I never thought I’d say this, but…coffee must be evil. Look at Starbucks, for example. I could stop there, I suppose, and everyone would understand my point, but to give a little more detail, PunkAssBlog highlights one of the quotes they are printing on their cups.
The morality of the 21st century will depend on how we respond to this simple but profound question: Does every human life have equal moral value simply and merely because it is human? Answer yes, and we have a chance of achieving universal human rights. Answer no, and it means that we are merely another animal in the forest.
Wesley Smith
senior fellow with the Discovery Institute
Oh, Starbucks does put a disclaimer on all these quotes — “The opinions put forth by contributors to “The Way I See It” do not necessarily reflect the views of Starbucks” — and they say the purpose is to “get people talking,” so I’ll bite.
Smith is a vacuous twit. Let’s talk about that.
There is no profundity in that question at all. He proposes a simplistic dichotomy using terms that he leaves undefined, but no doubt have a private meaning that he can use as a codeword to his like-minded compatriots, and then tells us what our answer damn well better be. It’s sloganeering for ideologues.
Tell me, what is “human”? Knowing what Smith’s other opinions are, he reduces humanity to a ‘mere’ fertilized cell, and his goal is equal rights for blastulae. Isn’t that rather more demeaning than being another animal in the forest? We’re just another cell in the colony, and the universal human rights he wants us to fight for are the privileges we give to the lowest common denominator, whatever cell has the right number of chromosomes and an appropriately human paternity (we all know that maternity is not quite as important to his side).
Isn’t that definition rather central to his whole premise? He’s arguing that saying that all humans are equal is a prerequisite to giving all humans equal rights, which isn’t necessarily true—we could grant chimpanzees all the rights of humans without requiring that they belong to Homo sapiens. Most importantly, though, if we conveniently defined away all Swedes as sub-human, he could still achieve his goal of universal civil rights for all people—after all, while we may have enslaved all the Swedish people and put them to work in forced labor camps, but they aren’t in our defined set of “humans” anyway.
I guess I’m just going to have to boycott that overpriced Starbucks stuff. Instead, I’ll frequent my local coffeeshop, which is run by a consortium of local evangelical churches.
Damn.
Like I said, coffee must be evil.
PZ,
I’ve been lurking here for a while, and I’ve always agreed with you. But I dunno…. Starbucks puts a lot of different quotes on their cups. It almost seems like they’re just picking crap at random. I mean, they’ve had David Cross and John Mayer do these–hell, they’ve had random customers do these quotes. It’s a stupid, meaningless program and it’s not worth getting upset over. They’re almost all lamebrained quotes. And yes, there was one instance where the religious right got their special underwear in a bunch over one, too, though I can’t remember what it was
Look, disagree with the guy, eviscerate him; but all I’m saying is that he’s not worth losing caffeine over.
Also, Starbucks isn’t that bad. They paid my bills for a while, and with considerably less cost to my sanity than any of my other service industry servitude. And dark roast coffee is just an acquired taste.
Sorry to rant.
Every business should be as “evil” as Starbucks. Several of my friends have worked there part time and recieved medical and dental benefits. It blew my mind when I found out about that.
The story about the quotes, btw, is they added a few right-wing quotes because they were catching heat about how biased toward the left their original batch of quotes were.
Niles,
You make a good point about the endless stream of dumb quotes on Starbucks’s cups, but I now have a good excuse to tell myself “No, three dollars is too much to spend on that Caramel Macchiato.”
Addicts!
I guess I was too subtle. I should have mentioned that I think our local coffeeshop is much more evil than Starbucks, but I’m still going there. Did you know I don’t like religion?
I think you are doing Smith a disservice. He’s clearly endorsing same-sex marriage.
Oh, am I happy to be in Berkeley where the independent coffeeshops outnumber Starbuck by 666 to three…
Oh noes! Don’t support my in-law’s church :)
You should just move away from coffee entirely and towards a mroe civilized beverage, tea.
Smith has obviously never been exposed to PeTA, who would eviscerate him for even suggesting that animal rights are somehow less than human rights.
Oh, I do hope that Ingrid Newkirk drinks Starbucks and comes across that quote, and then firebombs the Discovery Institute. What a lovely thought.
Bullshit. Answer “yes” and you’ve made every life of identical value — which means no life has any value. I think we can argue that many, many people living today are more “moral” or valuable than was, say, Stalin.
It’s amazing to me that atheists can be accused of “relativism” in the face of such vapid, mindless prate.
Can corporations have a soul? I know they’re defined as persons from a legal standpoint. Wonder if that’s enough to qualify for that Wesley Smith guy.
