The Orthodox Heretic Weekly

What is Our Judeo-Christian Heritage?, Part One

2011-07-18T14:18:00.003-06:00

We often hear people speak of our nation’s ‘Judeo-Christian heritage.’ As near as I can tell, when people say that, they are speaking of our culture’s traditional adherence to selected Christian doctrines (that’s the Christian part), and to the 10 Commandments found in Exodus 20 (that’s the Jewish part). I really think it’s as simple as that (although it is possible that some also have in mind Genesis 3).

The 10 Commandments, as the concept of a divinely-given law, are indeed important to many people in our country (even if few people actually know many of the individual 10 Commandments!). So much so, that many people advocate for their appearance in law courts and other official buildings. I’m not going to get into the church/state debate (at least not in this current blog series), but my point is that many take them to be the basis of our society and our society’s laws.

I want to make it clear that I think the 10 Commandments are indeed important and should be taken seriously. However, I stumbled on an interesting passage a little while ago from Deuteronomy 27. I won’t reprint the whole text this week, but it recounts the story of Moses, who, at the end of his life, gave the Israelites a new set of commandments that they were to write on stones and set up after they entered the Promised Land. I am wondering why this list of commandments in Deuteronomy is relatively unknown; that is, when we talk about our ‘Judeo-Christian heritage,’ I wonder why no one ever talks about Deuteronomy 27.

First, it is clear from the passage that Moses meant this list of commandments to be the basis for the law in the Promised Land. Thus, they were (or should have been) the legal foundation for the Jewish nation. Now, there is nothing to suggest that this made the list of commandments found in Exodus 20 irrelevant, but it seems that Moses regards this new list as having special importance for the future of the Jewish nation.

It is also a little awkward that the 10 Commandments from Exodus 20 are regarded as the basis of America’s laws, because 8 (out of 10!) of them are perfectly legal. And not only are they legal, but there is no cultural taboo against, say, coveting or working on the Sabbath. Furthermore, the two that are illegal in certain contexts, namely stealing and killing, aren’t at all particular to Christians or Jews. That is, every society that has ever existed for any length of time necessarily had some kind of injunctions against killing and stealing.

Interestingly, most of the commandments found in Deuteronomy are illegal in America. Or at least violating them is a cultural taboo, or could even get you sued. So, my proposal is this: let’s weave together Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 27, as this represents a more complete understanding of our Judeo-Christian heritage. More to come next week about how this might work.

The After-Life: An Argument for Ignorance, Part IX

2011-07-14T15:52:00.002-06:00

I began this series by reflecting briefly on Rob Bell’s book, which claims to reveal ‘the fate of every human who ever lived.’ In brief, he wants to convince us that there is no hell. On the other side of Protestant theology we have the conservative evangelicals, who claim that every person will experience eternal conscious torment in hell, unless they accept the Gospel (which I have been referring to as the Evangelical Hell Doctrine [EHD]). Indeed, they are so certain about this belief that it often makes an appearance on a list of official church doctrines, and it is thus what its members are expected to believe.

In the last weeks, I have not chosen one of these sides, but taken a different route entirely, namely, to claim that there is not really much information given about the negative side of the after-life in the Bible, and this is true of both the Jewish scriptures and the Christian New Testament. This is particularly problematic for Bell and the conservative evangelicals, because they tell us that their beliefs are formed entirely by Scripture.

Bell’s position strikes me as arrogant, but I reserved most of my disdain for the EHD, because in addition to the arrogance problem, they are making a dramatic, terrible claim about almost every person who has ever lived. If you are going to state that you know that another person is going to live in conscious torment, you really should have some good evidence for your claim. However, when we examined the passages that supposedly offered proof of the EHD, we found something different. There were three groups of passages. First, there a handful of passages in Matthew and one in Luke that say that you go to hell (or something like it) for moral failings such as neglect of the poor, and not for a lack of belief. There are also several passages that talk about how the unbeliever will someday die, or perish, or be destroyed, which is explicitly defined in Scripture as the opposite of living forever in torment. The third group of passages is from Revelation, which describe the eternal conscious torment of the devil and his worshippers. But nowhere do we find anything close to a passage that supports the EHD.

What I have to say next may sound like a joke, but it is not. When you experience what is sometimes called a ‘brain freeze,’ try to imagine that pain lasting forever. That pain is excruciating, but it is bearable because it lasts only a few sounds. But what if it never stopped? If you are a conservative evangelical, you are saying that you know for sure that something like this kind of pain will happen to almost every person who has ever lived. And, importantly, you are saying this without any Scriptural evidence.

Two parting notes before I start a new series next week. It strikes me that people who believe in the EHD should order their lives far differently than they do. For example, why in the world would you have children if you thought that there was a decent chance that one of them would be tortured forever? Why would you oppose abortion? Isn’t it better for a being to die as a fetus than to grow up and thus have a chance of being tortured forever? Also, why would you spend time with family, friends, church, leisure, travel, career, sports, hobbies, etc? Because if the EHD is true, life is an emergency, and the only point to it is to make sure that as few people are tortured forever as possible. I really wonder if anyone - including those who outwardly affirm it - really believes in the EHD.

In Scripture, we learn what kind of lives we should lead. If we are Christians, we should order our lives accordingly. What we are not told is what will happen to those ‘on the other side.’ And so, if we are honest, we will continue on in ignorance, as we must do already with very many issues.

The After-Life: An Argument for Ignorance, Part VIII

2011-07-04T16:05:00.003-06:00

Next week I will make some conclusions, but this week I want to make one final observation about the attempt to derive the evangelical hell doctrine (EHD) from the Bible. There are a few passages in the New Testament that use the words ‘death,’ ‘destruction,’ or ‘perish’ to describe the fate of unbelievers. For instance, 2 Thessalonians 1:9 says that “[t]hey will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord…” John 3:16 famously says that unbelievers will ‘perish,’ and Romans 6:23 says that “the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” The one who holds the EHD has to believe that these are euphemisms; that is, Paul and John talk about mere death, but what they really mean is that these people will be alive forever while being consciously tortured.

These are two reasons that this is an irresponsible reading. First, if it is true that most people who have ever lived will suffer eternal, conscious torment, then such a truth would be the most important thing that we could ever discover. Therefore, we should expect the writers of the Bible to talk about this at every turn! But Paul never does, and John only does in Revelation when talking about worshippers of the beast and the devil. So are John and Paul holding out on us? Do they actually know that the fate of most people will be eternal conscious torment and yet do not tell us because it would be impolite? This seems absurd.

The second reason has to do with the Greek words being used. Those three passages I reference use three different Greek words for death, and when those words are used in other passages, they really just mean death – as in a complete end to life. For instance, the word translated ‘destruction’ in the 2 Thessalonians passage also shows up in I Corinthians 5:5, where Paul talks about “the destruction of the flesh,” which he contrasts with the “spirit [being] saved in the day of the Lord.” Or in John 3:16, the Greek word translated as ‘perish’ shows up in Matthew 5:29, when Jesus says that you should take out your right eye, because “it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell” (NKJV). In Jesus’ teaching in Matthew, then, perishing is the opposite of going to hell. So why would he use it in a radically different way in John without explaining himself? Did he just assume that we would get the message? In both of these passages, then, death is contrasted with ‘going to hell’; that is, perishing, or dying, or being destroyed is the opposite of living forever.

And so we have a handful or passages that mention hell or something like it. There are a few (mostly from Matthew, one from Luke) that mention hell as a place that you go for doing immoral works, and not for what you do or do not believe. Therefore, these passages cannot support the EHD. Then there are a few passages, all from Revelation, that describe literal, conscious torment. These, however, do not refer to regular unbelievers, but to the devil, worshippers of the beast, etc. Therefore, these passages cannot support the EHD. Then there are the passages I talked about today. They do (unlike the other two kinds of passages) talk about those who do not believe in the Gospel. However, they do not talk about hell as a destination for unbelievers; rather, they say that they will die, instead of having to endure some sort of everlasting torture. We can see that the Evangelical Hell Doctrine is unraveling fast. I want to make some concluding remarks next week.

The After-Life: An Argument for Ignorance, Part VII

2011-06-29T12:13:00.001-06:00

Last week I addressed one of the verses that the idea of eternal, conscious, punishment may come from. This week, I address the other two (or maybe three). One is Revelation 20, where John envisions a great and final judgment: “And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life…And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was throw into the lake of fire” (vv. 12, 15).

The Evangelical Hell Doctrine (EHD), we may remember, says that those who do not believe in the Gospel will suffer eternal, conscious, torment, and apparently, this text is supposed to offer support. There are two important reasons that it does not. The first is that only a few verses later, John mentions which individuals are not in the book of life: “…the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable,…murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars…” (21:8). This list does not refer (at least exclusively) to those who have prayed the sinner’s prayer, as the EHD would have us expect (I have blogged about the relevance of character in another series, ‘A Theology of Love’). Thus, Revelations 20 and 21 cannot be used to support the EHD.

The second is that the result of being thrown in the lake of fire is frequently and simply referred to as “death” (v. 14). And since the text nowhere says or implies that those thrown in the lake of fire suffer eternal, conscious, torment, it would be quite a leap to believe that John meant to say that they experience eternal, conscious, torment, but just never got around to saying it. Such a detail is too important to leave out.

John actually does mention some who will experience eternal, conscious, torment, namely, the worshippers of the beast: “And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night, these worshippers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name” (14:11). There are three others mentioned in chapter 20: “the devil…was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever” (v. 10). Thus, John specifically mentions that the devil, the beast, the worshippers of the beast, and the false prophet will suffer eternal, conscious, torment. And so are we to believe that John forgot to mention that detail just 5 verses later when describing the fate of those not in the book of life?

I want to emphasize that there are several other passages (in addition to Rev. 20) that imply that those who are not reconciled to God die, or perish, or are destroyed, in contrast to being tormented. I will consider those passages next week.

The After-Life: An Argument for Ignorance, Part VI

2011-06-21T16:27:00.004-06:00

In part III of this series, I pointed out that the Evangelical Hell Doctrine (EHD) does not actually come from any passage of Scripture. But let’s focus mainly on the origin of the idea of eternal, conscious, torment. It seems that it comes from two passages. The first is Luke 16: 19-31, where Jesus tells the parable of an unnamed rich man and Lazarus, an extremely poor man. As the passage goes, after they both die, Lazarus goes to heaven, and the rich man goes to Hades, where he is “in anguish in this flame” (v. 24). To be sure, this passage is haunting, but two observations will show that this passage does not support the EHD.

First, we need to ask why the rich man ended up in torment, while Lazarus ended up ‘in Abraham’s bosom.’ The passage does not say, but it is obvious that we are meant to reflect on the contrast between Lazarus’ poverty and the rich man’s lack of sympathy for him (vv. 19-22). Then in v. 25, Abraham says to the rich man “remember that you in your life received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish.”

The passage ends by Abraham explaining that the rich man’s relatives may avoid the place of torment by listening to ‘Moses and the prophets’ and repenting. So what, exactly, do Moses and the prophets say that would cause someone to repent? Well certainly there is much in the Jewish scriptures about taking care of the poor, and since that is the relevant transgression here, it is possible to believe that this is the important thing that Moses and the prophets would have said. But while the passage never says explicitly, we can be sure that Abraham wasn’t referring to the Gospel, because Moses and the prophets don’t talk about that. That means that Luke 16 cannot be used to support the EHD.

