Christians Against Dinosaurs

 A few months ago, I scanned a headline about a group seeking the removal of a dinosaur statue outside a McDonalds in Tucson, AZ. Having lived in Tucson and familiar with the landmark, I was intrigued to the point of actually reading the article.

The group is called ‘Christians Against Dinosaurs’ (aka CAD) which maintains a Facebook page with a dead link to christiansagainstdinosaurs.com (I guess the CAD admins don’t make enough money or haven’t heard about free web hosting). Per the Facebook page, the philosophy – such as it is – maintains: There is no evidence dinosaurs ever existed, that dinosaurs ever existed is based on assumptions, Jurassic Park is not a documentary (I wasn’t aware anyone thought that), dinosaurs in musea(?) are made of plaster, carbon dating is not reliable, and that chickens are not modern dinosaurs. The group admins repeatedly assert they have done the scientific research and have concluded – with no help from their faith – that dinosaurs never existed. Furthermore, to believe in dinosaurs is dangerous because, well, it’s false and naturally leads people away from the Christian god.

 

Of course, I couldn’t help but be tempted to join the group and weigh in on their discussions. I also knew it would be fruitless to change anyone’s mind, so why would I bother? Because insanity doesn’t get a free pass, ever, even when you can’t cure the ill. I’m glad I did join, though, because what I discovered is a potentially dangerous group of people.

 

Let’s begin with their denial of the evidence, of which there is a lot. What I mean is that we’ve recovered fossilized bones (NOT the bones themselves, which CAD members don’t seem to understand) of many exceptionally sized animals that would be classified as lizards. (Lizards being their classification based on anatomy and physiology, and in this case, supposedly their behavior; based on modern lizards). We’ve recovered LOTS of fossils of these lizards and as the evidence mounted, yes, assumptions were made that these fossilized bones belonged to (often large) lizards that we do not see anymore. Because what else could they be?

 

Ah, the ‘fossilized’ bones are either all fakes and/or were put in place by Satan to deceive all of us about there ever being dinosaurs, because the more time you spend obsessing about dinosaurs the less time you spend with God. (The devil couldn’t come up with a better plan than that? That’s disappointing.)

Certainly, nevermind that most adults spend more time at church than on dinosaurs even if they did go through a dinosaur phase as a child. I mean, no one is missing church to go catch the latest Jurassic Park movie. Sheesh. So we can dismiss the Satan Theory as being childish nonsense but to claim all the recoveries are fake? That would be a massive undertaking and human beings aren’t exactly known for keeping their mouths shut the larger a conspiracy becomes. BUT, the fakes are driven by money, prestige and power, leading us to the perpetrators of the conspiracy – Big Paleo. Ooo, scary.

 

I think CAD’s claim about Big Paleo being in it for the money is so ludicrous that it highlights the lack of research group members must avoid. Their assertion is that the field of paleontology makes so much money, that is what drives the industry to lie about what they’ve discovered and what they do. Now, I couldn’t find any estimates on how much money the field of paleontology makes annually, but literally no one thinks of paleontologists first when asked to make a short list of opportunistic careers. (Click here for a list of the most influential – not richest – paleontologists https://paleontologyworld.com/paleontologists-curiosities/12-most-influential-paleontologists ). By comparison, the faith industry in the U.S. alone makes approximately a trillion dollars a year. So, if money is the motivating factor for paleontologists, why aren’t they pastor instead? They’re in the wrong industry! And I won’t even mention the fact that you need at least a Masters degree to make any money in paleontology whereas you don’t need any education to lead a flock astray. So why go through the trouble? By the way, can you can name at least one mega-rich pastor off the top of your head? Who can’t! The lie about Big Paleo is an attempt to cash-in on the hysteria of phrases like Big Pharma and Big Oil which are seen as inherently evil, which in this case is an outright lie. (I know what you’re thinking, why would a Christian lie about something? Perhaps being Christian, they’re already immune to facts. I’m not sure. Actually I do know why but that’s not important right now.)

