Category Archives: Rationalism

The world has turned topsy turvy in India since BJP came in power on the Hindutva agenda. PM Narendra Modi got away with the genocide of Muslims in his home state of Gujarat. Even the US had refused a visa and maintained its stand and succumbed to its temptation of looking at which side of the bread was buttered. This is not surprising because the Americans are deft in the pragmatism of where the dollar does not stop. Furthermore, the Trump administration could work out to have even the White House taken over by the extremists of white supremacists cliques. The commander in chief Trump was directing the attackers from the premises of his official residence. If genocide can be accepted then why not take over the White House.

It took Chief Justice of India N V Ramana by surprise when he said on Monday, November 22, 2021. He was delivering the 40th convocation address of the Andhra Pradesh-based Sri Sathya Sai Institute for Higher Learning. Unfortunately, the modern education system tends to focus only on the utilitarian function of education. Such a system is not equipped to deal with the moral or spiritual function of education which builds the character of our students and allows them to develop a social consciousness and a sense of responsibility.

Read more: Hemant Karkare: Tribute to a hero

Martha Nussbaum also had put her fingers on the same when she found that rote learning in Gujarat had become the order of the day. She dubbed it as clash within. In other words, the Indians were to blame for it. What can you make out of the pronouncements of RSS boss Mohan Bhagwat for a whole month from his claim that Hindutva can make India a vishwaguru or world-teacher! And now he has the temerity to say that the Hindu religion can teach other people how to live. It has sarcastically failed to teach even those who are the descendants of the Hindu religion.

If Hindutva can be so procrustean as Boko Haram and IS what do the most rational Hindus say? Chidambaram comes from Tamil Nadu who has a streak of rationalism still vibrant in our time. Jaya Lalita could order the police to arrest a Shankar Acharya and still have a cordial relationship with Yusuf Ali Lulu who had donated crores of rupees when Gujarat faced the most devastating earthquake. Most of it was allegedly pocketed by Brahmins belonging to RSS. Here is what the gentleman from South has to say: Hinduism does not have One Church, One Pope, One Prophet, One Holy Book or One Ritual.

There are many of each, and a Hindu is free to choose among the many or reject all. Some scholars have argued that one can be a Hindu as well as a believer or an agnostic or an atheist! Every place is my village, every-one is my relation. The first line is inscribed on the walls of the United Nations. The poem is believed to reflect the way of life of the Tamils 2,000 years ago and earlier. Shashi Tharoor: the word Hindu did not exist in any Indian language till its use by foreigners gave Indians a term for self-definition. To my knowledge, no Tamil Hindu king waged a war to establish the supremacy of the Hindu religion over other religions. Hinduism does not claim to be the only true religion. Swami Vivekananda said, I am proud to belong to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance. We believe not only in universal toleration, but we accept all religions as true.

Hinduism allows a Hindu to worship other gods and saints. Thousands of Hindus go to worship at the shrine in Velankanni or pray at the Golden Temple in Amritsar or offer obeisance at the Dargah Sharif in Ajmer. Historians are not agreed whether the Sai Baba of Shirdi was a Muslim or a Hindu; he was perhaps both because he did not see any difference between the two.

Read more: Kashmir teetering on the brink of disaster

Dr Doniger also points out that Gandhiji never called for banning cow slaughter, and quotes him as having said: How can I force anyone not to slaughter cows unless he is himself so disposed? It is not as if there were only Hindus in the Indian Union. There are Muslims, Parsis, Christians and other religious groups here. However, many Muslims and Christians do not eat beef and many non-vegetarians do not eat red meat at all.

Jinnah was also very secular in his outlook and believed that all religions can one day disappear when people reason and live together. He felt awful with the respect to Gandhi being so devoted to Hinduism albeit he respected the mahatma.

CJI Ramana added that true education is one which imbibes moral values and virtues of humility, discipline, selflessness, compassion, tolerance, forgiveness and mutual respect. Education must elevate your character and broaden your thinking. It must enable you to take the right decision when faced with the complexities of life.

He said education is often understood to mean academic learning. But being truly educated means much more. True education should result in a far more holistic positive change and advancement in the life of a student.

Given this wide ambit people like Moeed Yusuf, Hemant Karkare and Suboth Kumar Singh (of the Dadri fame killed in the Bulumdshar cow-slaughter case, Haren Pandya. On the other side would be found Ajit Kumar Doval, Yati Narsingha Sarasvati, Yogi Adityanath. DG Vanzara, etc.

Read more: What led to the great divide of India and Pakistan?

Akhlak he did not eat beef and yet they killed him and others. Hence not to lose sight of historians like WD: Dr Wendy Doniger, Professor of History of Religions, University of Chicago, who studied Sanskrit and ancient Indian religion for over 50 years, has observed: Scholars have known for centuries that the ancient Indians ate beef.

It is remarkable to note that Sardar Patel, Narendra Modi (a telli, Amit Shah, a baniya Jain, have skewed perception of being holier than thou attitude. Jinnah was shocked that at the round table conference in London Sardar Patel would not sit at the dinner table with Jinnah so how could they live together. Much of the unprecedented hatred for Muslims in India is on account of such people. The South Indians are different and saner.

Mustafa Khan holds a Ph.D. on Mark Twain. He lives in Malegaon Maharashtra, India. The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Global Village Space.

Continued here:

How the RSS transformed India? - Global Village space

Rationalism and empiricism are two distinct philosophical approaches to understanding the world around us. They are often contrasted with each other, as their approach to knowledge is completely different. Empiricists believe that we learn about our world through our previous experience, while for rationalists, reason is the basis of understanding anything. Both views can help someone attain knowledge, but they have certain disadvantages.

1 Empiricism Advantages

An empiricist would say that the laws of electrical conductivity are dependent on human observation. It's because we've seen electricity going through a piece of metal and not wood thousands of times that we consolidated the fact that metal is a conductor and wood is not. Our senses don't lie -- under normal circumstances -- and experience can show whether a phenomenon repeats itself and therefore it abides by certain laws or it happened randomly. Scientists for example use experiments to test through observation whether an assumption is true or not.

2 Empiricism Disadvantages

Perception is not universal: What a person perceives as true can be false for another person. For example, a book can be red for one man, but for a color-blind person it may be green. Does this mean that because one or many color-blinds perceive the book as such it is indeed green? Furthermore, perception is also affected by external factors: the same experiment under different conditions (temperature for example) can give different results, unbeknownst to the careless researcher.

3 Rationalism Advantages

Rationalists believe that there is a reason each object or phenomenon exists. An object comes back to the ground when thrown upwards not because a million people have observed so but because there is a reason for it to happen: the law of gravity. In addition, metal is a conductor because it facilitates movable electric charges, unlike wood. Rationalism tries to find the already existing general principles (man didn't create them) behind each phenomenon, which are independent of each individual's perception of knowledge. The result is undisputed theories explaining the laws of the world surrounding us.

4 Rationalism Disadvantages

Rationalism suggests that people are born with innate ideas, truths in a particular subject area (such as math concepts) that are part of out rational nature and we only have to bring them to the surface. However, as philosopher John Locke suggests, there are "idiots" who are not aware of -- and cannot understand -- simple notions, contradicting the universality of innate ideas. Furthermore, laws or logic describing the world are not infallible, as they may be based on human misconceptions, otherwise scientists would not conduct experiments and just rely on logical arguments.

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Advantages & Disadvantages of Rationalism & Empiricism ...