Second, it is very difficult to believe that this passage is supposed to be taken literally, for in the passage, the rich man is in the fire, looks up, sees Abraham, and starts a dialogue with him. Furthermore, he asks that Abraham send Lazarus down to put his wet finger on this tongue – a request that seems reasonable to him. It is odd to believe that any after-life really works that way (on anybody’s theology), leading us to the more reasonable belief that this passage was simply meant as a vivid reminder of how much God cares about our attitude toward the poor.

The After-Life: An Argument for Ignorance, Part V

2011-06-08T20:37:00.006-06:00

Last week, I argued that ignorance is actually often a good thing, because knowledge – when that knowledge is useless – can do nothing but make us arrogant. For my money, this makes sense of why the Evangelical Hell Doctrine (EHD) is not actually in the Bible even once. I sometimes have this same conversation with Creationists. They say that Gen 1 (or Gen 2) must be a science lesson, because if it wasn’t a science lesson, it must be a waste of time, and God wouldn’t include anything in the Bible that was a waste of time.

This reasoning is not very good, because the first three chapters of Genesis tell us many, many important things that help us live godly lives. So even if there is no science there (as I believe), it is still certainly valuable. It is useful practical information for us to know, for example, that we humans have a responsibility to care for the earth, or that not trusting God leads to pain, etc, etc. The point is, a deep knowledge of Genesis 1-3 helps us order our lives. But how exactly would it make a difference in your life if the universe is 6000 years old or if it is 13 billion? What does that change? What are you going to do differently if one is true and the other is false? And since it is useless practical information, we should not expect God to tell us how old the universe is. As I said last week, I believe that God puts us on a need-to-know plan, and there are many things we do not need to know.

But some argue that knowledge of the EHD is actually important, because without such knowledge, there would be no evangelism. That is, it is helpful to know that some people might experience eternal, conscience torment, because that motivates us to share the Gospel. Honestly, I feel sorry for people like that. It seems clear from nearly any passage of Scripture that God intends to improve our earthly lives. I am not saying that there are no plans for an eternal life, but it is not possible to believe that the goodness of this life is unimportant to God.

Thus, it would be incredible for someone to say something like, “Well, I’m not going to share the gospel with that person unless I can be certain that she is going to experience eternal, conscious, torment if I do not.” When the matter is put that way, we may even wonder if that person even understands what it means to be a Christian.

The After-Life: An Argument for Ignorance, Part IV

2011-05-31T21:01:00.002-06:00

The last two weeks, I have been criticizing the picture of the afterlife that conservative Protestants try to sell, but you may remember that I started this series more as a response to Rob Bell’s liberal book, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, And the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived. What Bell’s position and the conservative one have in common, despite their incompatible conclusions, is their certainty in what they believe. They both are sure that they know what will happen ‘to every person who ever lived.’ I think this is wrong, because this is a matter about which we do not have certainty. But isn’t that a bad thing? Wouldn’t it be better if God clued us in on this important matter?

I want to focus this week on the virtue of ignorance. You may recall Jesus’ words to his disciples in Acts 1:8: “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses…to the end of the earth” (ESV). My favorite word is that verse is ‘but,’ which indicates a contrast. So what is contrasted? In verse 6, the disciples ask Jesus when he will restore the kingdom to Israel. Then in verse 7, Jesus informs them that this is not information that is “for you to know.” Then the contrast word – ‘but’ – and then, “you will receive power” from the Holy Spirit.

What Jesus is implying is that when the disciples asked for that information, they were also asking for power. I believe that the old adage – ‘knowledge is power’ – is true. That means, at least partly, that when one has knowledge that another does not have yet want, the knower has power over the ignorant. This leads to another feature of knowledge: it “puffs up” (I Corinthians 8:1).

Now, there are some things we need to know if we are to live as Christians, but there are also a lot of things we do not need to know. One example, as discussed in Acts 1:8, is when the world will end. I think knowing ‘the fate of every person who ever lived’ is also an example. What these two pieces of information have in common is that they do not help us live as Christians. Thus, all they can do is to make us prideful.

The After-Life: An Argument for Ignorance, Part III

2011-05-23T11:35:00.005-06:00

Last week I began addressing what I called the Evangelical Hell Doctrine (EHD): “All people who believe that Jesus died for their sins and was resurrected and accept this sacrifice will go to heaven, and all people who don’t believe and accept it will go to a place of eternal, conscious, torment.” This week I want to offer another criticism of the EHD.

You may have noticed that the EHD I gave was something that I constructed based on my own observation of most evangelical church doctrines, instead of a quotation from a passage of Scripture. Why? It is because there are no passages or verses in Scriptures in which this doctrine is articulated. There are passages that extol the virtues of belief in the Gospel, of course, but none of those passages mention anything like a disagreeable afterlife for non-believers, let alone a place of eternal conscious torment. There are also a handful of passages that mention hell or something like hell, and two or three that talk about a place of conscious torment, but in all cases, these passages talk about hell as a place for morally evil people, not for those who do not believe in the Gospel.

This absence of mention of the EHD in Scripture is problematic for at least two reasons. First, Protestants in general (and therefore evangelicals) distinguish themselves from both Orthodox and Catholic Christians in part because they emphasize Scripture and de-emphasize tradition. Thus, for evangelicals, it matters less what tradition says and quite a lot what Scripture says.

Let me illustrate my point by talking about it from the other way around. There are certain Catholics who believe you go to heaven if you have taken the sacraments, and going to hell if you have not. Not in the Bible? No problem, they will say, this is what our tradition has believed for 2,000 years, and therefore we must accept it as true. This sounds a little suspicious to me, but at least it’s consistent. Evangelicals, however, can’t make this move. We should not let them say, “Well, we know the EHD is not actually in any passage of Scripture, but these are our traditional beliefs.” By their own admission, when Scripture and tradition are in tension, Scripture wins, every time.

Second, if there really were a way to know for sure who was going to experience eternal bliss and who was going to experience eternal conscious torment, such a thing would be the most important thing that anyone has ever discovered. And, if as the evangelicals believe, God wants this to be obvious to us, we should expect there to be a plethora of verses which unambiguously articulate the EHD. Or at least one. But none? It strikes me as very strange that a belief of such dramatic importance that is supposed to be obvious is nowhere to be found in Scripture.

The After-Life: An Argument for Ignorance, Part II

2011-05-17T12:01:00.004-06:00

Last week, I identified the evangelical hell doctrine (EHD): “All people who believe that Jesus died for their sins and was resurrected and accept this sacrifice will go to heaven, and all people who don’t believe and accept it will go to a place of eternal, conscious, torment.” The next few weeks, I am going to introduce good reasons to believe that this doctrine is simply not Scriptural.

I’ll start with this teaching of Jesus: “I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.” (John 10:14-16, ESV)

So there is an original flock. If you are a Christian in my tradition, you believe with me that this flock is made up of those who believe and accept the Gospel. But who are the members of the 'other' fold? I have heard speculation that these people may be the Jews, or at least some of the Jews. The Mormons claim that Jesus is talking about them, while still others say that this group must be those who live in unreached, remote parts of the world.

Perhaps one of these answers is right, perhaps all are, and perhaps none is. Perhaps there are two people in the other fold, perhaps there are billions. But here is an important thing to notice: Jesus does not tell us or even indicate who these ‘others’ may be. So for a reason unknown to us, Jesus felt that it was important to indicate that there were ‘others,’ but he also felt it unimportant to tell us who those ‘others’ may be.

But while it is impossible to be clear on the specifics, we do know some general things about the other flock. First, they were not members of the original fold. And, since the members of the original fold are those who believe and accept the Gospel, these ‘others’ must be people either who do not believe the Gospel (and hence do not accept the Gospel), or do not accept the Gospel (even though they believe it).

Second, these ‘others’ have exactly the same destiny as the original flock, for the two flocks will become ‘one flock’ in the end.

Third, although the other flock may not know or accept Jesus now, they “will listen to [Jesus’] voice.” Jesus is here continuing his metaphor of himself as the shepherd and us as sheep, for a shepherd’s voice is very intimate for the sheep. In fact (at least, this used to be true in ancient cultures), if a shepherd died, the herd of sheep that he was in charge of would be slaughtered. This is because the sheep recognize only one voice, and in the absence of that shepherd with whom they have been familiar their whole lives, there is no hope of getting the sheep to do anything. What this image suggests are people without a real, explicit recognition of the Gospel who nevertheless recognize Jesus’ voice (whatever that may mean non-metaphorically).

It is important to recognize that this verse alone shows that the second part of the EHD is false, because John 10:16 explicitly states that there are some who do not believe/accept to Gospel who will share a destiny with the original fold.

The After-Life: An Argument for Ignorance, Part I

2011-05-09T22:07:00.004-06:00

I just finished Rob Bell’s controversial new book, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, And the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived. His central idea is that hell -- understood as a destination for people of eternal, conscious, torment -- is incompatible with God’s character; hence, such a place cannot exist. None of his arguments are new (and he readily admits this), as they are arguments that we sometimes hear about salvation from mainline Protestants and liberal Catholics. Bell, however, already has a significant following within the evangelical community, and so when those arguments came from his pen, they become newly controversial.

I am starting a blog series that is not so much a direct, point by point response to any of Bell’s arguments, but rather a broader response to the kinds of conclusions he comes up with. We don’t have to go any farther than the subtitle to realize that Bell is making some spectacular knowledge claims here – about ‘the fate of every person who ever lived.’ Now of course the subtitle is intentionally obnoxious (that’s what gets people to pick up the book while they perusing Barnes and Noble), but it is not false to say that Bell is making these kinds of bold claims.

What I am sympathetic with is Bell’s attack on the traditional fundamentalist/evangelical understanding of salvation and hell. For clarity, let me summarize what I will call the evangelical hell doctrine (EHD): “All people who believe that Jesus died for their sins and was resurrected and accept this sacrifice will go to heaven, and all people who don’t believe and accept it will go to a place of eternal, conscious, torment.”

Bell’s doctrine is obviously opposed to the EHD, but what the two doctrines have in common is that they make confident assertions about how God will handle things in the afterlife. What I will argue in the coming weeks is that such claims can never be supported by Scripture; they are based on wishful thinking (or you could call it ‘hope’ if you want a fancier word), but not much more.

Climate Change, Part Three

2011-04-18T20:23:00.003-06:00

I have been criticizing some of the strategies and excesses of climate science. Now, I want to focus my criticism on those non-scientists who are certain that climate change is a hoax.

One of the most obvious signs of conservative disdain shows up every time it snows; the blogosphere, Fox News, and talk radio just explode. Surely, the existence of snowfall proves that the earth is not warming, they insist. What could be more obvious?

Well, three things. First (and I’ll try to say this without being condescending), snow does not indicate coldness in the air. Snow is simply precipitation when the air temperature is 32 degree or less. So, let’s say that it snowed when it was 30 degree on February 1, 2011, but didn’t snow when it was 29 degrees on February 1, 2010. That means that it was warmer on that day in 2011 than 2010, even though it snowed in 2011 and not 2010. Got it?

