Category Archives: Words

Word of the Day: Burqa, Niqab, Hijab

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A novel that tackles Christian apologeticsHijab is the Muslim dress code for women.  It is typically interpreted to permit only the hands and face to be visible in public.  It also refers to the headscarf that covers the head but not the face.

The niqab is a cloth that covers the face.  It can reveal the eyes or have a mesh or veil that covers the eyes.  Seeing through the veil is reportedly no more difficult than seeing through sunglasses.

The burqa is a loose-fitting outer garment that covers the body and includes both the niqab face covering and hijab head covering.  The hands and face are often treated together, with customs saying either that they may both be visible or must both be covered.  In the latter case, women often wear gloves.

The Arab world has many local customs, of course, and there are many variations.  For example, the chador is an Iranian cloak without fasteners that is held closed in front.

Demands on men are minimal by comparison, often interpreted to require covering the knees and avoiding jewelry.

France banned “ostentatious religious symbols” like the hijab from public schools in 2004.  Nicolas Sarkozy (then a French minister) justified it this way: “When I enter a mosque, I remove my shoes.  When a Muslim girl enters school, she must remove her veil.”  Turkey also prohibits the hijab in schools and universities.  The French law was extended in 2010 to ban face covering in public, including the niqab.

A Muslim-American woman is the second-best saber fencer in the U.S. and is hoping to represent the U.S. in the 2012 Olympics, even though it will fall in Ramadan, the month when she will be prohibited from eating or drinking during the day.  She conforms to hijab and was attracted to the sport because the uniform (inadvertently) also conforms to hijab.

From a Western standpoint, it’s easy to see the hijab requirement as oppressive, though from the inside it can be seen as a matter of cultural identity.  A cultural demand doesn’t always vanish when that demand is lifted.  During the Qing dynasty (1644–1912), Manchu rulers imposed queues (long ponytail with an otherwise shaved head) on Chinese men.  Not wearing one was considered disloyal and a capital crime, but when the dynasty ended, many men still wore the queue as a custom.

A fascinating example of unexpected consequences came when wearing the veil became mandatory in Iran after the 1979 revolution.  Protest came from an unexpected quarter—women who had been wearing the veil.  Before, they could publicly say, “God is great” by wearing the veil in public.  After, they were simply obeying the law.

Imagine a Christian theocracy in the West that made wearing crosses mandatory.  The same thing would happen to the cross as happened to the Iranian veil—the cross would no longer be a religious statement but a political one.

I wonder if there’s something of this kind of unexpected consequence with Christian morality.  Do Christians do good things just because they’re the right thing to do?  That is, do they do good things for the same reasons that atheists do them?  Or do they do them because God is watching?  Whether God is tallying up good and bad actions that will confront the Christian in heaven or the Christian is simply trying to put a smile on God’s face, I wonder if the Christian moral motivation is shallower than that of the atheist.

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Word of the Day: Irreducible Complexity

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A novel about Christian apologetics and atheismMicrobiologist Michael Behe coined the term “irreducible complexity” to describe a system in which every part is mandatory.  Here is his definition:

By irreducibly complex I mean a single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning.1

Let’s look at a popular example, the remarkable bacterial flagellum.  Built of several dozen different proteins, this tiny motor with a whip-like appendage can propel a bacterium 60 cell lengths per second.  Compare this to the cheetah, the fastest land animal, which sprints at 25 body lengths per second.  (Here’s a good agenda-less video showing the structure of the flagellum.)

The irreducible complexity claim is this: imagine turning the clock of evolution back.  Which protein was the last to be put in place?  Remove any protein from the flagellum and it doesn’t function.  So if one step back in time from the working flagellum was something useless, no matter which protein you remove, why would evolution have created this thing?  Evolution doesn’t spend effort slowly building elaborate nonfunctioning appendages on the remote chance that with a few more mutations over 100,000 generations it might get lucky and create something useful.  But Intelligent Design comes to the rescue by postulating a Designer that put everything together all at once.

