Why I am not a Deist

(Let’s get away from the health care debate for a bit, and on to something easier.  Like religion!)

Ever notice how, when trying to figure out what something is, we sometimes start by ruling out what it isn’t?  Here’s a couple of blatant male/female stereotypes as examples-

(Male) “Is that one of the new Corvettes?”  “No, the nose is wrong…maybe a Dodge Viper?”  “Nah, definitely not a Viper.”

(Female) “Look at those shoes!  Manolo Blahniks?”  “No way, probably Michael Kors.”  “Not his style.  Maybe they’re Jessica Simpsons?”

You get the picture.  As a general rule, it’s the same way with any question for which there are a large number of possible answers, and almost every answer shares many similar characteristics.  I’d have a hard time looking a terrier and telling you the exact breed, but I could rule out very quickly the chance that it’s a Great Dane.

What does any of this have to do with being (or not) a Deist?

Over the last few months, I’ve been mulling over the question of just what I believe. Not just whether I believe that dark chocolate is better than milk chocolate (it is), or whether golf is interesting enough to rate its own cable channel (it isn’t), but the really big belief questions.  Some who know me better may think my position on this had been decided, but if there’s one thing I’m sure of regarding belief, it’s that it should never be definitively decided. (I’ve also taken the question even further- should I believe at all? But we won’t get into that here.)

If you’re unfamiliar with the term, a Deist believes that a supreme being created the universe, and that this can be determined by observation of the natural world, with no need of faith or religion.  Deists do not accept the idea of a personal God that intervenes in human affairs or even takes a particular interest in them.  Deism is by no means a formal system.  Its roots are in England in the 1600s, and it has gone through many varieties and changes, with the tenets I mentioned above changing in both degree and detail.  Deists opinions about the soul, for example, have ranged from belief to agnosticism to reincarnation.  Well-known ones are Thomas Jefferson, Ethan Allen, John Adams, James Madison, and Thomas Paine.  Alexander Hamilton and Benjamin Franklin are strongly suspected.  Deism’s own core beliefs kept an authoritative organization from forming around it, but it has made contributions to Unitarianism.

Given this description, you might be inclined to think “wow, I was a Deist and never knew it.”  I suspect there may be many people who believe along these lines and never knew there was a name for it.  The appeal of Deism for many, I imagine, is simply the on-the-face-of-it sensibility of the proposition, for it can satisfy two requirements;

1)A need that may be satisfied by religion in general- that there is something more than this, some explanation for it, some ultimate meaning.

2)A need to find some constructive way to handle the dilemmas we may eventually find ourselves in- we’ve found that when we are honest with ourselves, we can no longer take the fairy-tale like stories in the Bible seriously… or we’ve realized that prayer doesn’t really work, as there is no rhyme or reason to how or if it is answered, which makes it no different from sometimes things go your way and sometimes they don’t… or you’ve realized that a profession of faith in people doesn’t determine their behavior, as many religious people act contrary to their beliefs, and many who aren’t in the least religious are very decent, so it starts to seem like people are just whoever they are, religion notwithstanding… and so on.

Deism as a belief, as a way of looking at things, satisfies both- God is present and has some purpose for setting all this in motion, but beyond that it’s all mystery.  God is not involved in our affairs, so prayers not being answered is no surprise.  The natural laws give rise to life and God planned it that way, but God expects nothing in particular from that life.  It’s up to us to work out how to treat each other, and unfortunately different religions will rail against each other over that question, but that’s a human problem, not a God one.

It sounds good.  It makes sense to people, like myself, for whom an anthropomorphic father figure personal deity makes no sense.  It leaves us responsible, as we should be, to work out the blindingly obvious; if you want to know what is good or evil, moral or not, just ask this question- am I hurting or helping? Am I, at the very least, doing no harm?  Asking that in every situation is the best barometer for behavior that you’ll ever have.

And while I subscribe to the above method of deciding how to act, I am not a Deist. This is why…

The God surmised by Deism is needed only as a placeholder, as a method to explain the beginning of the universe (this explanation has certain problems, and there are many other potential ways to describe that beginning, but that’s a topic for another day).  After that moment, everything is up for grabs.  If you like to believe that God set the ball rolling and then went off to do other things, that’s fine.  If you prefer to believe that God continued (and continues) to guide the overall progress of the universe, monitoring and maintaining the various physical laws and properties of space and time, that’s ok too.  You may even believe that God is directly guiding the processes and development of life right here on Earth. Within Deism there is room for variation to any degree you like.  And that’s the problem with it.

On the one hand, the Deist outlook is a relic from a pre-Darwinian, pre-modern cosmology era, where God was invoked because… well, no one could think of another way this all came to be. Deists had already rejected the specificity of other faiths, but left the general idea in place.