I whole heartedly agree with PZ. Try living in some of the places I have lived . . . In Ada, Oklahoma the local Taco Bell gives a 10% discount if you bring in your church bulletin. When I lived near Dayton, Tennessee (I now it should be expected here) the McDonald’s and Burger King both have a gospel music night! And here in Bowling Green, Kentucky (where I currently reside) if you go to the burger chain Backyard Burgers you will hear christian radio blaring . . . Not to mention every other week some religious wipe comes to my house trying to save my ass. All that to say, I have no need or tolerance for Starbucks attempt to get me engaged in a talk about religion . . . If they want me to get talking, lower their prices.
That damn first amendment lets people say stupid things and lets companies print stupid things on their cups! It’s not Starbucks that is the problem, its that damn Constitution!
j/k. I know PZ is taking issue with the words, not the printing of the words.
Wait, Starbucks serves coffee? I know they call themselves coffee shops, but I really don’t think they still do.
Coffee doesn’t make evil people, baristas make evil people.
I already made a comment to this effect at PunkAssBlog, but thought I’d share the idea here:
Does anyone know how best to communicate our displeasure to Starbuck’s? I’m sort of a novice at this stuff, but it strikes me that there are enough sensible folks on this blog and others that we could probably get the cups pulled if we put our minds to it.
Because, you know, we atheist skeptics just want to censor people. :-)
Someone has tried this sort of thing before, and AFAIK they had no luck.
Starbucks sells tea, too.
I’m not bothered so much by the quote — it’s really as vacuous as any ot the others that I’ve seen on Starbucks cups. I’m bothered more by the fact that this cup-quote thing is symptomatic of a greater societal trend that I’m not very comfortable with. I’m sure everyone here has noticed, but modern discourse is frought with epistemic relativism, and not the kind that arises from giving ethics careful consideration. These days balance, not correctness, is the thing we should strive for in opinion. What’s more, opinion and belief (no matter how baseless or uninformed), is deemed sacrosanct. That’s your belief, we’re supposed to say, and I won’t question it. Really, that isn’t what they do say. They say we’re supposed to respect the beliefs of others, but the problem is that, in practice, the people at large seem to think that even so much as criticizing or questioning an opinion or belief amounts to a defilement of someone’s core being.
I actually stopped buying anything from Starbucks over this. It wasn’t because they quoted people from the National Review or the Discovery Institute, although that’s pretty tasteless. It was because, with these cups, Starbucks is exploiting and encouraging the facile intellectual relativism that has poisoned the modern discourse.
My Starbucks coffee cup says “Intended for single use only.” Yet another reason to avoid marriage!
I get my coffee from the Boulder Street Coffee Shop in Colorado Springs. You probably remember it from that segment in The Root of All Evil where Dawkins was talking about Paul Hill — it’s where Dawkins was drinking coffee and looking at stuff on his laptop.
It isn’t run by churches or a big corporation. It’s run by hippies.
When I worked in Edinburgh, Scotland, I was surprised (naively I suppose) to find Burger King, McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, TGIFriday, and two Starbucks within 100 yards of the office. Since Scotland has given us such culinary delights as haggis and deep-fried pizza slices maybe they need a special exemption in the food category, but for heaven’s sake lets push back on the giant multinationals. Vote with your feet and your dollars when ever and where ever you can.
“as of May 2006, Starbucks had 6,495 company-operated outlets worldwide”
Wait, if every human life has equal value, and fertilised eggs have human life, does that mean that identical twins only have half the value of everyone else?
I still prefer Peet’s, or, like Rien, one of the huge number of independent coffee shops here in Berkeley.
I gotta say, taking issue with Starbuck’s over the cup quotes thing is pretty lame. I agree with PZ’s attack of the content of the quote above, but it’s also true that Starbuck’s puts all kinds of random quotes on their cups. I’ve seen at least two from prominent gay celebs, one advocating coming out, even (that was the one that got the right-wingers in a tizzy). Boycotting Starbuck’s over this seems extremely misguided. You might as well boycott your local food mart because the guy who delivers their toilet paper is a creationist.
Ok, that’s a crappy analogy. I’m going on vacation at 4, and I’ve been mentally on vacation since…oh, Monday, I suppose :)
PS — It must be nice to have such a variety of local coffeeshops where you live, but some of us do not have that option. Around here, I think we have one “local” coffeeshop, Starbuck’s, and Dunkin Donuts. The local place is open 8-5 and their coffee tastes odd, whereas Starbuck’s is open 7-12 AND their cappucinos don’t taste like something scraped off your shoe on a hot day. Dunkin is not to be thought of. So I’m going to keep frequenting the “evil” corporation, if you don’t mind. It’s so nice and leftie to say you should support local business, but sometimes, for some things, that just isn’t an option.
