After watching the umpteenth discussion between Richard Dawkins and some random creationist on youtube I concluded three things: 1) Richard Dawkins has infinite patience and belief in the wisdom of humanity, 2) Richard Dawkins is too polite to be a good debater, and 3) though a staunch believer in the effectiveness of the scientific model, he does not seem to demand this attitude from his fellow scientists. All of these points come up in every single debate where prof. Dawkins comes up with argument after argument after argument and the only thing the creationist has to do is repeating the line "I don't see the evidence, show me the evidence".
Apparently it has come to the point where prof. Dawkins does not want to enter into a debate with creationists anymore, because he has finally realized the futility of these debates. Ofcourse in creationistland (right next to middle earth it is said) this refusal is seen as confirmation that they are right because prof. Dawkins cannot win the argument. They are ofcourse wrong, for the reason prof. Dawkins (and anyone else for that matter) can't win this debate, is that he is the only one trying to debate. The creationist is not interested in arguments or evidence or logical reasoning, they are interested in being right. I shall try to show their inability to reason and I urge anyone to call them out on this while you have a discussion. I will start by shortly explaining the scientific model.
the scientific model
Since creationism wants to be seen as a scientific model, it has to play by it's rules. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning. Scientific researchers propose hypotheses as explanations of phenomena, and design experimental studies to test these hypotheses via predictions which can be derived from them. The experimental studies must be repeatable, to account for both anomalies and biases. A scientific theory which encompasses wider domains of inquiry may bind many independently derived hypotheses together in a coherent, supportive structure.Scientists set out to falsify their hypotheses, instead of verifying them. This is done because it is both a time-saving method (if a hypothesis is proven to be false, oftentime the theory must be altered or even discarded), and a way of diminishing all sorts of biases that could appear when trying to verify a hypothesis.
The problems with creationism start with the basic principles scientific model. In my opinion the inability of creationism to be a scientific theory should disqualify them from the debate, but I'll pretend like I don't feel this way. Creationists tend to start with the conclusion that their theory is true and then look for the evidence supporting that conclusion. Furthermore, evidence that suggest either a hypothesis is false, or another hypothesis might serve as a better explanation, is not being explored. I will give an example of how this works by the hypothesis of "miracle healing". Creationists use unexplained recovery of mostly cancerpatients as evidence for the existence of a benevolent God. They believe that if you are a devout believer, God will cure all your ailments and afflictions. So there are multiple hypotheses here.
1) since God is benevolent, he cures people from ailments
2) since God is omnipotent, any ailment can be cured
3) since believe in God is both optional and a condition of being cured by miracles, you'd suspect a higher number of people with faith will be cured than people without faith.
Of these 3 hypotheses, the third one poses a real problem, which is oftentimes exploited by creationists as an escape route. Since being healed by God requires you to believe in God, and since there is no way of measuring believe in God that does not rely solely on people's given answers, this hypothesis provides a problem for the measurability of the concept of miracle healing. Consider the case where some self-proclaimed religious people are cured miraculously, and many others aren't. The creationist would say that those that weren't healed were not true believers. Since there is no way to measure this correctly, the entire concept already falls apart.
For the sake of argument however, let's pretend that it doesn't yet. Let's discuss miraculous healings. It is true that sometimes cancerpatients go into remission and their cancer might even disappear entirely. Doctors sometimes have no solid explanation as to why this happens. The creationist sees this as evidence for the existence of God. There are 2 things that are wrong with this conclusion.
1) the absence of an explanation from a medical proffessional does not warrant the conclusion that God did it. First of all, our knowledge is not omnipresent but is slowly growing. It is entirely conceivable that in the future the remission of cancer in patients can be predicted, or even ameliorated. 2) the fact that miracles only seem to occur with diseases like cancer, which happens at a cellular level and is very hard to monitor, makes this a very premature conclusion. If God was to cure people from ailments, why focus only on cancerpatients? A much presented example of a group of people who have NEVER been cured are amputees. This is remarkable since religious based war have in the past resulted in many amputees. The evidence therefore points towards a more earthly conclusion, which I am sure scientists will eventually discover.