Although lip-syncing, synchronized dancing, and comedic skits tend to catch the most attention on TikTok, another form of art is gaining popularity: witchcraft. Last month, the Washington Post even ran a feature piece taking readers inside the life of a teenage witch, from spellcasting to podcasting.

The Wiccan organization Covenant of the Goddess defines witchcraft as a magical religion with many diverse traditions derived from various cultural sources around which covens and individual practitioners base their practices. The hashtag #WitchTok has roughly 20 billion views, making it one of the more popular hashtags on TikTok.

One can find thousands of videos on potions, tea leaf and tarot card readings, pendulum boards, astral projection, magic charms, wands, crystals, automatic writing, channeling, and spellcasting. These occultic practices, which would have been much more fringe and less accessible in previous generations, are now highly accessible and even trending for Gen Z, thanks in part to the rise of postmodernism.

A substantial amount of witchcraft on #WitchTok can be referred to as a form of neopaganism. Linda Jencson, a professor of Anthropology at Appalachian State University, defines neopaganism as the revival of pre-Christian pagan gods, goddesses and spirits, their worship and ritual manipulation. It also involves an animistic sense of spiritual power and a reverence for nature. Neopagans focus much of their spiritual practice upon practical results, the ability to affect their environment for magical means.

Jencson goes on to explain that neopagan practice involves shamanistic states of trance induced by dancing, chanting, percussion, meditation, and the manipulation of other ritual tools such as power bundles, crystals, wands, feathers, and knives. Virtually all of these neopagan practices can be found on #WitchTok.

There is also a large presence of users who encourage interaction with pagan deities. Neopaganism functions as an umbrella term for all kinds of different folk religions that employ witchcraft. Some users seek guidance from a transcendent mother goddess, while others pantheistically seek divinity within themselves and nature. Some attempt to channel personal spirit guides while others look towards ancient Egyptian, Roman, or Norse gods and goddesses.

Different neopagan traditions are represented on #WitchTok, like Gardnerian, Alexandrian, Celtic, Georgian, and Dianic, to name a few. Because of this, you can find occasional frustrations and controversies between witches of different traditions, covens, or levels of experience.

It is no secret that witchcraft has been on the rise in the United States since the late 20th century. Wicca, one of the more organized of the neopagan traditions, has seen its number of adherents multiply by more than 40 times just from 1990 to 2008. The widespread rediscovery of paganism in the United States coincides with a radically transformative change in Western civilization.

Many contend that atheistic rationalism is to blame for the crippling of Christian influence in the contemporary West. Although that development should not be neglected, the rise of postmodernism is also contributing to aggressive attacks on both established religion and atheistic rationalism.

Dogmatism, whether religious or rationalist, is fiercely criticized as arrogant and intolerant. However, instead of turning to nihilism, members of Gen Z are expanding their spirituality outside of conventional Western religions by incorporating neopaganism.

As Heather Greene reports, While interest in tarot and other forms of divination often corresponds to a complete rejection of traditional religion, that is not a given. Greene goes on to explain that a lot of Gen Z individuals continue to identify with a traditional faith, while looking beyond established structures for spiritual growth.

Despite its massive reach, #WitchTok should not be considered the cause of this cultural transition. It should instead be seen as the consequence. Gen Z is hungry for spirituality. Yet the spirituality they hunger for is one liberated from dogma, organization, authority, prescription, and constraint.

They want to harness spiritual power on their own terms, from their own self-chosen deities, and for their own self-chosen purposes. Neopaganism provides witchcraft as an answer to their wishes.

Our consumer society is quick to capitalize on these desires by providing an abundance of crystals, pendulums, tarot cards, hoodoo oil, and even witch starter kits. Most importantly for this trend, it provided TikTok, which is becoming the most effective virtual platform for converting young religiously frustrated individuals into liberated neopagan consumers.

Online witchcraft practitioners and the consumer sector are both paying close attention to this radical development. Parents should too.

Taylor J. Anderson received his B.A. in Christian Studies and an M.A. in History from Grand Canyon University. He currently works as a Grading Assistant for undergraduate classes at the same institution.

Read more:

How 'WitchTok' Lets Kids Dabble In The Occult From Their Phones - The Federalist

Now is the time to bring our conversation about whiteness and world-viewing into the present tense. The language and concept of worldviews are somewhat clear in many corners of evangelicalism today, but how does whiteness figure into these concepts? And to what degree could this possibly be a problem among the everyday faithful?

We may well acknowledge some of the historical problems (like Kuypers arguments around race and colony) without really thinking that the very form for thought established in those days could itself be a problem. Looking ahead, I acknowledge this is tough work, hard to do well in a short space, and requires good-faith effort from both writer and readers.

In that spirit, for those who have followed this series since the first installment, I want to reaffirm my prior provisos and commitments. This work is about understanding how Americas churches arrived in their current predicament, studded within Americas social divisions rather than offering a compelling alternative. And ultimately, I continue in hope that genuine faith in the living God can reorient our lives, as will come into view in the next few installments.

Below I will introduce the evangelical project since the 1940s when some younger folks set out to restore a biblical worldview (for political engagement, through institutions of higher education and other cultural fixtures) to the silent majority of Americans. And I will observe where the energy for public engagement among visible leaders and movement elites undeniably took on a particular character and color.

This protest provides an opening to understand how Christian world-viewing can go wrong in this case, how evangelical witness picks up its silent letters as whiteness.

Then, I will highlight the witness of one early Black evangelical leader who protested the public witness of mainstream evangelical leaders. This protest provides an opening to understand how Christian world-viewing can go wrong in this case, how evangelical witness picks up its silent letters as whiteness. Before we break, I will spell out some defining features of whiteness relative to world-viewing.

The worldview concept took shape within 1940s evangelicalism as part of a conscious attempt to end the cultural isolation and infighting that had characterized Christian fundamentalism for decades.

Fundamentalists had been searching for new ways to speak of faith in a society that was increasingly marked by Modernism. Framed in terms of materialism, rationalism and scientific naturalism, Modernism (capitalized to present as a competing worldview) seemed to threaten traditional religious values. The fundamentalist struggle against such threats sometimes spilled into public view, as in the Scopes Trial that took place in Tennessee in 1925.

Exacerbated by a sense of alienation from the wider culture, Christian fundamentalism was marked by divisive infighting about theological and moral minutiae. The rhetoric ran hot, and friendly fire abounded.

But seeing threats like fascism and Communism abroad and interpreting them as the fruition of godless worldviews, some younger fundamentalists hoped to stop their ilk from eating each other alive while the world burned down around them. Early spokesman and pastor-theologian Harold John Ockenga imagined a progressive Fundamentalism with a social message.

While recognizing the need to continue working out the theological details, the younger group seemed to believe the particulars of a worldview framing social life together would be easier to agree upon even commonsensical among the unvoiced multitudes (Ockengas words in 1942) of evangelicals. They spoke of the guileless, organic unity of biblical Christians and aimed to promote a common sense of public responsibility under the standard of a new evangelical worldview.

As historian Molly Worthen puts it, The rise of Nazism prodded some Westerners to realize that the conflict required not only manpower and matriel but a coherent intellectual front as well. Here is another way we might understand world-viewing as a kind of impulse. The first was an intuition about race and virtue; the second is a somewhat reflexive, involuntary response to ideological threats.

Dreaming of the possibilities for a National Association of Evangelicals, Ockenga called those who maintained their deep roots in orthodoxy to branch out and meet societys greatest needs. Overall, the strategy would depend on concerted leadership from the brain trust of the evangelicals dispersed in various organelles throughout society media outlets, an organization for colleges and universities, the schools themselves, a clearinghouse for missionary work, organized political lobbies, and more. This placement could facilitate the development and broad dissemination of their worldview over the long haul.

