A philosophy of science. A philosophy of religion. A philosophy that they ain't the same. Teaching philosophy.

20211226

As all you readers know, I am in the process of homeschooling my children, the oldest of whom is Eddie, now 10. Reading, writing and arithmetic are the primary skills to be learned. They might be called the modern trivium. Other academic subjects – science, history, foreign language, logic, philosophy, statistics and the like – reinforce those three basic skills as the pupil acquires useful knowledge.

From its 18th-century inception public education also sought to instill religion and patriotism. Paul Kingsnorth says that notion of religion has evolved from Christianity through Science and on to Progress and Social Justice. I capitalize them all because they are held with dogmatic intensity.  They are unassailable; debating them is sacrilege. Meanwhile, rather uniquely in the United States and Western Europe patriotism is disparaged and globalism or trans-humanism is extolled. In practical terms that means abandoning any sense of duty to one's country, or serving it in any way, in favor of espousal of feel-good platitudes about Gaia.

My grown children were steeped in the social justice notions of equality (all people are identical under the skin), environmentalism (climate change is destroying the world) and the notion that the evil white man (with many other adjectives, all of which apply to me) was the enemy of all the above. The current incarnation, called Critical Race Theory, caused enough commotion in wealthy Loudoun County Virginia, through which I used to bicycle on summer weekends, to tip the recent governor's race. Though I agree, I have not bothered to read Matt Taibbi's thorough coverage. I am no longer there, it won't be fixed in any timeframe meaningful to me, and this woke nonsense, which they embrace with religious intensity, ruined those children's lives beyond redemption.

With regard to my grown children, Jack will be 40 in April. So far as I know nobody has heard from him for about eight years. Last I heard of Naomi, now 38, she was working for BioReliance in Gaithersburg. I don't find any evidence she is still there, or of where she might be. She is no longer visible on Facebook or other places I check.  Though I am curious, I am not going to investigate further. My focus is on my children over here.

Eddie must recognize a fundamental truth. You cannot argue religion. As Mattias Desmet posits in his Mass Formation formulation, the positions of the woke are unassailable. Let me cite a couple of cases in point before moving on. If you follow this link to the BBC Trusted News Initiative you find a wealth of information on how to prepare arguments against people like me. They call it "anti-disinformation interventions." There are unspoken assumptions all through the BBC website. The first would be that there is an absolute truth. The second is that the BBC and the Trusted News Consortium have it. The third is that most who would argue can politely be described as "misinformed" and only need to be corrected.  The rest are incorrigibly misinformed, possessed of evil motives. Therefore the objective of the BBC should be to sway those people who can be swayed, and to discredit and silence those people who cannot be swayed.

Paul Kingsnorth, the philosopher and author cited above, and Robert Malone, the inventor of the mRNA technology who has come out strongly against its use against Covid, take very different views. In a recent post Malone includes this cartoon:

Major scientific advances of my lifetime have included verification of the tectonic plate theory, the out of Africa theory of human evolution, The Big Bang Theory, the curved universe theory, Chomsky's theories about innate grammar, and Kahneman and Tversky's theories about human irrationality. All of these had to overcome immense opposition before being accepted.

Theories that are currently accepted by part of the scientific community, but rejected by others, include Svensmark's theories about the sunspot cycles, theories about the effect of the Milankovich Cycles on climate, and of course the theory of the lab origins of Covid 19. As always, there are vested interests on the side of the status quo.

The established mechanism for sorting these things out are laboratory experiments, statistical analyses, scientific articles, and the publication of peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals. It is widely accepted that government money has corrupted the system. People who do not agree with the government consensus do not get grant money. They do not get published. They get fired, belittled and physically attacked.

In my last blog I wrote about one of you correspondents who absolutely refuses to acknowledge what I consider to be devastating video evidence on three hot topics. He doesn't even answer the question of whether the videos have been faked. He ignores them. Steve Kirsch writes about a doctor on the Stanford medical faculty who likewise simply cannot be brought to acknowledge studies that disagree with his position. Robert Malone, a modest soul, describes in his blog the many, many times he has been wrong in his career in science. It was the willingness to admit errors and look for the truth that led him to success. BBC's approach, assuming that there is a single correct answer and all else is "misinformation," is a flat earth approach. It will stymie progress forever.

This is relevant to Eddie's education. If he were attending the Loudoun County Public schools he would, like my grown children, be indoctrinated with all sorts of supposedly scientific consensus that is neither consensus nor, in many cases, even the majority view. He would not only learn things that were not true, but develop an epistemology that assumed that a fount of all truth was to be found. He would look for Aristotle's argument from ethos, at the expense of an argument from logos.

I am teaching Eddie that that which scientists now hold to be true is subject to modification and even reversal.  He has to hold an open mind. Even about what he hears from Dear Old Dad.

I also have to teach him to avoid fights about religion.  While almost nobody today argues about transubstantiation or the authenticity of the Book of Revelations, a great many argue supposedly scientific positions with religious fervor. There isn't much to be gained by joining such fights. He won't win, probably won't learn much, and definitely will make enemies.

He is lucky to be in a country that respects differences of opinion. You can get some good arguments here, but people will respect your right to hold dissident opinions, and for the most part people will leave you alone. You will not get locked up, fired, or shunned for different opinions. I tell him he should be grateful for that freedom and that it is something worth fighting for.  But likewise, it is not worth wasting your breath trying to convert true believers. More than that, if those true believers hold power it is best to avoid them altogether. Choose your battles, and that means avoiding them unless you have a good reason not to.

It is worth my while writing these things down to share with you, because at the same time I am formulating them to share with Eddie. This is yet another truth of which I wish to convince him. You do not really know your own thinking on a subject until you can express it clearly to somebody else.

Eddie is enjoying playing chess and checkers with his grandfather. I don't get involved. I observe each of them make what I would consider to be mistakes. However, given my own propensity to make obvious blunders, I'm not going to judge them and I'm certainly not going to say anything. I'm happy they are playing together.

The two of them got together and made a wooden birdfeeder this morning to replace the ugly, but serviceable, 6L plastic jugs we have been using.

In other news, after three days of antibiotics my cough is lighter but it still with me. I have a fear of even going near a doctor in this time of Covid. I know it is irrational – they will not snatch me out of a private clinic in order to jab me – but I don't even want to answer the question. I'm going to go to the drugstore and get another three pill course of azithromycin. I don't know exactly what I will do if that doesn't work. Probably simply give the thing another week to run its course, since it isn't getting any worse.

That's the news from Lake WeBeGone, where the men are strong, and God willing, will soon be back to strength; the women good looking as ever, and the children enjoying a lot of adult attention.

Graham