The theory of Evolution
The implications of Darwin's theory of evolution are vast and numerous. Not only does the theory clearly show that all life on earth shares a common ancestor, it also shows that life has been around for a good 2 billion years. The theory of evolution is a thorn in the side of the devout believer, since the holy bible says that men and animals were all created the same day, some 6000 years ago. The response to the theory of evolution by creationists is that they are constantly trying to debunk the evidence. Again, two mistakes are made: 1) Creationists seem to think that the scientific community does not have a critical attitude towards the theory of evolution. This shows a disspiriting lack of knowledge about the scientific process and about the literally millions of experiments, which ALL support the theory of evolution. 2) We've seen this one before, even if they were to disprove the theory of evolution, this would not mean that their theory of intelligent design were true.
What goes wrong in a discussion?
Clearly, there is no argument worthy of mention. There is no disagreement in the scientific community about the theory of evolution: it is accepted as a truth. This is the case because 1) the theory neatly explains and predicts an enormous range of phenomena, and 2) although millions of attempts to falsify the theory have been made, not a single one succeeded in doing so. In contrast, the theory of creationism is unfalsifiable and makes no predicitions whatsoever.
How on earth is it then that when a debate is being held the creationist is always the one on the offensive and the scientist the one on the defensive? There is a fairly simple answer here, which is: because the scientists let them. The scientist should be the one asking the creationist to show him the evidence, since there does not appear to be one. When the scientist presents his evidence, he should not allow the creationist to make the point that he doesn't see the evidence, when clearly this is from 1) a limited understanding of the theory, evidence, or the scientific process or 2) he bluntly refuses to see it. If the creationist doesn't understand, debating is pointless. If the creationist refuses to accept the presented evidence, debating is pointless.
Prof. Dawkins was right in concluding that debating is pointless, because that is exactly what it is. I only wish that he would have stuck to his guns and exposed the creationist' ignorance and lies before pulling the plug.
Let us not forget that the creationist is the one trying to gain scientific acceptation, not the other way around. You want in, you gotta play by the rules.
donderdag 17 januari 2013
dinsdag 1 januari 2013
the Hobbit
In 2001 a good friend of mine urged me to come see a movie with him. The movie was called "the Fellowship of the Ring", and I am ashamed to admit that at the time, this did not ring any bells. I never was much of a reader, and my only encounter with cinematic fantasy had been "Willow", a movie I enjoyed alot, but which never sparked my imagination in such a way as to become a avid fan of the fantasy-genre. The fellowship of the ring had my jaw drop firmly on the floor and proceeded to keep it there for it's full 3 hour duration. I loved everything about this movie: the characters, the scenery, the soundtrack, and above all, the story.
This movie sucked me into the fantasy-genre. So much so, that I even started reading books. I've read all of the brilliant Tolkien's work, as well as several series of other fantasy-novelists (Eriksson, Martin). The continuation of the Lord of the Rings trilogy was fantastic, even though in my opinion the 2 sequals; the Two Towers, and the Return of the King, could not reach the heights of the Fellowship of the Ring. Ofcourse, I did view both sequals in a different way than I did the first one. I had now read the books beforehand and knew alot about the existing Tolkien-universe. I realised that the film's director, Peter Jackson, took a few liberties with the storyline, but I mostly understood these, and respected his decisions. Mostly because they seemed to be in service of the storyline.
Immediately after the Lord of the Rings trilogy was completed rumours about a Hobbit movie started to surface. It seemed Peter Jackson was highly interested in directing them, but there were issues about the license of the story. This went on for quite awhile until finally Jackson was given the green light. The Hobbit was originally intended to be divided into 2 films. This, to me, was a reasonable suggestion, as the Hobbit may be a small book, but it is packed with detail. The seemingly last minute, and dollar-inspired decision to make it a trilogy was met with alot of questions.
......and understandably so. The obvious greediness behind this decision did not reduce my level of enthusiasm one bit though. Especially after I found out the movie would also be available in 2D instead of the headache-inducing horror that is 3D. I figured there would now be lots of time for character development. After all, the Hobbit is basically a heavy characterdriven fantasy story. So I went in there with alot of excitement, waiting to be emerged into Middle Earth once more...