However much the emerging plan was about getting active, Ockenga located the hope of genuine social change in individuals prepared to do the rethinking and the restating of the fundamental thesis and principles of a Western Culture. There must be today men who have the time and the energy and the inclination and the ability and the support to be able to redefine Christian thinking and to fling it forth into the faces of these unbelievers everywhere. Ockenga served as the founding president of not only the NAE but also Fuller Theological Seminary.

As early new evangelical leaders eagerly planned a revival of the evangelical worldview a notion often styled more simplistically and more presumptuously as the biblical worldview they left unnamed a number of other salient details they shared in common.

The genuine like-mindedness of many leaders of this movement and more than a few enthusiastic early supporters extended invisibly (to them) beyond any official theological statements into other commonalities like race and political ideology in a still-segregated United States, but also gender and sexuality among others. They were evangelicals indisputably, but they were also straight, white, affluent, male Protestants (to suggest a 21st-century spin on the old WASP acronym) with an affinity for a particular wing of the Republic party.

So, this relatively small number of folks did share a history and a set of convictions sufficient to envision and work toward common goals. Yet as they drummed up support and stepped into the limelight, they named only their cherished religious identity as the essential difference between them and the various threats they perceived.

For those following this series, it should be relatively easy to see how this appeal to the Bible as the source and framework for their worldview turned out to be primarily a rhetorical figment. The new evangelicals clearly supplied extrabiblical ideas to fill out their worldview not unlike Kuyper weaving his racial hierarchy and support of colonialism into the biblical narrative.

To start rather simply, Ockenga cast a classic Christian nationalist vision, revising Americas golden age as driven by evangelical influence. Filling out the principles of a biblical worldview, he described Christianity as one bank of the river Capitalism, with democracy as the other bank. Assessing the threats to American society, Ockenga worried about the erosion of Christianity on the one side and the frenetic overcompensation of the government on the other.

With an eye toward the question of race in this history, we also might note the tendency of folks in the new evangelical circle to favor voluntary segregation and otherwise slowing down social efforts moving toward integration (not least the possibility of intermarriage). Ockenga himself, at the 1957 NAE gathering, proclaimed, There is nothing biblically, nothing morally, nothing legally against (integration), but it is not wise, that is all, for expediencys sake because it is selfish.

There is nothing biblically, nothing morally, nothing legally against (integration), but it is not wise, that is all, for expediencys sake because it is selfish.

Many comments like this and public arguments around activism and policy toward the goals of socially conservative whites could extend this point further. (See my book for more receipts.) Then as now, white evangelicals tended to offer personal-spiritual solutions to racism and to deny the very possibility of structural or institutional problems.

Rather than moving through too many specific examples here, I want primarily to call attention to what little wonder we should have at the lack of ongoing conversation between the new evangelicals and Black evangelicals. The power dynamics generated by the formers unvoiced identities along with the more overtly exclusive aspects of their movement meant racially diverse others kept their distance from the emerging evangelical establishment. This has continued to be true even among those who would subscribe to the NAE statement of faith or otherwise connect with the primitive lexis of the evangel.

But the folks out front were organizing world-viewers against threats felt along very specific lines. And, for purely historical reasons that became ensconced in biblical references, their anxieties about the direction of American culture simply did not include movement toward racial reconciliation or much by way of advocacy for civil rights.

To look at one specific instance, as protests grew during the long filibuster of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Ockenga chided Northern whites involved in demonstrations in St. Augustine, Fla., as doing more harm than good. He argued: The whole situation is rapidly deteriorating. If we break the law by forcing the situation, we are going to encourage the extremist groups. We ought to be careful what we do.

Evangelicals, as identified in terms of key beliefs and practices or historical connections with earlier Pietistic movements, always have been more diverse than the white, mostly northern elites who led the new charge starting in the 1940s.

Making this statement about evangelical elites in 2021 is somewhat humorous. Recent concerns around this subject have tended to underscore the disconnect between visible, relatively progressive scholars and rank-and-file evangelicals. At issue is the ongoing fallout around the supermajority of white evangelicals who voted for Donald Trump. Twice.

At this point in my argument, however, I am talking about the younger evangelicals who raised their voices in the days Richard Nixon was running for president. In those days, elites like Ockenga were stumping for Nixon. To the younger folks playing for the other team in 1972, Ockenga wrote, I for one cannot understand how any of you men of evangelical conviction can back Mr. McGovern. And more often than not since those days, white evangelicals issuing their political judgments as the fruits of the biblical worldview have favored the GOP.

Ockengas strategy here suggests one way the scope of the biblical worldview creeps outward even as it plays a regulative role. Gesturing toward the most basic set of shared convictions is useful to the visible and influential as they define and limit membership in the orthodox party. Underlying their use of the concept is the assumption that, if you start with the same biblical principles, and if you operate in good faith as a born-again believer, you should come to the same political conclusions. And if you do not, you will be defined out of the picture before you ever make it to the convening table.

Not coincidentally, Black American evangelicals are typically not self-identifying as such but rather identified by their adherence to, admittedly problematic, sets of beliefs and practices. And this demographic has tended to fill out their worldview and engage in politics under different assumptions about how the vision should cash out in public.

Historian Mark Noll has noted, The very high level of evangelical support for Donald Trump is like nothing seen in Americas recent religious-political history except for the even higher percentage that since the 1960s Democrats have received from Bible-believing, born-again African Americans.

Considered the father of Black evangelicalism, Bill Pannell found his footing in a space that others (both Black and white) struggled even to see. Describing the mostly white audiences from his days as an itinerant evangelist, he has said, Some were reluctant to take me seriously because I was a Black person, but they felt obliged because I sounded just like them, believed as they did, was evangelical as they were. Meanwhile, Pannell found members of major Black church denominations to be uncomfortable with the term evangelical because they see it as a denotation of white culture.

Throughout his early writings, Pannell described how he began to discover within his own patterns of thought signs that he had been raised to think whitely not least in his training at mostly white Fort Wayne Bible College. He said of himself and of other Black evangelicals he knew, From a cultural and theological perspective we were white men. The essentially white evangelical ghetto in which he lived and moved from his growing up years through Bible school fostered a particular identity politics that the communitys self-understanding could not even begin to articulate.

Pannell awakened to the power dynamics affecting evangelicalism after the 1963 bombing of 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham that killed four young Black girls. He confessed that he was initially critical of the Civil Rights Movement but came to see the disparity between the good news preached by predominantly white revivalists and the social scene that they were inept at addressing. In those days, Pannells view of Jesus and his work on the Cross was radicalized (vis--vis other evangelicals) as he began to see its parallels in the experience of Black persons in America.

Importantly, Pannell identified the racial overlays on the American values of democracy and free enterprise. As for democracy, he said, The problem is that ones internal commitment to democracy has little to do with ones treatment in this democracy. When you are judged by your color before you can open your mouth, the republic has become a pigmentocracy.

Speaking of the freedom advocated by American patriots, he named its limited or parochial application in the United States. Pannell boldly charged, The mentality that produced and prospered the system of slavery is still with us. Today, we dont own slaves, we rent them, and for the non-white this system of enterprise is anything but free.

As he weighed the feedback he received from his conservative white evangelical frenemies, Pannell called out the tendency toward a certain set of politics. He mused, My white brother taught me to sing Take the World but Give Me Jesus. I took Jesus. He took the world and then voted right wing to ensure his property rights.

