Dogmas Ancient And New

Yes, I haven't gone anywhere - not yet, anyway. Meanwhile, there's nothing I like better than someone taking an axe to some bit of dogma or another, and here are a couple of examples that I found lying around the Internet yesterday.

First, via PZ Myers (AKA "P-Zed"), here's the latest version of Mr. Deity. In this episode, he and son Jessie are trying to figure out the whole Trinity thing, which I have to say is one of the more confusing bits of religious nonsense out there. Going from memory, they get both its meaning and its origins largely right, and yes, that's what makes it so confusing:



Don't believe me? Here's what the Catholic church has to say on the issue via the Catholic Encyclopedia:

The Trinity is the term employed to signify the central doctrine of the Christian religion — the truth that in the unity of the Godhead there are Three Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, these Three Persons being truly distinct one from another.

Thus, in the words of the Athanasian Creed: "the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and yet there are not three Gods but one God." In this Trinity of Persons the Son is begotten of the Father by an eternal generation, and the Holy Spirit proceeds by an eternal procession from the Father and the Son. Yet, notwithstanding this difference as to origin, the Persons are co-eternal and co-equal: all alike are uncreated and omnipotent. This, the Church teaches, is the revelation regarding God's nature which Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came upon earth to deliver to the world: and which she proposes to man as the foundation of her whole dogmatic system.

The Dogma Of The Trinity

I don't think I could write something that confusing without the aid of psychotropic drugs.

Meanwhile, Ian Welsh takes on another dogma, this time from politics and faux economics:

Free market [fundamentalism] in the US has done a great deal of damage by claiming the only ethic that matters is greed. The free market is not self regulating, the invisible hand does not always work to the benefit of society as a whole (as Adam Smith well knew), greed is not always good, and free markets naturally tend towards unfree markets in which the choice for consumers is to take what is offered or go without. (If you don’t believe me, take one of the “contracts” given to you by a big firm, and cross out the parts you disagree with, and write in your own wording. “Negotiate” with them. Let me know how it works out.)

Free markets are grand things. Every once in a while they even exist.

Consumers Can’t Choose Not to Do Business

The only place that truly free markets exist are in basic economics textbooks and in the fevered imaginations of libertarians. Everyone else realizes that what Ian wrote is true - that there really is no such thing in real life. Anyone who has taken basic economics is aware of the thought experiment economists use to explain how markets behave when everyone involved has free will and knowledge of the products. There are widget makers everywhere, and widget sellers and consumers on every street corner (they were pin makers, sellers, and buyers in Smith's day, of course). Some markets, such as farmers markets and other bazaars might approach this ideal to some degree, but in most cases there is only the faintest resemblance. The question is whether to try to (some would say "artificially") make those markets freer, regulate them so people are not taken advantage of, or have the government take them over. All those approaches have their hazards, of course, and what might work best probably depends on things like how much choice consumers have in entering those markets.

The local hobby shop has far more interest in treating its customers right than the local television cable company has, even though both are not strictly required to survive or make a living. I don't have to have either an RC race car or Comedy Central, but if I don't want to buy that model car at one hobby shop, I usually have alternatives. In the case of cable television, there's only one provider, and the alternatives are expensive and similarly complicated to deliver. The local health insurance companies have even less motivation than the cable company, largely because, for most of us, their product is required. This is the nature of real markets, and as far as I'm concerned, anyone who argues that all these markets would be better off if everyone in them was free to do as he likes is either a moron or a fool, and quite probably both. The only exceptions to that rule are the folks who have made an excellent living from plying this nonsense on radio, television, and in print.

Watch, read, and learn.

UPDATE: Speaking of dogmatic foolishness, there's this quote from Bob McDonnell, the Republican candidate for governor of Virginia, courtesy of Talking Points Memo:

Bob strongly supports promoting access to affordable healthcare. He believes that expanding and improving health care coverage lies in market based principles, not mandating a nationalized system that restricts choices, limits options and diminishes quality.

Governors (And Candidates) Span Spectrum On Public Option Opt-Out

This statement is tripe on any number of levels, but perhaps the most basic fallacy is that "market principles" is just a feel-good term that doesn't really mean anything. There are no "market principles" in a market where everyone needs the product, and where that product must, almost of necessity, be available from only a small number of sources. Why the press doesn't ask politicians which market principles they're referring to, and don't let them get away with more nonsense, is an interesting question. As Ian discussed, the insurance market is anything but a free one, at least for consumers. To make things worse, in many cases the insurance is paid for by the patients' employers, who have their own motivations when buying insurance.

Unfortunately, American politicians are allowed to get away with bullshit like this, because journalists are often as badly educated as the public they're writing for.