My initial feelings leaving the theater were a mix of confusion and disappointment. Confused because I had trouble pinpointing the reasons for my disappointment. It is only know, a few weeks later, that I am able to discernate all that is wrong about this film. For organisatory purposes, I will divide the review into 4 "problem-areas": (1) (lack of) character development; (2) additions and alterations to the original story; (3) battle-scenes; (4) tone of the movie. I'm purposefully leaving out the problems with the new format, because those problems only arise when you've watched the film in 3D. And let's face it, if you prefer 3D over 2D, you deserve all the crap you get.
(1) (Lack of) character development. With a runningtime of 3 hours, and 2 more films on the horizon, the one thing I was not worried about was lack of character development. In the Lord of the Rings trilogy the main characters all had an interesting developmental-arc, so what could go wrong here? Well about everything it seemed. With a total of 14 of them, even the book did not try to give all of the dwarves alot of characterdevelopment. Thorin, Balin, Fili, and Kili were the ones most mentioned, and their characters were the most worked out. The other dwarves were actually quite shallow. In the film this is mostly the same. After Thorin, the dwarves Balin, Fili, and Kili are given the most screentime. Thorin himself however, is done in such a poor way that it is hard to sympathize with him. From the very start he is a grumpy, vengeful, distrusting dwarf, particularly towards young Bilbo. This all changes abrubtly, and in a annoyingly forced way, after Bilbo saves his life. There is no middleground here. There is not a moment in the movie where Thorin is starting to warm up to the hobbit. For most of the film he finds him utterly useless, and then all of a sudden he is idolizing him.
This is not the movies biggest concern when it comes to characterdevelopment however. The main character Bilbo Baggins suffers from severe motivational issues. Why he decides to go along with the party of dwarves is still unclear to me. He really didn't want to go, was completely annoyed by all the dwarves. They leave without him howver, and suddenly he wants to tag along, knowing it will probably get him killed. As with Thorin, he also has a hastened, forced development of character. Being used to a life of quiet, peace, and luxury in the Shire, Bilbo is quite useless, be it with a sword, or any other survivalskill for that matter. All he has is his wits, but they are never used. This does not prevent him from swinging his sword wildly at well-trained Orcs and killing them in the process. His competence in battle is comletely uncredible. The hastened, uninspired characterdevelopment of the story's two most important character makes it very hard to feel for them in any way. There was plenty of time for this, so if this wasn't in the film, what was?
(2) additions and alterations to the original story. I will try my best not to come across like a Tolkien purist in this section. In order to do so convincingly, let me start by saying that I understood it when Jackson completely left out Tom Bombadill in the Fellowship of the Ring. There was an entire book to cover in 3 hours, 9 characters to introduce and develop, so this decision made perfect sense to me. As much as I loved Tom Bombadil, he hardly made any impact on the storyline. I was also perfectly fine with exploring the love between lady Arwen and Aragorn. I believe this was done to make sure Middle Earth would feel more real, and it accomplished just that. There were some decisions I did not agree with (the encounter between Gandalf and the Witch king for instance), but they were mostly minor nuisances.
In the Hobbit it was a whole different story. Scenes were added just to stretch the duration of the film. Throughout the film there were additions and alterations that did not make any sense at all, and a few that did make sense (the introduction of the Necromancer). Some scenes are added to remind the audience that the Hobbit story takes place in Middle Earth. These are the scenes with characters from the previously made Lord of the Rings movie. They do nothing, but incite a feeling of familiarity with people who are unfamiliar with the Hobbit novel. I find these annoying wastes of time, but they are not as bad as the addition of Rhadagast the Brown, and the white Orc. Why Rhadagast is in this movie, is completely beyond me. He does not add anything and worse, he changes both the flow, and the tone of the movie. He feels like a distraction thrown in for comic relief. The white Orc is supposedly added to give this part of the story a bad guy. In my opinion this addition has way too much influence on the original story, and more importantly, on the character of Thorin. The vengeful side of Thorin is mostly fueled by the existence of the white Orc, and completely ruins Thorin for me. It also leads to way too many battle scenes, which brings me to my next point of critique.