Pannell learned to see that too many evangelicals were perpetuating the myth of white supremacy and associating Christianity with American patriotism (its called nationalism when we criticize its manifestation in Africa), free enterprise, and the Republican party.

Given his training, Pannell could speak as an insider to white American evangelicalism. Pannells message was primarily the gospel itself. But he came also to the conclusion that he needed to confront socially conservative white evangelicals. The gospel that claimed all their lives equally did not, as the basis of an all-encompassing worldview, lead to the policies the white folks were advocating.

While they claimed to represent all biblical Christians, white evangelical elites simply could not do that in good faith.

While they claimed to represent all biblical Christians, white evangelical elites simply could not do that in good faith. After all, they were not really in conversation with a diversity of biblical Christians. And this put them at risk for baptizing commitments that came to them in other ways and, in effect, honkifying the gospel.

At this point, I can start speaking more directly to what whiteness is and how it gets bound up in the fabric of churches and parachurch organizations like schools and associations. And we can unpack Pannells comment about learning to think whitely in his Bible college education and maybe answer his plea for the courage and humility to confront fellow believers honestly about attitudes that divide them.

Here some actual Critical Race Theory might help us. Learning from the work of folks like Wendy Leo Moore, we might see the parallels between (a) how race comes to determine outcomes within the legal system and to suffuse the culture of law schools and (b) how whiteness lingers within the institutional cultures of churches and parachurch organizations, especially those that began as whites-only institutions.

Speaking in the context of American law, Moore describes how, once the norms and practices were generated in the absence of diverse actors, the experts could assert the law is a neutral and impartial body of doctrine unconnected to power relations. I, for one, sense a strong resonance between this description and Ockengas gesture toward the authority of the Bible alone uninterpreted by traditions as a virtue of evangelical faith.

But if you want to know why whiteness is in the air for so many institutions, Moore argues, attention must also be paid to the historical racial exclusion that provided the context for the uncontested construction of white institutional space. Advantages are structured into institutions by way of founding representation and are invisible from the start because of the regulating influence of founders and early adopters. They set in motion a social machine that will invariably strive to maintain homeostasis, to conserve itself amid the push and pull of latecomers.

And while structures may formally open to, or even invite, a diversity of faces, the prevailing norms and practices came into being without the input of diverse voices. Under these conditions, institutions tend to attract and, in some ways, to select for new folks who look different but think the same. This phenomenon is known as managed diversity.

The formal reality that churches are voluntary associations serves to mask these dynamics within any given institution, not least many churches intentionally branding themselves as multiracial or multiethnic in culture. (More on this later in the series.)

It is axiomatic that institutions struggle to change and prefer to conserve energy if possible, appearing to change more so than really changing. Certainly, there is more integration now than before, even less intentional racism, and often a move toward colorblindness (which carries its own trouble, but that is a conversation for another day). However, these kinds of moves tend not to be accompanied by deep analysis or change around the guiding norms or basic principles that continue to sit underneath the institutions.

This axiom is true even on the evolving, progressive side, where we can see the lingering effects of white institutional space. In 2018, students at Fuller Theological Seminary interrupted graduation events to protest the curriculums pervasive white cultural frame. (This at a school with centers dedicated to Black church studies and Asian American theology and ministry as well as a Centro Latino!) We must learn to wrestle more honestly with the many realities (daresay, traditions) within which we learn to interpret the Bible.

From the outset, what I mean by whiteness is not exactly about ethnicity or specifically about skin color, although that has been a clear marker over the last 400 or so years. As we shift toward naming something like a way of seeing the world, we call it whiteness because some of its most obvious features coemerged in the colonial moment with modern racial hierarchies. And we have the testimony of Black voices throughout this history (like W.E.B. Du Bois, but also Bill Pannell) naming the reality and their exclusion from it.

As I say in my book, whiteness might be understood through a culinary metaphor as a kind of blandness, a basicness that is home to the dopamine-releasing fats and sugars our bodies crave. More literally, whiteness is the unquestioned aptitude to participate in the norming group in any given room, the privilege of not questioning whether one really can or ought to try ordering, grasping, or even viewing the whole world.

Whiteness is the easy, unquestioned, often invisible extension of ones own ideas into the world as the norm in a world where some folks are routinely unseen, oppressed and otherwise left out of the conversations that generate public definitions (including what it means to be evangelical).

Whiteness tends to manifest as just feeling right, feeling like a well-meaning person.

Without adequate reflection on our many identities, social power is routinely transfigured into theopolitical power. Put bluntly, persons and groups that already enjoy social power (for example, heterosexual white American evangelical men) effortlessly become authorities on Jesus identity, Gods will and so on. As such, whiteness tends to manifest as just feeling right, feeling like a well-meaning person (for example, good intentions even if a sinner), and so on.

Worldview conceptuality did, in fact, take root in the elite evangelical circles, but it clearly has taken on a life of its own and a mass appeal. And this observation makes the everyday use of the concept and the common impulse to engage in this style of thinking fair subjects for analysis.

Not everyone enjoys the special powers that come with being a part of the elite group of world-changers who might first come to mind. But as a spiritual posture, whiteness can be performed by anyone who has a social media profile, who argues at a table with their family members, who casts a vote in this or that election. And, quite clearly, this also means that thinking whitely in the way I am criticizing is not limited to folks who could be identified racially as white.

Anyone can gesture toward the biblical worldview in place of a detailed argument for their judgment on an issue. And if the folks who have done the most work to develop this theory have clear blind spots, others who deploy it are bound to exhibit some sort of family resemblance.

What I am concerned about under the heading of whiteness is not limited to evangelicals or even to the specific language of the biblical worldview. The problems can be manifest in the way Southern Baptists (among others) throw around the adjective gospel to describe their perspective on some issue. For others, kingdom (of God) or even the narrative language of the Great Story can tend the same direction.

In any case, within the fold (whichever fold), these underspecified concepts are invested with lots of energy and become serviceable to address the current anxieties of whoever has the mic. The folks on stage can gesture toward these relatively empty signifiers to justify their positions and consolidate support without having to make much of an argument for the folks who already agree.

The continuous, silent creeping of the biblical worldview to cover and encompass more terrain in the world is part of its trouble.

The continuous, silent creeping of the biblical worldview to cover and encompass more terrain in the world is part of its trouble. Particularly because it is so often unnamed, this activity of the mind covers more conviction sets and loyalty bases than most folks care to admit let alone announce. What was clear to Pannell but invisible to many mainstream white leaders was this: the growing number of neo-evangelical organelles maintained and articulated a worldview that was both more and less than biblical.

If we can, even for a moment, honestly assess ourselves, or maybe it is safer to start with powerful expositors like the case studies in my book, then we must see how the form of a world-view its all-seeing, all-ordering tendency drives human beings to narrate whatever they think they know, however grizzly it may be, as the stuff of divine revelation. And in so doing, one can enjoy the support of likeminded others and claim the moral high ground without making much of an argument and swatting away Christological scrutiny.

At the same time, the world-viewing impulse drives us to see ourselves through the ideals of the worldview, which have tended to romanticize our minds in terms of unified, rational thought structures. Many of us have been trained to think of ourselves as singular individuals who freely associate with others as we please and engage the world through such frameworks or create problems as we allow the emotions to leach into our thinking. To this shortcoming of worldview theory as well as some hopeful alternative ideas for understanding ourselves, we will turn next.

This is the third in a series of articles introducing the hypothesis of the authors new book, Worldview Theory, Whiteness, and the Future of Evangelical Faith.

