The Golden Age of Humanity?

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The Golden Age of Humanity? We’re Living in It. Modernity is more meaningful and moral than medieval Christendom. By Steven Pinker and Marian L. Tupy, 11.24.25 — The Free Press

Post at Linkedin

The article presents the argument for secularism. The counter-arguments are provided in the comments. One area of consensus may be to the statement: “Our moral purpose, then, is to use knowledge and sympathy to reduce suffering and enhance flourishing: health, freedom, peace, knowledge, beauty, social connection.”

The Christian worldview holds that God is love and that love is willing the good of others. “Love is not a feeling but an act of will.”

A “more perfect Union” could be described as one in which more needs are met, thereby reducing the harm caused by unmet needs. Consequently, continuous improvement becomes a moral imperative. Take crime, for example: the less crime, the fewer people who are being harmed.

Whether you believe in God or not, a moral imperative would be to reduce the gap between the ideal (all needs met) and the actual situation.

Successful actions, including determining whether change results in improvement, can be supported by quality management methods and tools.
The Taguchi Loss Function reinforces that the closer any product or service gets to the ideal or target, the better the quality and the lower the cost to the individual and society.

Fossilized Faith

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Post at LinkedIn.

Fossilized Faith by Aaron Reen, Nov 14, 2025.  I have a review of sociologist Christian Smith’s important new book Why Religion Went Obsolete: The Demise of Traditional Faith in America in the new December issue of First Things magazine.

“As Smith writes, obsolescence doesn’t mean extinction”. .. religion is just “less relevant to mainstream society”. Smith and Renn make the case that the “method” (“fossilized forms”—of traditional religion) of communicating the message is certainly becoming less relevant.

The topic of obsolescence is a little surreal to me. The expectations from a belief in the Christian message are timeless. God is love; love is willing the good of others, followed by taking the appropriate actions.

In the American system of government, the responsibility of citizens is to work together toward that more perfect union, which includes providing products and services as employees, entrepreneurs, elected officials, business owners, and ministers, where everyone benefits or at least, is not any worse off.

Meeting expectations requires reducing variation from the ideals advertised through promotions, marketing, and electioneering.

In a different context, how many parents and guardians who love their kids do not take the action needed to do what they think is best for them? Who doesn’t like to be the recipient of a kind word or deed?

Excellent quality results from doing the right things (effectiveness) and doing them right (efficiency). How can the management of quality ever be “obsolete”? Some people may always associate their motivation to do good with a higher power (God or a God), and others won’t – nothing new or obsolete about that. What “method” produces the best results for everyone?

Linkedin: “We have been subverted”

Tim J. Clark LinkedIn

This post at Linkedin.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: We Have Been Subverted. The Free Press.“What is at stake in our ability to see the threat plainly? Nothing less than the preservation of our way of life.”

From a Biblical worldview, the subversion is spiritual and started in the Garden of Eden when mankind was deceived by the belief that they could be God.

The U.S. system of government (a Republic) is exceptional in that Judeo-Christian principles influenced its design. These principles enable “We the People” to work together towards that “more perfect Union.”

The quality management technology provides the methods and tools to support both a secular and non-secular approach to improvement.

https://lnkd.in/gSJrGKmE

Linkedin: “How Intellectuals Found God”

Tim J. Clark LinkedIn

Posted at LinkedIn – Oct 9, 2025

12.28.24 — The Big Read,  The Free Press, How Intellectuals Found God
Almost 150 years after Nietzsche said ‘God is dead,’ some of our most important thinkers are getting religion. Peter Savodnik meets the new theists.

W. Edwards Deming introduced an additional convincing argument for the belief in God. Deming recognized that an inherent part of God’s design is variability. Reducing the variation from God’s standard of perfection (where all needs are met) meets the expectations God has for his faithful servants.

Deming has been referred to as a Prophet of Quality who supported a secular approach to improvement. His contributions were recognized by Fortune magazine as being among the 20 that have shaped the modern world of business and by U.S. News and World Report as one of nine turning points in history. The top turning point was identified as “The Apostle Paul, whose preaching and eloquent writings led to mass acceptance of Christianity.”