Second, the worst fears of climate scientists are that the global temperature will rise 2.0 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the 21st century. What does this mean? Certainly it means that you can’t go outside and predict whether the planet is warming based on how the temperature feels to you. This is change we’re not going to feel.

Finally, and most importantly, the theory is called global warming and not local warming. That is to say, no scientist is predicting how the temperature will change in your little city or neighborhood or area of the country. Rather, they are talking about global temperature rise. So, for you climate deniers, you can’t say, ‘Oh, look, it’s colder this January than last January in my state. Therefore the world is getting colder, not warmer. On the contrary, since we are talking about global warming, you must factor in the warming temperature of say, the Arctic, before drawing any conclusions about temperature change.

My point is this: no rational person should make judgments about climate change if those judgments are based primarily on their personal observations of local temperatures. And for the love, snowfall doesn’t tell us anything.

Climate Change, Part Two

2011-03-23T10:51:00.002-06:00

Last week I described a substantial problem I had with climate science. This week, I want to focus on a complaint I have about the way in which climate science is presented – i.e., the style, not the substance.

It seems that conservatives in general think that the theory of global warming is some kind of hoax. This allows them to say that we don’t need a big, world-wide government solution (because there is no problem), and government should relax their environmental rules, so that the free market can operate unimpeded. So, what possible evidence will it take to change their minds?

For the optimistic liberal, I have some bad news for you: there is no such evidence. The idea that the free market doesn’t need any guidance from government is fundamental to their belief system, and it is very, very, difficult to get someone to admit that a fundamental belief that they have is wrong. The scientific community doesn’t seem to understand this. They just keep doing research, publishing articles, etc, hoping that some evidence that they produce will finally get the conservatives to admit that they were wrong about global warming.

This will never happen. So instead of wasting time trying to produce new evidence in hopes that some of that evidence will be convincing, we need to shift the environmental conversation to other, less controversial issues. For instance, our oceans are in big trouble, we are running out of room to store our trash safely, our aquifers are being depleted by our desire for meat, the world is running out of arable land, and, as we learned last week, nuclear energy needs greater security. These are just a few of the dozens of issues confronting our generation as the world’s population continues to rise with no end in sight.

What these problems have in common is that they are not really controversial. But since conservative believe that climate science is ‘junk science,’ and scientists and the media associate environmental concerns with global warming, the result is that conservatives are hostile to any environmental concerns. This is why the conversation about the environment has to start with concerns that are not controversial – such as dirty air, toxic pollution, etc. Even conservatives will have to admit that we need laws to prevent such things. These should be ‘common ground’ issues.

Climate Change, Part One

2011-03-03T22:33:00.005-06:00

Recent polls have shown that as many as 41% of Americans believe that global warming news is ‘exaggerated,’ which is probably a nice way to say that around 41% of Americans think that the theory of global warming is BS. Not surprisingly to any of my regular blog readers, I am not a climate change skeptic, although before I defend my position in the next weeks I want first to state my dissatisfaction with global warming science.

It doesn’t take a scientist to know that the weather on our planet is not the same as it has been in recent decades. You have only to look at photographs, graphs and tables of melting polar and glacier ice to realize that something is going on – but what? Scientific consensus is that the climate is changing because of greenhouse gas emission, and, as I will explain next week, this is a respectable theory.

But the word ‘because’ is an important word, and it makes all the difference. Philosophers know (and scientists are supposed to know), that cause and effect analyses are quite difficult, even when there is a large sample size. For example, the theory that smoking causes lung cancer was certainly a worthwhile theory when it was first proposed (whenever that was, exactly). But you can’t just conclude that smoking causes lung cancer from one dead smoker, for the simple reason that you must control for variables. For instance, does the brand of cigarette matter? Does the amount smoked per day matter? Does the number of years as a smoker matter? Does the age that the smoker started smoking matter? Does it matter that the smoker lived next to a factory with high vapor admissions? Does it matter whether the smoker also had asthma before he started smoking? And of course, I could go on.

Today we can safely say that we have controlled for a sufficient number of variables to infer that smoking is the cause of lung cancer. But what if our sample size is not millions of smokers, but one single earth? And what if the only member of our sample, the earth, is 4.5 billion years old (our best current estimate)? This wouldn’t be much of an issue, but human beings happen to live for only 80 years or so, making billion year estimates impossible. Scientists tell us that they do have temperature records embedded in ice, but the oldest glaciers are only 800,000 years old.

I think we have to at least admit that these two facts alone significantly complicate any cause/effect analysis, and I would respectfully request that scientists stop using the ‘k – word.’ We human beings know far less than we usually claim.

Are Unions Still Important?

2011-02-23T12:15:00.002-06:00

Unions are dying, and that is a measureable fact. Today, only 7% of the American workforce is a member of a union, down from 35% just a few decades ago. But it this good, or bad?

The strict capitalist will say it is good, because unions disrupt the free market. Because of unions, they say, the market cannot set the true price of labor, and thus, the owner-class has to artificially inflate the cost of goods. The moderate capitalist will respond by saying that unions prevent a downward spiral. The owner class wants to pay the worker the lowest wage possible. Thus, the worker will work more and more cheaply, in more and more dangerous working conditions, until finally there is no middle class left that can afford any goods and services. In the end, then, everyone, including those in the owner class, ends up poor.

I believe that the second argument is correct. I think that there is good evidence that the existence of collective bargaining saved capitalism from itself during much of the 20th century.

However, it does not follow that because unions were important in the past that they will always be important. I don’t have studies or statistics, but I do have my own experience to share. In between undergrad and grad school, I worked for a small business that manufactured and sold chemical cleaning products. There were about 75 full time employees, and no one thought about unionizing – we just didn’t need to. The owners of the company were extremely concerned about employee safety, and we were given a decent wage, medical benefits, educational opportunities, and a 401K.

I think that this is because the owners of that business knew that if they didn’t offer those things, the talented employees would simply go work somewhere else. But this opportunity has not always existed for people (and in some cases and in some areas of the country and the world, it still doesn’t exist). For example, 50 years ago, it probably would have been too complicated (socially, economically, and otherwise) for the metal worker unhappy with his compensation package simply to pick up and move to a different area of the country.

Today, however, the world is mobile. People change jobs and even careers all the time because they are unhappy with their current job. This forces the owner class to provide safe, comfortable working conditions and decent wages. So, while I disagree strongly with the strict capitalists that unions undermine capitalism, I don’t know if we still need them.

Any liberals more educated on the subject than I want to educate me about why I'm wrong here?

Explaining Religious Belief, Part Four

2011-02-09T14:22:00.003-06:00

[Editor’s Note: I ran out of steam on this one, due to a newborn and a dissertation due date. This blog will be my last in this series before moving on to the global warming controversy (hint: both sides really annoy me) and then tax policy].

There have been several attempts by the skeptic to explain religious belief - two that I have addressed in some detail (seeking comfort, regulating ethical behavior) and some I haven’t (evolutionary by-product, seeking meaning in life, seeking power, etc). I have only a final observation: we may observe that it is unlikely that all of those theories could be true. For example, if religious belief were a by-product of evolutionary development as some claim, that would seem to undermine that claim that religion was invented as a way to regulate ethical behavior. Or if religion was invented merely as an attempt to gain power and control people’s minds (think Gary Oldman’s character in The Book of Eli), then it doesn’t seem possible that religion was invented for the sake of comfort.

I say this because atheists and agnostics seem to think that they are on the same page, and congratulate each other on ‘exposing’ religion. You may over-hear this sentence in coffee shops: “Well, I just think religion is….” And then everyone at the table fills in the blank differently: “…an attempt to control people’s minds, ….an evolutionary development, ….a futile quest for meaning in a meaningless world.” I’m all for dialogue and disagreement, of course, but in this case, those in the dialogue seem to be content to know that they have the same opinion (i.e. that religion belief is misguided). But they simply seem to gloss over the fact that their various justifications for their common opinion are incompatible.

And I’m not just thinking of the undereducated agnostics in coffee shops, but also of highly educated anthropologists and sociologists who write important books on the subject. What we have to keep in mind is that scholarship on the origin of religion is constantly contradicting previous scholarship. I think that this should make us skeptical of any attempt to ‘sum it up,’ – that is, to present some grand narrative that claims to explain the origins of religious belief in general. It seems that every direction I turn, I hear someone offering a new and better theory about the origin of religion, which in turn is undermined by a newer and even better theory. Perhaps this tells us something about this ubiquitous human phenomenon.

Explaining Religious Belief, Part Three

2011-01-03T12:24:00.002-06:00

Another attempt to explain the origin of religious belief appeals to ethics; essentially, the theory says that God was invented in order to encourage us to behave. This theory begins with the observation that a certain amount of fear is often necessary to ensure ethical conduct. Prison is partly justified because we want to lock up people we are afraid of, but prison is also meant to strike fear into potential law-breakers. That is, we want potential law-breakers to think “Gee, if I steal this car stereo, I might be caught and then have to go to jail. I don’t want to go to jail. Therefore I will not steal this car stereo.”

Even though this system works fairly well, it is certainly not perfect. The obvious shortcoming is that the law is not omniscient, and so if law-breakers believe that they can outsmart the law, then they will not hesitate to commit the illegal action. With children, we have solved this problem with Santa Claus. Parents discipline their children when they catch them being bad, but we can’t always catch them. So we teach the song “he knows when you are sleeping/ he knows when you’re awake/ he knows when you’ve been bad or good/ so be good for goodness sake.” This leads some to infer that God is to adults what Santa Claus is to children.

Last week, I dismissed the theory that religion was introduced for the sake of comfort as implausible on the face of it. This time, I cannot be so dismissive, because we can indeed observe instances in the Scriptures when God is introduced in order to ensure ethical conduct. For example, if a Hebrew caught his friend doing something immoral, he might ask, “Do you not fear God?” This kind of fear is greater on two levels: first, God is omniscient, so unlike the law, God sees all. And second, God has the power over life and death, unlike any human power.

Do you believe that religion was invented for the sake of giving us orderly societies? Why? And if you (like me) do not share this belief, how would you respond to this kind of skeptic?

Explaining Religious Belief, Part Two

2010-12-15T12:21:00.004-06:00

[Note: I am mostly finished with job applications and my dissertation, so I am going to pick up a blog series that I started some time ago.]

Here is the general topic:

[If someone is an atheist, then he or she owes us an explanation about why nearly everyone who has ever lived has held to some kind of religious belief. There are, of course, several such attempts (five, as I count them) that I will review one by one over the next several weeks.]

Perhaps the most common way to explain religious belief is as a quest for psychological comfort. After all, it is common to hear people saying that their faith has helped them through hard times, or parents telling their children about heavenly bliss when they confront the death of a loved one or a pet. The mere existence of those Precious Moments dolls in a child’s room seems to emphasize this. Undoubtedly, then, there are many people who are religious believers today because religion makes them feel good.