Unless a boycott is extremely well-publicized and wide-spread, it’s an impotent gesture that hurts exactly the wrong people.
Just the fact that you’ve read the quote well enough to make some comment on it, is enough to get the guy in marketing who came up with the idea a fat Xmas bonus, and more of the same in the 2007 cup line. Nothing says $$ like getting the consumer’s attention whether it’s positive or negative. Unless of course, you do more than gripe.
For what you spend on a couple three months coffee at Starbucks you can buy a real Italian espresso machine and make your own, from Fair Trade espresso beans. In fact you’ll probably have enough left over to be one of the supporters of a Fair Trade coffee station.
It’s not what’s on the cup that’s so objectionable, it’s Starbucks.
Putting idiotic vapid quotes on your company’s cups for the mere act of appeasement is spineless. Tell the dim-wits (i.e. religionists) that their quotes are a waste of ink and neural transmitter.
If a large corporation can’t muster enough fortitude to stand up to the intimidation of the religious chauvinists, then who will?
People need to understand that getting a quote on the side of a Starbucks cup is the first step in the evolution of legitimacy. No actually it’s payback for cup #43. How about the fourth amendment on the side of a Starbucks cup, it could use a little legitimacy about now. Or, here’s one you might like: “Many existing superstitions are the remnants of former false religious beliefs.” CD
Still, I digress…..
Hooray for college towns. I can hardly go a block without tripping over a non-Starbucks coffee place… except near my apartment! But even then it’s only about a 10 minute walk, so no big deal.
Although, going to Boston University, I had to live with having the second highest grossing Starbucks on the planet. It’s inside (INSIDE!) the School of Management, a.k.a. Chainsmoker Central. Yeesh.
But, since it’s a college town, I also had plenty of indie places in reach. Some of them suck, others are good. It’s hit-and-miss, which is really why people like Starbucks: consistency. I’m not a huge fan of their coffee myself, but if you get a cup there, you always know what to expect.
They don’t have the ambience of my preferred chain, Espresso Royale, though. Nor do they have crepes like the other coffee place I usually find myself these days. Mmm… crepes.
People actually read the coffee cups? I thought that pretty much all the writing you find strategically strewn around a Starbucks was there for decorative purposes only – with the exception of the menu.
All this talk of coffee…. the smell of freshly brewed organically grown Brazilian coffee now fills the air, mmmm thats a good cup of coffee, even though its 93 outside, still good!
Indeed a stimulant and a depressant flovourfully wrapped
“Does every human life have equal moral value simply and merely because it is human?”
Yeah, at conception, but it usually is a downward spiral from then on, as soon as freewill kicks in our “moral value” become very unequal when some choose to do all sorts of bad things while others choose to do all sorts of good things with their lives. As for “what is human” … I’d say it isn’t necessarily the physical, but the mental, humans have potential of self realization and altruism, and the ability to convey these and other abstract ideas and thoughts to another.
Boycotting Starbucks over this is emotional, irrational and excessive. But I still love PZ!
Peace.
Now where’s my caffeine?
I have to say the menu is pretty much meaninless decoration, too. Everything you get is just “loads of sugar, caffeine added.”
Never been to Starbucks, never will. I don’t understand our cultural obsession with drugs of which caffine is one of the most lucrative and widely abused in this country. Adding a preachy message about morality to their cups certainly shows the hypocricy of this corporate machine.
I had this exact quote on the first Starbucks coffee I had bought in a while, and got pretty pissed, because I figured they were trying to force-feed propaganda to their customers.
Until the next time, when I saw one with a quote my Maureen Dowd,
then the next one by someone I’d never heard of… Then I realized that it was all just empty-headed BS.
To paraphrase the Hitchhiker’s Guide, they make … a cupful of liquid that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike coffee.
I’ve never had a good cup of coffee from Starbucks. Never. I’ve had coffee that approaches adequate, but never good. It always tastes like they forgot to clean the pot, like it’s been sitting on a hotplate and evaporating too long.
The average donut shop treats coffee with more respect than Starbucks.
I agree with other commenters – go to the good independant coffee shops that actually care about individuals. Starbucks coffee is terrible.
“Does every human life have equal moral value simply and merely because it is human?”
Yeah, at conception, but it usually is a downward spiral from then on, as soon as freewill kicks in our “moral value” become very unequal when some choose to do all sorts of bad things while others choose to do all sorts of good things with their lives.