 

Could it be that Big Paleo is driven by prestige and power? That is possibly more likely since we know spiritual leaders are likely motivated by the same factors; it’s just a human thing to do, pretend you hold special knowledge. So that’s a possible explanation for the ‘lie’ but since that motivation applies to so many people in so many fields, the point is perhaps moot. Except when it comes to fossilized bones there is no special knowledge: We have a bunch of bones that when we compare them can be classified in a certain way and leads us to certain conclusions. As I mentioned the conclusion may be somewhat inexact, but the overall conclusion that really large lizards once roamed the earth is inescapable. (Or at least that’s what Satan wants us to think. I keep mentioning to CAD members that the evidence is there but they just don’t want to hear it; it would be too much mental work for them to draw any conclusions from it.)

 

I also point out that even if we take it as a matter of faith that dinosaurs existed, this is no different than any of them believing in God on faith. Naturally, they always counter this by saying matters of faith are not subject to scientific inquiry as if they’re being clever in avoiding the ‘evidence trap.’ So CAD gets upset that paleontologists tell everyone that dinosaurs existed based on the evidence. What they don’t realize is that, epistemologically speaking, ultimately every belief is a matter of faith, which circles back to my point about just believing in dinosaurs on faith as a non-starter. In other words, they shouldn’t be getting upset if, really, believing dinosaurs existed is a matter of faith since evidence isn’t required for beliefs. CAD doesn’t realize any analysis of their argument in dividing the beliefs undermines that argument. (I’d like to add here that there is evidence for every belief we have, though that evidence may be falsified or be a false claim. No one is born with a belief in God, though it seems human beings are born with an innate ability to believe in the nonsensical or the flimsiest of ‘evidence,’ like a book written by superstitious tribal men.)

 

But aren’t all the dinosaur bones in museums fakes, made of plaster? Many are because fossilized bones which really aren’t ‘bones’ in the way we understand them are very fragile. (This link speaks to the definition and fragility of fossils https://www.amnh.org/dinosaurs/dinosaur-bones#:~:text=The%20%22dinosaur%20bones%22%20that%20you,bones%20are%20turned%20into%20rock. ) Yet many real fossils do appear in museums around the world. Sure, some are plaster replicas made from molds or are guesswork where skeletons have been recovered incomplete, but even forensic scientists do the latter with human bodies. (So I guess we should consider human skeletons that aren’t recovered fully intact fake? I know, that’s a stretch, but it was fun to write.)

 

At this point I’m going to move on to their disdain for (radio)carbon dating which everyone knows can only date organic material back 50,000 years or so. Paleontologists use a different kind of radiometric dating to determine the age of the rock and sediment fossilized bones are found in and that helps estimate the age of a recovery. The most rudimentary research can point this out, so for a group that claims to be scientifically minded they goofed one of their primary talking points. Good grief, CAD’s not doing so well so far.

 

Hold on! You mean chickens aren’t modern dinosaurs? Let’s file this under ‘N’ for No Shit, Sherlock. Chickens aren’t even lizards. Alas, the evidence seems to indicate birds have descended from dinosaurs, because evolution. I won’t get into evolution here because many of its detractors either can’t grasp the basic concepts involved or refuse to believe it on religious grounds. Anyone who says chickens are modern dinosaurs means they are descendants, not that they’re actually dinosaurs. But leave it to CAD not to understand this.

 

Behind all their misleading and outright false drivel is something inevitably more sinister, however. Checking in on them this evening (you gotta keep an eye on these people) sees one CAD member going on a rant because he came across a dinosaur’s face plastered on a case of beer. That’s being a little triggered, wouldn’t you say? CAD members often post such pictures with such pithy captions as, “This is not okay!” or “Dinosaurs never existed!” Similarly, for every new report of a recovery, a CAD member will inevitably remark, “Jesus is really testing us,” making it clear that at least some members really do think dinosaur bones were put in place by Satan.

 

CAD’s desire to see dinosaurs erased from all aspects of culture indicate the worst tendencies of humanity. Among them, the inability to understand science, the declaration of special knowledge, and to be clearly divorced from reality while insisting their religious beliefs have nothing to do with their denial of the evidence. And the group is clearly religiously motivated, which can never be not troubling. Then there’s the fact that they are a group, having consciously sought each other out for the purposes of locking themselves into an echo chamber. Sure, you can try to reason with them, but the echo is too loud and we know by now that reason is not enough to make people abandon false beliefs.