On the other hand, Deism doesn’t have the conviction or rigor of other faiths.  As described above, it has no requirements other than a vague belief that there is a deity. After that, it’s as you wish.

On the one hand, filling in the blanks; on the other hand, lazy.

Deism sits on the fence, unable or unwilling to assert anything in particular about God or faith.  It’s also unable to move to the other side of the fence, unable to admit that if your idea of God is that vague you may as well move on to the “I don’t know” of agnosticism (to say nothing of the go-where-the-evidence-leads, rationality-above-all of atheism).  As Richard Dawkins wrote, Deism is watered-down Theism.  (Add Jesus to Deism and you get liberal Christianity: instead of having whatever vague idea of God you like, you can be sure that Jesus accepts you unconditionally no matter how you live and there’s never any real judgment. Liberal Christianity makes Jesus no more consequential or specific than reading your horoscope.)

Here is where the Deist God ultimately proves not worth the trouble.  As a belief, it’s optional at best; a God uninvolved with human affairs does not, by definition, care if we worship or believe.  As an explanation of creation, it is either giving up (shrug your shoulders and say ‘God did it’) or adding to the problem (so where did this incredibly brilliant and complex God entity come from?).  As a source of comfort that your life has meaning, it falls short; if God is uninvolved with human affairs, and we assume God has a plan, no particular human life can be of any real importance to the plan.  As the end result of a search for truth, it is immensely unsatisfying.  The Deist God is so uninvolved that there is almost no reason to believe, except that maybe you just like the idea.

Here’s the question- what’s the difference between an uninvolved, non-interventionist, non-expectant, undemanding, unconcerned, set-off-the-big-band-and-run God, and no God at all?

Exactly.

So just like in the initial example where we start to determine what something is by ruling out what it is not, I can say that whatever my beliefs my be, I am not a Deist.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss

Going back to the health care debate debacle for a moment; it looks increasingly like the public option is dead or dying.  If I start on about this I’ll type for page after page, so I’m just going to pass on a few things worth considering-

From Robert Reich

Without a public, Medicare-like option, health care reform is a bandaid for a system in critical condition. There’s no way to push private insurers to become more efficient and provide better value to Americans without being forced to compete with a public option. And there’s no way to get overall health-care costs down without a public option that has the authority and scale to negotiate lower costs with pharmaceutical companies, doctors, hospitals, and other providers — thereby opening the way for private insurers to do the same.

It’s been clear from the start that the private insurers and other parts of the medical-industrial complex have hated the idea of the public option, for precisely these reasons. A public option would cut deeply into their current profits. That’s why they’ve been willing to spend a fortune on lobbyists, threaten and intimidate legislators and ordinary Americans, and even rattle Obama’s cage to the point where the Administration is about to give up on it.

And if you don’t think the the insurance companies are ultimately behind the resistance to a public option, then here it is from the horse’s mouth- an exec who was in public relations for 20 years, most recently with Cigna (if you only follow one link from this blog, make it this one):

How Insurance Firms Drive Debate

The higher I rose in the company, the more I learned about the tactics insurers use to dump policyholders when they get sick, in order to increase profits and to reward their Wall Street investors. I could not in good conscience continue serving as an industry mouthpiece. And I did not want to be part of yet another industry effort to kill meaningful reform.

I explained during the press conference with Rep. Slaughter how the industry funnels millions of its policyholders’ premiums to big public relations firms that provide talking points to conservative talk show hosts, business groups and politicians. I also described how the PR firms set up front groups, again using your premium dollars and mine, to scare people away from reform.

What I’m trying to do as I write and speak out against the insurance industry I was a part of for nearly two decades is to inform Americans that when they hear isolated stories of long waiting times to see doctors in Canada and allegations that care in other systems is rationed by “government bureaucrats,” someone associated with the insurance industry wrote the original script.

The industry has been engaging in these kinds of tactics for many years, going back to its successful behind-the-scenes campaign to kill the Clinton reform plan.

And from Dennis Kucinich, who may be one of only two truly honest people in Congress (the other is Ron Paul, but he’s just a little crazy):

Health care reform is now a private option: WHICH FOR PROFIT INSURANCE COMPANY DO YOU WANT? You have to choose. And you have to pay. If you have a low income, under HR3200 government will subsidize the private insurance companies and you will still have to pay premiums, co-pays and deductibles.

The Administration plan requires that everyone must have health insurance, so it is delivering tens of millions of new “customers” to the insurance companies. Health care? Not really. Insurance care! Absolutely. Cost controls? No chance.

…

The hotly-debated HR3200, the so-called “health care reform” bill, is nothing less than corporate welfare in the guise of social welfare and reform. It is a convoluted mess. The real debate which we should be having is not occurring.

