Thinking like Benjamin Franklin

By Gary Berg-Cross

There are many reasons to celebrate Ben Franklin – the “First American.”  We celebrate him as a complex man, with many and varied insights available in his voluminous writings. He provided wise counsel in difficult and confusing times.  Without the benefits we have now of the science of decision making he steered a wise course based on self developed ideas.

Known for promoting common sense early on his is Almanacs, Ben went on to some uncommon wisdom. He seemed to understand a core of irrationality in people even in an Enlightened age. He glimmered cognitive biases and how to slow down thinking to improve its quality. He steered around obstacles when even intelligent people like John Adams had blind spots and yielded to  confirmatory bias which lead to dead end arguments. He understood information overload & how human intellect can be overwhelmed by details and conflicting ideas.

He made thousands of wise decisions. How did he functionally bring his insights together to make a balanced decision?  He did it used a formal method called a Balance Sheet that allowed him to carefully compare alternatives with many factors considered that affect the decision. His was a cognitive arithmetic that summed up things in a realistic, hence balanced way. By way of history, Ben described the process  as advice to an English scientist friend on how to make an important personal choice:

“My way is to divide half a sheet of paper by a line into two columns; writing over the one Pro and over the other Con. Then during three or four days’ consideration, I put down under the different heads short hints of the different motives, that at different time occur to me, for or against the measure. When I have thus got them altogether in one view, I endeavor to estimate their respective weights; and where I find two, one on each side, that seem equal, I strike them both out. If I judge some two reasons con equal to some three reasons pro, I strike out five; and thus proceeding, I find where the balance lies; and if after a day or two of further consideration, nothing new that is of importance occurs on either side, I come to a determination accordingly.” –Benjamin Franklin

Source: How to Make a Decision Like Ben Franklin

Franklin clearly understood the need to think deliberately He noted that one difficulty in making an important choice is because “all Reasons pro and con are not present to the mind at the same time”

It might be worth noting (crassly) that in modern society your are more likely to run into Franklin’s Balance Sheet in a course on sales technique than in a History of Civics.  The “Balance Sheet” has been used by salesman for decades to guide prospect towards the a buying decision that the sales person prefers. 

This is the type of situation people face now in things like long election campaigns where we are sold a candidate. We find it difficult to accumulate reasons to support one candidate or another. 
I’ll leave it to the reader to try this for their choices they face. Over a period of time fill in your own column as thoughts occurred to you so that in Ben’s words:

“when each reason is thus considered separately and comparatively, and the whole lies before me, I think I judge better and less likely to make a rash step…”

Images

Ben: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Creator/BenjaminFranklin?from=Main.BenjaminFranklin

Half a Truth: http://www.theburningplatform.com/?tag=ben-franklin

Short memory: From Facebook sites

Snapshots from an Historical Perspective

By Gary Berg-Cross

One topic that heats up debate involves a family of concepts like “liberal” or moderate religious communities and what interactions non-theists might have with them. Are moderate religions as bad as fundamentalist varieties? It’s not exactly a new topic but perspectives may change with the times especially as they involve strategic and tactical action. I thought it interesting to provide some snapshots on circumstances that humanists have faced in the US over time. This is just a smattering, but part of the story.

Early fundamentalist American colonizers like the Puritans were neither liberal, not easy to converse with, or moderate. They were not admirers of intellectual enlightenment. John Cotton, wrote 1642:

"The more learned and witty you bee, the more fit to act for Satan will you bee".

Over 50 years late the rigid, faith-guided atmosphere in Boston drove out a young, pragmatic and freethinking Ben Franklin to the more tolerant climes of more tolerant Quaker in PA (not that he was wholly enamored with them). There he developed a more humanist view of an ethical society and built institutions to support this vision. He founded the very secular Philadelphia library & in 1744 set up the very intellectual American Philosophical Society. Franklin finding few minds to stimulate his thought found a way to spark more reflective thinking in others. His letters show engagement with all sorts of believers, but in an enlightened way that suggests he had a Franklin Bible in mind that twined Jefferson's later version.

While intellectualism grew in the East with the help of a variety of Susan Jacoby's freethinkers. an anti-intellectual atmosphere was spreading on the early 19^th century frontier. Baynard R. Hall, wrote in 1843 about his Indiana neighbors:

"We always preferred an ignorant bad man to a talented one, and hence attempts were usually made to ruin the moral character of a smart candidate; since unhappily smartness and wickedness were supposed to be generally coupled, and incompetence and goodness."

The civil war and a reaction to the Gilded Age's plutocracy and poor social conditions came under harsh attack from what would later bloom as the Social Gospel movement. These preachers implicitly allied with reformers in the Progressive Era. Should we not give some respect to the Social Gospel movement? I like it better than the Gospel of Wealth....Mark Twain, for example, engaged  issues of Christianity and the Social Gospel,  as documented in Mark Twain and the Spiritual Crisis of His Age. 

