A Couple of Comments

On Defeatocrats and Scott Adams & God.

I commented at a couple of other blogs lately. First, at Irish Pennants (italics in original):

Today it finally dawned on me: They want out because they now recognize we will soon achieve victory! That dawned on me a couple of weeks ago, too. It also seems to me now that some Democrats, at least, are starting to employ a strategy which will paint the outcome as a defeat, no matter what the outcome will be. Never mind that Saddam has been overthrown, captured, and imprisoned; never mind that several successful elections will have been held; never mind that a fairly representative parliament will be sitting; never mind that, relatively speaking, Iraq will have a fairly stable society and a fairly democratic government: it was Bush's War, so we must have lost it.

Also at Lex Communis (emphasis in original):

From that link: "If people believed in God," he points out, "they would live every minute of their lives in support of that belief. Rich people would give their wealth to the needy. Everyone would be frantic to determine which religion was the true one. No one could be comfortable in the thought that they might have picked the wrong religion and blundered into eternal damnation, or bad reincarnation, or some other unthinkable consequence. People would dedicate their lives to converting others to their religions." He adds: "If you believe a truck is coming toward you, you will jump out of the way. That is belief in the reality of the truck. If you tell people you fear the truck but do nothing to get out of the way, that is not belief in the truck." Now, do you believe in God? It seems to me that, as portrayed, the analogy is faulty. It uses the word "belief" in two ways: one is the way in which we usually apply the word to believing in God; the other way is that in which we would more typically use the word "know" rather than "believe". One's belief that a truck is coming towards one is quite different [from] one's belief that God exists, creates, loves, etc. That is why it would be very rare, and indeed strange, to hear of one's actions based on the "belief" that a truck is coming towards one. I think it would be more usual to encounter a situation like, "I saw the truck was going to hit me..." or "I knew the truck was coming right at me..." or even "I thought the truck was going to hit me." As I understand things, no "belief" is involved in those cases: what is involved is knowledge. (To further illustrate the possibility of confusion of thought concerning the concept of belief, I originally began my remarks, "I believe the analogy is faulty....") :-) Also, positing what people would do if they actually believed something is a remarkably weak assertion and depends, I think, to a great extent on the person's own imagination of what he would, or would not, do in consequence of such beliefs. Surely, the whole book is actually better than this bit? And why would such a poor example be excerpted by the reviewer?

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sat. 12/10/05 08:13:34 AM
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