(3) the battle scenes. In order to give the Hobbit the same epic feeling as the Lord of the Rings, this film is filled with battle scenes. There is a flashback to a battle scene between dwarves and orcs, a battle between dwarves and 3 trolls, a chasescene with wargriders, a battle between stone giants, a battle inside the mountain between dwarves and goblins, a finally, the episode-ending battle between dwarves/eagles and warg-riding orcs. Note that 3 of these 6 battles are actually in the book. The only ones that aren't are the flashback battle, the chasescene with the wargriders, and the battle between stone giants. The problem is that even though those 3 battles are in the book, they are both elongated and ridiculous to the point that the it induced a audience-wide facepalm several times. I haven't quite measured it, but I think I would be mild if I were to say the battlescenes take up about 2/5 of the movie. Now if the battles were well done and filled with excitement I could live with this, but unfortunately they are not. With the exception of the battle with trolls (which is the shortest one I might add) all battles have a tedious feel to it and are derived from any excitement. At no point in time do you feel like this could go wrong. All of our merry band feels invincible. They survive smashing, bashing, falling a couple of hundred metres, and ridiculous odds without so much as a scratch. To top this off, they are miraculously saved by (1) a group of Elves, (2) superGandalf, (3) superGandalf again, and (4) Eagles a total of 4 out of 6 times! It is just so boring, and it all just feels so wrong. which reminds me:
(4) the tone of the movie. This really seems to be an almost common problem with movies these days. The tone of films is all over the place. For a nice example of this, go see the Redlettermedia reviews of the Star Wars prequels (www.redlettermedia.com). In this film an attempt is made to alleviate the mood by using humour. There are 2 problems here. The first one is that there basically is no mood to alleviate because there is no tension (see point 3). The second one is that they are using slapstick humour, which is enormously out of place. Radagast the Brown, the slime and muckusjokes of the trolls, heck even the entire existence of both Bombur (the fat dwarf) and the Goblin king are pieces of slapstick. It is not funny, and it completely changes the tone of the movie, once again distracting from the storyline. You would think Hollywood knew what slapstick could do to a movie *point at Jar Jar Binks*.
This is supposed to be an adventuremovie from a characterdriven concept. What we would suspect is excitement, filled with wonder, tension, and sometimes drama or humour. We want to feel the joys and pains of Bilbo, his excitement, his fears. We want to see him grow, to overcome obstacles and to succeed. Yet after 3 hours of his story, we hardly know who he is, and what his motivation is. How are we supposed to care about him? to care about the movie? For me the result is that I don't. I fear this trilogy will be as bad as the Star Warsprequels and that it will taint the Lord of the Ringfilms accordingly.
Please mr. Jackson, learn from George Lucas' mistakes, it is not too late, you can still escape from the evil clutches of Disney.
This movie sucked me into the fantasy-genre. So much so, that I even started reading books. I've read all of the brilliant Tolkien's work, as well as several series of other fantasy-novelists (Eriksson, Martin). The continuation of the Lord of the Rings trilogy was fantastic, even though in my opinion the 2 sequals; the Two Towers, and the Return of the King, could not reach the heights of the Fellowship of the Ring. Ofcourse, I did view both sequals in a different way than I did the first one. I had now read the books beforehand and knew alot about the existing Tolkien-universe. I realised that the film's director, Peter Jackson, took a few liberties with the storyline, but I mostly understood these, and respected his decisions. Mostly because they seemed to be in service of the storyline.
Immediately after the Lord of the Rings trilogy was completed rumours about a Hobbit movie started to surface. It seemed Peter Jackson was highly interested in directing them, but there were issues about the license of the story. This went on for quite awhile until finally Jackson was given the green light. The Hobbit was originally intended to be divided into 2 films. This, to me, was a reasonable suggestion, as the Hobbit may be a small book, but it is packed with detail. The seemingly last minute, and dollar-inspired decision to make it a trilogy was met with alot of questions.
......and understandably so. The obvious greediness behind this decision did not reduce my level of enthusiasm one bit though. Especially after I found out the movie would also be available in 2D instead of the headache-inducing horror that is 3D. I figured there would now be lots of time for character development. After all, the Hobbit is basically a heavy characterdriven fantasy story. So I went in there with alot of excitement, waiting to be emerged into Middle Earth once more...
My initial feelings leaving the theater were a mix of confusion and disappointment. Confused because I had trouble pinpointing the reasons for my disappointment. It is only know, a few weeks later, that I am able to discernate all that is wrong about this film. For organisatory purposes, I will divide the review into 4 "problem-areas": (1) (lack of) character development; (2) additions and alterations to the original story; (3) battle-scenes; (4) tone of the movie. I'm purposefully leaving out the problems with the new format, because those problems only arise when you've watched the film in 3D. And let's face it, if you prefer 3D over 2D, you deserve all the crap you get.