Jacob Alan Cook is a postdoctoral fellow at Wake Forest University School of Divinity. He is the author of Worldview Theory, Whiteness, and the Future of Evangelical Faith as well as chapters on Christian identity, peacemaking and ecological theology. He earned a Ph.D. from Fuller Theological Seminary.

Related articles in this series:

What if your Christian worldview is based upon some sinful ideas?

A short history of the roots of colonialism, racism and whiteness in Christian worldview

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Putting the white in witness since the 1940s Baptist News Global - Baptist News Global

The deaths of nine young people at the Astroworld festival have sparked justified outrage over the management of the event, but also a new wave of online conspiracy.

TikTok, the social media home of Gen Z, is awash with chatter that the tragic festivals deaths were the result of an insidious Satanic ritual, where young lives were sacrificed for a villainous elite.

TikTok videos attached to the phrases astroworld illuminati and astroworld satanic have grown following the event, with young people speculating about imagery used at the festival and accusing Travis Scott and festival organizers as being part of a demonic cult. This Gen Z version of satanic conspiracy has much in common with its more Boomer-equivalent, QAnon, in that a sinful elite are orchestrating tragedy to advance their own wealth and power.

Satanic panic, particularly in the United States, is nothing new. The1980s saw a wave of conspiracy theories related to so-called satanic ritual abuse, with recovered memories of human sacrifices and occult rituals for a satanic elite. Most academic commentary on satanic conspiracies treat the phenomena like any other form of misinformation readily spread through mass media, simply the natural result of unregulated social media networks and Internet bubbles.

However, theres a deeper existential longing underpinning the allure of satanic conspiracy thats worthy of exploration. One connected to our current age of, as sociologist Max Weber put it, disenchantment. We live in highly rationalized times, where spirituality has lost its cogency and a mutually dependent ethos of utilitarianism and productivity cage our inner experience.

As philosopher Byung-Chul Han has noted, were living in the time of the achievement-subjecta kind of neurotic self-maximizing agent whose never-ending goal is to construct the perfect self-image. This state of mind isnt voluntary, its an inevitable result of a glut of productivist propaganda telling us to be healthy, morally righteous and influential.

The early-20th century social theorist (and pornographer) Georges Bataille is probably the most suitable intellectual for understanding the appeal of dark fantasy in our age of over-thinking. For Bataille, civilization is the result of a tension between two social contradictory impulses: the homogenous and the heterogenous. The homogenous describes social impulses that provide structure: production, rationality, specialization, organization, conservation, predictability and preservation. These are the utilitarian collective goals of society in action, of which each citizen is one part of the whole.

The heterogenous refers to all that cant be rationalized and assimilated into the homogenous: violence, criminality, insanity, perversion, disorder, rowdiness, intoxicationall of which provide potential avenues for experiences of the sacred.

Our current age is one of over-homogeneity, leading to a longing for anti-social symbolism to meet our desires for the heterogenous and the sacred.

Underlying the apparent self-seriousness of both TikTok and QAnon conspiracy theorists is the intense enjoyment of occupying a world of the grotesque, macabre and inhuman.

You can see this in the oddly specific imagery used.

One TikTok conspiracy theorist jaybaskinfun smash cuts surrealist art and horror imagery to the ominous sounds of Mozarts Lacrimosaa pleasurable montage of sacred, heterogenous symbols. For QAnon conspiracy theorists, we have a similarly creative set of images: politicians ritually torturing children and extracting their adrenochrometheir suffering in tangible biochemical formto enact their global agenda.

Even in the days of satanic ritual abuse hysteria, the imagery put forward about the satanic eliteimpregnating children only to have the child mothers eat their newborns soon after to birthreflected a very creative kind of dark fantasy.

It seems evident that the motivations of satanic conspiracy theorists arent truth-telling or political activism, but a kind of perverse enjoyment in wicked spectacle. Their behavior is similar to fans of the True Crime genre who, no matter how many times they protest their earnest intellectual interest in criminal psychology, are motivated by a perverse enjoyment in grisly details.

In this way the motivations of conspiracy theorists are perfectly sane: conspiracy allows some pleasurable relief from an excess of rationalism and self-marketing. However, there are better ways to engage in our darker impulses.

Bataille described various methods for engaging in heterogenous pleasures while avoiding the destruction of others or oneself. In particular he praised:

Laughter, tears, poetry, tragedy and comedyand more generally, every art form involving tragic, comic, or poetic aspectsplay, anger, intoxication, ecstasy, dance, music, combat, the horror of death, the magic of childhood, the sacredof which sacrifice is the most intense aspectthe divine and the diabolical, eroticism beauty crime, cruelty, fear, disgust.

This provides some hope that the young people taken in by satanic conspiracies can channel this creative energy away from the exploitation of real-life tragedy into a fulfilling engagement with transgressive art and fantasy.

Link:

The Allure of Satanic Conspiracy - Splice Today

Like a hidden world, The Joy of Sculpture is found tucked away within Nottingham Trent Universitys Bonington building, one of utilitarian tiled flooring, raw concrete and exposed services. Space literally and figuratively expands as you enter the gallery. The main gallery has a double height ceiling, its spacious and airy and clearly contrasts the more enclosed corridors before you enter the exhibition. As you walk into the gallery, an essential component of Andrew Logans work becomes clear a desire to counteract the supposed coldness of everyday life. Logans work brings a playful excess to the space, which consumes the senses as absurdism takes over from the rationalism of the Bonington building. Curated by Joshua Lockwood-Moran, the exhibition pulls together fifty years of work from one of Britains most iconic twentieth century artists. Andrew Logan began sculpting in 1968, though he is mostly recognised for his jewellery and spoof beauty pageant, Alternative Miss World. Bonington Vitrines, a distinct space accessible before you enter the main exhibition, is dedicated to archival material from Alternative Miss World; selected jewellery courtesy of Logans family and friends is displayed within the main exhibition. A key part to Logans art is the artist himself. Logan is displayed on the poster of the show. He is in the photographs displayed within the main exhibition, and all over the archival material of Alternative Miss World. In some way, the show seems to assert the idea that Logan himself can be as much the art as the pieces he creates. Before you enter the main space there is an archival video of Logan guiding us around his The Glasshouse Studio in London. In the video he speaks of a totality with his artistic creation; there is no beginning, no end, a sensibility that is felt deep within the exhibition. This is not only true in the recurring presence of Logans self-image, but through the fact the walls of the gallery space have been painted in the style of a cartoon sky with cotton candy clouds. This idea comes from 1967 photographs of Logans bedroom on Denmark Street in Oxford, which are also on display in the exhibition. The exhibit extends further than the white cube; entering it is like entering Logans subconscious.

