The Questioning Librarian

Yesterday marked the one hundredth anniversary of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, an act which proved to be the spark that set off the First World War. Four years of pointless, mechanized slaughter followed, in which over 65 million people died. The history of our civilization is rife with useless wars that accomplished next to nothing, but the First World War must surely rank as one of the most pointless conflicts we've ever engaged in. Worse than that, the conflict continues to affect our world in ways both numerous and negative.  A crowd in London celebrate's Britain's declaration of war, 1914 Humanity seems to need little pretext to start to kill one another. We go to war over reasons both large and small, petty in both senses of the word. We battle each other over resources, territory, because our neighbors are a different ethnicity than us, because we quibble over the precise interpretation of a religious text, because we have a divine mand...

When I went to my book club last week, I was looking forward to discussing the Anita Shreve novel that had been selected, a book that was interestingly written even if the story itself was a little dull for me. The way our book club is set up is that each of us takes a turn talking about what we thought about the book and got out of it, and with the diversity of people there, ranging from a retired German teacher, an old Presbyterian minister, to a local artist, the discussion is always interesting. But what was most striking for me this time was the response to the book from a member of the group who spoke very little about the novel itself. Instead, he talked about how when he lived in California he walked several miles to the library to take out books, how he treasured them, how a handful of books that he had taken out of the library changed his life. It really turned out to be a profound mediation on the power of books to alter a life in the most surprising ways.  Where I ...

It is easy to get frustrated, and never more so when witnessing the absolute gullibility of humanity. We all know, of course, about the strange beliefs that some people hold, that aliens abduct and probe humans, that aliens built the pyramids, that planes disappear in the Bermuda Triangle and that Bigfoot is walking around somewhere in the undiscovered wilds. We may shake our heads at the fact that some people swallow an endless number of conspiracy theories, seeing the hidden hand of the Freemasons, the Illuminati, the Jews, or some other secretive power behind the workings of the world. We rightly mock and ridicule anyone who seriously believes that FEMA is setting up detention camps, just waiting for a crisis to allow them to impose a fascistic "New World Order" on the United States, or that the Sandy Hook school shooting was a false flag operation. These are easy targets, however, and only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to wrong and foolish things that we believe. ...

There is a discussion going on right now in the science community about whether or not we should debate creationists: it is a debate within a debate, if you will. There are good arguments on both sides, but I have to think that we should debate creationists, and we should do it as often as we can stand it. Why do I think this? Last week, I saw that Michael Shermer posted a link to a story of a woman who argued this very point. As a former creationist, it was going to debates between Shermer and Kent Hovind that began to convince her of the legitimacy of evolution and of science. I too was once a creationist. Without ever having read anything about it, without it ever having been mentioned in class (I never heard a word about evolution in high school), I was ready to pounce at the merest mention of the topic as false and godless, two of the favorite creationist talking-points. I look back at this self in amazement, at how ignorant and proud of that ignorance I was, how I failed to ...

And we intend to remain here for quite some time, thank you very much. The world keeps going, much as it has for several billion years, much as it will for millions more, long after I and everyone reading this are dead, long after humanity itself as a species ceases to exist. The world will keep going after that, until the sun expands and consumes it, far into the future. To say anything else (other than a chance collision with an asteroid) is a strange form of wishful thinking, the need to see ourselves, the times in which we live, as special. In the meantime, religious doomsayers will come and go. And they will all, inevitably, be proven wrong given enough time. How about a listing of such dates? In 1914 the founder of what would come to be the Jehovah's Witnesses predicted the end of the world, and the outbreak of war in Europe seemed to confirm his view. Until the end didn't come, and a religion was organized around the idea that 1914 had marked a transformation in heaven...

In dealing with Mr. Hovind's post of yesterday, it crossed my mind that someone randomly stumbling across this blog might look at its contents and wonder just why it is that Ken Ham and Kent Hovind seem to receive so much of my ire. Surely they are harmless, this person might argue, just fringe kooks, one in Kentucky and the other in jail. Why take the time and effort to attack them and their arguments? As much as I wish that I could dismiss them as simple loons, crazy but harmless, to regard them as such would be a dangerous underestimation of who they are and what power they hold. Fringe they are, but to dismiss them because of that would be premature. The numbers of people who either actively follow them or accept what they believe puts these two in the majority, not a small minority as so many of us would like to believe. Whether it is on a literal, six-day creation, Noah's Flood or the alleged young age of the earth, poll after poll of Americans agree about these issues,...

I place a great value on education and real learning (not indoctrination); it is a process that has had a great impact upon my own life and the lives of many I know. There is a joy in the discovery and discussion of new ideas, facts and thoughts. It has, truly, the power to change lives, to liberate minds and to truly revolutionize the world...if only you let it! The process of education has, for me, been not only a life-changing, mind-liberating process, but it has been the process of helping to give me the tools that I need to get me through life; not mere information, but the tools of learning. These are the basic devices that any educated person needs; good reading skills, good writing skills, the ability to sort out useful information from nonsense in all its guises. Perhaps most important of all is the humbling realization of my college years; the fact of the matter is, the more I learn, the more I realize I don't know. Every fact illuminates three further areas in which ...

Not necessarily so. At least, it doesn't have to be that way. Science finds itself under attack on many fronts from fundamentalist religion, and in response to these attacks a number of scientists (and others) have become very vocal in response, attacking religion as an irrational, unsupported, ancient superstition from a time before science, a relic that is no longer necessary for modern society, one that is in fact harmful. Even before these scientists helped to launch the "New Atheist" movement, some believers seemed, and still seem today, positively afraid of science. They hold to a literal interpretation of the Bible, that every  word is literally  true, inspired by God (except the prophecies in Daniel or Revelation, which they interpret in various ways). Thus when it comes to certain facets of science, specifically biological evolution, paleontology, astronomy, chemistry and geology (among others), the response of this set of believers is to deny, deny, deny. But ...

I've been thinking about starting this for a while; I already have a blog, but it is a blog for an organization to which I belong and is for said organization rather than my own personal playing field. So that's where "The Mockingjay" comes in; this is my personal blog, for what it's worth, where I can post...well, whatever I want. Hopefully it leans toward being erudite rather than whatever comes to mind. What's my goal? Yes, I do actually have a goal aside from having an outlet for my personal thoughts. My idea is that this will not only be a place to share any thoughts, especially reviews of books I read or what few movies I see, but this is a place dedicated to shining the light of truth upon false claims and ridiculous ideas of all stripes. Too much passes for knowledge and information that is utterly untrue, irrational or simply stupid, and in the last few years my tolerance for this has grown progressively lower. Time for Reason to push back against ir...