 

Unsurprisingly, member as the group will go out of their way to lie and create memes such as the David Attenborough one here, giving a quote the man never said. Perhaps they missed the commandment (not optional) against bearing false witness? Called out on their lies, they never acknowledge it. Like so many people, their truth is the only truth that matters. Fortunately, science – and courtrooms to a lesser degree – don’t give a fuck about what you think is reality. This raises a question: Should people be allowed to believe their own ‘facts’? Both the far-right and far-left think so, and this is what has made such a cultural and political mess of the United States.

 

What is to be done with CAD, then, leave them to their own device? Ignoring them is more dangerous than fruitlessly trying to reason with them because if we can prevent even one more indoctrination, it’s worth it. Plus, it makes ourselves feel better to insult intentionally stupid people, does it not? It seems to work for them. Interesting that they don’t like it when the shoe’s on the other foot.

All Rights Reserved (C) Theory Parker Dec. 2020

F*** the USA

It seems so long ago I was what a modern ‘red’-blooded American would consider a patriot. When I joined the army when I was 18 (and for the better half of my military career) I was a Republican, I believed in the rule of law, I believed in the country’s elected officials, and I believed that – all things considered – the United States was a country every other country should be looking up to because her citizens warranted that respect. Three decades later, I could not have been more wrong. While I have figuratively renounced my U.S. citizenship years ago, this morning’s news item finally caused me to spit, “Fuck the USA.”

Various news agencies reported that the owner of a Massachusetts ice cream parlor decided to close his door one day after re-opening during the current pandemic due to the harassment of his employees because…because people had to wait in line to get ice cream. (Please read that again, pause, and let it sink in.) Apparently his best employee quit at the end of her shift due to the harassment. It is absolutely unbelievable that this happened because, again, ICE CREAM was at stake. Although the operation basically returned to ‘normal’ soon thereafter, what with a renewed emphasis on safety and ordering procedures, it cannot be dismissed that people simply forgot their manners after weeks of being in quarantine.

It’s a common criticism by the alt-right that the alt-left hates America and I dare say the alt-right is not totally incorrect. But the alt-left also has a point insofar is that a love of the U.S. is simply not warranted and in fact perhaps should be hated. Donald Trump’s favorite saying ‘Make America Great Again’ really gives a thinking person a moment’s pause as it is not known exactly when America was so great. (Perhaps briefly upon entering WWII?) While many of you reading this right now may think ‘hate’ is a bridge too far, let us not forget the very recent history in which a black man, Ahmaud Arbery, was peacefully jogging until he was hunted down by apparent white supremists and shot to death, and then his assailants went free for two months until a video of the incident surfaced. To be certain, the assailants were not arrested because Georgia law enforcement saw the video but because the rest of the country saw the video. So is this the ‘great America’ the current U.S. president thinks the country should be? If it seems like I’m digressing, I’m not.

The Polar Cave Ice Cream parlor incident is indicative of almost everything that is wrong with the U.S. (By the way, this happened on the same weekend a group of white men carrying large-caliber weapons went to a Subway sandwich shop in North Carolina in an apparent attempt to protest lockdown orders.) Because Americans are not particularly well known for their intelligence, I will briefly enumerate what makes the U.S. such a terrible place to be these days (assuming you’re a non-white, unarmed, non-male person, though, the alt-left is certainly not without problems given their philosophy).

·       The Polar Cave Ice Cream parlor incident reveals the utter entitlement Americans feel they have to everything they want and to have it immediately. (Surprisingly, Americans haven’t yet stormed Amazon warehouses because they have to wait two whole days for their Prime shipments to arrive.) Americans feel so entitled to everything – including ice cream – that to too many people it was acceptable to harass ice cream shop employees for having to wait too long (a few minutes?) with language that would embarrass a sailor. Americans feel so entitled to what they want that involuntarily celibate men think it’s okay to shoot up college campuses because they shouldn’t have to do anything to get laid. And naturally Americans feel entitled to the guns they use in such incidents because they are part of a well-regulated militia. FFS, these days, Americans even feel entitled to their own facts. And when Americans don’t get their way, the play the victim card.