We can topple this thinking by considering an arch.  Which was the last stone to be put in place in an arch?  If you try to turn the clock back by removing the central keystone, the arch falls.  So that one couldn’t have been last.  But try removing any stone from the arch and the same thing happens.  This makes the arch irreducibly complex, using this Intelligent Design thinking, with a Designer levitating the stones into place all at once as the only explanation.

But of course this is nonsense.  If you imagine watching a movie of the building of an arch played backwards, the first change you’d see was not a stone removed but the last piece of scaffolding put into place.  Then the remainder of the scaffolding to support the stones, then the stones removed one at a time, and then the scaffolding removed.

In the same way, the step that preceded the bacterial flagellum might have been the removal of an unnecessary piece of scaffolding.

There is much more to say about why the idea of irreducible complexity has not won over the science of biology, including attacks on how good an example the flagellum is of irreducible complexity, but that is a tangent for this post.  For more on this topic, check out the links below.

Science may well have unanswered questions regarding the origin of the flagellum, but “I don’t know” is no reason to invent a Designer.  And you can be sure that once the origin of the bacterial flagellum is sufficiently well understood, this argument will be discarded like a used tissue and some other complex feature of biology (and there’s always something) will be seized upon by the Intelligent Design advocate as the wooden stake that will finally destroy the monster that is evolution.

If the past is any indication, our ID friend will have a very long wait.

1 Michael J. Behe, Darwin’s Black Box (Touchstone, 1996), p. 39.

Photo credit: harrymoon

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Word of the Day: Beg the Question

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Novel of Christianity and atheismTo beg the question does not mean “to invite the question.”  Here’s a faulty use of the phrase: “Bill’s report shows too many returns on our Mark 20 widget, which begs the question, ‘How will we improve our manufacturing quality?’”  Or, “The weeds in this lawn beg the question, ‘Why is it so hard to get a good gardener?’”

As a rule, if some variant of “beg the question” is used in a sentence with an embedded question, the phrase is used incorrectly.

Used properly, begging the question (petitio principia) is a logical fallacy that means to assume the conclusion in your premise.

For example: “(1) The Bible is the word of God; therefore (2) it’s correct.”  This one leaves much unsaid:

  1. God exists [unstated assumption, and the reason for the fallacy]
  2. (1) the Bible comes from God [stated premise]
  3. therefore (2) the Bible is correct [stated conclusion]
  4. therefore the Bible is correct when it says, “God exists” [unstated conclusion].

Question begging often hides in convoluted prose.  Wikipedia gives this example: “To allow every man an unbounded freedom of speech must always be, on the whole, advantageous to the State, for it is highly conducive to the interests of the community that each individual should enjoy a liberty perfectly unlimited of expressing his sentiments.”  In other words: freedom of speech is essential because it is good.  A simplifying restatement can often uncover this fallacy in both others’ arguments and our own.

Begging the question is similar to circular reasoning, but the difference is subtle.  The flaw with begging the question is that it depends on an unstated premise.  The flaw with circular logic is structural.  It is an argument of the form “A, therefore A.”  That is, the conclusion is a restatement of the premise.

An example of circular logic: “He is unattractive because he is so damn ugly.”  “He is ugly” is just a restatement of “he is unattractive.”  Or, “Dr. Smith’s Pink Pills are what you need because that’s the best treatment.”

“The Wheel of Power” illustrates an example of circular logic with more steps:

  1. “How can you be sure it’s the word of God?”  Because the Bible tells us so.
  2. “But why believe the Bible?”  The Bible is infallible.
  3. “But how do you know?”  The Bible is the word of God.  (And repeat …)

You should know what “beg the question” means so that you can understand it when used correctly, but I recommend against using it.  If you use it correctly, many people won’t understand, and if you follow the crowd and use it to mean “invite the question,” you’ll annoy those who understand the correct usage.

Photo credit: Wikimedia

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Word of the Day: Shermer’s Law

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Christianity and atheism clash againI propose “Shermer’s Law” for this observation by Michael Shermer: “Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.”1

This observation makes an important distinction between (1) how someone came to their beliefs and (2) how they later defend those beliefs.  People often come to their beliefs for poor reasons—for example, they may be racist or religious simply because they were raised in that environment.