There are continual cultural references to this idea, but the most sustained critique I can think of comes from The Invention of Lying. In that movie, Ricky Gervais’ character is the only member of the human race who has the capacity to lie. And, since everyone else only tells the truth all of the time (they don’t know any different), they believe everything that Gervais says. In an effort to comfort his dying mother during her last moments, he describes her after-life in heaven. He intends this as a white lie to make her last few moments bearable, but others overhear his story and ask him to describe this ‘heaven’ in more detail. So, he is forced to give a systematic account of the after-life, which he has made up entirely. And since no one is aware that he is lying, his story about heaven becomes dogma.

This is obviously meant as a reconstruction of the process of inventing religion; 1) some guys just made it up in an effort to comfort the masses, 2) it got written down, and 3) it came to be considered the word of God.

What is undoubtedly true is that some – perhaps many or most – religious people have accepted much religious dogma because it makes them feel good. But whether this explains the religious belief of some people is not the question I want to ask. I am asking a deeper question, namely, “Why is there religious belief at all?”

It seems to me unbelievable that religion was merely invented in order to make people feel good about their afterlife prospects. I say this because many religious people (pantheists) do not even believe that your personal identity survives death. The rest, the monotheists, rely on books that are absolutely unsettling. How do you read Revelation and feel comforted? Pick a passage from the Jewish Scriptures and read it – feel good yet? My point is that if the Bible were written in order to offer people comfort, the authors did a very, very, poor job. If I were in Gervais’ position and got to completely make up a religion for the sake of comfort, the religion that I would make up would have nothing but love, angels, smiles, and hugs. That is not even close to what we find in the Bible.

Explaining Religious Belief, Part One

2010-10-04T21:34:00.001-06:00

If someone is an atheist, then he or she owes us an explanation about why nearly everyone who has ever lived has held to some kind of religious belief. There are, of course, several such attempts (five, as I count them) that I will review one by one.

My interest in this issue was renewed recently when I heard about an interesting scientific study attempting to explain the human tendency for religious belief as an effect of natural selection. I will get more into this issue in a few weeks. Obviously, such a claim would be significant for the religious believer; however, if true, it would also pose problems for those who want to explain away religious belief as somehow disingenuous. I will begin next week by addressing the attempt to explain religious belief as a desire for comfort.

Theories of Government, Part VI: What Do the Democrats Believe?

2010-09-24T10:25:00.002-06:00

What unites the Democratic party is not obvious. Previously, I said only that they cannot be thought of as ‘socialists-light,’ as might be tempting, for this implies that the Democrats desire government solutions, which they do not. A better analysis is that Democrats are willing to use government as a way to make its citizen’s lives better.

To both the religious and economic conservative, the above statement is offensive. Religious conservatives see government and religion as engaged in a fundamental war for hearts and minds; we must either believe that religion can improve people’s lives, or that the government can. For the life of me, I do not see why this is an “either/or” thing. I believe strongly that local, personalized, religiously-based solutions are a better way to improve people’s lives than any government solution can be, when those solutions are available.

The problem, of course, is that those solutions are not always available. For example, in the health care debate, there were a few town-hall type debates where cancer patients who had been kicked off of their insurance publically asked Republicans leaders (Cantor and Boehner, as I recall), “What am I supposed to do now?” The answer was that “You should see what private charity/church resources are available.” So does Boehner expect us to believe that some local church is going to pay tens of thousands of dollars in medical costs as some kind of ministry to a single person? I’ve been to a lot of churches in my life, but I’ve never been around one that had an extra $100,000 lying around to help someone with their medical bills.

A similar analysis is available in the case of the free market. Free market solutions to problems are preferable when those solutions are available. But consider the above case. I consider it morally reprehensible that rescission (canceling someone’s insurance policy) is a legal option for insurance companies (rescission is appropriate when the person intentionally committed fraud on his application. However, the practice of rescission, before yesterday, occurred sometimes even when there was no fraud). Let’s assume that rescission is a problem (you’re free to disagree with me about this, but I am also free to think of you as a horrible person): is there a free market solution for rescission? No, there is not. Insurance companies are not going to keep sick people on their roles out of the goodness of their hearts. If they can legally dump someone, they are going to; furthermore, they are acting appropriately, for their only job is to make as much money as possible within the parameters of the law. The government’s job is to change laws when those laws don’t make a damn bit of sense.

Theories of Government, Part V: What do the Republicans Believe?

2010-09-06T16:09:00.002-06:00

If the socialists believe in complete government control of the economy (and society, in the case of Communists), and true libertarians believe in a severely limited role for government, then what do the Republicans believe? It is tempting to say that the Republicans are libertarians-light, as I suggested in the first post in this series; that is, they basically have a ‘small government’ philosophy, but are more tempered about it. I no longer believe that this is true.

A better summary of the Republican philosophy is something like this: “We believe in small government, except for when we don’t.” For example, they believe in small government except when they tried to defeat health care reform by arguing that it would cut Medicare (I thought they hated Medicare?). Or take warrant-less wire-tapping. I am fine, as any normal person should be, with warranted wiretapping (let’s get those terrorists!). But warrant-less wiretapping means that the executive branch spies on any citizen it wants too, for any reason whatsoever, without having to explain those reasons to the legislative or judicial branches. All Republicans I know supported this, although it’s hard to imagine how the government could get any bigger and more intrusive than that.

Or some other philosophy busters: the Americans with Disabilities Act, the proposed federal amendment banning gay marriage, the jaw-dropping expansion of the federal deficit under Reagan and both Bushes (it declined slightly under Carter and actually turned in a surplus under Clinton), and a highly-desired federal amendment to ban abortion (not a state-by-state law, as it was before Roe).

We could multiply examples, but my point is that the idea that a ‘small government’ philosophy guides the GOP’s policy positions just flatly contradicts history. The truth is that, in the end, I have more respect for the strict libertarian. It’s just ridiculously frustrating to talk to a Republican, because they just keep making up the rules as they go along. For example, it was a complete waste of time to try to talk to a Republican during the heath-care debate, because as I alluded to before, they just kept saying how health care reform would cut Medicare. The libertarian, on the other hand, believes in principles, and it is possible to have a fruitful discussion about principles, even if those principle are, as I tried to argue last week, unrealistic.

Four Theories of Government, IV: When Freedom Fails

2010-08-30T11:14:00.003-06:00

The truth is that there has never been a vibrant economy that it not managed to some degree by the federal government. By ‘manage’ I do not mean that the government controls the market in a rigorous sense, but that the government guides the market. But why does the free market need a guide? Because it is blind. The market is good at generating wealth, but generating wealth can be a dangerous thing if it is not done carefully. Somebody outside of the market has to look out for the market’s impact on the environment (eg: the feds forbidding companies from saving money by dumping chemicals into the river), for individuals who are exploited (eg: credit card contracts with impossible to read legal language for the purpose of tricking you), or for the free market creating inflation or deflation (eg: the Federal Reserve’s task of manipulating the interest rate).

It might seem that I have contradicted myself. I said that the market should be free, but also that it should be guided. How can something be free and guided at the same time? It is like an individual. An individual is free for the most part, but there are some actions that the government has told me that I cannot do. For instance, I am not free to drink and drive. Is this restriction on my freedom justified? Yes, because studies have shown that this particular restriction on my freedom is a good thing for society as a whole.

Fast forward to bailouts of 2008; most people hated them, and many think they never should have happened. First, they were terribly unfair because they saved already rich individuals who had acted stupidly or dishonestly, while many honest middle class people lost their jobs. Second, they were an infringement on freedom, because the federal government took away our private property (in the form of tax dollars) and gave it to people who we really didn’t like very much.

So what if ‘most people’ had their way, and the bailouts had never happened? Well, we would certainly be more free, and isn’t that a good thing? I say ‘no.’ Every reputable economist from the right and left was convinced that the failure of all the major banks would usher in a Second Great Depression that would have no foreseeable ending. Little House on the Prairie was a great book series, but I have no desire to live like that; not having enough to drink, watching my children die of curable diseases, freezing my butt off in the winter. The point is this: what good is freedom if we are all eating out of garbage cans?

If the bailouts had been orchestrated by a Democratic administration, can you imagine what Fox News and Rush Limbaugh would have said? “See, the Democrats’ secret plot to turn us all into socialists has finally come to fruition!” But in fact, they were done by the Bush Administration. But why? Was the Bush Administration part of some secret Commi plot? No, they were not. Here is the gist of what really happened:

Economic Advisors: “Ummm, sir, we’re going to have to give $700 billion tax payer dollars to private banks”

Bush: “But wait, I’m a free market guy who doesn’t believe that the government should do that. In fact, I wrote this really nice essay in college about how taxes are bad and that the government should let institutions fail that cannot make it on their own.”

EA: “Yeah, that theory sounds nice on paper, but unless you want to be remembered as the president who ushered in the Second Great Depression, we have got to do this”

Bush: “Well, OK…”

Last week I highlighted the fact that every society already limits individual freedom in the form of laws when that freedom is dangerous. I see the bailouts as adhering to the same principle. In the end, then, my critique of libertarianism is the same as my critique of socialism: nice sounding theory on paper, doesn’t work in reality.

Four Theories of Government, Part III: What Kind of Good is Freedom?

2010-08-22T08:16:00.002-06:00

Freedom is a good thing, and everyone save a few old people in Russia and a few of the world’s dictators would agree with me about that. Since I’m pretty sure that none of those people read the Orthodox Heretic, I’m not going to talk about the benefits that come from freedom. Instead, I’ll ask a related question: “What kind of good thing is freedom?”

In the Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes describes a state where people are completely free in the ‘state of nature.’ By nature then, we have the right to do whatever it is that we want to do. Unlimited freedom – is that not a good thing? Hobbes correctly points out that it is not. He says that when everyone is free to do whatever they want, like stealing and killing, life would be ‘poor, nasty, brutish, and short.’ His point was that for the sake of happiness, we should be willing to give up some of our natural freedom and enter into a social contract. This contract of laws, of course, places severe restrictions on our liberty; however, given the boost in happiness that we get from living in a society governed by laws, we should be willing to make the exchange. Hobbes’ ideas, via Locke especially, had a deep impact on the Founders.

This simple analysis reminds us what is true about freedom, namely, that it is not an absolute good. If it were an absolute good, it would be good independently of the circumstances or the consequences. But our Founders, like any founders of any society, reject the idea that freedom is good-in-itself. Importantly, when freedom will make us less happy, as is true in the case of the state of nature, we should limit freedom for the sake of happiness.

I’m afraid that our friends the libertarians gloss over this fact and instead think of freedom as an absolute good. I don’t mean to say that they are anarchists who want to overthrow laws and the government entirely, but rather that they have forgotten the principle that freedom must be limited when it severely conflicts with our pursuit of happiness.

Next week I will show how our Founders put this principle into practice not just by instituting laws against killing and stealing, but about bankruptcy.

Four Theories of Government Involvment, Part II

2010-08-15T20:17:00.007-06:00

I want to start by analyzing the two ideologically pure positions of the role of government: socialism (this week) and libertarianism (next week). Strictly speaking, those two theories are not real opposites, since socialism is merely an economic theory and libertarianism is the theory that government – particularly the federal government - should be absent in all or nearly all areas of social and economic life. So Communism may actually make a better ‘opposite’ to libertarianism, since Communism not only advocates government control of the economy, but also that government control all aspects of social life, such as mandating religion (or lack thereof), who you marry, how many children you can have, etc.