·       Being entitled to their own facts demonstrates America’s now nearly complete war on intellectualism short of killing university professors. A friend recently posted a blog (here) on the intellectual dishonestly so often associated with memes that is, of course, so completely on point we should be thankful Americans are able to communicate through posting memes at all and not still smashing rocks together to make crude music. Can a country that made the Kardashians, creationists, and flat-earthers famous and can’t answer basic questions about how their government works but is somehow mind-controlling them really be considered great? The U.S. is a country whose citizens can’t be asked to wear a facemask for a few months for everyone’s protection. It’s not like these people are being asked to go off to war to fight Nazi’s – which they wouldn’t do now anyway – or suffer a famine ala The Great Depression or stop taking selfies. The U.S. is a country that elected a president that cannot maintain a train of thought for more than two minutes, which no one should have sought to do because most people should not be electing people like themselves to high office seeing how unqualified the average American is for such a task. Exerting power by fiat has never worked out well for anyone, but the average American has no idea what I mean when I say that anyway. America is the same country whose Republicans foam at the mouth when the word ‘socialism’ is spoken but gladly took their pandemic stimulus checks and think big businesses and farmers deserve government bailouts.

·       Anti-intellectualism and racism go hand-in-hand, so it’s no surprise that hate crimes increased dramatically after Trump took over the U.S. presidency. True, it’s not like many white Americans weren’t already racist, it’s just that the person they elected to high office emboldened them to act on that racism. While we probably didn’t have too many incidents during the

Obama Administration in which the police were called on a black cop searching for evidence in between houses, but today it’s basically the norm. White people are so willfully oblivious to what black people go through, they dare not take a moment to figure out what Black Lives Matters really means. Does that sound ‘great’ to you? America is simply an evil place for allowing racism to go unaddressed and unfettered. It is an evil place for what happened at the ice cream parlor. If Americans cannot get over the frustration of not having ice cream in a ‘timely’ fashion, then how are they great?

·       America no longer appears to adhere to any rule of law. Just this past week, the Trump Administration’s DOJ dropped charges against former national security advisor Michael Flynn, a man who admitted to lying under oath twice. There are various reasons for this which have nothing to do with Flynn being an honorable man, but as it is for many in the Trump administration, being legally accountable is laughable. (Yes, Bill Clinton lied under oath, too, but at least he paid for it.) Meanwhile, President Trump has routinely said he is above the law as president…which would mean all the crimes he’s accused Obama of committing in office are irrelevant. Meanwhile, white men are walking into capitol buildings and sandwich shops with guns in an attempt to intimidate elected officials, but they are not charged with domestic terrorism because white. Meanwhile, in the 1960’s the Black Panthers were charged with domestic terrorism for doing exactly this. Meanwhile, a white salon owner in Texas openly defies a court order and judge and is hailed a s hero while the people hailing her as a hero keep telling black people that they wouldn’t get shot if they just did what they are told by law enforcement. What officials in high office and white people get away with, to say nothing of corporations, is reprehensible, to be polite.

·       Not surprisingly, the current pandemic has exposed the weaknesses of capitalism, that weakness being that it cannot survive something like a pandemic without the aid of socialism as I mentioned earlier. The strange thing is, not even liberals are questioning the fundamentals of capitalism. I expect such a thing of Republicans, but not Democrats. Even Bernie Sanders is mostly silent about the recent turn of events. I’ll say that capitalism may be the best monetary philosophy going, but that is not the same as saying it’s good at all.

·       For those of you who have forgotten, the U.S. consistently lags behind other Western and some Asian countries in math, science, and reading. You don’t see the Trump Administration doing anything to rectify that situation. No, instead Trump installs a completely unqualified person (because that’s what he does with his cabinet) to head the DOE because she’s a campaign donor with a vested interest in college students repaying their student loans. No, trump doesn’t see to it that Americans get an education because that would disrupt his base, that being uneducated citizens. As we’ve seen from China, Japan, and the Scandinavian countries, an educated population is in a country’s best interest. That simply cannot be allowed in a country held hostage by mega-corporations, though.