While Twain's writing and large progressive movements changed things a bit around the turn of the century, Robert Ingersoll, a leading figure in the Free Thought movement writing in1896, could still say of the religious fundamentalism:

“I heard hundreds of these evangelical sermons—heard hundreds of the most fearful and vivid descriptions of the tortures inflicted in hell, of the horrible state of the lost. I supposed that what I heard was true and yet I did not believe it. I said: ‘It is,’ and then I thought: ‘It cannot be.’”.

I would add that Ingersoll's genius and the times of a Social Gospel allowed him to be one time the most popular speaker on the U.S. speaking circuit at that time. According to Rachel Ozanne in ‘Heretics’ or ‘Atheists’? A Response Ingersoll was:

“ well known for being a loving family man and an ethical leader in his community—as a public unbeliever. Though he criticized Christianity and religion in general, he did so from a place of sincere engagement with its ideas. And while he was a self-styled agnostic rather than an atheist, his positive leadership is something all of us doubters and unbelievers could aspire to.”

One point to be made here is that Ingersoll was able to be heard by many because his thoughts were valued by a wide group. Such a positive approach has been in the Humanist tradition and fits an enlightened approach that values tolerance, but of course this is all challenged in difficult times. The more recent perspective comes from the early days after WWII. There was a progressive spirit in the air riding on the recent experience of combating right-wing fanaticism. There was the often delayed hope of a more modern, progressive & democratic world - one that would be free, tolerant & open to inquiry. Secular leaders after World War II included the likes of Corliss Lamont and Paul Kurtz, with a broad vision of an enlightened society where people peacefully and cooperatively manage group differences. 

But this vision hardened to a defensive Cold War mentality. For the US the adversary was an expansive, atheist communism. Richard Hofstadter writing about Anti-Intellectualism in American Life could look back in 1963 on these roots finding fertile ground to grow in Joseph McCarthy's 1950s. To an intellectual like Hofstadter (who saw a The Paranoid Style in American Politics) post war intellectuals like Dean Acheson were disdain as academic "eggheads." As to learning from them ceremonial president of Columbia university Dwight Eisenhower (or his speech writer) spoke disdainfully of them 1954 - an intellectual is "a man who takes more words than are necessary to tell more than he knows.” Not exactly an opening for deep conversations.

To a disappointing degree this cold war climate has continued. The rise of militant, fundamentalist efforts, such the Moral Majority, which was at the height of their power in the 80s and 90s, often embed themselves in a primitive nationalism. This mixture makes it hard to attack and encourages defensive posture by non-believers. Paul Kurtz writing back when new, modern American fundamentalism used it growing power to massively assaults humanism, noted that it was also an attack on the humanities and modernism itself:

“They are opposed to modern science and the scientific revolution of our day. They are opposed to modern literature — everyone from Shakespeare to writers as diverse as Kurt Vonnegut, D. H. Lawrence, and Vladimir Nabokov. ...The fundamentalists are attacking modern education, including science, literature, the arts and philosophy. We must grant that the curriculum of modern education expresses secular values. But that is the nature of the modern world; it is not secular humanism per se that is at the root of all evil, as fundamentalists define it.”

These are still modern things under attack and which we still might reach out to others including the Social Gospel style Christians that Michael Ruse was talking about in his July 27, 2012 article: Should Atheists Reach Out to Christians?  

The article was linked to in previous blogs on New Atheist but it is interesting to actually read what he said in that article.

“I live in a country – a country of which a couple of years ago Lizzie and I voluntarily and with joy became citizens – where at least half of the people are genuine, believing, practicing Christians – and with others sympathetic or as committed to other faiths like Judaism. My neighbors go to church on Sundays and believe that Jesus died for their salvation. So did the teachers of my kids and many of the folk that we interact with every day. Lizzie’s closest friend is the youth coordinator at First Presbyterian and I am co-teaching a course this fall with one of my good friends, an ordained Presbyterian minister.

I don’t believe what they believe and they know that and most of them respect it. Nevertheless we want to get along as neighbors and as parents and as teachers and as friends. I don’t want – they don’t want – differences to lead to hatred and suspicion and working against rather than with.

The great tragedy in America today is that we do have these uncompromising differences. Look at politics and at the damage that the Tea Party has done, not only to the country but to its own party. There is massive unemployment. Economists know full well what needs to be done. Remember the New Deal? But we are paralyzed because of the ideological rigidity of people in power.

A smart way of finding allies on some shared values that is perhaps not so different from what Kurtz was talking about earlier in defending humanism against its Fundamentalist critics, where he could find some agreement about the problems to be dealt with.  We need to find the signal of commonality that can stand out  from even the most extreme noise of radical positions. 