Few will admit as an adult, “Oh, yeah—I don’t believe that for any better reason than that I was steeped in that environment, and I’m now just an unthinking reflection of that environment.”  Instead, they use their intellect (much more formidable now that they’re an adult) to marshal a defense of their beliefs.  The belief comes first, and the defense comes after.  And this isn’t just to save face with an antagonist; it’s to save face with themselves.

We can come up with a defense for just about anything.  It may not be a very good defense, but it’s something, and it may be sufficient to avoid cognitive dissonance (“Surely I believe this for a good reason, right??”).  The smarter you are, the better the defense you will come up with.

All of us do this, and (this may be consolation) the smartest people can do it more spectacularly than the rest of us.  Isaac Newton wasted time in alchemy, Nobel laureate Linus Pauling in vitamin C research, and Nobel laureate William Shockley in eugenics.

No one’s immune, but this is common in Christians who cobble together rationalizations for their beliefs.  “In for a penny, in for a pound” is easier than taking a step back to soberly consider the logic of the beliefs.  And the smarter the Christian, the better they can defend groundless beliefs.

Try to uncover this by asking, “You’re giving me an argument for Christianity, but is this what convinced you?  If not, why don’t you give me the argument that made you a Christian?”

Photo credit: Wikimedia

1 Michael Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things (Freeman, 2002), p. 283.

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Word of the Day: Systems and Wicked Problems

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Lots of wires, but ENIAC didn't replace GodWe all deal with systems—computers, cars, or communities, for example—and a few concepts may help see things a little more clearly.

This is an excerpt from another book of mine, Future Hype: The Myths of Technology Change.

 

Perfection means not perfect actions in a perfect world,
but appropriate actions in an imperfect one.
— R. H. Blyth

Systems are difficult to work with, and seeing things for what they are is an essential first step.  Horst Rittel in the late 1960s distinguished between “tame” and “wicked” problems.  This is not the distinction between easy and hard problems—many tame problems are very hard.  But wicked problems, while not evil, are tricky and malicious in ways that tame problems are not.  The unexpected consequences we’ve seen have been because systems problems are wicked.  We will understand systems better—and why they spawn unexpected consequences—if we understand a little more of the properties of wicked problems and approach them with appropriate respect.

Tame problems can be clearly stated, have a well-defined goal, and stay solved.  They work in a Newtonian, clockwork way.  The games of chess and go are tame.  Wicked problems have complex cause-and-effect relationships, human interaction, and inherently incomplete information.  They require compromises.

For example, mass transit is a wicked problem.  Everyone likes mass transit—unless it comes through their neighborhood, it consumes road lanes, or they have to pay for it.  The difference between something that works in the lab, on paper, or in one’s head versus something that works in the real world and is practical to real people is a characteristic only of wicked problems.

Tame and wicked problems differ in many ways.*  See if the traits of wicked problems as described below sound familiar, either with the examples mentioned here or with situations you have experienced yourself.