In regards to Communism, my criticism is basically the same as everyone else’s: nice sounding theory on paper, not so great in reality. Marx did genuinely begin his quest for a noble reason: compassion for exploited capitalist workers. It is hard for us to imagine exploitation; we may think exploitation is working an extra 2 unpaid hours a month or something like that. But In Marx’ day, there was no workman’s comp, no overtime pay, no minimum wage (and so workers kept undercutting each other), no unemployment insurance, no unions, no sick leave, no vacations, and no safety regulations. And young women in the workplace? Forget about it – have a baby, you’re fired! Still doesn’t sound so bad? Well, add to that the fact that most work was difficult and extremely dangerous. What you end up with is depressed, sick, and injured workers who can’t feed their families anyway. In order to remedy this, Marx recommended that there be no private property. The hope is that if there is no private property, then no rich person can exploit a poor person. We should never forget this when critiquing socialism.

But as most of the world has now admitted, a government cannot create wealth. Hence, economic equality ends up meaning that everyone is equally poor. My favorite example is from Cuba. Only after Raoul Castro took over were cell phones permitted. ‘What could anyone have against a cell phone?,’ you may ask. Well, remember in the 90s when everyone talked about ‘bling’? Bling, apparently, referred to such things as light reflecting off your gold chains, or the sound that a cell phone would make. Bling was significant because it meant that you had status – that you were more important than your neighbor. Easy solution for Fidel: no cell phones, no inequality (that’s not the whole story, but that’s a part of it).

Well, capitalism wins again. It turned out that after a few years of private economic competition working its magic, everyone got a cell phone. Now, everyone’s life is easier, competing cell phone companies have created a ton of wealth, cell phones are no longer a status symbol, and human beings are still trying to flee Cuba.

I intentionally started this series with an uncontroversial post (unless I have any Communist/socialist/Marxist blog readers I don’t know about), but I’m going to start getting controversial next week. Then, I will argue that a similar critique can be made of libertarianism: sounds nice on paper, but in reality it just doesn’t work. There has never been, is not now, and never will be a successful economy that is not overseen by the federal government. And yes, that does include early America: even the Founders intentionally left many ways for the federal government to intervene in the economy and to place limits on capitalism.

Four Theories of Government Involvment, Part I

2010-08-10T21:24:00.002-06:00

[The Orthodox Heretic finally finished his dissertation. So finally, some more blogs!]

It is common to believe that the Republicans are ‘libertarians-light’ in the same way the Democrats are ‘socialists-light;’ that is, Republicans are generally in favor of small government, but not to the extent that libertarians are, and the Democrats generally favor large government, but don’t want to go to the extremes of socialism.

This is what I used to think. Now, I see things as significantly more complicated – so much so that it turns out my initial analysis was just plain wrong. I want to spend a few weeks 1) describing what appear to be the four major theories of government involvement – libertarianism, socialism, and whatever the Democrats and then Republicans believe, 2) arguing that a morally responsible person should desire a society that considers its most vulnerable members, and 3) arguing that this kind of society is the one that fosters non-state involvement but is willing to involve government when appropriate.

[If you are reading this on FB, there may be some advantages to visiting the actual blog]

Are You More Afraid of the Government or the Super-Capitalists?, Part II

2010-06-13T16:11:00.004-06:00

Defining our political views as simply conservative or liberal is often difficult, but I think one important piece in the puzzle is identifying who we are more afraid of: the government, or the super-capitalists. I laid out some very basic reasons last week why we might be (and should be) afraid of the government, but for the next weeks I want to argue that we should be more afraid of the super-capitalists.

Capitalism is simply when the means of production are owned privately. My adjective ‘super’ is supposed to identify those private companies whose production methods have an effect on the lives a large number of common citizens. So for example, BP would be a super-capitalist corporation on my definition because they control a huge portion of energy supply. But while it is true that I use their products, that is not why I call them ‘super;’ what is important for my purposes is that the way they produce energy has an effect on my life. So a regular capitalist would be like a small-time farmer. He is a capitalist because he owns the means to produce food (the land, the seeds, the tractor), but he is not a super-capitalist because how he produces his goods has little or no effect on me (at least if I am not consuming his products).

Before I proceed with my argument, I want to propose an analogy. This analogy first occurred to me a couple of years ago, and since then, it has proven to be remarkably accurate and predictive of events. As a result, my economic and thus political opinions have generally been guided by it. Here it is:

I think that the free market is like a fire. One thing we know about fires is that they can seem like miracles to those who need them. You don’t have to go very far back in history to a time when an open fire was the only way to cook, the only source of light, and the only way to avoid freezing to death. Can you imagine how valuable a fire must have been to our ancestors? Similarly, the free market can seem like a miracle because it actually has the power to create wealth – just like that, out of thin air. I still don’t understand how this works, but it does. The free market can make the wealthy even wealthier it can make a middle-class family rich, and it can make a poor family middle-class. Importantly, it does this without necessarily ruining someone else’s economic prospects. There is no way for the government to create wealth; at best, they can print money, but this doesn’t actually produce wealth because of the immediate problems with inflation, etc.

But of course, we know something else about fires, namely, their destructive capabilities. Just like that, an untended fire that was providing light and heat to those who were cold and in the dark suddenly turns on its former beneficiaries, consuming them, its surroundings, and eventually itself. The clear lesson is that fires must be tended. I will defend the accuracy of this analogy in the next weeks.

Should We Be More Afraid of the Government or the Super-capitalists?

2010-06-07T22:30:00.005-06:00

Most people, myself included, would call the government a ‘necessary evil.’ Anyone would love to be in a world where nations generally got along, where citizens and corporations behaved responsibly, and where basic public needs were easily met by our neighbors and religious communities. But of course, that is not the world we live in. As a result, we hand over a portion of our freedom to this entity called the ‘government,’ which is frequently corrupt and sometimes incompetent; but given the choice between subjection to this imperfect institution and a society without supervision, we choose the government. The difference between conservatives and liberals concerns the level of control that we are willing to hand over.

So while the government is necessary, we also recognize that it can be corrupted and thus should evoke fear. It is a fact that almost all of the major tragedies in human history have occurred because of bad government. So shouldn’t we all be political conservatives? Isn’t is just common sense that we should want our government to provide basic protections such as the police and basic services such as roads and then get out of our lives?

My answer is ‘no.’ Although I think that we always need to be vigilant and afraid of our government, there is an entity out there far more dangerous than the government; I’m speaking of the super-capitalists. My term ‘super-capitalist’ does not have a rigorous definition, but I am trying to pick out those in the private sector who control a disproportionate percentage of the means of production. There are lots of small and mid-size private businesses out there, but in modern capitalism, just a few dozen people own almost everything. Over the next few weeks, I want to argue that we should be more afraid of these folks than the government. As a result, we need a government large enough to control them.

Fear and Love

2010-05-16T12:05:00.002-06:00

“The fear of God” is perhaps the most common phrase in the Bible from beginning to end, transcending authors, cultures, and even testaments. Whatever it may mean, it obviously describes a healthy way to relate to God. This suggests that ‘fearing’ must be distinguished from ‘being afraid’ despite the fact that those phrases pick out the same emotion in English in any non-theological context. That there must be a distinction is recognized by biblical authors; it was John who observed that fear is contrary to love, because “perfect love casts out fear” (I John 4:18).

I wonder how clear the difference between fearing and being afraid really is. It’s the easiest thing in the world to invent some trite distinction based on what we think the difference should be, or a distinction that serves our personal theological narrative. But I think complete honesty demands more of a struggle. For instance, the same Greek word for 'fear' in the sense of proper relation to God is the same word that John uses in 4:18.

John’s thoughts on love and fear are thought-provoking. It seems to be true that you cannot love something and also be afraid of it, at least not simultaneously. Love has other contraries of course – hate and indifference come to mind – but these are not nearly as interesting as fear, because there is nothing redeemable about hatred and indifference; we simply label them as ‘bad.’ Fear is different, because at least according to the biblical cannon, there is something desirable about fear. This means that unlike hatred and indifference, we are responsible to discover what is positive about fear and what is negative.

Any thoughts? How do you understand the phrase 'fear of God'?(If you are reading this on my blog, the comment feature is turned off, so you will have to visit me on Facebook, which is slightly more complicated these days because my facebook last name is now ‘Collins’).

Are Democrats Bad at Public Relations?

2010-03-17T15:22:00.003-06:00

I frequently hear exasperated liberals ask how the Democrats could lose the PR war with the Republicans so badly and so often. For instance, a recent survey has shown that, among other things, a strong majority of Republicans either believe or are unsure whether Obama is a secret terrorist, a secret Muslim, was not born in America, etc. Other polls show that these types of beliefs extend to health care. None of these contain even a hint of truth, of course, which makes some ask: how could Democrats be so bad at setting the record straight?

I have been sympathetic with this line of reasoning in the past, although I have come to reject it. Here is the relevant fact: 40% of the nation defines itself as conservative, while only 21% defines itself as liberal. Consider two highly-skilled boxers fighting, but one weighs 100 lbs and one weighs 200 lbs. In this analogy, the rival boxers are the opposed politicians and media consultants, while the boxer’s weights correspond to the number of self-identified liberals and conservatives.

Now what should we expect from these boxers? Well, since the 100-lb boxer is well-trained, he is going to get his shots in, but in the long-run, the 200-pounder in going to win; this is why there are weight classes in boxing. I think that this analogy explains why Democrats can only get victories when the Republicans really mess things up, like with the invasion of Iraq. Under ordinary circumstances, the Democrat PR-machine just doesn’t have nearly enough sympathetic ears.

The simple truth is that as human beings, we are programmed to believe or disbelieve new information based on our previous beliefs. So, for example, I believe that Dick Cheney basically lacks a moral compass. So if I heard a rumor that Cheney had several affairs during his stint as vice president, I would say, “Ah ha! I knew it,” even if Cheney denied it and the evidence was ambiguous.

It is a fact that there are many people in the country who for whatever reason believe that nearly everything (or do I dare drop the modifier!) the government does is an attack on Christianity and/or freedom. So, for example, when these people hear even moderate senators (i.e. Charles Grassley) affirm that Obama’s health care plan is an attempt at some version of euthanasia, they say “Ah ha! I knew it!” And it is extremely difficult to get someone to reject any belief that they have acquired that fits well into their general view of things.

Insanity and Health Care, Part One

2010-02-15T22:20:00.002-06:00

I’m very tired of hearing this definition of insanity: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” People think that they are so clever when they use this definition against their opponent that you can almost see them straining their own arm to pat themselves on the back. For example, I hear this slogan most often as an out of hand dismissal of Communism: “Well, Communism may sound nice, but has been tried before and has failed; therefore trying it again would literally be insane.”

