From that wonderland of freethinkery, Overcoming Bias, Eliezer writes:
At tonight’s Thanksgiving, Erin remarked on how this was her first real Thanksgiving dinner away from her family, and that it was an odd feeling to just sit down and eat without any prayer beforehand. (Yes, she’s a solid atheist in no danger whatsoever, thank you for asking.)
And as she said this, it reminded me of how wrong it is to give gratitude to God for blessings that actually come from our fellow human beings putting in a great deal of work.
So I at once put my hands together and said,
“Dear Global Economy, we thank thee for thy economies of scale, thy professional specialization, and thy international networks of trade under Ricardo’s Law of Comparative Advantage, without which we would all starve to death while trying to assemble the ingredients for such a dinner as this. Amen.”
Of course, John Locke stripped us of reverence for God’s providence, making gratitude basically impossible. So take this for what its worth. In any case, I’m grateful for Eliezer, despite the fact that he probably doesn’t care about food miles.
Will, could you clarify that last sentence?
Would you be more grateful if he cared about food miles?
> …without which we would all starve to death…
You are forgetting about tree bark.
Isn’t it a bit silly to say that LOCKE stripped us of reverence for God’s providence? Why would you say that? If God provides us the means to flourish and intends us to use them for His glory, then why is gratitude to God problematic? A theist will want to say that God grants us gifts so that we might flourish and abilities and reason in order to put them to use.
There is simply nothing to Eliezer’s point that a theist should concern herself with. In fact, I find him continually sloppy when it comes to matters of philosophy of religion (and philosophy generally, for that matter). If there is a God, then presumably He is even responsible for the Law of Comparative Advantage. Just because He enables us to flourish and then we choose to do so doesn’t mean we owe God any less gratitude (that is, if He exists).
I thought that in most cases food miles turned out to be relatively insignificant compared with local advantages in energy costs? The greenhouse costs more than the shipping?
Invisible hands that help are better than lips that pray.
I don’t get your Locke comment. Can you explain it?
I asked all of my kids to say a similar “prayer” at their Thanksgiving tables. So far only a handful have, and the universal response has been stone silence, confusion or parents/grandparents being upset because God wasn’t exclusively thanked.
Of course, such flippancy damages our ability to enact the only actual project of atheism, the separation of church and state. But of course, the insult isn’t a sad byproduct, it’s the point, and the reason most American atheists are atheists. When atheists fall out of love with self-aggrandizement through ridiculing others, we may actually see a country more consonant with atheism. But, again, self-aggrandizement, not truth or righteousness, is the point, so that’s what remains.
‘wonderland of freethinkery’? You can’t've been paying attention lately.
Don’t forget to thank the local police for helping to provide an environment where you can keep both eyes on the food.
I suppose that’s covered under professional specialization.
Excellent, entertaining, useful reading, Thanks !!
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