As Kurtz said earlier “we cannot simply reject the Moral Majority and say that nothing they claim is meaningful.” What they and their latest incarnations say speaks to problems that confront people. It is there approaches to problems and with the way they reason that we disagree with. It is important to take on these errors, but in ways that others besides us (freethinkers etc.) and them (fundamentalists) understand. 

Image Credits:

http://sharpiron.wordpress.com/page/26/

Celebrating Spring in DC & the Reason Rally

By Gary Berg-Cross

It’s March again and after a mild winter the longer daylight hours have sweet sap rising. Bulbs, shoots and buds burst are venturing forth in color along with the witch hazel in my backyard, which still is feeding robins. As in 2011 I look forward to the change of seasons and some secular pleasures that DC offers. For sure Saturday, March 17 is St. Patrick's Day. On the 2oth we have the Vernal equinox. Monday, 19 March 2012 at 7P.M.you can celebrate this First Day of Spring (in the Northern Hemisphere) at the Takoma Park Planetarium. As I have said before the Spring equinox is an obvious secular Spring event to. There's a funny write-up by the Onion on “Area Pagan Dreading Big Family Vernal Equinox Celebration”.

A few days later we have the Reason Rally on March 24^th from 10:00AM – 6:00PM on the National Mall. This is expected to be the largest gathering of secular movement in US, if not world history. A great time to be in DC. Washington Area Secular Humanists (WASH) is a sponsor along with:

• American Atheists
• American Humanist Association
• Atheist Alliance of America
• Atheist Nexus
• Camp Quest
• Center for Inquiry
• Foundation Beyond Belief
• Freedom From Religion Foundation
• Freethought Society
• Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers
• National Atheist Party
• Secular Coalition for America
• Secular Student Alliance
• Society for Humanistic Judaism
• Stiefel Freethought Foundation
• The Brights
• The James Randi Educational Foundation
• The Richard Dawkins Foundation
• United COR

WASH is looking for volunteers to help at the Reason Rally merchandise table and to usher on the Mall.

While secular people are in town for the Rally those who don’t mind moving indoors can enjoy some of secular treasures such as at the Library of Congress. But there’s an exhibit at the National Archives that is here till May 6^th on "Benjamin Franklin: In Search of a Better World" that explores his creative and inspiring life from printer, traveler, Founding Father, pioneering scientist, diplomat, humorist, philanthropist, and entrepreneur. The exhibition includes pictures of Franklin I’d never seen before and worth the admission. There are also 20 hands-on interactives, such as games, experiments, demonstrations, animations, and maps.

Another reason it is great to be in DC this Spring.

Oh and yes this year March 31^st have the 2012 Earth Hour (8:30pm-9:30 local time). Earth Hour started in 2007 in Sydney Australia when an estimated 2.2 million individuals and more than 2,000 businesses turned their lights off for one hour to take a stand against climate change. It has become an annual global event, organized by the non-profit World Wildlife Fund. In 2008, for example, it became more of a global sustainability movement when over 50 million people who own homes and businesses across 35 countries participated by:

"switch(ing) off their lights and to stop using electrical equipment for one hour in order to raise awareness about the effects of global warming and climate change."

King James and Citizen Grayling

A few days ago I was surprised to hear an NPR story about the 400th anniversary of the completion of the King James Bible (KJB) in 1611. The story by Barbara Bradley Hagerty was entitled "Hallelujah! At Age 400, King James Bible Still Reigns"

One of the themes of the celebration is to honor its general status as one of the great masterpieces of world literature. The early 17th century was indeed a great era for literature since it comes roundly in Shakespeare's time. Perhaps for this reason one of the celebrating events in a marathon recital of the King James Bible at London's Globe theater with 20 actors working in rotation to present all 69 hours of this historic book.

The NPR story was interesting to me because it not only covered the language of the KJB, but some of the background history about how it came to be written. Interestingly there were several poltical-religious ingredients starting around 1603. That's when King James I, whose name leads in KJB, ascended to the English throne after ruling Scotland. According to Gordon Campbell, a historian at the University of Leicester the English were suspicious of this seemingly foreign king, He may not have been born in Kenya or a Hawaii-like distance but he:
"spoke with a heavy Scottish accent, and one of the things he needed to legitimize himself as head of the Church of England was a Bible dedicated to him."

This was timely because England was warring over 2 earlier English translations of the Bible. There was the Bishops' Bible which was read in churches, but was clunky & inelegant. Then there was the Puritan choice, called the Geneva Bible which was more accessible and "bolder" because it included "marginal notes" according to David Lyle Jeffrey (Baylor University historian). From the point of view of the royalists, and the new King there was a executive problem:

"these marginal comments often did not pay sufficient respect to the idea of the divine right of kings."