Stepping into the main gallery space you are immediately confronted by the gigantic gold wheat crops of Goldfield, towering sculptures constructed from aluminium, steel, resin, glass, glitter and straw. There is a sense of surreal theatricality, as if the gallery has been transformed into a theme park. Lockwood-Moran does a good job utilising this to divide the space and create an accessible route through the exhibition. Once you exit Goldfield you begin to explore a collection of wholly different objects. The individual pieces to some extent bleed into one. Homage to the New Wave, in particular, is placed in a space where it is neither here nor there. Understandably, such a space is difficult to divide up meaningfully. There is certainly no outright issue here, simply that the show itself does not make the argument to individually consider each piece.The exhibitions strength, though, is its transformative quality, which is intertwined with Logans process. Logans work takes detritus and found objects and places them into the gallery setting. With every piece on display there is an otherworldly, surreal and mystical quality. For example, The Arum Lily Record Player is a record player shaped like giant lilies, with a reflective mosaic base using scraps of glass. Each day the exhibition invigilator chooses a record to play from Logans personal collection, creating a piece that is so dreamlike it feels almost alien. With this auditory component, Logan introduces another element to the sensory experience of the exhibition. There is a real optimism in Logans approach in trying to find something more, something beautiful, within the everyday. On display for the first time is a four metre high glass portrait of artist Duggie Fields titled, simply, Duggie. Constructed from wood, glass, glitter and resin, Duggie stands with open outstretched arms, the portrait yearning to pull the viewer in. Often when we study art closely we can begin to see more and more of ourselves in it; moving closer to Logans mirror portraits, literally all you see is yourself.Reassessing Logan today, there are similarities to social media influencers. His art and practise is so much about himself, as already explored, everywhere you look his self-image is present. Like an influencer, there is perhaps an element of performance in the way he accentuates and heightens his personality, which is particularly apparent in the introductory video outside the exhibition doors. Perhaps a lasting outcome of the exhibition should be considering Logans art in relation to todays shallow personality obsession. And asking questions like when does art become egotistical, if ever? However, what can be said with more certainty is that, in every way, The Joy of Sculpture is an all-encompassing exhibition. Ultimately what it provides is a complete sense of the artist, both in terms of his art and him as an individual.

Andrew Logan: The Joy of Sculpture is currently on view at Bonington Gallery until Saturday 11 December

boningtongallery.co.uk

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Exhibition Review: The Joy of Sculpture at Bonington Gallery - LeftLion

During his maiden visit to the United States in 1949, Nehru was idolised by Hollywood directors and movie stars and wooed by Americas big business. Yet he did not let the might of Americas wealth and her charm affect him.

Dom Moraes, in his biography of Indira Gandhi recalled hearing an anecdotal account. On a visit to New York, Nehru was the guest of honour at a lunch in Wall Street where several of the richest men in America were present. Just think, Mr Prime Minister, said his host, at this very moment you are lunching with men worth 40 billion dollars.

It was apparently difficult for his aides to persuade Nehru not to throw down his napkin and walk out! Dom mentioned this story to Indira and asked if she had been there and if the story was apocryphal or true. She laughed a little but did not answer directly. Well, the Americans irritated my father. But that was because of his British education. (Dom Moraes, Indira Gandhi, pages 133-134)

In an article on Indira Gandhi after her death, Norman Cousins, titled, India: Carrying on the Nehru tradition, wrote, After Nehrus death, there was deterioration on the home front. The country needed a rallying centre Jawaharlal Nehru had inherited the mantle of Mahatma Gandhi; now it was necessary to pass along the mantle and the full symbolic power of the Nehru name in providing continuity for the total society. Indira possessed this symbolism. (The Christian Science Monitor, November 14, 1984).

Similar views were echoed by V.S. Naipaul, mingling praise for both Nehru and Indira, in an article written for The Daily Mail, which was also reprinted by the New York Times on 3rd November 1984, three days after Indiras death. The Nobel Laureate wrote: Indira gave India stability; without her, that ceases to exist. The country has grown intellectually and industrially, and for a long time there has been a balance between rationalism, the life of the mind and the pull of barbarism.

India has been very lucky in the Nehru family, he further wrote, Nehru was unique in recent world history: a colonial protest figure, a folk hero who did not appeal to fanaticism but was a reasonable, reasoning man. A man committed to science, religious tolerance, the rule of law and the rights of man. Indira Gandhi his daughter carried on this way of looking at things.

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Those who still question the enduring legacy of the Nehru-Gandhi family should read VS Naipaul - National Herald

Protestors scale a wall of the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021.JASON ANDREW/The New York Times News Service

Its often said that we are living in a post-truth era. But if the pandemic has taught us anything it is that society cannot function without at least some shared truths. A number of writers and thinkers are now tackling this topic, arguing in favour of a shared reality. Here, a crop of new titles advocates for liberalism, freedom of expression, rationalism, science and the collective making of meaning.

The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth, Jonathan Rauch (Brookings Institution Press, 280 pages)

In this thoughtful defence of liberalism, Atlantic writer and gay rights advocate Jonathan Rauch champions what he calls the constitution of knowledge, or the institutions of government, law, journalism and academia that form a reality-based community adhering to rules and norms and striving for objectivity. Its a system that he argues is now under threat from a fire hose of falsehoods on the right and cancel culture on the left, resulting in a crisis of democracy. Even so, Rauch remains optimistic, making this timely and compelling book a hopeful one, too.

The Quick Fix: Why Fad Psychology Cant Cure Our Social Ills, Jesse Singal (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 352 pages)

In a world of viral TED Talks and blockbuster pop psychology books, everyone and their aunt is busy selling simple solutions to the worlds most complex problems. Back in 2014, it became Jesse Singals job to review this tsunami of behavioural science offerings, as editor of Science of Us, New York magazines new online social science platform. Thanks to a stats-heavy masters at Princeton and a solidly skeptical disposition, he was in a decent position to parse good research from bad. What I didnt anticipate was the fire hose of overhyped findings that would fill my e-mail inbox daily, the host of the popular Blocked and Reported podcast writes. Starting with the implicit association test, Singal began taking a closer look at the fields sacred cows, and the result is this well-researched, engaging and often funny debut.

Languages of Truth: Essays 2003-2020, Salman Rushdie (Random House, 368 pages)

This collection of essays and speeches, old and new, spans almost two decades and serves as a sort of extended meditation on the collective making of meaning. No subject is off limits for the Booker Prize-winning author, who muses on a range of topics, from his friendship with Carrie Fisher and his early days as a writer travelling India, to how he quit smoking and his recent bout of COVID-19. And, of course, truth, with Rushdie noting that reality itself seems everywhere under attack. The author is at his most moving, however, when he reflects on the profound dislocation of the 21st century. These are the four roots of the self: language, place, community, custom, he writes. But in our age, the great age of migration, many of us have at least one of these roots pulled up. We move away from the place we know, away from the community that knows us, to a place where the customs are different, and, perhaps, the most commonly spoken language is one we do not know, or if we speak it, we speak it badly and cannot express the subtleties of what we think and who we are. Migration is an existential act, stripping us of our defences, mercilessly exposing us to a world that understands us badly, if at all: as if the earth were stripped of its atmosphere and the sun were to bear down upon it in all its pitiless force.

Dangerous Ideas: A Brief History of Censorship in the West, from the Ancients to Fake News, Eric Berkowitz (Beacon Press, 320 pages)

Freedom of speech has fallen out of favour, now frequently associated with right-wing talking points. But here, in this nuanced outing, California human rights lawyer Eric Berkowitz gives the subject the consideration its due. He traces the history of attacks on free speech and explores why societies censor dissenting ideas. The compulsion to silence others is as old as the urge to speak, because speech words, images, expression itself exerts power, Berkowitz writes. Even in countries where free expression is cherished, we often forget that forgoing censorship requires the embrace of discord as a fair price for the general good. Tolerance is risky. Suppression, on the other hand, is logical and, across history, it has been the norm.

Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters, Steven Pinker (Viking, 432 pages)

Canadian Steven Pinkers latest is a thought-provoking and energetic scribe on why rational thinking is crucial for the progression of civilization. In an era blessed with unprecedented resources for reasoning, the public sphere is infested with fake news, quack cures, conspiracy theories and post-truth rhetoric, the Harvard psychology professor opens. How can we make sense of making sense and its opposite? The question is urgent. In the third decade of the third millennium, we face deadly threats to our health, our democracy and the livability of our planet.