That still leaves the “does an identical twin only have half the value” problem standing.
As for “what is human” … I’d say it isn’t necessarily the physical, but the mental, humans have potential of self realization and altruism, and the ability to convey these and other abstract ideas and thoughts to another.
Which, if I understand correctly, would mean that newly-conceived embryos aren’t human – they don’t have the neurons necessary for serious mental work, nor the peripherals to communicate their results through word or deed. That’s pretty much what I thought anyway, but it rather conflicts with the first half of your comment.
It’s interesting to see you posting here, Bro – been lurking your blog for a while now :)
P Z Myers wrote:
OK, you’re the biologist. You tell us.
Apparently, it’s not a zygote or blastula. You’re saying that they’re all the same? It doesn’t matter what species the parents are or what they’ll develop into – assuming they get the chance?
To James Taylor: Loved your Fire and Rain dude!
Correct.
Unfortunately, consciously or not, a great many people use the speciesist rationale for rights ascription found in the quote. It’s so ubiquitous most people take it in an ethical discussion as granted that humans innately have more rights than other animals.
Didn’t you quit coffee some months ago, PZ?
I assume the Disco Inst affiliation is supposed to provide some gravitas to this pseudo-profundity (hey – this isn’t just some guy off the street talking! He’s from an Institute!). Why else would it be there?
In any case they might as well have printed a disclaimer stating that the source of the quote is without credibility and should in fairness be utterly distrusted. Perhaps their failure to do so is a kindness to fellow Seattleites (?).
I’d join in the boycott, but… I don’t drink coffee.
In fact, as bizarre as it sounds, I don’t know if my general area has any Starbucks whatsoever.
Just checked. There are exactly two within 50 miles of my home.
Profound Vincent. However, I think sentience and intelligence, and the different levels of it must count for something.
For example: Your statement implies it would be a violation of an animal’s rights (say, a cow) for a human to kill it for food since the human doesn’t really need it for food or resources.
Can the same logic be successfully applied to the lion in the Serengeti killing the gazelle? No. It has no other options. So now we have a different set of rights for the gazelle if a human is killing it for food versus the lion.
This must be because to the difference in cognitive capabilities, I would think. It’s all the different shades that make it messy.
Bro. Corkscrew,
The “twins” … you have dropped “moral” from “moral value” and this is why the Starbucks’ cup quote is fuzzy (it seems everyone assumes Wesley Smith is speaking of the “value” of each human, which is of course a completely different question). Moral values are ideas of what is good and what is bad that one develops as one’s mind develops, and are depended upon freewill and a mind that is able to consider abstract ideas, so at conception, the necessary brain is not there, but within the living cells are the potential for the development of a brain and a thinking mind that can discern such thoughts, and it is this potential that makes us human and is what separates humans from animals. Of course, each baby twin has “value” but each twin has not developed “moral values” and when they do, they may have completely different sets of moral values.
By the way, any relation to “Screw tape”?
Shalom,
Bro. Bartleby
You’ll note he doesn’t specifically mention blastulae. He wrote every human life. For example, if your doctor takes a biopsy of a tumor and cultures some cells in a tissue culture flask; those cells are alive, and they’re certainly human – it’s not like you’d have a canine tumor growing in your body. So, according to Wesley Smith, those cultured tumor cells need to have equal rights with every person you meet, or else “we are merely another animal in the forest.”
The man is an idiot.
I wondered how long it would take before the forced pregnancy crowd showed up. Not very long.
Now if Starbucks only served up a menu like those offered in Amsterdaam’s coffee shops….
No, Tara, if an egg is enterprising enough to divide into two people, it gets to be twice as valuable and important than those of us who were too lazy to divide ourselves. It’s only fair.
The “twins” … you have dropped “moral” from “moral value” and this is why the Starbucks’ cup quote is fuzzy (it seems everyone assumes Wesley Smith is speaking of the “value” of each human, which is of course a completely different question).
No, that is indeed what the quote is talking about, at least as I read it. It refers not to “moral values” but to “moral value” – to a person’s ethical worth. Any other interpretation is nonsensical – obviously all humans do not have equal moral values.
Whether a person’s moral value should be predicated on the moral values they hold to is an interesting question – there’s undoubtedly a relationship – but it’s quite clear which Smith is talking about.
but within the living cells are the potential for the development of a brain and a thinking mind that can discern such thoughts, and it is this potential that makes us human and is what separates humans from animals.
We’re not there yet by a long shot, but it’s theoretically perfectly possible to clone a human being from an adult human cell – by your definition, therefore, those cells are human. Does that mean that, every time you graze your elbow, you’re killing off thousands of humans? I personally would argue not – the humanity of homo sapiens lies in their actual mental and spiritual* capacity, not in the potential thereof.
