've been considered a commercial failure (making "only" $15 million) had it only been distributed domestically in the US. However, The Meg made approximately $385 million internationally. So its grand total was a little over $530 million. The largest percentage of any nation in the total looks to be mainland China ($153 million). Overall The Meg did quite well commercially, largely thanks to international audiences. (Source is Box Office Mojo.)

I guess it's no surprise, but many movies now seem to be made primarily with the international market in mind. Often the Asian and especially Chinese market. Another example is the Pacific Rim series of movies. I presume the main reason is because that's where all the money and potential money is. Of course, this makes sense from a business perspective. However, what happens if (say) an American film production's business collides in significant enough ways with American values? Or even undermines American values? Suppose it becomes quite lucrative for an American studio to film and distribute communist Chinese propaganda.

Of course, this has wider implications than the entertainment industry. For instance, consider how tech companies like Google and Apple try to do business in China. In the US, these big tech companies rail against all sorts of social injustices. However, in China, these same companies tolerate human rights violations and other ethical issues as the price of doing business in China. At what point does business stop becoming "just business"? Remember when Google's motto used to be "Don't be evil"?

Thinkspot

Per the Joe Rogan podcast this week, I'm backing a new platform called thinkspot, currently in Beta. Get on the waitlist here, exciting announcements coming very soon. https://t.co/3xQ78Iqc0h

— Dr Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) June 10, 2019

1. Amanda Prestigiacomo writes:

Thinkspot.com, the author revealed, will be a space where creators can monetize their work and users can engage in thoughtful debate without worrying about the ubiquitous Big Tech censorship plaguing conservative and right-of-center users on platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.

Speaking to popular podcast host and comedian Joe Rogan last week, Peterson explained that Thinkspot’s terms of service will uphold free speech principles. “Once you’re on our platform, we won't take you down unless ordered to by a court of law,” he said.

The forthcoming platform, currently in beta testing, will be a subscription service where creators can monetize their work.

“We’re hoping we can really add dialogue to the podcast and YouTuber world,” explained Peterson. “We’re also gonna do the same things with books, so if you buy an e-book on the platform, you’ll be able to annotate publicly. ... We can do that with books that are in the public domain, too.”

“We’re hoping that we’ll be able to pull people who are interested in intelligent conversation, specifically, into this platform, maybe start pulling them away from YouTube and some of the less specialized channels — that, plus our anti-censorship stance,” he added.

2. I expect liberals and progressives to attack Thinkspot (if they haven't already) despite still being in beta. However, if so, then this might give Thinkspot more publicity. Just like how Jordan Peterson became a sensation.

3. I presume Thinkspot will seek to employ people who agree with their vision. Or at least who won't attempt to undermine their vision. That could create jobs for conservatives and the like-minded.

Huawei

Background:

1. Huawei is a gigantic Chinese tech company that produces and sells smartphones (among other things). Huawei have used their tech to spy on Western nations (e.g. US, UK), steal technology, steal trade secrets, and continue to sell their products to nations which have international sanctions against them (e.g. Iran).

2. All this despite multiple warnings from multiple nations, the arrest of their CFO, and so on.

3. Hence American companies including Google and Microsoft have banned Huawei products. So have several other companies from other Western nations. More will likely follow. No one wants the Chinese Communist Party to infiltrate them via Huawei.

4. Ironically, big tech companies like Google may be big brother, but I guess Chinese companies like Huawei are an even bigger big brother.

In short, we live in "interesting" times.

Revelation then and now

Many scholars view the 1C as the proper frame of reference for interpreting Revelation. You also have scholars who think Revelation has a futuristic dimension, but is grounded the 1C. Even though, say, Rev 19-22 looks far ahead, they think much of Revelation speaks directly to the situation facing 1C Christians. 

But here's an interesting thing about Revelation: from a 1C standpoint, it's surreal and hyperbolic. Yet as of the 20-21C, the surreal, hyperbolic aspects are becoming increasingly feasible. 

That doesn't necessarily mean we should interpret the imagery literally. I myself think it's dream-like. Things are possible in dreams that are physically impossible. 

But it is striking that technological advances make the literal interpretation of Revelation more realistic, in terms of hitech analogues to the ancient imagery. 

Trapped in the Matrix

I wonder what makes video games, social media, texting, &c. so compulsive for so many people. It's ominous to see how quickly it's taking over. 

Of course, once people become addicted to something, that takes on a life of its own. So at that stage there's no point asking why they do it. But the question is how they get hooked in the first place. What makes it so addictive? 

Here's my armchair theory: I'm guessing people have already been conditioned by so much artificial stimuli that they were predisposed to develop a psychological dependence on nonstop artificial stimuli. 

By that I mean, even before the advent of smart phones or Facebook or the Internet, you had TV, movies, and recorded music. That was readily available and very prevalent. People get accustomed to having so much artificial stimuli that smart phones just tip the balance. 

Problem is when people have an incessant need for constant external stimuli. They can't stand silence. They can't use their own imagination to occupy their minds. It has to come from the outside. 

Even natural stimuli like mountain views, seascapes, or the sound of surf, is no longer strong enough. They've become so restless. So fidgety. 

I also think there's an element of self-importance. What if someone can't reach me at any time? What might happen? 

In times past, when people left the house, they were incommunicado. They might be incommunicado for hours. If you wanted to contact them, you had to wait until they got home. But we've become so impatient. 

I don't object to having a cellphone on your person in case of family emergency. But the idea that you have to be available the instant someone wants to talk to you is narcissistic. The world won't fall apart if you can't be reached for a few hours. Humans survived without cellphones for millennia. Heck, humans survived without landlines for millennia. 

Unfortunately, some people now have jobs that require them to be just a phone call away all the time. So they don't have a choice.  

BTW, one benefit of intramural sports is that when boys are playing a sport, they have to put the cellphone down and give the game their undivided attention. Having to give anything your undivided attention is increasingly rare. But when you play football, basketball, hockey, soccer, &c., your total focus has to be on the state of play. 

The talking dead

http://www.chron.com/news/article/The-talking-dead-how-personality-drives-9123845.php

Pandora's iPhone

What if science can duplicate a miracle?

Elliott Sober is a leading secular philosopher of science:

These comments have not addressed the question of how we would ever know that an event is a miracle. It isn’t hard to know that an event is awe-inspiring and that it presently cannot be explained by science. But how can we know that science will never be able to explain it? And how are we to know that an event is the result of God’s intervening in nature? Many religions endorse the idea that the dead coming back to life is a miracle in this last sense. Atheists often claim that it is impossible for the dead to come back to life, but maybe the science of the future will show that they are mistaken. Perhaps mere human beings, armed with a  technology that is more powerful than the one we possess, can do the trick. If future scientists discover how to bring the dead back to life, they will be following in the footsteps of Newton and Darwin. 

http://www.slate.com/bigideas/are-miracles-possible/essays-and-opinions/elliott-sober-opinion

That's deeply confused. In principle, it might be possible for advanced technology to replicate some biblical miracles. But that misses the point: since this hypothetically advanced knowledge didn't exist in Bible times, it would take a miracle to produce the same effect absent scientific intervention.

Even if, in principle, scientific intervention could sometimes produce the same effect as divine intervention, that explanation is hardly a substitute for divine intervention in cases where no such scientific intervention did or could exist. 

A heart of flesh

The human heart is amazingly complex. Even this otherwise exquisitely designed model of the heart doesn't fully capture what's known about the heart. It's certainly still worth watching though. (Along similar lines, some might be interested in Dr. Howard Glicksman's continuing series on the human body over at EN&V. I presume his series will be turned into a book someday.)