So we’re left trying to figure out when the U.S. was great and deserving of being loved. Was it when it institutionalized slavery and even fought a civil war to preserve it? Was it during Prohibition when the government was poisoning beer so it could use the dead as propaganda? Was it during the Trail of Tears? Was it during the McCarthy era? Was it when it dropped TWO nuclear bombs on Japan? Was it during the Tuskegee Experiment? Was it during the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam? Was it when it lied its way into invading Iraq post-9/11? Was it when the wholesale spying on Americans by the NSA was greenlit? Was it when the Supreme Court ruled that corporations were people or ruled that super-PAC money didn’t have to be transparent anymore? Was it when the employee of an ice cream parlor quit her job because of the harassment she received because people couldn’t get their ice cream on demand?

It might be argued that many countries behave reprehensibly but this means nothing more than the U.S. being a country no better than any other. Yes, the U.S. may have a higher standard of living and all the money and goods it could ever want (gotta have the latest iPhone!), but U.S. citizens seem to equate these enviable qualities with some kind of moral high ground. That is how stupid Americans are. That’s how undeserving of America’s status it is.

Is it really such a big deal to be an American, to live in the USA.? Not when your job at an ice cream parlor entails threats to your life. Not when it’s more important to re-start the economy than to save people’s lives. Not when Americans are too stupid to see that capitalism cannot survive without socialism. Not when a black man cannot go jogging without being hunted down by Trump supporters. Not when the alt-left has ruined any sense of fairness on college campuses (they’ve turned out to be almost as bad as their alt-right counterparts). Not when you’re considered a lower form of life because your credit score is terrible.

The next time you see someone post “We’re better than this” on social media in response to the next example of human depravity, please remind them that the U.S. is not and never has been. Given history, both past and present, you might even want to say to them, “Fuck the U.S.A.” I sure do.

Theory Parker: Citizen of the World

I’ve long maintained that one of the worst ideas to ever plague mankind is nationalism. Nationalism, the identification with one’s nation and its interests typically to the detriment of other nations, is a natural outcropping of tribalism which, long ago, used to be on a small enough scale as to not be harmful on a global scale. But, thanks to population growth, the internet, and all the other streams of media that know the value of sowing division, tribalism and nationalism have become so strongly embedded in people’s psyche that they would become virtually rudderless without these identity markers. When the alternative to being rudderless is being a detriment to other members of the human race, I, as a thinking and rational person, would choose to be rudderless. Only I am not; my county is the world. More on that momentarily.

The thing about concepts like tribalism and nationalism is that it divides people along often arbitrary lines. As a citizen of the United States I’m supposed to hate the Chinese for letting COVID-19 out of their country and wreaking havoc across the globe? Last time I checked, viruses didn’t have nationalities, doesn’t care what tribe you belong to, and will potentially kill you regardless. (Funny story – as of this writing the U.S. has more cases than any other. Americans are the ones spreading it more than any other nationality, so, I guess we’re supposed to hate Americans given the preceding logic.) Even within the United States, citizens are often raised to have contempt for their neighboring state because, well, because someone drew a line somewhere.

Tribalism and nationalism strictly ignore what binds people everywhere together – the fact that we’re all people where by ‘people’ we mean human beings. Undoubtedly it is difficult for nations to fight a wars if their troops think of the animals they’re fighting as anything more than that. Here, I’m reminded of a line from the movie Saving Private Ryan (I think) where one or the troops asks another, “Why are we fighting the Germans if we’re probably going to be friends 30 years from now?” (I’m paraphrasing). People everywhere have more in common than they think such as the need for food, clean air and water, shelter, friendship, intimacy, and a sense of belonging (e.g. tribalism). Of course there are nuances to these concepts but the point is people often have to conceptually go out of their way to dehumanize others in order to get a sense of any self-worth. Why should this be the case?

This shouldn’t be the case because it is clear that throughout history cooperation between people has been more productive than going to war or worse, committing to genocide. Squabbling over irrelevant things like which side of an egg to crack open accomplishes nothing and wastes time, though to be sure, people have killed each other for less, such as being a woman. What’s really at stake when people commit wholeheartedly to tribalism or nationalism is power, that goddamn exertion of power human beings are so bad at getting over. Certainly, Nietzsche’s Will to Power is more or less in the nature of all human beings, but it can be nurtured out of a person as easily as its flames are fanned by manipulative forces. Or, the Will to Power can be overcome by introspection. I overcame it through self-analysis when I realized (fortunately early enough) that I didn’t like people telling me what to do, especially when they didn’t have good reasons for wanting me to do what they wanted. This allowed me to examine the world through consecutively larger lenses.