Removing the “public option” from a public bill paid for by public money is not in the public interest. What is left is a “private option” paid for with public money. Why should public money be spent on a private option which does not guarantee 100% coverage nor have any cost controls? A true public option would provide 30% savings immediately which would then cover the 1/3rd of the population who presently have no health care.

Unfortunately, under HR3200, the Government is choosing winners and losers in the private sector; proposing to spend public funds on subsidizing insurance companies who make money not providing health care. This process will insure only the expansion of profits. Gone is the debate over cost.

So that’s it.  If the public option fails, the private companies stay in control.  If that happens, and there aren’t some significant changes in the bill, they have your money, your employer’s money, and now your tax money too.  And no competition. Even my friends who think a public option is a bad idea would likely agree- a plan that takes public money and feeds it to private insurance companies who already rule the health care industry like rapacious bastards is the worst of both worlds.

If anyone believes such an outcome will make things any better, I’m amazed.  You’re managing to believe things they wouldn’t even believe at a Scientology meeting.

Windows 7 and the joy of failing hard drives

If you saw my updates on Facebook a couple of months ago, you may have picked up on the hint that I was running the Mac Operating System… on a PC. Much fun and some hair pulling, and a lot of learning about the internals of the Mac OS (and even though Apple disapproves of that highly, I at least did the right thing and bought full versions of the software. So I was only, uh… half-wrong.)

But now Windows 7 is about to be publicly released, and is already available for TechNet subscribers.  So in order to keep up my geek cred and to stay current in what I do for a living, it was time to dive in. Not without problems though- after backing up my data from the Mac install, I ran into weird install errors (like files “corrupted or not found”) and from there it got progressively worse, with inconsistent bootup problems that a normal process-of-elimination was not solving. Imagine a forensics expert visiting a crime scene and the evidence is different on each return trip;  that’s about what it was like. I finally found the problem- not one, but TWO different hard drives were causing the system to freeze on boot in a couple of different ways. Just after I had backed up all the data I needed to keep, just as I was starting the Windows 7 install. Out of the 4 hard drives I had (two older spares and two in the system), two failures at that time. I mean really, what the hell are the odds?  Keep in mind, none of these improbable hardware shenanigans are a reflection on Windows 7 itself.

I’ll get to a more thorough examination later, but for now I can say this much- Windows 7 is much better than Vista. It’s even better than XP. Changes have been made to the taskbar, the Start menu, and within Windows Explorer itself that have an immediate impact on productivity and navigating your way around the desktop. I get kidded at the office for having so many application and windows and browser tabs open at once that it seems like it’s an experiment to crash the system instead of do actual work. If this is you too, you’ll enjoy Aero Peek- any running programs are highlighted on the taskbar and hovering over a program’s icon with the mouse pops up a thumbnail preview of any open windows. This is substantially more usable than the similar but much more primitive way the XP taskbar behaves.

Jump Lists- you may be familiar with XP’s ability to remember your most recently used programs on the Start Menu. Jump Lists take the idea one step further- for any program pinned to the taskbar an arrow next to it pops open a list of the files or documents that program most recently opened. For example, Word will have a list of all the Word docs you’ve opened most recently, without having to do it the old way- which was open Word first, then check your recent items.

Jump lists also open for programs in the taskbar. Just right-click to get the list of items recently viewed. For example, right clicking on Internet Explorer shows a list of recent sites, giving a faster way to revisit often-viewed sites than regular bookmarks.

Windows Explorer itself has also been enhanced, with an automatic organizing (not moving, very wise choice) of certain key document types into “Libraries”. There is also a new view option that combines the traditional thumbnail view with a preview pane, making viewing, categorizing and editing your digital photos much easier. There are a number of smaller ways that Explorer has been tweaked, but suffice to say for now that simply getting around your PC now seems to take fewer clicks and less time.

In fact, I like it enough that the Mac install is going to stay archived indefinitely, although I may have to look at Mac OS 10.6 “Snow Leopard” next month when it arrives (the Finder, the Mac equivalent to Windows Explorer, is supposed to have some redesigned features). I say this from the perspective of someone who has admired the Mac hardware and operating system for quite some time, and who is equally at home in both worlds. Windows 7 is just that good. The improvements in Explorer and the task bar give it a edge in productivity over the Mac Finder and the Windows XP-era taskbar. Not just in a “I’ve spent some time learning the ins-n-outs” way, but immediate usefulness, as in I already got some work done tonight before typing this.  And this goodness is in addtion to Microsoft putting this version of Windows on a diet and a treadmill.  Better, harder, faster, stronger.

Next time on this subject I’ll get more into some of the technical details (built-in hardware support, 32 vs. 64 bit editions; older program compatibility; power saving features; other user interface improvements) and hopefully not go too awfully geeky on you in the process.

Down with socialized highways!