I’m not here to defend Communism; it has some serious problems in my judgment. But I want to discuss this odd analysis of insanity, and then next week, apply these observations to the current health care debate. There are two dramatic insufficiencies with this so-called definition of insanity. First, it would require us to say that it was insane of Edison to try again and again, even 100 times, to invent the light bulb. It must have been insane – right?, because he did the same activity over and over again expecting different results. This, of course, is false. The obvious response is that even though engaged in same activity again and again, he did it in a different way each time. That makes his actions completely sane.

Or consider my adventures with my computer. Sometimes, I click a button, and I get an error message. Then, I click the same button again. And I get the exact same error message again. This may happen a third or fourth time, until the fifth time it finally works. I did everything in exactly the same way, but my actions are not insane because I was hoping – and reasonably so - that the underlying conditions had changed.

What these two examples show is that it is stupid to say, for example, “well, health care reform has been tried several times before, and failed every time; therefore it is insane for Obama to try it again.” It is not insane for both of the reasons introduced above; Obama is trying to reform the health care system in a different way (like Edison). Furthermore, the underlying conditions have changed (like me clicking the same button repeatedly). Next week I want to discuss these underlying conditions that have shifted.

American Idol, the Coliseum, and Exploitation

2010-02-07T15:21:00.002-06:00

The Roman’s treatment of the Christians in the first century is well-known. According to tradition, Romans went to the Coliseum to watch people ripped to bits by animals, all for the sake of entertainment. This is exploitation: the Christian had a purpose, to stay alive, while the Roman also had a purpose, to be entertained; the attainment of the Roman’s purpose involved over-riding the Christian’s purpose. Today, fortunately, we have evolved as a society. There are no more socially acceptable forms of exploitation this disturbing. Right?

Consider American Idol (AI). As most know, the first few weeks of the show consist of the auditions, of which there seem to be four kinds, three of which are valid entertainment. The first is when someone auditions, and they are basically a joke, but you get the feeling that they are ‘in’ on the joke. So ha, ha, they get their 15 minutes of fame by being silly, and then go back and brag to their friends. Another two types are those who are decent singers, and make it, while some are decent signers, but don’t.

The fourth type of audition, however, is disturbing. These consist of contestants who made the journey, confident that they are in the second or third categories I mentioned (i.e. at least they have a shot at making it). Unfortunately for them, they are there for a very different reason: to be publicly mocked and humiliated (check out this video, starting 2:30 into it). This is exploitation, because this kid goes to his audition, hoping that this may be the first step to a signing career. He realizes this may not happen, but he believes he is being auditioned in good faith. So his purpose is to achieve fame through music. AI also has a purpose, which is to boost ratings. In order to achieve this purpose, they bring in the kid for an audition in order to mock him. The kid doesn’t realize until after the audition that he has been exploited; the audition was not in good faith, as he had believed.

So the result of this exploitation? AI’s ratings inch ever upward, while a teenager was humiliated and destroyed for our entertainment. So who has it worse? The exploited Christian, or the exploited AI contestant? In one sense, of course the Roman Christian had it worse, because the Coliseum created orphans and widows. But besides that, here are some brief considerations in favor of the AI contestant:

1) The Coliseum only held a few thousand, while several million joyfully watched the humiliation of this unsuspecting teenager.

2) The Christian does not have enduring pain (his pain only lasted 20 or so seconds), while the AI contestant will remember it with great embarrassment for the rest of his life.

3) The AI contestant experienced emotional and not physical pain, and thus could easily develop some antisocial behaviors, depression, etc.

4) The Christian was not humiliated in the sense that he was proud and then brought low for all to see. The AI contestant, on the other hand, clearly had the rug pulled out from under him. That is, what he was most proud of was the object of mockery.

5) The Christian, while awaiting the public execution, took heart in the persecution because he believed it is a sign of God’s blessing (Matt 5), while the experience was just purely bad for the AI contestant; there is no silver lining.

For these reasons and perhaps a few that I am not thinking of right now, I just don’t buy that we are any more civilized than those who had season tickets to the Coliseum.

The Problem of Evil, Part Three

2010-02-01T13:07:00.004-06:00

I want to close by addressing two groups who will be skeptical of what I have said. First, there are the believers, who take me to be saying that God is not good. This is false; what I am saying is that God is not omnibenevolent, or what may be equivalent, that God is not moral in the way that we understand morality. As near as I can tell, the Biblical proclamations of God’s goodness amount to saying that in the end, God will make things as they are supposed to be. That’s not the same as saying that God respects the autonomy of persons, acts according to their interests, etc. Those are the ethical standards that we require of other people.

There is at least one extremely important thing that this does not imply. We all know that in matters small (justifying a lie) and great (the terrorist attacks of 9/11), there have been and always will be those who believe themselves to be ‘special agents’ of God’s will, as it were. Since God doesn’t adhere to the normal rules of ethics, and they are God’s agents, they are also above the law. I think that this is the definition of - not merely an example of - bad religion. Run away, dont walk away, from such a theology.

But is this not a double-standard? Is it not unjust for God to require things of us that God does not require of God’s self? Yes, of course it is a double-standard; and no, it is not unjust. Aristotle has a definition of justice that may be relevant here: justice is treating equals equally, and non-equals unequally. Using Aristotle’s observation about justice, we might say that since we are not equal to God, God’s justice does not require treating us as equals.

There will be many non-believers, no doubt, who say something like this: “Well, how could you worship a God who is not ethical?” At some level, there really is no conversation to be had here. If you truly believe that God’s way of doing things is unfair or backwards, then you owe it to yourself to walk away; that would be consistent with your belief. But I will simply refer to my point in the previous paragraph: if there is such a being as a Creator and Sustainer of the universe, then it would be arrogant to assume that that being should be held to our standards. I realize that there is a big, if not impossible, ‘if’ for many, but that is not the point here.

Finally, I want to make it clear that the problem of evil is still something that religious believers will always have to deal with; it’s always frustrating to see injustice, and it there will always be those of us who ask ‘why’ when tragedy strikes. But if my argument the last few weeks is accepted, then the problem of evil is not a logical problem, and this is because God is not omnibenevolent.

The Problem of Evil, Part Two

2010-01-25T12:53:00.004-06:00

Last week, I promised to explain my claim that God is not omnibenevolent, which, if true, would undermine the logical force of the problem of evil. Since “benevolence” means “good will,” I take it that omnibenevolent means an unlimited, complete willing of the good. Further, I proposed that by the word “good,” we typically mean “ethical.” That is to say, never harming someone if the person harmed will not benefit from the harm.

The Scriptures reveal a God that is not at all omnibenevolent. For example, in John 9, Jesus and some disciplines find a man who was born blind. The disciples are curious about why this man was born this way; they assumed that either the man sinned, or his parents did, and his punishment was blindness. Jesus, however, affirmed that “it was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him” (v. 3). This is quite a statement; it means that the man was stricken with blindness specifically so Jesus could restore his sight on that day and be praised for it.

To appreciate the extent to which this is outside ordinary moral boundaries, suppose one of us assumed the place of God in that example. Say I snuck into a hospital, and injected a newborn with a special poison that would render the child blind but have no other effect. Then, when the child was older, I would find him, inject him with the antidote, which I alone had, and proclaim my greatness for healing him. The catch, of course, is that it is a disease which I had originally afflicted. You would certainly have to call me unethical. But this is exactly what John claims happened.

I claimed that at the heart of most ethical traditions is the notion that you must not harm another, particularly when the other person will not ultimately benefit from that harm. Now, whether the former blind man ultimately benefited or not is irrelevant; Jesus is clear that he was not stricken with blindness for the man’s own benefit. In a real sense, he was used. God overrode the man’s autonomy and used him as an object lesson.

I do not claim to have solved the age-old problem, “Why do bad things happen to good/innocent people?” Since I am a religious believer, I am committed to the idea that there always is always some reason for suffering. But short of a proclamation from Jesus himself (as happened in John 9), we can’t look at a situation and say, “Oh, this tragedy happened for such and such a specific reason.” And anyone who believes they can is an arrogant ass. What I am saying is that the problem of evil, while still a problem on a certain level (I’ll explain next week), is not a logical problem. It would only be a logical problem if God were omnibenevolent; Scripture everywhere testifies that this is not the case.

Next week, I want to close by talking about what I think this implies, and what it doesn’t.

The Problem of Evil, Part One

2010-01-15T15:41:00.005-06:00

I want to spend a couple of blogs on the problem of evil, which refreshes itself each time a large scale tragedy happens, as is the case with Haiti. The problem stems from the alleged incompatibility of four propositions (although many combine the first two): 1) God is omniscient, 2) God is omnipotent, 3) God is omnibenevolent, and 4) evil exists. The worry is that evil should not exist if an all-powerful, all-knowing being exists who wills good, always and completely. But, in fact, evil does exist. Therefore one of the first three premises must be false.

I want to focus on the third premise, that God is omnibenevolent. What, exactly, is omnibenevolence? The term itself does not seem to have much of a history; in fact, it is not unreasonable to believe that it was coined specifically to serve as a term in the problem of evil. Benevolence, of course, means good will, so omnibenevolence can mean something like unlimited good will.

But as soon as we break down the word, a new problem arises: what is goodness? That is, what is this good that is being willed always and completely? Most of us think of a good person as an ethical person; that is, one adhering to the basic standards of right conduct that are features of all moral traditions. This gets really complicated, so I will just state (but not argue for) my belief that what we mean by an ethical life is one that involves never causing harm or pain to someone when the person being harmed does not ultimately benefit from the harm.

If I am permitted that analysis of omnibenevolence, I will argue next week for this claim: God is not omnibenevolent. I am not disallowing us to say that God is good, but the goodness of God would not be equivalent to the omnibenevolence I just described. This is already too much for many – both religious believers and non-believers – to stomach. But stay tuned for next week.

The Governement Can't Do Anything Right?

2009-12-14T21:22:00.004-06:00

Children speak in extremes – “All,” “None,” “Every.” The reason that these words are childish is because except for in mathematics, these words are rarely true. So it is unfortunate that so many supposed adults adopt this mantra: “The government can’t do anything right.” If you watch Fox News in the evening, it will probably only take you 15 minutes to hear this phrase in this exact wording.

But this is a senseless phrase uttered by thoughtless people. Brief reflection reveals this truth instead: there are 1) some things that the free market does well, 2) some things that the government does well, and 3) some things that the government doesn’t do particularly well, but there is no free market solution for it, and so we are stuck with the government. The successful politician distinguishes between these three types of activities, and acts accordingly. The Republicans simply try to shove everything into the first column.

There are of course plenty of examples of #1: the free market has given us many wonderful things and improved all of our lives. But, although the Republican will be surprised to learn this, there are also many examples of #2. Do you ever worry about the mail you send? Do you ever use your tap water? Do you know any old people who want private insurance rather than Medicare? These are trustworthy services provided by the government. There are also examples of #3. For example, it is cheaper for company X to dump its hazardous waste into the river behind its factory than to dispose of it properly. Now, sometimes the EPA does an alright job of preventing this, sometimes it does not. But there is no free-market solution for this (the free-market is the problem here), and so we are forced to hope that the EPA is competent.

We need a leader who allows to the free market to work its magic, provides citizens with services when appropriate, and has the courage to stand up to the free market when the free market is threatening to destroy itself and us. If the Republicans ever come up with a candidate like this, I will consider voting for him or her. But right now, the Republican party is filled with children who think that no matter what the problem, the solution is the free market. This is only true occasionally.