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Five new titles advocate for truth and rationalism - The Globe and Mail

Good evening, lets start with todays top stories:

The dangerous standoff at the frigid border of Poland and Belarus continued Thursday, with about 3,000 migrants still trapped between military forces of the two countries.

Countries bordering Belarus warned the crisis on the European Unions eastern borders could escalate into a military confrontation while Ukraine said it would deploy thousands more troops to reinforce its frontier. Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia said Belarus posed serious threats to European security by deliberately escalating its hybrid attack using migrants to retaliate for EU sanctions.

This increases the possibility of provocations and serious incidents that could also spill over into the military domain, a joint statement by the countries defence ministers said.

Migrants stranded inside Belarus threw rocks and branches at Polish border guards and used logs to try to break down a razor wire fence overnight in new attempts to force their way into the EU, the authorities in Warsaw said.

The EU says Minsk is encouraging thousands of migrants fleeing war-torn parts of the world to try to cross its borders and may impose new sanctions on Belarus and airlines ferrying the migrants as soon as Monday.

This is the daily Evening Update newsletter. If youre reading this on the web, or it was sent to you as a forward, you can sign up for Evening Update and more than 20 more Globe newsletters here. If you like what you see, please share it with your friends.

Suspicious package disrupts Remembrance Day ceremony in Ottawa

Canadian Forces members salute after placing their poppies on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the National War Memorial following the National Remembrance Day ceremony in Ottawa.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press

Large crowds returned to the National War Memorial today in Ottawa as the country marked Remembrance Day. Last year, the ceremony was held without crowds due to concerns about COVID-19.

The traditional Remembrance Day routine was disrupted slightly this morning after a suspicious package was discovered in the vicinity of the National War Memorial, according to the RCMPs National Division.

Both Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Governor-General Mary Simon, who is also the Commander-in-Chief of Canada, arrived behind the Royal Canadian Legions schedule. The Prime Minister is usually scheduled to arrive at about 10:45 a.m. ET, but he instead arrived at the Cenotaph alongside his wife at about 11:00 a.m. ET. Ms. Simons arrival took place after that.

A spokesperson for Veterans Affairs Minister Lawrence MacAulay said in a statement that ahead of the Remembrance Day ceremony today in Ottawa, a security issue was identified and quickly resolved, adding that the ceremony continued after a brief delay.

In pictures:

Biden and Xi expected to hold virtual summit on Monday

The leaders of the United States and China are expected to meet virtually on Monday amid continuing tensions over trade, human rights and military activities.

U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping have been sparring on issues from the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic to Chinas expanding nuclear arsenal. U.S. officials believe direct engagement with Xi is the best way to prevent a direct conflict between the two countries.

One media report suggested Xi is likely to invite Biden to attend the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, but that could put the U.S President in a tough spot as he presses China on human rights. Biden and Xi last spoke on Sept. 9, a 90-minute conversation that a senior U.S. official said focused on economic issues, climate change and COVID-19.

Also:

ALSO ON OUR RADAR

Who will pay tops the COP26 agenda as climate talks approach a conclusion: Approaching the final day of the two-week COP26 UN climate summit, delegations intensified efforts to strike a deal to tame global warming, with the focus on finding cash to help developing nations cope with its worst effects.

Judge dismisses Maxime Berniers defamation case against Warren Kinsella over Project Cactus campaign: An Ontario Superior Court judge has ruled the Peoples Party of Canada leader failed to prove that his defamation concerns outweighed the importance of protecting free speech in the political realm. The defence of Mr. Kinsella, a political columnist and former Liberal strategist, relied on Ontarios anti-SLAPP legislation, which is aimed at discouraging the use of a strategic lawsuit against public participation in which libel cases are used to chill critics from speaking out about public policy matters.

Archeological dig in Newfoundland unearths what could be Canadas oldest English coin: William Gilbert, head archaeologist and supervisor at the Cupids Cove Plantation Provincial Historic Site, says the coin found in September was minted some time between 1493 and 1499. Known as a Henry VII half groat, or twopenny piece, the nickel-sized coin was minted in Canterbury, England.

Cyberattack hobbling Newfoundland and Labradors health care network is likely ongoing, expert says: David Masson of U.K. firm Darktrace says its quite telling that Health Minister John Haggie told reporters Tuesday that those involved in the cyberattack are watching, literally, what were doing, and Masson said that Haggies comments suggest the cyberattack found to have hit the provinces IT network on Oct. 30 is ongoing.

MARKET WATCH

Canadas main stock index rebounded from a midweek breather to resume its record climb as the materials sector got a boost from investors seeking safety from inflation.

The S&P/TSX composite index closed up 120.05 points to 21,581.98 after hitting a record intraday high. In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was down 158.71 points at 35,921.23. The S&P 500 index was up 2.56 points at 4,649.27, while the Nasdaq composite was up 81.57 points at 15,704.28.

The Canadian dollar traded for 79.46 cents US compared with 80.31 cents US on Wednesday.

Got a news tip that youd like us to look into? E-mail us at tips@globeandmail.com. Need to share documents securely? Reach out via SecureDrop.

TALKING POINTS

Canadians are waking up to the reality of racism. Now is the time for leaders to act

We know from our research that Canadians want to celebrate their country for its multiculturalism and inclusiveness, but there is an expanding dissonance between this vision and the growing recognition of racial inequality and injustice in society. Michael Adams and Marva Wisdom

Would you recognize an unspoken cry for help?

Recognizing the red flags is only the first step. The real work comes next, and its not surprising that people feel confused or uneasy about how theyre supposed to respond if they suspect that harm is taking place. One thing you can do is learn how to be an effective bystander, like the motorist on that road in Kentucky. Elizabeth Renzetti

LIVING BETTER

Five new books advocate for truth and rationalism

A number of writers and thinkers have begun to tackle what has often been described as our post-truth era. The pandemic has amplified the idea, while also teaching us that society cannot function without at least some shared truths.

Here, Tara Henley offers five new titles which advocates for liberalism, freedom of expression, rationalism, and science.

TODAYS LONG READ

Newfoundland police face crisis after sex-assault conviction against on-duty officer

On a cold night in January, 2015, Royal Newfoundland Constabulary officer Kelsey Muise discovered a distraught woman while on patrol in St. Johns. The story told to officer Muise would take more than six years and three trials to prove and would rock Newfoundland and Labradors provincial police force, the oldest law-enforcement agency in North America.

Jane Doe, a then-21-year-old community-college student whose real name is protected by a publication ban, said shed been raped by an on-duty RNC officer a month earlier. That officer, Constable Doug Snelgrove, assaulted her in her own apartment, she said, after he offered her a ride home from a bar.

Constable Snelgroves conviction in May, 2021, unleashed a flood of new complaints from other Newfoundland women who said Ms. Does story wasnt an isolated incident.

Ms. Does stunning case is forcing changes to policing in her province, and has created a crisis around the future of the RNC, a 400-officer organization with roots dating back to 1729 that has long been a celebrated part of Newfoundland history.

Read Greg Mercers full story here.

Evening Update is presented by Rob Gilroy. If youd like to receive this newsletter by e-mail every weekday evening, go here to sign up. If you have any feedback, send us a note.