* For a sufficiently fuzzy and secular definition of the word “spiritual”, of course :)
Oh, and no relation to “Screwtape” – I waste far more time corrupting people :P
Who is Howard Shultz and Starbucks today?
http://www.inminds.co.uk/boycott-starbucks.html
Am I the last human being on earth who has never set foot even once in a Starbucks?
(the fact that I can’t drink coffee for medical reasons makes it easier I guess.)
Sometimes it seems that having been shut out of many of the “mainstream” experiences that other people take for granted can at least be interesting in one respect. I get to see life from an outsider’s point of view.
You caffeine junkies.
Bro. Bartelby wrote:
Humans *are* animals….
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Primates
Family: Hominidae
Genus: Homo
Species: H. sapiens
Thank you Dark Matter….really.
I get perturbed when somehow someone manages to convince themselves that humans are not animals.
By the way, I didn’t believe in your actual existence until recently. Now it seems you may actually exist. Apologies.
“I get perturbed when somehow someone manages to convince themselves that humans are not animals.”
Years back a co-worker of mine confronted me with that crap, the whole “you can’t believe we came from apes, can you?” and “man was created in the image of God” stuff.
It’s funny. Chimps look a lot like us… hands, etc. Which means, I suppose, chimps look a lot like God. Which also means God looks a lot like a chimp.
She didn’t like that suggestion one bit.
I’ve even come across the absurd concept of animals as essentially automatons, whose mimicry of human (i.e. authentic) emotion is, for lack of a better term, “front loaded” by God.
On some level, I had to admire the dude for carrying the idea of humans having a soul, and animals not, to its logical conclusion.
Corporate amerika may be evil and Starbuks is a part of dat!
As for that wonderful white crystaline alkaloid that is caffeine, I can assure you that it is the elixir of all mortals aspiring to be gods.
Oh give me a double cuban expresso to start my day! I don’t give a rodent’s arse for the diluted swamp water the sell at Starbucks!! That ain’t coffee! Trust me I’m Brazilian and I know real coffee.
Coffee, evil? Only a DFW would dare say such a thing.
Jeez pls. get your priorities straight.
Everybody’s complaining about Starbucks today – take a gander at the New York Times, front page story about two tiers of breastfeeding in the workplace. Everyone knows it happens, it happens at almost all companies, but they used Starbucks as their example. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that – Starbucks has gotten a lot of mileage from claiming to treat employees well, so they’re fair game)
Re Bernarda
The best reason to shop at Starbucks: stick it to the Israel bashers.
We’re reading a lot into that particular quote — because we know who said it, and we’re making assumptions (which isn’t necessarily unreasonable.) But the jist of the statement is that the concept of universal rights rests on the fundamental choice to value people as equals, regardless of race, religion, sex, or nationality.
If Starbucks had said that the author was Gandhi — or Nelson Mandela or Kurt Vonnegut or pretty much anyone else who lacks the baggage — I suspect the quotation would not have been put through the ringer like this.
No.
It appears to me that you are also reading a lot into the quote that isn’t actually there. Welcome to the club.
Of course I am. If Starbucks had attributed the quote to someone with a record of human rights activism, we would probably have interpreted it that way.
I suspect most of the people who glance at the Wesley Smith quotation on the coffee cup have no idea who he is, or what the Discovery Institute is. They’d paraphrase it in benign fashion.
James Taylor,
“Never been to Starbucks, never will. I don’t understand our cultural obsession with drugs of which caffine is one of the most lucrative and widely abused in this country.”
Ah, but a good cup of Joe–have you never had one? You cannot understand the obsession if you have not had one…coffee…mmmmmmmmm…
Incidently, I didn’t drink coffee until I was 24 b/c MN coffee (pre-Starbucks) was merely thin, brown water. I was forced to start drinking it when I could not stay awake in my advisor’s seminar class of four students (just a wee bit conspicuous, it was, as my eyes would roll into my head). Then I discovered the tasty goodness of wonderful coffee (I lived in Washington, mind you) especially when brewed with a French Press…I’m going home to make some right now…
Oh–and Sastra–good point.
Serious comment:
Why not submit quotes to Starbuck’s that are challenging?
“I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.” – Susan B Anthony
Not serious comment:
When we take invade your country and free you from oppression, we’ll bring Tim Horton’s with us.
“…and it is this potential that makes us human and is what separates humans from animals.”
“Humans *are* animals….”
