Tribalism poisons everything...

...but the problem is that we are hardwired for tribalism.

Todd Kelley ponders the recurring fact that we have a tendency to take sides even when taking sides means that we line up with those who hurt what we love:

Clearly, this kind of tribalism is destructive. It keeps us from getting to the best solutions for our children, our country and ourselves. Worse, it forces us to become champions of the very things we most despise, things such as child abuse, sexual harassment and crony capitalism. So what, then, is the answer?


There is no easy answer, of course – or if there is I have no idea what it might be. The best I can manage is two very small pieces of advice to people of all political, religious and alma mater stripes.

The first is to always be willing to take a step back and audit your beliefs. When someone you are supporting is being “unfairly crucified” by FOX or the lame stream media, take a step back and ask yourself: If this was happening to the other tribe’s team, how would I be reacting right now? If the honest answer is anything other than “the same,” it might be wise to go back through all of the facts you had previously dismissed to see if perhaps you’ve let yourself miss something. More important, though, is this:

Be an advocate for what your tribe stands for, not an advocate for your tribe.

I simply don’t believe that there aren’t a ton of Republicans out there that are very disturbed by what has transpired with Herman Cain this week. Similarly, I am sure there are more than a few (maybe a large majority?) of Penn State students and alum that know that people have to be held accountable for their school’s horrible scandal. And since it is my understanding that a lot of Rick Perry’s own GOP brethren actually can’t stand the guy, I am very certain that there are a lot of Republicans that pay close attention to his cronyism.

These people need to speak up; not to the world at large, but to the members of their tribe. I’m not a Republican, so I can point to the myriad of things that don’t add up about Cain’s denials all day long and it’s going to fall on deaf ears. The same way, not incidentally, that Democrats shrugged off all evidence of Clinton’s pattern of sexual harassment fifteen years ago. People don’t listen to those outside their tribe when their self-identity is on the line. But they might be open to peeking at reality when it’s being presented by one of their own.

These two bits of advice aren’t much, I’ll be the first to admit. But they’re a start.

It's a good essay.  Read the whole thing.

Perry's "Pastor" also thinks that Christians should avoid a "cult-like pagan religion" whose name rhymes with "Datholic."

I was kind of waiting for this shoe to drop from the moment I heard about this guy.

And don't forget, he's the guy who thinks that one reason that Mormons are cult is because they were founded 1800 years - and not 1500 years - after Christ.

According to K-Lo at NRO:

Bill Donahue, president of the Catholic League, is calling on Rick Perry to formally distance himself from Robert Jeffress.


Jeffress, of course, is the pastor who introduced Governor Perry at the Values Voters Summit in Washington, D.C. last week, who did Perry no favors, as Bill Bennett put it the next day, when he derided Mitt Romney’s religion.

Unsurprisingly, it’s not only Mormons Pastor Jeffress has problems with. As Donahue points out:

Last year, Rev. Jeffress said the Roman Catholic Church was the outgrowth of a “corruption” called the “Babylonian mystery.” He continued, “Much of what you see in the Catholic Church today doesn’t come from God’s word. It comes from that cult-like pagan religion. Isn’t that the genius of Satan?”

Donahue asks:

Where did they find this guy? When theological differences are demonized by the faithful of any religion—never mind by a clergyman—it makes a mockery of their own religion. Rev. Jeffress is a poster boy for hatred, not Christianity.

Perry should follow John McCain’s lead here. As Wayne Barrett explains:

A powerful Catholic voice based in the New York Archdiocese, Donohue’s denunciations of another controversial Texas evangelical—Pastor John Hagee—as an anti-Catholic bigot forced 2008 GOP nominee John McCain to reject Hagee’s endorsement. (Hagee had called the church “the great whore” and a “false cult.”) “I think Rick Perry should follow the lead of McCain,” Donohue said in an interview on Wednesday, “and say ‘I don’t want this guy Jeffress’ endorsement.’” Donohue later reconciled with Hagee, who Donohue says came to visit him and apologized for the comments.