The Republicans and Racism

2009-11-24T16:42:00.003-06:00

I’m not one to shout ‘racism’ much. I watch Keith Olbermann frequently, and while I like the program generally, I can’t stand the way he invents new reasons to call the Republicans ‘racist.’ For example, I didn’t think it was racist that Joe Wilson shouted ‘You lie’ in Obama’s address to congress. Now, Joe Wilson is a first class idiot, but I didn’t see racism there.

Generally, I am hesitant to find racism in people for three reasons: 1) ‘racism’ has no good definition that I know of, 2) I think it is possible to be racist without knowing it, 3) it’s always hard to really know someone’s intentions. Having said that, the recent rage over the Acorn scandal is very thinly veiled racism. The scandal in question is the recent ‘undercover’ video that was taken by two teenagers and given to Fox News. In it they get Acorn workers to help them cheat on their taxes, affirm prostitution, etc. All sorts of nasty stuff. What followed was a complete defunding of Acorn, which almost every single Democrat in congress supported.

I think it was appropriate for Acorn to be defunded. Yes, those were low level workers, but I believe it shows some weaknesses in the organization. I am sure that as a whole, Acorn does many positive things, but because of the scandal, it was time for their government funding to end. So if you ask any conservative why they hate Acorn, they will say “Because Acorn is a corrupt organization.” This is false; conservatives generally hate that organization because it is run by black people and it largely serves black people.

The reason I know this is that shortly after the Acorn scandal unfolded, it was discovered that members of Halliburton (now KBR) gage-raped a female coworker, and when she went to the higher-levels of Halliburton to complain, she was put in a box without food and water for two days. Because this happened in Iraq, the rapists and those who covered up the crime could not be prosecuted. The prompted the Democrats (specifically Al Franken) to put out a bill that said employees of contractors could at least sue the contractor in that situation.

When the Senate voted, almost all of the Republicans voted against the provision. Their justification was that KBR is an independent contractor, and the government should not interfere with their business. But of course, all of those same Senators were absolutely outraged when a far less morally significant crime was committed by Acorn. The Acorn workers didn’t actually do anything; they gave advice about how to do it. The KBR employers actually screwed up someone else’s life. And it appears the Acorn workers were all low-level employees, as opposed to the KBR supervisors who assigned the rape victim to that box. The only difference I see between the two organizations is color.

Health Care, Part VI: Government Health Insurance in a Democracy

2009-10-15T00:45:00.004-06:00

I’ll start blogging about something else next time, but one more on theme of government health insurance. Government insurance would be scary if America were run by a dictator. In that case, the dictator could decide what health outcomes were desirable, and then, based on his idiosyncratic ideas of a good society, could choose what medical expenses to pay for and what people/illnesses were expendable.

So, for instance, the dictator might decide that the elderly are not worth the medical expenses, and so would refuse them treatment or even take matter into their own hands. These are real possibilities in a government that is controlled by one or a few with a lifetime appointment.

However, ‘death panels’ will not happen in a true democracy (distinguished from Russia, for example, who has a “democracy” but not a political system that is actually controlled by the people). Our American system is set up so that we can ‘kick the bums out’ every few years. The result would be that if any elected official actually proposes ‘death panels’ that execute the elderly, he will get kicked out of government in the next election. The reason is simple: all of us will be elderly one day, which means that we (the people) will not support euthanasia for the elderly (and of course, the elderly themselves are one of the most active voting blocks). This line of reasoning can be extended to physical handicaps, reproductive issues, and much else.

This is the beauty of a democracy – the common citizens have the political power, and we choose the leaders whom want to speak on our behalf. In a democracy, then, government controlled health insurance would be equivalent to ‘people-controlled health insurance.’ That’s not scary at all.

Health Care, Part V: Who's Looking Out for Your Health?

2009-09-30T00:13:00.004-06:00

I have been arguing in this series, and have argued in a previous blog series, that while market forces are in general beneficial, it makes no sense to subject health care to market forces. I want to add yet another reason to the ‘pile.’

One obvious problem with health-care in America is that we have a ‘sick care’ system rather than a health care system. That is, we take care of people who are already sick, rather than taking steps to make sure that people don’t get sick in the first place (this is not a partisan point – it was one of the talking points of Mike Huckabee’s campaign). Classic example: its costs a lot of money to treat advanced colon cancer, but relatively speaking almost nothing to pay for annual colon cancer screenings.

Now, why do we have a ‘sick care’ system instead of a health care system? The answer is simple: we have a system in America that does not reward insurance companies for preventing illness. Currently, most people have health insurance through their work or some other temporary arrangement. In our current system, why would an insurance company create incentives for you to get a colon cancer screening if you are going to be someone else’s problem in 5 years? Answer: they wouldn’t. The point of their business is to make money, not to keep you healthy. This does not make them immoral, but amoral: they are just good capitalists.

But if the government were paying for health care, they would indeed have an interest in paying for that extra colon cancer screening for two reasons. First, they would be on the hook financially if you did have to have expensive cancer treatments. And second, the government needs a healthy citizenry to keep its economy working. Now I don’t care if the government is federal or at the state level. But it should be the government, because the government has the dual motivation I just described, which will lead them to take common sense measures to keep its citizens healthy. A health insurance company has no motivation whatsoever – you will likely be some other company’s problem by the time you get sick.

Health Care, Part IV: Private Compassion?

2009-09-20T21:54:00.006-06:00

In Obama’s speech to the joint session of Congress, he saved his ‘preaching’ for the end. He described the practical advantages in the first part of his talk, and then the moral imperative: making sure that everyone has access to health care is our moral obligation. I certainly agree that there is a moral dimension to health care. It is absolutely shameful that we have the richest nation on earth, and yet are the only first-world nation where money (and/or insurance adjustors) comes between people and their lives.

Conservatives have always been sensitive about the morality issue, because in advocating small(er) government, their position ends up looking something like social Darwinism: the rich, talented, and well-connected survive and prosper, while the poor stay poor for generations. So conservative Christians, ever since they joined Republicans in the 70’s, have always had an answer ready: “of course we are concerned about the welfare of other human beings, but we think that it should be the concern of the private sector, not the government.”

I have heard several Christians stick to this same traditional line in response to Obama’s plea for health care. Now, if you oppose government-run health care because it gives the government too large a role in citizen’s lives, fine. I disagree, but at least I can respect that argument. But the moral argument that I just briefly described is quite different. The claim is that the private sector should be compassionate instead of the government.

This argument is as senseless as it is old. Are conservatives afraid that the government will ‘take their business’? That if health care is free they will run out of sick people to visit? I just don’t understand. Why is it an ‘either/or’? Why is it either the government’s responsibility or the obligation of churches? This would be a stupid position, were it actually the position of Christians who are politically liberal. Why can’t it be both the job of the church to provide services and then the government, when necessary. If churches provided free health care for everyone, then I would say, ‘Yes, keep the government out – the private sector is taking care of things.’ But they are not – people are sick and dying and filing for bankruptcy in numbers that should make any true Christian sad. If churches can't be bothered to stop persecuting gay people and instead provide health services for those who can't afford it, perhaps it is the government's turn.

Health Care, Part III: Healthcare and Capitalism

2009-09-15T23:42:00.007-06:00

I am a fan of capitalism. A big fan. It is an economic system that can actually create wealth by harnessing talent, intelligence, and hard work, and in the end, everyone experiences the benefits. I like the fact that Wall Street executives get huge, ridiculous bonuses for doing a good job (although what happened recently was an outrage because many executives got enormous bonuses for doing a bad job). If you are good at your job, and your job is important, I have no problem with you getting rich. I like, for instance, that Steve Jobs and Bill Gates have more money than they know what to do with.

However, just because capitalism is appropriate for some situations, we cannot assume that capitalism is appropriate for all situations. Take for instance the health insurance industry. Conservatives are angry because a public health insurance option may put private insurers out of business eventually, and honestly, I think they are right. But so what? What’s so great about health insurance being subjected to capitalism?

Consider this difference: Steve Jobs had to be really smart to start a company that eventually gave us the iPhone. His intelligence, skill and hard work were rewarded by market, and he got rich. Good for him. But why in the world are there rich insurance executives? America is the ONLY country on this earth that has multi-millionaire insurance executives. The average pay for upper-level management is 12 million per year this year. But don’t they deserve their wealth, the way (some) Wall Street executive do?

In a word - NO! Health insurance isn’t chess; it's checkers. You get a certain amount of money coming in each month from premiums – let’s call that x, and you pay out a certain amount each month in claims – let’s call that y. In order to make money, your x has to be higher than your y. So what do you do to make that happen? Well, sometimes it happens naturally, and sometimes you have to deny a certain number of claims. That’s it. Someone please tell me why people deserve 12 million bucks a year for making that happen. Sure, you need a few competent people running your company and you have to have some good accountants, but their intelligence is just not irreplaceable enough to warrant giving them all that money. Capitalism just doesn’t make sense here, the way it does for financial markets, computer design, etc. We should take a cue from the rest of the world: no one needs to become a multi-millionare for figuring out how many claims to pay out.

Health Care, Part II: We Are Not First

2009-08-31T22:14:00.005-06:00

I am going to do a brief series about health care (again), and I consider last week the first in that series. I want to evaluate the claim which was a fixture of the McCain campaign and has since become a talking point on Fox News: “The USA has the best health care system in the world.”

The question is, what is the evidence for this claim? I have never heard them quote any statistics in support, nor could I find any on the internet. I have two guesses about the popularity of that quote. The first is that we Americans love to tell ourselves that we are the best. In everything. And so I assume that the phrase in question resonates well. The second is that even though there is no statistical support for this claim, there is some anecdotal evidence. The fact is that when rich foreigners need surgery, they tend to fly in to the good ole USA. So doesn’t that mean that we have the best health care system in the world?

The answer is yes – unless you are a Christian. One thing about Christians is our upside-down value system. Instead of valuing the great, powerful , and rich, Jesus told us that the weak, meek, and poor are the ones who are really well off. For those with money, this is indeed the best health care system in the world. That must be why the rich fly to America for surgery. But if you are a ‘have-not,’ this is the worst (37th) of all the first world countries. In America, money leads to health, and poverty leads to sickness. And no, the good health care does not ‘trickle down.’ If such a thing happened, it already would have. America’s health care system has already been tested, and found to be wildly successful for the rich, and neglectful of the poor. And that gap only appears to be widening with time.

So if you insist that America has the best health care system in the world, what do you mean? Which people do you include in your calculus?

Puttin Granny to Death

2009-08-25T00:41:00.005-06:00

I don’t want to waste words talking about the hypocrisy and stupidity of the Palin/Gingrich ‘death panel’ world. Obama’s proposed legislation is not about death panels, but about paying for doctor consultations about end of life decisions. For example, you must decide in advance if you want to be resuscitated if you are merely going to live a few more painful months hooked up to a ventilator. When thy meet their maker, Palin and Gingrich will have to explain why they choose to scare old people and make their lives worse in order to score cheap political points.