How about:
“…and it is this potential that makes us human and is what separates human animals from other animals, primates, critters, creatures, and vermin and not excluding varmint.”
And Bro. Corkscrew, how about:
The cells at conception, that is where the potential exists, blueprinted in the DNA.
“…so at conception, the necessary brain is not there, but within the living cells are the potential [DNA blueprint] for the development of a brain and a thinking mind that can discern such thoughts, and it is this potential [DNA] that makes us human and is what separates humans from other animals, primates, criters, creatures, and vermin and not excluding varmint.”
craig: I only go in them the few times I am with colleagues or friends who wish to go in and get something, as I find coffee to have one of the most revolting smells imaginable. So I’m close, I guess.
Let them quote “Dan from Austin“:
“If by banning gay marriage you are exercising your freedom of religion, then by punching you in the throat I am exercising my freedom of speech. “
Here in Southern California, In ‘n Out Burgers are thought by a lot of people to make the best of the corporate fast-food burgers. They print Bible verse name/number (Gen 1:1) in small print on their paper placemats, soda cups etc. It’s kind of weird to me–are people expected to bring their Bibles while they eat their Double Double’s with cheese, no onions or lettuce and look up the wording? Or take their used placemat home to check up on the wording of the reference? Talk about preaching to the converted!
Mmmm…Double Doubles…..
I have never understood the success of Starbucks. They don’t roast their beans; they burn them. I make better espresso with my $15 stovetop pot than they do.
Here in Canada, the coffeeshop industry is dominated by Tim Horton’s (named after the famous hockey player, of course), kind of the same feel as Dunkin’ Donuts, but a cultural phenomenon in the Great White North. To this day, I’m convinced they spike their coffee with crack–it’s so addictive.
I agree with other commenters – go to the good independant coffee shops that actually care about individuals.
What, like the workers? I don’t know about your neck of the woods, but around here, Starbucks pays better and gives better benefits than any other coffee place I know of. And personally, those are the individuals I care about. (It probably doesn’t hurt that coffee gives me a stomachache, so I just end up drinking tea or frappucinos anyway…)
Peets pwnz0rs Starbucks.
& royal coffee pwns peets
The cells at conception, that is where the potential exists, blueprinted in the DNA.
I just cut my finger. There are undoubtedly cells concealed within the resulting outflow that could, given the technology, be restored to totipotency and allowed to grow into a real human being. Truly, blood is the water of life. But does that mean I should feel guilty about throwing my plaster into the bin? Am I casually discarding members of my own species?
The potential for humanity doesn’t lie just in the cells at conception. It lies in every fragment of our body. It lies in the vast databases that store the genomes of entire humans. Heck, someday we’ll probably invent artificial intelligence, and then it’ll also lie in every semiconductor on the planet. There’s a choice here: either we spend all the days of our lives sweeping the ants away from our footsteps, or we accept that potentiality has less value than actuality. A bird in the hand, and all that…
Yeah, darn those multinational corporations! Down with globalization, down with the man!
You can argue that kids shouldn’t be exposed to creationism in school because it’s “wrong” and shouldn’t be allowed the luxury of contemplating false ideas, but adults aren’t vulnerable.
I’ve never had a problem with starbucks–their staff is nice, the coffee predictable, etc. Stick to what you’re good at, PZ: biology.
Bro. Corkscrew,
Prior to conception, the two components, sperm and egg, by themselves, they lack potential. By themselves, nothing develops, nothing happens. But, at conception, potential comes into existence, the potential is the complete blueprint [DNA] for developing the unique brain/mind of a human.
As for everything after conception, I have no quibble with what you say, yes, potential, the complete blueprint of DNA now resides in ever cell, that is, except the haploid cells — the sperm and egg!
Bro. Bartleby
I stopped eating In ‘n Out back in the mid-80s because of their surreptitious proselytizing on their packaging; but a couple years ago I gave in to a group of coworkers who wanted to get lunch from there one day, and ordered a burger combo. By the end of the meal, I admitted to the group that while perhaps my boycotting the place because of their slapping scripture citations on everything could be perceived as going a bit overboard; however, after eating one of their combos after all these years, I was once more committed to never eating In ‘n Out again, because it was just awful! At least for me, “In ‘n Out” was an entirely appropriate name for the place, because I’d probably be better off eating their food on the toilet in light of the speed with which my digestive tract ejected it!
OB’s short review of In ‘n Out: Tastes good, feels bad, cites scripture on their packaging. Skip it and go to Burger King.
Wesley is an extremist who doesn’t like it when people own their own lives. That’s his REAL motivation between opposing euthanasia and assisted suicide. It all seems very similar to those people in the South who fought to RETAIN slavery during the American Civil War.