(1) (Lack of) character development. With a runningtime of 3 hours, and 2 more films on the horizon, the one thing I was not worried about was lack of character development. In the Lord of the Rings trilogy the main characters all had an interesting developmental-arc, so what could go wrong here? Well about everything it seemed. With a total of 14 of them, even the book did not try to give all of the dwarves alot of characterdevelopment. Thorin, Balin, Fili, and Kili were the ones most mentioned, and their characters were the most worked out. The other dwarves were actually quite shallow. In the film this is mostly the same. After Thorin, the dwarves Balin, Fili, and Kili are given the most screentime. Thorin himself however, is done in such a poor way that it is hard to sympathize with him. From the very start he is a grumpy, vengeful, distrusting dwarf, particularly towards young Bilbo. This all changes abrubtly, and in a annoyingly forced way, after Bilbo saves his life. There is no middleground here. There is not a moment in the movie where Thorin is starting to warm up to the hobbit. For most of the film he finds him utterly useless, and then all of a sudden he is idolizing him.
This is not the movies biggest concern when it comes to characterdevelopment however. The main character Bilbo Baggins suffers from severe motivational issues. Why he decides to go along with the party of dwarves is still unclear to me. He really didn't want to go, was completely annoyed by all the dwarves. They leave without him howver, and suddenly he wants to tag along, knowing it will probably get him killed. As with Thorin, he also has a hastened, forced development of character. Being used to a life of quiet, peace, and luxury in the Shire, Bilbo is quite useless, be it with a sword, or any other survivalskill for that matter. All he has is his wits, but they are never used. This does not prevent him from swinging his sword wildly at well-trained Orcs and killing them in the process. His competence in battle is comletely uncredible. The hastened, uninspired characterdevelopment of the story's two most important character makes it very hard to feel for them in any way. There was plenty of time for this, so if this wasn't in the film, what was?
(2) additions and alterations to the original story. I will try my best not to come across like a Tolkien purist in this section. In order to do so convincingly, let me start by saying that I understood it when Jackson completely left out Tom Bombadill in the Fellowship of the Ring. There was an entire book to cover in 3 hours, 9 characters to introduce and develop, so this decision made perfect sense to me. As much as I loved Tom Bombadil, he hardly made any impact on the storyline. I was also perfectly fine with exploring the love between lady Arwen and Aragorn. I believe this was done to make sure Middle Earth would feel more real, and it accomplished just that. There were some decisions I did not agree with (the encounter between Gandalf and the Witch king for instance), but they were mostly minor nuisances.
In the Hobbit it was a whole different story. Scenes were added just to stretch the duration of the film. Throughout the film there were additions and alterations that did not make any sense at all, and a few that did make sense (the introduction of the Necromancer). Some scenes are added to remind the audience that the Hobbit story takes place in Middle Earth. These are the scenes with characters from the previously made Lord of the Rings movie. They do nothing, but incite a feeling of familiarity with people who are unfamiliar with the Hobbit novel. I find these annoying wastes of time, but they are not as bad as the addition of Rhadagast the Brown, and the white Orc. Why Rhadagast is in this movie, is completely beyond me. He does not add anything and worse, he changes both the flow, and the tone of the movie. He feels like a distraction thrown in for comic relief. The white Orc is supposedly added to give this part of the story a bad guy. In my opinion this addition has way too much influence on the original story, and more importantly, on the character of Thorin. The vengeful side of Thorin is mostly fueled by the existence of the white Orc, and completely ruins Thorin for me. It also leads to way too many battle scenes, which brings me to my next point of critique.