  • Problem Definition.  A tame problem can be clearly, unambiguously, and completely stated.  Math problems are tame.  By contrast, there is no absolute statement of a wicked problem.  To state a wicked problem means to also state its solution.  That is, the problem can’t be stated without a proposed solution in mind, and coming up with a new solution means seeing the problem in a new way.  Avoid locking in a problem definition too soon.
  • Goal.  A tame problem has a well-defined goal, such as the QED in a proof or the checkmate in chess.  With a wicked problem, you could keep iterating and refining your solution forever—or go back and consider other solutions.  After all, if a wicked problem is something you can’t define, how can you tell when it’s resolved?  You don’t stop because you’re done (you’ve reached the goal) but rather because of external constraints (you’ve run out of money, time, or patience, for example).  You must strive for an adequate solution, not a perfect one.
  • Solutions.  Solutions are unambiguously correct or incorrect with tame problems.  The solution to a wicked problem is not judged as correct or incorrect but somewhere in the range between good and bad.
  • Time.  The solution to a tame problem can be judged immediately (that is, there is no maturation time), and the problem stays solved.  Euclid’s geometry proofs are still valid today.  Evaluating the solution to a wicked problem takes time (because the results of implementing the solution take time to be appreciated) and is subjective.  Is that a good design?  Maybe, but maybe not.  Like the response to art, different people will have different answers, and the solution causes many side effects (unintended consequences), like medicine in the body.  Additionally, a “solved” wicked problem may not stay solved—wicked problems aren’t solved but are only addressed; they’re treated, not cured.  Your perception of how good the solution is may change over time.
  • Consequences.  Trial and error may be an inefficient approach with a tame problem, but it won’t cause any damage.  Implementing or publicizing a proposed solution doesn’t change the problem.  With a wicked problem, however, every implementation changes reality—it’s no longer the same problem after an attempted solution.  After a failed attempt, the solution you realize you should have tried may now not work.
  • Reapplying Past Solutions.  A class of tame problems can be solved with a single principle.  A general rule for finding a square root or applying the quadratic formula will work in all applicable cases.  By contrast, the solution to a wicked problem is unique.  We can learn from past successes, but an old solution applied unchanged to a new problem won’t produce the old result.  Many unexpected consequences arise when we rush to reapply (without customization) a particular solution we’ve seen before—there will likely be unseen differences between the old and new problems.
  • Problem Hierarchy.  A tame problem stands alone.  It is never a symptom of a larger problem, but a wicked problem always is.  For example, if the cost of something is too high, this can be a symptom of the higher-level problem that the company doesn’t have enough money.  Often, we can’t see the higher-level problem (“This new software is terrific!  I can’t imagine what could be better.”).

Systems are large, complex, and real-world, and they are the domain in which technology is applied.  Industry’s dreams and expectations for its new high-tech products are formed in the lab, but it is in the system of society that they’re put to use.  This brief summary of wicked problems as well as these cautionary examples give some insight into the inherent difficulty of meddling with systems.  This is not to say that we can’t address systems problems but that they should be approached with caution and respect.

Let’s end this chapter with a final example of unexpected consequences due to technology.  In the 1954 short story “Answer,” Fredric Brown envisions many great scientists working for years to build a giant computer network, connecting the computing power of billions of planets.  As the inaugural question for this technological marvel, the gathered dignitaries ask, “Is there a God?”

The computer doesn’t hesitate before answering, “There is now!” 

Everything has both intended and unintended consequences. 
The intended consequences may or may not happen;
the unintended consequences always do.
— Dee Hock, president of VISA

* Rittel and Webber, “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning,” Policy Sciences, 4:155–169, 1973.

Photo credit: Wikimedia

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Word of the Day: CE and BCE

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How does the dictionary define "morality"? There's no objective there.It’s easy to overlook how recent our calendar system is.  Our Gregorian calendar is defined by a number of features: that this is the year 2011, that we use a solar calendar of 12 months, “30 days hath September” and all that, that the year starts roughly 10 days after the winter solstice, the calculation of the leap year, and so on.  Developed during the reign of Pope Gregory XIII, it was introduced into Roman Catholic regions beginning in 1582, but it wasn’t adopted by the British Empire (including America) until 1752, and it wasn’t the world’s predominant calendar system until China adopted it in 1949.

Year 1 must be fixed to some point in history, and myriad dates have been used (and are still being used).  Dionysius Exiguus (Dennis the Short) in the 6th century used the birth of Jesus as the starting point, and this has been the custom in the West since.  Unfortunately, Dennis was off by a few years, and Jesus is now thought to have been born 4–6 years before year 1.

So how do we label years 1 and following?  The Anno Domini (year of our lord) label for this era gradually came into vogue centuries after Dennis, and BC (Before Christ, for the years before) came in later still.

International standard ISO 8601 specifies date and time representations, but it uses plus and minus signs instead of BC and AD.  Unlike conventional dating, it doesn’t bypass the year 0.  Year 10 AD is written as 0010 (4 digits are always used for the year), and year 10 BC becomes –0009 (because of the addition of year 0).

The convention that has become widespread is the use of CE (Common Era) to replace Anno Domini and BCE (Before Common Era) to replace Before Christ.  “Common Era” has been used in English in this sense for over 300 years.  This convention is seen as a way to eliminate outdated religious baggage from the calendar, though there are objections.  Indeed, it was opposition to this convention that prompted the formation of the Conservapedia wiki.

Photo credit: Wikimedia

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