Deming’s experiences were similar to the Prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 6:9-10), where the simplicity and truth of the message lead many to “Keep on hearing, but do not understand; keep on seeing, but do not perceive. “

The quality profession, through the Taguchi Loss Function, has reinforced that the closer any product or service gets to the target or ideal (more perfect), the higher the quality and the lower the cost to the customer and society.  Deming referred to this as a Chain Reaction: “When you improve quality, costs decrease, productivity improves, capture the market with better quality and lower costs, stay in business, create jobs, and more jobs. “  https://lnkd.in/gc3egWgB

References:

The Discovery of the Prophet of Quality,  by Clare Crawford-Mason

Kirk Effect: On The Goodness Of American Evangelicals

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Excerpt: Now It’s The Mormons’ Turn And: Our Fragile Economy; Rethinking Comey; Digital IDs; Good Evangelicals; More, Rod Dreher, Sep 29, 2025 (paywalled)

Along those lines, Peggy Noonan had this to say (paywalled) about the Christian Right, in the wake of the Charlie Kirk service:

There is something you could have said at any time the past decade that is true now in some new way. It is that the GOP is becoming a more explicitly Christian party than it ever has been. A big story the past decade was that so many Trump supporters, especially but not only working-class ones, were misunderstood as “those crazy Christians” but in fact were often unaffiliated with any faith tradition and not driven to politics by such commitments.

But it looks to me as if a lot of those folks have been in some larger transit since 2015, as Kirk himself was. He entered the public stage to speak politics but said by the end that his great work was speaking of Christ. If he had a legacy, he told an interviewer, “I want to be remembered for courage for my faith.”

The secretary of state of the United States gave personal testimony on what Christ is in history and in his life. The vice president did the same. John Foster Dulles and Hubert Humphrey didn’t talk like this!

The whole thing was self-consciously and explicitly Christian. Kirk’s widow, Erika, talked of new converts and asked the crowd to help them. She said of her husband’s assassin, “That young man—I forgive him.” And she received a standing ovation.

As I watched I realized: This is the true sound and tone of the Republican Party right now. This is the takeover of the previously patronized.

She added that when she worked in the Reagan White House as a speechwriter, Christian conservatives had a seat at the table, so to speak, but they were quietly looked down on by the “pragmatists” in the room. No more.

It is no secret that as the GOP has become more religious, the Democrats have become more secular. This is not something you are going to see reflected in media coverage, because US journalists, being overwhelmingly secular liberals, are blind to how their own party has moved to the extreme on religious and cultural matters, just as the Republicans have. I think this is unavoidable, this schism. What you, reader, should watch out for is the attempt to shape the Narrative such that it looks as if religious conservatives are the ones taking America away from Normal. As Bill Maher said in his closing monologue on Friday:

LinkedIn: Who has no coherent idea?

Tim J. Clark Uncategorized

Who has no coherent idea? In his NYT article, David Brooks remarked: “My problem with the Kirk memorial service and all the conversation about his assassination generally is that many people seem to have no coherent idea about the proper relationship between faith and politics. In their minds, the two spheres seem all mixed together higgledy-piggledy.”

The aim of the U.S. system of government is to enable We the People to work together towards “a more perfect” Union. Who defines “more perfect”?

In a biblical context, perfection is described as having all needs met (the Garden of Eden being a notable example). The more needs that are met, the less harm caused to people as a result of unmet needs.) Thus, continual improvement becomes a moral imperative for Christians.

Take the example of crime: A Christian would embrace the belief that all crime should be continually reduced. A secular belief could include that crime is an acceptable, unfortunate, or normal part of life. A run chart showing a predictable trend would provide feedback on current mitigation strategies.

Within the quality management profession, it is an accepted fact that the closer any product or service (such as crime reduction strategies) approaches the ideal or target (i.e., the more perfect it is), the higher the quality and the lower the cost to the customer and society. (Ref: Taguchi Loss Function).

So, who has “no coherent idea”?
https://lnkd.in/gfMXjiaj

” … there is actually no such thing as atheism”

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This is Water by David Foster Wallace (Full Transcript and Audio), The Free Press

 

I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn’t. You get to decide what to worship.

Because here’s something else that’s weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship–be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles–is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.

Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful, it’s that they’re unconscious. They are default settings. 

PDSA – Value of One-Page Proposal

Tim J. Clark Uncategorized

PDSA one page Dave Nave

LinkedIn Post – Dave Nave PDSA

Debra Mervyn: Excellent summary! Benjamin Franklin used Plan, Do, Study, Act long before Deming. Franklin used it for all his inventions, projects and businesses. More important for his life goals as documented in his autobiography, an international best seller, and “Project of Arriving at Moral Perfection” https://www.ushistory.org/franklin/autobiography/page38.htm