And so I came to a point where I realized it’s irrelevant that I happen to be American by an accident of birth. (I find it repugnant when people do this, are proud of something they had no choice in being.) I could go so far as to say that I have so little in common – value wise –  with my countrymen and women that I’m actually not American. I’m a simple human being, much the same as any other, and if I owe allegiance to any group – which I don’t – it would be the human race whether that person is red, white, blue, or black. It doesn’t matter which country’s ideology one subscribes to, one is still part of the whole. We should then act accordingly because the differences one makes along ideological lines are less than the lines drawn between species (though, even at that point, we’re all still living things). The more one sees the bigger picture, the closer we can become. Divisions we’re supposed to prescribe to are typically driven by the rich and powerful. Recognize this and the less likely we are to be coerced to kill for them in wars. The only way I could possibly find myself fighting for my country of birth is if the entire world was at risk, such as in World War II. The ‘War on Terrorism,’ a situation the U.S. helped create, not so much. I’m sure I would fight for my own preservation, but until that’s required of me I have better things to do.

There are still many countries to visit and many cultures to experience. I find it fascinating to do so because one never knows when they’re going to come across a situation where they find people doing things better than they were doing within their own culture. And this is the value of experiencing other cultures; it allows you to see problems in a new light and therefore possibly solve them with different thinking. In the supposed words of Albert Einstein, “We cannot solve problems with the same kind of thinking that created them,” which he apparently said upon musing about a post-nationalist, post-militaristic world. It is clear no one culture is superior to another in successfully propagating the human race or in securing its future, so why is the idea so widely subscribed to? We already know and we already know that it’s false.

I owe allegiance to no country because no country has demonstrated it is superior to any other. (Proponents of American exceptionalism are easily defeated and will not be entertained here.) My allegiances are made on a case by case basis. My judgements are cast on a case by case basis. The world is too rich, too ripe for exploration to remain within one’s shell for too long. For it’s a myth that the shell offers protection. It does provide insulation, where being too cozy with one’s own ideas for too long leads to mental weakness, inflexibility, and worst of all, controllability. These are not a good things. If humanity as a whole would only recognize themselves as such, as human, the fewer robots there would be hell-bent on destroying it all.

What is Art?

Art.

What is art? You’ve probably been told that this is a difficult question. The word ‘art’ is so broad in scope that it might as well be synonymous with the word ‘love’ whose definition is so vague as to be almost meaningless. Words that are too broad in scope are not words at all, but mere utterances aimed at conveying gross approximation. This problem of definitions plagues every language besides mathematics it seems, and so it must be up to someone to remedy this situation if it is to ever be known what anyone is talking about. I will now attempt the seemingly impossible given that there appears to be no objective basis for what is considered art. I will attempt to be objective and therefore come to a reasonable conclusion.

What is art? There must be criteria met for something to be considered art. We cannot, for the sake of definitions, rely solely upon subjective judgement calls such as “I like it” or “I don’t like it.” Again, generalities only confuse the issue. And so, I have arrived at several criteria to determine if something is art and I do admit this list may not be exhaustive. However, the criteria I think are reasonable. In thinking about the criteria, I will analyze it from the perspective of having experienced an oil painting. Though the criteria should apply to all forms of art (or what is assumed to be an art form), I think it easiest to think about our criteria as it applies to paintings.

What are the criteria?

First, and perhaps most importantly, art must invoke an emotion in someone besides the artist. (No one considering themselves an artist would produce something they think should be a called art without being passionate about the work, so they are disqualified from figuring into this criteria.) If a piece of art can elicit an emotion from at least one subject, the work is on its way to being considered art. Thus, the more people the work elicits emotion in, the more confident we can be in proclaiming something ‘art.’ However, there is a very important caveats to this first criteria.