“Potential” means precisely dick unless you can measure it. You can’t, so your idea is a social construct not based in science.
And judging by which species is doing the most damage to this planet, we humans are the worst animals in existence. So by any objective measure, the less humans there are, the better for the Earth. Am I saying this is how we should structure society? No. But I feel that any ideology that makes blastulae equivalent to a human being, regardless of whatever “potential” means, makes attempts to curb overpopulation moot and futile, and will only make humanity’s claim to destructive evil that much more certain.
Exactly, JackGoff.
If a fertilized egg is a person, then someone who has the potential to get a university degree should be treated the same as someone who as already graduated with that degree.
Sastra says, “But the jist of the statement is that the concept of universal rights rests on the fundamental choice to value people as equals, regardless of race, religion, sex, or nationality.”
There’s more to it than that. Smith’s claim implies “human exceptionalism”: the idea that all humans have a unique moral worth, one that all non-humans lack. That’s the tie-in to the Discovery Institute, of which he is a leading member. God’s intervention (“Zap! I give all you humans unique moral worth, even if you have the intelligence of a slug”) is what is required to make any sense of human exceptionalism, given that many non-humans are mentally superior to many humans.
Wesley loves humans, but not free will. He actually believes that suicide is ALWAYS immoral, regardless of the success (or lack thereof) of palliative care. He loves to torture quadraplegics.
If he got a paper cut, he’d probably shoot himself because of the pain.
Meh. IMHO there are much better reasons to hate Starbucks than the fact that they print random stupid quotations on cups in a calculated attempt to make themselves look a little less like an evil soulless corporation.
Personally, I don’t go to Starbucks because the only coffee they have is overroasted. (For the non-coffee-drinkers: if Starbucks sold toast instead of coffee, none of their toasters would be set to less than 7 out of 10.) I don’t have anything against people who like to drink hot liquid carbon, but that’s not my… um… cup of tea.
One of the great pleasures of visiting Seattle was that, even in their home city, I could drink coffee all day long and never have to settle for Starbucks. The only place where I couldn’t find a decent cuppa was at the Space Needle.
So anyway, IMHO hating Starbucks because of the quotations on ther cups is like hating Disney for Gay Days: sure you can, but there are so many better reasons for hating them.
Maybe I should make a deal with Wesley. If I become terminally ill, I’ll agree not to commit suicide if he gives me the pleasure of killing him. I wonder what his response would be.
Potential: something that has the possibility to become actual. Frog DNA in hand appears to be but a bit of goo, but a frog in hand is a pretty cool creature, yet the appearance of the goo does not negate that it is the blueprint of that creature in hand. Under the right conditions, that goo has the potential to become a frog; no other goo in the universe can make that claim.
“…we humans are the worst animals in existence.”
Perhaps, but from a science point of view, this “worst animal” is the only one with the “potential” to save and carry life to another place when that day comes when the sun fulfills its destiny and becomes a red giant, thus incinerating earth and all life on it. Without humans, evolution of life as we know it would end.
So I would suggest that for an atheist, a worthy goal would be to support the space program, and begin charting the escape routes, for after all, the chimps aren’t going to do it for you.
[laughs uncontrollably]
That is a worthy. As is curbing overpopulation. Nothing you have said refutes my arguments, since I don’t think we’re going to make it for the 5 billion years it’s going to take for our sun to burn itself out.
Should be “worthy goal”
I should also point out that ZPG for humanity should be the greatest goal humans are working towards in terms of species survival.
I suppose an atheist can blissfully face his existential dilemma as:
A thinking creature that sees his here-and-now the result of a near timeless chain of happenstance and circumstance, with no driving purpose beside the self-created drive to survive and propagate, but ultimately it is all meaningless.
Another model would be the atheist that knows not the purpose of existence, yet feels it important to at least keep the status quo in nature, kind of the Boy Scout model, leave your campsite the way you found it, so do no harm to any life forms and allow this unknown urge to survive and propagate to continue, or if this upsets the status quo of other life forms, then use brain and mind to regulate the propagation of any creature that impedes evolution, or at least those creatures that upset balances in nature, such creatures being various virus, of course humans, jack rabbits, and perhaps Argentine ants.
So I think an atheist can choose to “follow evolution to its ultimate destiny” … these folks would be the ones that would consider a “Star Trek” future as both desirable and the only avenue to ensure the progress of evolution, at least as evolution manifested on Earth. Of course the existentialist would think all this absurd and as fanciful as the thinking of the religious.
