To make this column interesting and attractive, I try to maintain an upbeat advocacy for the use of rational thought and decision making based on proven techniques. Although the subjects of these columns are often arcane and based on formal mathematical development, I always plead for readers to avoid separating these ideas from their everyday life. This week I almost gave up on my quest to help spread rationality. Overcoming the ingrained habits of our society is too big a task.
Don Imus, a commentator who is paid to be provocative , was fired for being provocative. One of his attackers, Al Sharpton, who is probably not paid to be provocative, was not fired for insulting the exonerated Duke Lacrosse team. Al said some pretty provocative things about them. Don Imus acknowledged and apologized for his error. To the best of my knowledge, Al Sharpton has not acknowledged or apologized for the damage he did. This is not a case of liberals bashing conservatives. No part of the political spectrum has an exclusive on inconsistencies. President Bush publicly chastised Nancy Pelosi, a Democratic member of Congress for visiting Syria, but I’ve seen no comment from him about the similar visit to Syria a week later by Darrell Issa, a Republican member of Congress. In both of these examples, I might be at fault for failure to find all the relevant facts in the news, but even if sharp-eyed readers shoot down these apparent inconsistencies, I can easily find others from celebrities of all political and religious stripes.
Bill Maher draws criticism because he ridicules revealed religion, but my local newspaper prints political cartoons ridiculing secular humanists and doesn’t attract a single outraged letter. [BTW, I seem to have misplaced the number of the pro-humanist television channel. That’s strange because I had it sitting next to the list of pro-religious (primarily Protestant Christian) television stations.] My company once shared a building in San Diego. The other half was a closely guarded video studio for the Rev. Tilden. From there he would broadcast his demands for contributions from poor believers. Most people think he broadcast his show from Texas. I’ve seen him drive into our shared parking lot in his black Mercedes 600-class accompanied by an interesting young thing dressed in red satin. That lasted until he was busted by the IRS. None of this makes sense to me.
As always, I insist that this is not an attack on organized religion. I try to understand and correct inconsistencies, but I respect people’s rights to resort to faith when events have no rational explanation. The rational thought and religious believe are not necessarily inconsistent. One of the smartest friends I ever had was a Jesuit who could wrap your head around any logical conundrum and still never waver in his faith.
Trying to promote rationality is a bit like collecting garbage. No matter how hard you work to get rid of the trash, more of it piles up next week. And it piles up in strangely mixed up ways. For instance, people use computers and the Internet to study astrology and the power of pyramids. The results of concerted thought and design leading to our outstanding ability to communicate as never before doesn’t mean a thing to true believers who will dismiss the results of biological research leading to the highly successful theory of evolution in favor of superstitious acceptance of creationism.
Maybe next week I will find an illuminating and fun puzzle to share with readers. That will cheer us up.
In response to the interest my original tutorial generated, I have completely rewritten and expanded it. Check out the tutorial availability through Lockergnome. The new version is over 100 pages long with chapters that alternate between discussion of the theoretical aspects and puzzles just for the fun of it. Puzzle lovers will be glad to know that I included an answers section that includes discussions as to why the answer is correct and how it was obtained. Most of the material has appeared in these columns, but some is new. Most of the discussions are expanded compared to what they were in the original column format.
[tags]decision theory, puzzle, fath, proof, religion, science[/tags]