The emotion elicited must be what the artist had intended to convey. An ‘artist’ who suggests that their painting is going to mean different things to different people has created something that merely speaks to the relative freedom a society may posses and not to human nature, where human nature is something that changes very little over time whereas societies change very quickly by comparison. Thus, a painting can have its meaning, it’s eliciting emotion fixed in perpetuity if it renders the same emotion in someone decades in the future as it does when it is first presented, though, we do have to allow for the context of the art’s time and place of creation. (For example, there is no doubt – bear with me – much Nazi propaganda that could be considered art despite how we may presently feel about WWII-era Naziism. Such art, through the lens of being a German nationalist circa the year 1939, would likely make us feel patriotic, as it’s creator intended.) A painting that conveys something entirely other than what the artist had in mind is not art. Remember, the definition of art cannot be left solely up to subjectivity or the word is, for all intents and purposes, useless. Ultimately, not only does the work have to elicit an intended response, that response must be maintained despite the passage of time and culture.

Of course, a reasonable objection is what if the artist’s intentions are unknown? At a minimum, an emotion has to be elicited and the response must be fairly universal* among those experiencing the work. Again, the emotional response cannot be broadly subjective. Ambiguity or vagueness is not the point of art; these words mean something is not being communicated clearly enough.

[Meaning, more often than not.]

It should be obvious that various emotions can be the intended response to a work of art, however, something like a painting doesn’t have to convey a strict message. To paraphrase Youtube user, Spoudaois, art can [also] be produced to create an aesthetic as something interesting or that enhances a mood, or as something complimentary to its surroundings (but also be able to be considered art on its own merit). I am in agreement with this assessment because it segues nicely towards the next criteria – purpose. What is the work’s purpose; what does the art do for the consumer of the art?

Probably not art.

If the art in question was created for the sake of an artist’s therapy, as something they simply had to get out of their system least they be driven mad, this is not art. Certainly the act of creation can be therapeutic, however, an artist cannot accurately gauge their work any more than a given person can accurately assess their own intelligence. The person experiencing a painting must be able to say, “Ah, this is what the art does,” and can go on to explain. If a painting does nothing, say, is a canvas painted white and without so much as texture among its characteristics, this would have no purpose in an all-white room and merely wastes the observer’s time.

At this point, we might raise the objection that what if this was the artist’s purpose, for their all-white painting in an all-white room to elicit frustration or anger at the observer’s time being wasted? (And perhaps also among the artist’s intent was for this to be a metaphor for the time we all waste in our lives?) This brings us to our last criteria, that a work of art is not something the average citizen can create. Anyone can create an all-white painting. This ability does not render one an ‘artist.’

An artist is one who displays talent not possessed by the population at large in much the same way the general population is unable to play professional-level basketball. For example, if a painter renders a near-lifelike portrait with charcoal, they possess talent that most others do not. Moreover, in much the same way as the professional basketball player, it does not matter if this talent is the result of innate ability or deep learning the average person in not amenable to; it is the ability itself that counts. Art is the result of an ability to produce it.

It might be argued here that artificial intelligence could produce a work of art free of human interference. However, the A.I. relied on human interference to exist in the first place and cannot operate outside of the parameters programmed into it. Nor does A.I. actually know what effort or ability is; it merely does what is asked of it. Currently, no ‘thinking’ machine wakes up in the morning and decides it is going to paint that day when it has the option not to, nor can it decide what mediums to use. In a vaguely similar vein, we should not consider a good deal of graphic design art ‘art’ either, as much of this work can be reproduced by the average citizen with relatively minimal software training. (This is not to say talented graphic artists do not exist, though.)

To recap the criteria, a work of art must:

·        * Eliciting an emotion from its consumer and be able to convey the message the artist intended [or]

·        * Produce an aesthetic, that is, enhancing or creating a mood, or act as something complimentary to its environment;

·        *Have a purpose which in brevity should be captured within the previous criteria;

·        * Be the result of talent that the average person does not and likely cannot possess.

With these criteria in mind, we can likely dismiss much of what is currently considered art and regulate it to the bin of well-intentioned but futile attempts. It’s not that we should be snobs about art, rather, we should simply have higher standards for both art and definitions. Otherwise, we’re as lowbrow as the art we think is admirable. 

Computer generated 'art.'