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Evening Update: Fears of military clash rise as migrant crisis on Poland-Belarus border continues - The Globe and Mail

Epistemological philosophy advanced by Karl Popper

Critical rationalism is an epistemological philosophy advanced by Karl Popper on the basis that, if a statement cannot be logically deduced (from what is known), it might nevertheless be possible to logically falsify it. Following Hume, Popper rejected any inductive logic that is ampliative, i.e., any logic that can provide more knowledge than deductive logic. So, the idea is that, if we cannot get it logically, we should at the least try to logically falsify it, which led Popper to his falsifiability criterion. Popper wrote about critical rationalism in many works, including: The Logic of Scientific Discovery(1934/1959),[1] The Open Society and its Enemies(1945),[2] Conjectures and Refutations(1963),[3] Unended Quest(1976),[4] and The Myth of the Framework(1994).[5]

Critical rationalists hold that scientific theories and any other claims to knowledge can and should be rationally criticized, and (if they have empirical content) can and should be subjected to tests which may falsify them. Thus claims to knowledge may be contrastingly and normatively evaluated. They are either falsifiable and thus empirical (in a very broad sense), or not falsifiable and thus non-empirical. Those claims to knowledge that are potentially falsifiable can then be admitted to the body of empirical science, and then further differentiated according to whether they are retained or are later actually falsified. If retained, further differentiation may be made on the basis of how much subjection to criticism they have received, how severe such criticism has been, and how probable the theory is, with the least probable theory that still withstands attempts to falsify it being the one to be preferred.[6] That it is the least probable theory that is to be preferred is one of the contrasting differences between critical rationalism and classical views on science, such as positivism, which holds that one should instead accept the most probable theory.[6] The least probable theory is preferred because it is the one with the highest information content and most open to future falsification.

Critical rationalism as a discourse positioned itself against what its proponents took to be epistemologically relativist philosophies, particularly post-modernist or sociological approaches to knowledge. Critical rationalism holds that knowledge is objective (in the sense of being embodied in various substrates and in the sense of not being reducible to what humans individually "know"), and also that truth is objective (exists independently of social mediation or individual perception, but is "really real").

However, this contrastive, critical approach to objective knowledge is quite different from more traditional views that also hold knowledge to be objective. (These include the classical rationalism of the Enlightenment, the verificationism of the logical positivists, or approaches to science based on induction, a supposed form of logical inference which critical rationalists reject, in line with David Hume.) For criticism is all that can be done when attempting to differentiate claims to knowledge, according to the critical rationalist. Reason is the organon of criticism, not of support; of tentative refutation, not of proof.

Supposed positive evidence (such as the provision of "good reasons" for a claim, or its having been "corroborated" by making successful predictions) does nothing to bolster, support, or prove a claim, belief, or theory.

In this sense, critical rationalism turns the normal understanding of a traditional rationalist, and a realist, on its head. Especially the view that a theory is better if it is less likely to be true is in direct opposition to the traditional positivistic view, which holds that one should seek theories that have a high probability.[6] Popper notes that this "may illustrate Schopenhauer's remark that the solution of a problem often first looks like a paradox and later like a truism". Even a highly unlikely theory that conflicts with a current observation (and is thus false, like "all swans are white") must be considered to be better than one which fits observations perfectly, but is highly probable (like "all swans have a color"). This insight is the crucial difference between naive falsificationism and critical rationalism. The lower probability theory is favoured by critical rationalism because the greater the informative content of a theory the lower will be its probability, for the more information a statement contains, the greater will be the number of ways in which it may turn out to be false. The rationale behind this is simply to make it as easy as possible to find out whether the theory is false so that it can be replaced by one that is closer to the truth. It is not meant as a concession to justificatory epistemology, like assuming a theory to be "justifiable" by asserting that it is highly unlikely and yet fits observation.

Critical rationalism rejects the classical position that knowledge is justified true belief; it instead holds the exact opposite: that, in general, knowledge is unjustified untrue unbelief.[7] It is unjustified because of the non-existence of good reasons. It is untrue, because it usually contains errors that sometimes remain unnoticed for hundreds of years. And it is not belief either, because scientific knowledge, or the knowledge needed to, for example, build an airplane, is contained in no single person's mind. It is only what is recorded in artifacts such as books.

William Warren Bartley compared critical rationalism to the very general philosophical approach to knowledge which he called justificationism, the view that scientific theories can be justified. Most justificationists do not know that they are justificationists. Justificationism is what Popper called a "subjectivist" view of truth, in which the question of whether some statement is true, is confused with the question of whether it can be justified (established, proven, verified, warranted, made well-founded, made reliable, grounded, supported, legitimated, based on evidence) in some way.

According to Bartley, some justificationists are positive about this mistake. They are nave rationalists, and thinking that their knowledge can indeed be founded, in principle, it may be deemed certain to some degree, and rational.

Other justificationists are negative about these mistakes. They are epistemological relativists, and think (rightly, according to the critical rationalist) that you cannot find knowledge, that there is no source of epistemological absolutism. But they conclude (wrongly, according to the critical rationalist) that there is therefore no rationality, and no objective distinction to be made between the true and the false.

By dissolving justificationism itself, the critical rationalist (a proponent of non-justificationism)[8] regards knowledge and rationality, reason and science, as neither foundational nor infallible, but nevertheless does not think we must therefore all be relativists. Knowledge and truth still exist, just not in the way we thought.

Non-justificationism is also accepted by David Miller and Karl Popper.[9] However, not all proponents of critical rationalism oppose justificationism; it is supported most prominently by John W. N. Watkins. In justificationism, criticism consists of trying to show that a claim cannot be reduced to the authority or criteria that it appeals to. That is, it regards the justification of a claim as primary, while the claim itself is secondary. By contrast, non-justificational criticism works towards attacking claims themselves.

The rejection of "positivist" approaches to knowledge occurs due to various pitfalls that positivism falls into.

1. The nave empiricism of induction was shown to be illogical by Hume. A thousand observations of some event A coinciding with some event B does not allow one to logically infer that all A events coincide with B events. According to the critical rationalist, if there is a sense in which humans accrue knowledge positively by experience, it is only by pivoting observations off existing conjectural theories pertinent to the observations, or off underlying cognitive schemas which unconsciously handle perceptions and use them to generate new theories. But these new theories advanced in response to perceived particulars are not logically "induced" from them. These new theories may be wrong. The myth that we induce theories from particulars is persistent because when we do this we are often successful, but this is due to the advanced state of our evolved tendencies. If we were really "inducting" theories from particulars, it would be inductively logical to claim that the sun sets because I get up in the morning, or that all buses must have drivers in them (if you've never seen an empty bus).

2. Popper and David Miller showed in 1983[10] that evidence supposed to partly support a hypothesis can, in fact, only be neutral to, or even be counter-supportive of the hypothesis.

3. Related to the point above, David Miller,[11] attacks the use of "good reasons" in general (including evidence supposed to support the excess content of a hypothesis). He argues that good reasons are neither attainable, nor even desirable. Basically, Miller asserts that all arguments purporting to give valid support for a claim are either circular or question-begging. That is, if one provides a valid deductive argument (an inference from premises to a conclusion) for a given claim, then the content of the claim must already be contained within the premises of the argument (if it is not, then the argument is ampliative and so is invalid). Therefore, the claim is already presupposed by the premises, and is no more "supported" than are the assumptions upon which the claim rests, i.e. begging the question.

William Warren Bartley developed a variation of critical rationalism that he called pancritical rationalism.

Argentine-Canadian philosopher of science Mario Bunge, who edited a book dedicated to Popper in 1964 that included a paper by Bartley,[12] appreciated critical rationalism but found it insufficient as a comprehensive philosophy of science,[13] so he built upon it (and many other ideas) to formulate his own account of scientific realism in his many publications.[14]

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Critical rationalism - Wikipedia