(3) the battle scenes. In order to give the Hobbit the same epic feeling as the Lord of the Rings, this film is filled with battle scenes. There is a flashback to a battle scene between dwarves and orcs, a battle between dwarves and 3 trolls, a chasescene with wargriders, a battle between stone giants, a battle inside the mountain between dwarves and goblins, a finally, the episode-ending battle between dwarves/eagles and warg-riding orcs. Note that 3 of these 6 battles are actually in the book. The only ones that aren't are the flashback battle, the chasescene with the wargriders, and the battle between stone giants. The problem is that even though those 3 battles are in the book, they are both elongated and ridiculous to the point that the it induced a audience-wide facepalm several times. I haven't quite measured it, but I think I would be mild if I were to say the battlescenes take up about 2/5 of the movie. Now if the battles were well done and filled with excitement I could live with this, but unfortunately they are not. With the exception of the battle with trolls (which is the shortest one I might add) all battles have a tedious feel to it and are derived from any excitement. At no point in time do you feel like this could go wrong. All of our merry band feels invincible. They survive smashing, bashing, falling a couple of hundred metres, and ridiculous odds without so much as a scratch. To top this off, they are miraculously saved by (1) a group of Elves, (2) superGandalf, (3) superGandalf again, and (4) Eagles a total of 4 out of 6 times! It is just so boring, and it all just feels so wrong. which reminds me:
(4) the tone of the movie. This really seems to be an almost common problem with movies these days. The tone of films is all over the place. For a nice example of this, go see the Redlettermedia reviews of the Star Wars prequels (www.redlettermedia.com). In this film an attempt is made to alleviate the mood by using humour. There are 2 problems here. The first one is that there basically is no mood to alleviate because there is no tension (see point 3). The second one is that they are using slapstick humour, which is enormously out of place. Radagast the Brown, the slime and muckusjokes of the trolls, heck even the entire existence of both Bombur (the fat dwarf) and the Goblin king are pieces of slapstick. It is not funny, and it completely changes the tone of the movie, once again distracting from the storyline. You would think Hollywood knew what slapstick could do to a movie *point at Jar Jar Binks*.
This is supposed to be an adventuremovie from a characterdriven concept. What we would suspect is excitement, filled with wonder, tension, and sometimes drama or humour. We want to feel the joys and pains of Bilbo, his excitement, his fears. We want to see him grow, to overcome obstacles and to succeed. Yet after 3 hours of his story, we hardly know who he is, and what his motivation is. How are we supposed to care about him? to care about the movie? For me the result is that I don't. I fear this trilogy will be as bad as the Star Warsprequels and that it will taint the Lord of the Ringfilms accordingly.
Please mr. Jackson, learn from George Lucas' mistakes, it is not too late, you can still escape from the evil clutches of Disney.
zaterdag 15 december 2012
gezegend zij de onzin
Paus Benedictus de XVI besloot dat het weer tijd was om iets controversieels te roepen: "Euthanasie, abortus, en het homohuwelijk zijn zware bedreigingen voor de vrede". Ik vermoed dat hij bang is dat de boodschap achter kerst verloren gaat in alle commercie en zodoende alles aangrijpt om de aandacht te vestigen op wat echt belangrijk is: Paus Benedictus de XVI, de wijze. Althans dat is wat zijn uiterlijk doet vermoeden. Oude grijze mannen in gewaden hebben immers de illusie van wijsheid. Helaas gaat dit ballonnetje niet altijd op, zeker niet wanneer het religie betreft.
Het is niets nieuws natuurlijk, wat onze vriend Benedictus hier roept. Niet voor niets echoën deze woorden door in conservatief Amerika. Euthanasie, abortus, en het homohuwelijk zijn al jaren "bedreigingen" voor "American families" en de antipathie hiertegen is een van de redenen dat George Bush, ondanks zichzelf, werd herkozen als president. Het probleem zit hem in de timing. Voor het eerst lijkt Amerika de dogma's van zich af te gooien. Het homohuwelijk is sinds de verkiezingen van afgelopen November legaal in maar liefst 9 staten. Abortus en euthanasie zijn controversieel, maar in principe hetzelfde geregeld als in Nederland. Het lijkt er zelfs op dat de groep Republikeinen die alle grip met de realiteit verloren had, zich achter haar hoofd begint te krabben.