Here’s a hypothetical situation for you…

I’m planning on changing jobs, but there’s one thing holding me up- I’m not sure how I’ll get to work. Where I work now, we have a Bridges & Roads plan that my employer partially covers and I partially cover, but if I change jobs I won’t be able to use those roads anymore.

My new employer has a plan too, but I’m not sure how much my copay will be for pothole repair, and that’s even after meeting my $2000 deductible.

What’s more, I’m not sure the roads will go to the same places I go now, or if I’ll even be able to get to them from my house.  I hope they go by a Starbucks without me having to drive 50 miles out of the way…

And to top it off, I’m not eligible for the new Bridges & Roads plan until I’ve been there 30 days, meaning I’ll have to pay a huge premium on my old plan through COBRA (Consolidated Omnibus Bridges & Roads Act) to have access to the roads until I can sign up for the new one.

I’m worried I’ll get pre-existed though; I got a couple of speeding tickets which means they probably won’t let me use any road rated more than 45mph.

Oh yeah, did I mention have to learn several new road signs and traffic laws too? One of my friends got ticketed for turning right on red. I can do that, but his plan has stricter rules. He has a lower deductible though, so maybe it evens out.

But here’s what really takes the cake- the government is actually talking about a public roads option!  I mean, I know the system has problems, but the last thing we need is the government telling us how to drive, dictating traffic laws and standards.  I don’t want some bureaucrat telling me how my stoplights should work or what kind of turn signals my car should have!

There’s a town hall meeting where some of my friends are going to raise holy hell about this.  But I’ll probably have to get one of them to come pick me up, because the Bridges & Roads plan I’m on now doesn’t go there.

…..

If the above situation strikes you as patently absurd, then go ahead and let that assessment percolate for a while. Then consider that this is exactly the situation we are in with health care today.

Substitute some of the terms in the above story and imagine if we had to depend on competing private military forces… police departments… fire departments… air traffic control systems.

There are many, many things that should obviously be left to the free market system and private business to work out.  We don’t need, for example, any sort of program or agency that guarantees my neighbor and I both have access to 56-inch plasma screen HDTVs, or that we can both drive a Mercedes-Benz SLK 350 when he can afford one and I obviously can’t.

One thing we do have is equal access to the basics of life in a civilized nation- roads, schools, electricity, water.  Both my Mercedes-driving neighbor and my Honda-driving self (as well as people lower on the income scale than me who can afford no better than a 5-year old used Buick) have the protection of the fire and police departments, and are equally defended by our military. Since health care addresses these same basics of a civilized existence, the question we need to be asking is not whether we should have a plan that covers everyone, but why health care was ever lumped into the same category as all the other extras (bigger houses, nicer furniture, fancier cars and televisions) in the first place.

This is not to say that any such change would be easy task, especially from where we are now. And if this had never been done before I would be as skeptical as anyone.  But the inescapable truth is that we are the only modern civilized nation not doing it.  People point to the imperfections in the systems in place by Canada and the U.K., while ignoring the imperfections we live with now, as well as the remarkably successful efforts by Belgium and Denmark.

But when imperfections arise in any large system or program or agency that is run and designed by humans, that is not a big sign of government inefficiency- that’s just life. We have a government for the people, by the people, and of the people.  That’s what you and I both learned in civics class and while watching Schoolhouse Rock on Saturday mornings. And if that is not true, or not working as it should, then we need to fix it.  The conservative’s refrain of “government is the problem, not the solution” is a mealy-mouthed cop out.  WE are the government and we have no one to blame but ourselves if it’s not working.

I remain completely astonished at people who rail against any kind of public plan to address these issues, because they fear it will be poorly run, while themselves working in privately held companies or institutions so infested with bad management, ineffective supervisors, and incompetent employees that it’s a wonder they manage to survive at all.

And yet, ask anyone you know (and I’ll bet you know at least one person) who is having to contest a decision made by their insurance company, and they will use words much stronger than incompetent, ineffective or bad to describe the decisions, rules, and attitude they encounter.  Given this, does any honest person seriously believe that any plan which leaves the private insurance companies in control of the industry can possibly be a good one?

Ask yourself- would you put up with this same pulling-your-hair-out madness if you were calling 911?  Or calling about a power outage? Or taking your child to school?

There may indeed be an advantage to being the last civilized nation to go down this road- we can learn from the experience of all the other nations that have gone before and build the best system possible.  That is the task that we need to be putting before our representatives and policy makers- not shouting them down about the idea, but challenging them to make it the best one in the world.

It’s really up to us.  We can be a civilized nation that includes the best health care in the world among the basics-of-life services that it provides to all its citizens, or we can be a every-man-and-woman-for-themselves third-world nation that is separated from its neighbors to the south only by having nicer cars and bigger TVs.

If we choose the latter, we’ll keep up the health care equivalent of having to drive on privately-held and managed roads, and end up with exactly the kind of comprehensive health care reform we deserve:

None at all.