I, personally, have no existential dilemma, nor do I need a God to tell me that my existence has meaning, a la The Stranger. I know I live in a meaningless world that is heartlessly indifferent, and I go from there, finding my own meaning where I can. You want to say that all atheists have some sort of problem with existence in that there is no meaning. Fair enough, if that were true for all atheists. It is not, so you statement is bullshit coming from a source that knows nothing about what it is generalizing. Either way, you have not refuted the need for ZPG, so arguing with you is futile.
So, I have a handful of coffee joints within a block of my office in downtown Eugene. The two with a counterculture tinge are also the two with the worst service. I tend to alternate between another indepentdent shop and ….. Starbucks. The staff at my Starbucks are efficient, friendly, effective and consistent … and the always give me a sleeve to cover up the silly quotes.
Unless something has happened in Morris since I was last there, PZ must travel quite some ways to find a Starbucks to shun :-)
I buy coffee from Mom and Pop Christians and from Starbucks, in spite of their religious issues, as long as they provide good service and quality caffeine.
Starbucks has upped the ante. They have switched to commemorative anniversay cups … which have a drawing with bare female breasts .. oh my. The barrista confided to me that some customers have been offended. I said give ’em a sleeve if they cant handle it.
I’ve been lurking here for a while, and I’ve always agreed with you. But I dunno…. Starbucks puts a lot of different quotes on their cups.
Uh, I don’t think PZ’s article was about Starbucks … or coffee.
Am I the last human being on earth who has never set foot even once in a Starbucks?
I used their bathroom once.
it seems everyone assumes Wesley Smith is speaking of the “value” of each human
Gee, I wonder if that has anything to do with the fact that he said “… value of …”. What he is obviously referring to is the value of every human being, as evaluated morally … as opposed to, say, financially, or their caloric content.
Moral values are ideas of what is good and what is bad that one develops as one’s mind develops
So you seriously think that Smith was referring to “the ideas of what is good and what is bad that one develops as one’s mind develops” of every human?
Sigh.
“It appears to me that you are also reading a lot into the quote that isn’t actually there. Welcome to the club.”
Of course I am. If Starbucks had attributed the quote to someone with a record of human rights activism, we would probably have interpreted it that way.
Uh, right, so the quote means what Gandhi would have meant by it rather than what the guy who said it meant by it.
The best reason to shop at Starbucks: stick it to the Israel bashers.
Yet another reason for me not to shop at Starbucks: I’m a proud (and Ashkenazi, FWIW) Israel basher.
Bro. Bartleby: So I think an atheist can …
No one cares what you think atheists can do.
Intelligent people can handle intellectual vapidity, and should call it out, as PZ does, but if anyone is profoundly influenced by what they read on a coffee cup there is no hope for them anyway. It is the call to mindless consumerism represented by the over-priced giftware shlock they have for sale in their stores that I though was the most offensive thing about Starbucks. I also have a beef about their portion sizes relative to their prices, encouraging people to over-consume in search of meaningless value (pay just 30% more for 100% percent more sugar and fat between a grande and venti frappuchino). I think that kind of pricing practice is wrong.
Wrong. Identical twins have very different minds and brains.
I never even noticed these quotes on their cups, not that I go there often. I stopped going recently because they are buddy-buddy with another pillar of Seattle, T-Mobile, and their insistence on customers having a T-Mobile subscription to use any internet access there, everyone else be damned. This gives me more reason to shun them. It’s one thing to have a spiritual quote from say, the Dalai Lama, but to put on such a politically charged – and abhorrently ignorant and stupid – comment as that from Smith of DI-shire, is back-handed.
Also, quotes on cups are the American form of fortune cookies…but Smith’s quote isn’t about fortunes, it’s not about advice, it’s not about a timeless truth of society…it’s an uninformed opinion that prefaces a rant about things which Smith is profoundly ignorant of. I’m sure this got through the corporate “censors” because it seems benign, but is really dishonest at its core.
Hey PZ, it’s good to see that you and WorldNetDaily have something in common. I suppose I don’t need to say, “yet another thing.”
Anyway, if you’re going to boycott Starbucks, do it for a good reason instead of being a drama queen about a quote on a cup. Starbucks, through the way it buys its Ethiopian coffee (almost all non-free trade Sidamo), has created an environment in which local Sidamo region farmers and their families are either at risk of starving, or have to grow chat to survive. That’s a good reason to boycott Starbucks.
See comment #4.
I thought it was obvious. I’m boycotting neither Starbucks (although I don’t go out of my way to give them my custom) nor my local church-run coffee house.
I also don’t really think coffee is evil.
Look! I’m rolling my eyes at your cluelessness!