Hoe verhouden deze uitspraken zich tot de realiteit? Volgens zijne heiligheid brengt abortus "onherstelbare schade toe aan de ontwikkeling, de vrede, en het milieu". Ik weet niet eens hoe ik dit moet interpreteren. Er kan misschien nog een link gelegd worden tussen abortus en ontwikkeling (niet per se een negatieve overigens), maar vrede? milieu? hoe? wat? waar? eh? Over euthanasie had hij het volgende te zeggen: "als in een wet een vermeend recht op euthanasie wordt geregeld, wordt daarmee het basisrecht op leven bedreigd''. Volgens mij verwart de beste man basisrecht met basisplicht. Een eigenschap van het basisrecht op leven lijkt mij de keuze om ervanaf te zien. Alleen bij een plicht is dit niet het geval. Een wet die euthanasie regelt is dan juist een wet die het basisrecht op leven bevorderd, niet bedreigd. Normaal gesproken zou in beide gevallen, terecht, worden gesproken van een holle claim en een roep om deze te staven met bewijs. Maar de kerk heeft van oudsher moeite met, en dus maling aan, het begrip bewijslast.
En dit is nu net het probleem. De paus en alle andere gelovige autoriteiten, hebben de mogelijkheid om hun ongefundeerde claims de wereld in te slingeren, zonder zich te hoeven verantwoorden voor (1) de bewijslast, en (2) de gevolgen van deze claims voor de rest van de wereld. Er zijn miljarden mensen die de woorden van deze paar gekken uiterst serieus nemen, en hier vervolgens vele levensbepalende beslissingen op baseren. Dit soort uitspraken zijn er onder andere debet aan dat homo's getreiterd of zelfs vervolgd worden, mensen die vreselijk lijden zullen moeten lijden zolang de medische wereld hiervoor kan zorgen, en dat kinderen opgroeien zonder vader, en een moeder die hen veracht, omdat hun vader een verkrachter is.
Als er nou iets een bedreiging is voor de ontwikkeling en vrede, dan is het uitspraken van dit soort gecertificeerde mafketels.
Het is niets nieuws natuurlijk, wat onze vriend Benedictus hier roept. Niet voor niets echoën deze woorden door in conservatief Amerika. Euthanasie, abortus, en het homohuwelijk zijn al jaren "bedreigingen" voor "American families" en de antipathie hiertegen is een van de redenen dat George Bush, ondanks zichzelf, werd herkozen als president. Het probleem zit hem in de timing. Voor het eerst lijkt Amerika de dogma's van zich af te gooien. Het homohuwelijk is sinds de verkiezingen van afgelopen November legaal in maar liefst 9 staten. Abortus en euthanasie zijn controversieel, maar in principe hetzelfde geregeld als in Nederland. Het lijkt er zelfs op dat de groep Republikeinen die alle grip met de realiteit verloren had, zich achter haar hoofd begint te krabben.
Hoe verhouden deze uitspraken zich tot de realiteit? Volgens zijne heiligheid brengt abortus "onherstelbare schade toe aan de ontwikkeling, de vrede, en het milieu". Ik weet niet eens hoe ik dit moet interpreteren. Er kan misschien nog een link gelegd worden tussen abortus en ontwikkeling (niet per se een negatieve overigens), maar vrede? milieu? hoe? wat? waar? eh? Over euthanasie had hij het volgende te zeggen: "als in een wet een vermeend recht op euthanasie wordt geregeld, wordt daarmee het basisrecht op leven bedreigd''. Volgens mij verwart de beste man basisrecht met basisplicht. Een eigenschap van het basisrecht op leven lijkt mij de keuze om ervanaf te zien. Alleen bij een plicht is dit niet het geval. Een wet die euthanasie regelt is dan juist een wet die het basisrecht op leven bevorderd, niet bedreigd. Normaal gesproken zou in beide gevallen, terecht, worden gesproken van een holle claim en een roep om deze te staven met bewijs. Maar de kerk heeft van oudsher moeite met, en dus maling aan, het begrip bewijslast.
En dit is nu net het probleem. De paus en alle andere gelovige autoriteiten, hebben de mogelijkheid om hun ongefundeerde claims de wereld in te slingeren, zonder zich te hoeven verantwoorden voor (1) de bewijslast, en (2) de gevolgen van deze claims voor de rest van de wereld. Er zijn miljarden mensen die de woorden van deze paar gekken uiterst serieus nemen, en hier vervolgens vele levensbepalende beslissingen op baseren. Dit soort uitspraken zijn er onder andere debet aan dat homo's getreiterd of zelfs vervolgd worden, mensen die vreselijk lijden zullen moeten lijden zolang de medische wereld hiervoor kan zorgen, en dat kinderen opgroeien zonder vader, en een moeder die hen veracht, omdat hun vader een verkrachter is.