Shades of Social Justice Christianity! The notes referred to kings as tyrants and challenged regal authority. Good King James needed another, more favorable version. Perhaps they had PR and Presidential Commission folks back, because they got the bishops and the Puritans together like 2 opposing groups to compromise and work out the differences. The hidden agenda was to eliminate the Social Justice flavored notes while losing the clunky language that hindered the kingly message.

What astonishes many is the quality of language that could emerge from something started with such devious motives. It's not every committee compromise that produces poetry of extraordinarily high quality. The KJB's pleasant phrasing has allowed it to find a home in our language, thoughts, customs and laws. As one commenter summarized it:
"It's memorable. It's beautiful. And in the KJB, it's distinctively the voice of God."

Of course as we've seen how it was engineered to be that kingly voice. It's been reworked to have an impact.

Examples offered of its powerful language include:

Isaiah 40 , where God speaks out of the whirlwind saying:
Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God.
Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received of the LORD's hand double for all her sins.
Hagerty's article summarizes many English Phrases which seem to have been coinage in the KJB. These are mostly non-religious and include:

• A drop in the bucket (Isaiah 40:15)
• A house divided against itself cannot stand (Matthew 12:25)
• A man after his own heart (Samuel 13:14 or Acts 13:22)
• A wolf in sheep's clothing (Matthew 7:15)

These are all fine and good, but I think that admirers of Mark Twain can find equally good ones that were inspired more recently and didn't take a committee of bishops. For example:

• You can't reach old age by another man's road.
• Honor is a harder master than the law.
• Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid.

Going back a little farther in US history an Enlightenment Age Benjamin Franklin coined some pretty good ones too:

• Honesty is the best policy.
• A penny saved is a penny earned.
• A place for everything, everything in its place.
• Lost time is never found again.

But there's more. I happened to have attended a talk by the noted philosopher A. C. Grayling a few days ago. He happen to also talk about the history of the Bible and had a few additional things insights(from what we might say is a Secular Perspective) about how the the language came about and its influence.

For one thing Grayling pointed out that the 6 committees of 50 translators did not achieve remarkable quality, clarity and consistency by themselves. They all drew heavily on an earlier 16th century translation by William Tyndale (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Tyndale) As noted in Wikipedia "Although the authorised King James Version is ostensibly the production of a learned committee of churchmen, it is mostly cribbed from Tyndale with some reworking of his translation."

The Catholic Church in particular did not like much of Tyndale's translations which in their opion did not provide a proper view- using words like "overseer" where they preferred "bishop," "elder" for "priest" etc. So “In 1535, Tyndale was arrested by church authorities and jailed in the castle of Vilvoorde outside Brussels for over a year. He was tried for heresy, strangled and burnt at the stake in 1536."

However, the KJB committees liked the tone of Tyndal's archaic language. They could use this is set a proper kingly tone for god. As Grayling notes, groups tweaked Tyndale translation to suit their purposes. This is part of a long history or reworking it to suit particular messages. Folks redact what they don't want and enhance what message they are selling. The translated Bible, like Shakespeare's works, draws heavily on prior work, making an older story into a bolder more digestible one. Old testament tribal leaders are made to seem like 17th century Kings and societies from 2500 years earlier are made to seem more like nation states than tribes. Great Scott! Mark Twain would have had fun with this if he gotten a chance as he did with the Romantic era's view of a King Arthur!

We don't have Twain to deconstruct the KJB, but A. C. Grayling has gone one better. He has constructed a new version, "The Good Book: A secular Bible." Like the KJB this is intended to make bold but is easy to digest since it can be taken in small bites such as "Be gentle since life is short."

This Good, or I would say Wise Book, mirrors the Bible in both form and language, but is a manifesto for rational thought. Grayling calls the work "ambitious and hubristic – a distillation of the best that has been thought and said by people who've really experienced life, and thought about it". To do this he draws on some classical secular texts from both east and west. So he has sources like Hume, Socrates, & Cicero. But he has reworked them into a "great treasury of insight and consolation and inspiration and uplift and understanding in the great non-religious traditions of the world".

While the book begins with a scientific view of our genesis it ends with a secular humanist version of the 10 Commandments. The Bible's has God giving Moses a small list include laws forbidding idol worship along with prohibition of killing and stealing. In Grayling's secular alternative, he mines and refines past secular humanists to give the reader these 10 commandments:

1. "Love well,
2. seek the good in all things,
3. harm no others,
4. think for yourself,
5. take responsibility,
6. respect nature,
7. do your utmost,
8. be informed,
9. be kind,
10. be courageous: at least, sincerely try."

Thank you Dr. Graylin. I was so charmed by the effort and his talk I bought a copy for my son. Something to grow on.