But under the "Obama Rule," why are presidential candidates responsible for the noxious views "their pastors" might hold?

A Teachable Moment - Galileo Division.

Subtitle: There really was a dispute by the scientists at the time over the scientific basis of Galileo's heliocentric theory.

Sarah Posner at RD writes:

In last night's debate, Rick Perry, stumbling over his answer denying the science of climate change, opined, "Galileo got outvoted for a spell." Of course Galileo, considered the father of modern science, wasn't "outvoted" by other scientists, he was subjected to an inquisition by the church for being a heretic.

Ironically, although Posner wants to accuse Perry of being stupid, it is Posner who demonstrates that she has uncritically accepted one of the great urban legends of modernity.

The truth was that the Catholic Church handed the issue of Galileo's claim that the Earth revolved around the Sun to the leading scholars of the day, who, like the pro-AGW scientists today, used their position of power and control over the universities to get a little political pay-back from an upstart they didn't much like. The academic politics of the issue can be seen in a letter from Cardinal Bellarmine which advised that "But to want to affirm that the Sun, in very truth, is at the centre of the universe and only rotates on its axis without traveling from east to west, and that the Earth is situated in the third sphere and revolves very swiftly around the Sun, is a very dangerous attitude and one calculated not only to arouse all Scholastic philosophers and theologians but also to injure our hold faith by contradicting the Scriptures…."

In respsonse to a recent shot by James Fallows at Perry's claim that the acceptance of heliocentrism was retarded by the jealousies of contemporary scientists, Pajama Media recounts:

Fallows further mocks Perry by comparing him to a person who says, “Hey, I’ll mention Galileo! Unfortunately in mentioning him, I’ll show that I don’t know the first thing about that case….” But although Fallows may think that he’s the one who really knows the first thing about Galileo, he may not know the second and the third thing — including what the Church’s main beef with Galileo was, and the position of Galileo’s scientific contemporaries on the subject of heliocentrism. The latter is especially important to Perry’s analogy, since he was talking about disagreements among scientists, both in Galileo’s time and now.

The Church had initially become upset with Galileo for two main reasons, neither of them the conventional “church vs. science” objection of legend. His first offense was committing theological overreach in their eyes when he stated that heliocentrism did not contradict the Bible because scripture should not be interpreted literally. The second was a kind of scientific hubris: Galileo’s assertion that heliocentrism had been proven (incontrovertibly, as it were) rather than being a tentative working theory. In addition, many of Galileo’s fellow scientists, although split on the matter, were more against Galileo than with him, just as Rick Perry said. The reason for their skepticism was not theology, it was that Galileo’s model was inconsistent with the best empirical observations of the time — although of course, in retrospect, his theory turned out to be correct.

The most important problem with Galileo’s heliocentric theory, and one that was widely recognized by his scientific contemporaries, was the lack of “observable parallax shifts in the stars’ positions as the earth moved in its orbit around the sun.” It was only much later that instruments were designed that were sensitive enough to detect the shifts. Therefore, Galileo lacked scientific evidence to prove his theory, and many leading astronomers of the day rejected it. The renowned Tycho Brahe was one of them; he had his own competing theory, which was a Geo-Heliocentric hybrid in which the sun revolved around the earth but the other planets revolved around the sun, a system that conformed better than Galileo’s with the lack of observed stellar parallax and which remained in scientific favor for a long time.

I have written that Galileo’s theory turned out to be correct, but that is actually an over-simplication. Galileo was indeed correct in stating that the planets revolve around the sun. But he also believed that the sun is the fixed and unmoving center of the universe, which we now know to be incorrect.

This error does not contradict the fact that Galileo was a scientific giant. But the story is a reminder that even the brilliant make mistakes, and that science does not advance by simple progression from ignorance to perfect knowledge, nor is it proven by consensus. It moves in fits and starts, sometimes with small wavering steps and meanderings, sometimes with great leaps. Sometimes it lingers for a while in blind alleyways. But it is always incomplete, and must continually be tested and questioned.