Als er nou iets een bedreiging is voor de ontwikkeling en vrede, dan is het uitspraken van dit soort gecertificeerde mafketels.
woensdag 12 december 2012
Het beestje bij de naam noemen
In de aanloop naar de verkiezingen van 2002 nam de populariteit van de tot dan toe redelijk onbekende Pim Fortuyn ongekende vormen aan. Dit was voornamelijk te danken aan zijn neiging om waar mogelijk de vinger op de zere plek te leggen. Pim speelde in op de onderbuikgevoelens van een hoop gefrustreerde Nederlanders, en dit op een manier die voor politiek Nederland tamelijk nieuw was: hij benoemde zonder enige vorm van politieke correctheid de problemen waarvan bijna iedereen wist dat ze speelden, maar waar niemand iets over durfde te zeggen.
De onfortuinlijke (no pun intended) moord of Fortuyn heeft zijn gedachtegoed verankerd in de maatschappij. Hij werd een martelaar, en zijn toch al populaire denkbeelden werden een eerbetoon aan zijn bestaan. Anno 2012 hebben wij aan deze denkbeelden twee gevallen kabinetten en de PVV overgehouden.
Het probleem met de nalatenschap van Fortuyn is namelijk niet zijn denkbeelden. De problemen die worden benoemd zijn aanwezig, en moeten bespreekbaar gemaakt worden. Nee het probleem is dat het altijd maar blijft bij het benoemen van problemen. Zowel de LPF als nu de PVV hadden een kunst gemaakt van het beestje bij de naam noemen. Over oplossingen wordt er niet of nauwelijks gepraat. Het doet me een beetje denken aan Amerikaanse ingrepen in de wereld. Er worden een paar bommen gegooid, maar niemand die zich bezighoudt met wat er gebeurt wanneer de rook optrekt.
De populariteit van de denkbeelden van LPF en PVV staan en vallen met de mate van toetsing aan de werkelijkheid. Fortuyn heeft nooit de kans gehad te regeren. De overgebleven leden van de LPF maakten er zo'n rotzooi van dat het kabinet in een recordtempo viel. Geert Wilders is slim genoeg om te weten dat zijn populariteit als sneeuw voor de zon zal verdwijnen wanneer hij in het kabinet zou zitten. Dit is precies de reden waarom de PVV maar wat graag koos voor de afgrijselijke constructie waarin de partij wel invloed had, maar geen verantwoordelijkheid.
Mijn suggestie: laat ze maar regeren, dan zijn we ervanaf en kunnen we weer terug naar de orde van de dag.
De onfortuinlijke (no pun intended) moord of Fortuyn heeft zijn gedachtegoed verankerd in de maatschappij. Hij werd een martelaar, en zijn toch al populaire denkbeelden werden een eerbetoon aan zijn bestaan. Anno 2012 hebben wij aan deze denkbeelden twee gevallen kabinetten en de PVV overgehouden.
Het probleem met de nalatenschap van Fortuyn is namelijk niet zijn denkbeelden. De problemen die worden benoemd zijn aanwezig, en moeten bespreekbaar gemaakt worden. Nee het probleem is dat het altijd maar blijft bij het benoemen van problemen. Zowel de LPF als nu de PVV hadden een kunst gemaakt van het beestje bij de naam noemen. Over oplossingen wordt er niet of nauwelijks gepraat. Het doet me een beetje denken aan Amerikaanse ingrepen in de wereld. Er worden een paar bommen gegooid, maar niemand die zich bezighoudt met wat er gebeurt wanneer de rook optrekt.
De populariteit van de denkbeelden van LPF en PVV staan en vallen met de mate van toetsing aan de werkelijkheid. Fortuyn heeft nooit de kans gehad te regeren. De overgebleven leden van de LPF maakten er zo'n rotzooi van dat het kabinet in een recordtempo viel. Geert Wilders is slim genoeg om te weten dat zijn populariteit als sneeuw voor de zon zal verdwijnen wanneer hij in het kabinet zou zitten. Dit is precies de reden waarom de PVV maar wat graag koos voor de afgrijselijke constructie waarin de partij wel invloed had, maar geen verantwoordelijkheid.
Mijn suggestie: laat ze maar regeren, dan zijn we ervanaf en kunnen we weer terug naar de orde van de dag.
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