But let’s leave the actual proposed legislation aside. Instead, let’s pretend that we live in a world where Palin’s worst nightmares came true, and there were a death panel: a group of doctors and politicians that decided whether someone deserved further treatment. Would that be immoral?

Two things must be pointed put. First, there already is a ‘death panel’ of sorts. It doesn’t involve beaurocrats or doctors, though; it involves money. If you have enough money, you can get your hip replaced when you’re 100. But if your mom doesn’t have money, she can’t take you to the doctor to screened for basic diseases when you’re a baby (actually, since Bush and the Republicans lost their ‘fight’ to the Democrats, free health insurance has been extended to poor children). A politician shouldn’t make health care decisions, but that seems no better than letting money decide.

Second, the euthanasia scare glosses over the incredibly important distinction between active and passive euthanasia. I think active euthanasia in all its form is immoral. That’s why I have a moral objection to abortion. But passive euthanasia is something vastly different. The question is, when an old person with asthma is being kept alive by a breathing machine, why are they alive? Is that the will of God? It is not. It is because medical technology has advanced to such a state that keeping them alive is possible. So is ‘pulling the plug’ immoral? The question is, why were they ‘plugged in’ in the first place?

Passive euthanasia just doesn’t bother me at all. When I am old, I would rather have God decide when I take my last breath – not a doctor or an insurance adjustor. Active euthanasia is completely different. That is what is immoral and deserves condemnation from Christians.

The Ethics of the Jewish Scriptures

2009-07-26T21:28:00.004-06:00

I have a growing concern about the possibility of reconciling the view of ethics found in the Jewish Scriptures with the one found in the Christian Scriptures (I’m talking about the Old and New Testaments for those of you who don’t have any Jewish friends). I’ll illustrate my point through a specific example. I just finished 2 Samuel, and chapter 24 is hard to digest. As summary, suffice it to say that David took a census of Israel, apparently to stoke his ego, and so he started to feel guilty (v .10). God told him that there would have to be a penalty, and essentially, David was given a choice: either God would punish David, or God would punish the Israelites. David decided that God should take out his wrath on the Israelites, and so over three days, God killed 70,000 Israelites (v. 15).

Evangelicals love talking about the Bathsheba stuff, but what about this? If a modern-day Christian leader condemned 70,000 to death to spare himself three months of uncomfortable living (v. 13), would we not call him the worst person ever? There are two answers I commonly hear from conservatives, and they are both insufficient:

1) “Well, God is variously harsh and then merciful in the Jewish and then the Christian Scriptures, so really there is no ethical difference between the testaments.” I hear Acts 5 about Annanias and Saphira trotted out as an example. Here are two people condemned to death because of something that seems to most of us like a “little white lie.” True, that’s a pretty harsh penalty from our perspective. But in that case, and everywhere else in the Christian Scriptures as far as I can tell, person A is punished for the ‘crimes’ of person A. But in the case of David cited above (and many other cases in the Jewish Scriptures), person A does the crime, and persons B, C, D, E, etc, do the time. That is a drastic ethical difference.

2) “Well, all people deserve hell, so really anything is justified.” Besides the fact that this sounds like something Dick Cheney would say, I regard it as insufficient for essentially the same reason as I reject the first justification. Usually, when we think about ethics, a person is given a punishment that is relevant to his or her crime. But why did those 70,000 people having sinful natures make them liable for a mistake made by David?

Does anyone have some good insight or some helpful references that speak to this issue?

What's Wrong with People Who Like Horror Movies?

2009-07-20T22:29:00.005-06:00

The theme of last week’s edition of This American Life was “the fear of sleep.” One story was an adult remembering his two-years of fear-based insomnia after accidentally watching The Shining at the tender age of six. This is a fairly common experience – children being exposed to horror movies.

But is it simply a case of exposing a child to something for which he or she is not ready? Or is something deeper wrong with horror movies? I’m mature enough to acknowledge that not everyone has the same values as me, and it is obvious enough that many nice people enjoy that particular genre, but it all seems fairly disgusting. The nicest thing I can say about the writers, producers, and consumers of horror movies is that they seem to me to have something terribly wrong with their desires.

When I see a commercial for a horror movie, I often think of Paul’s admonishment to think about things that are beautiful and praiseworthy. Of course there is a time to face hard truths. I recently saw Slumdog Millionaire, and have thought a lot about the scene where the kid gets his eyes burned out so he will be a better beggar. This is horrible to be sure, but there is a fundamental difference between these sorts of movies and horror movies. In the former case, the problems are problems that we can hope to solve. We can give money to organizations like the International Justice Mission who break up this kind of human trafficking. Movies like Slumdog heighten our desire to lighten the suffering of others.

Horror movies, on the other hand, are usually about things that are imaginary. Hauntings, vampires, Freddy Kruger killing in dreams, blood rushing out of the elevator (that happened on The Shining, apparently). These are things that we can’t do anything about. It appears then, that lovers of horror movies love meditating on evil – not for the sake of conquering that evil (Slumdog), but because it brings them pleasure.

What can we say about someone who gets their jollies from meditating on horror and evil? I wish I could be nicer about this, but lovers of evil have always made me think of lovers of child pornography. In both cases, the lover has desires that have been twisted and are incomprehensible and sickening. I wonder how many children have been damaged by horror movies?

Sorry if I just called you a pervert. If you would like to talk about it, my cell is 555-555-1234.

"I Don't Love Money...Right?" Part III

2009-06-11T23:02:00.003-06:00

The Orthodox Heretic breaks his silence after a few weeks. No good reason, I am just busy dissertating and traveling. Hence the following very brief post…

I have been trying to articulate some of the difficulties we may encounter when we try to convince ourselves that we are not lovers of money. I’ve tried to state that while there will always be ways to assure ourselves that we are not guilty of money-loving, there are also always reasons to think that we are. How then, can we guarantee that we are innocent?

It strikes me as impossible to love money if you are excited about giving it away. I’m not just talking about tithing. Tithing is wonderful, but it is automatic. You can even have automatic deductions taken out of your account every month by your favorite charitable organization. I’m talking about something beyond a tithe – extra money every month that is set aside for unexpected things – causes and needs that excite you. If you genuinely give, as Paul said, hilariously, then it must be that you don’t love money.

"I Don't Love Money...Right?" Part II

2009-05-19T15:57:00.004-06:00

Last week I suggested that it is not wise simply to shrug off the verses about money-loving. This week I want to try to describe my motivation for taking up this issue. The elephant in the room for Western Christians is how much freaking money we have. The comfort and luxuries that middle-class Americans enjoy, compared with, say, people in the third world today or Christians of the past is beyond staggering. It is this dramatic economic inequality that should make honest Christians ask ourselves whether those passages about money-loving are about us. Now, as I argued last week, you cannot simply equate having money with loving money. But it sure is bizarre that my Christian brother in the third world makes $1 per day while I make a million times that much! (Alright, my math may be a little off, but my point remains).

This kind of comparison may give you what I call ‘Schindler disease.’ Oscar Schindler, as the story goes, was an incredibly wealthy man who saved 1,100 Jewish lives during the Holocaust by employing them at his factory, even though he did not actually need them as workers. He basically used his fortune to save their lives. It seems like he was a generous hero, but in this clip, he realizes that there was even more he could have done (even if you have seen this movie before, I recommend watching this scene again).

Our situation is not somewhat similar to Oscar Schindler’s. It is the exact same. We find ourselves with plenty that we do not need, and we could trade that stuff to either change or save the lives of another. But if we follow the Oscar Schindler problem down the rabbit hole, we will all have to take a vow of poverty, for if we have any money or possessions at all, then there is by definition more we can do for the poor. But alas, we would be part of the poor in that case, dependent on handouts and calling our local church for rent money!

Oscar Schindler and his interlocutor articulate this frustrating state of affairs well in that scene:
Oscar: I could have done more….
Interlocutor: But you did so much…
…and this conversation could go one forever, because both men stated a truth. Yes, Schindler could have done more, and yes, he did so much. Schindler never solves his own problem. He drives away in his car tortured by guilt and sadness. In that moment he must have felt like a true money-lover, the kind that Jesus denounces in the harshest terms. This, despite the fact that he had just done one of the kindest acts in human history!

How can we heal ourselves of Schindler disease, even though Oscar Schindler himself could not? Should we just go through life feeling guilty every time we swipe the credit card? One very effective method, practiced by most Christians today, is to look at the person driving the luxury car and say “Thank you, God, that I am not like that!” But is there a way that is not hypocritical?

"I Don't Love Money...Right?" Part 1

2009-05-10T11:20:00.004-06:00

The next blogs will be about the interpretation of two statements, one from Jesus and one from Paul, which I take to be conveying the same general idea:

“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.” Matt. 6:24

“For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils…” I Tim 6:10

I’m wondering what it means to love money, and how I can be assured that I do not. It’s easy to quickly dismiss the possibility that this verse applies to me or to you, because we might say: “Well, I’m not as rich as some in our society.” This line of reasoning fails immediately for three reasons. First, I and everyone reading this blog are in fact some of the richest people in the world. And second, there are enough Scriptural counterexamples to show that merely having money is not the same as loving it. David, for instance, was filthy rich, as were most of the patriarchs. And we can also turn that around - it’s easy to imagine a person in poverty who loves money and is willing to lie and kill to get it, but simply doesn’t have it yet. So finding a few people in America who have more money than we do is perfectly irrelevant to the question, “Do I love money?”

So it's clear that having money does not equal loving money. But what could those passages mean then? Surprisingly, it’s difficult to come up with clear examples of money-loving. For instance, spending a lot on a home could be justified as an investment, as could sending your kids to an expensive college, or buying the organic milk for twice as much as regular milk. From the perspective of some, these could seem like luxuries, but if you have the money, who wouldn’t give their child the best education possible? On the other hand, there are always easy, extreme examples of money-loving, such as the purchase of a luxury car. If you spent $100,000 on a commuter car when a $20,000 car would have done just fine, I can’t think of any other motivation for that purchase than that you wanted everyone to see how much money you have. And of course there are always ‘gangster’ examples – those who enrich themselves by killing others. That’s a clear example of money-loving causing evil-doing.

But coming up with extreme examples is not really that healthy for us. When we think of the owner of the $100,000 commuter vehicle, we may start thinking, “Thank you, God, that I am not like that.” But this strikes me as exactly the same attitude as the hypocrite in Luke 18:11 who prayed “God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.” Just because we can find someone worse than us does not mean that we're off the hook. Yes, I feel confident about saying that I love money less than someone who kills for it. But so what?

The difficulty in properly interpreting these passages is dangerous. It makes it easy for us to justify to ourselves that we are not money-lovers. But…what if we are? This blog series is different than some of my other ones. I often have a direction, but I don’t know where I’m going with this one. So any comments would be useful – what do you think it means to love money? And how do you ensure that you do not?

Homosexuality, Part X: Conclusions Concerning Romans 1

2009-05-03T23:42:00.003-06:00

It was previously shown that Romans a could not be referring to homosexuals in general, for that would commit us to the absurd positions that a) all manifestations of homosexuality and same-sex behavior are punishment for the sin of literal idol worship, and b) all homosexuals are guilty of hating God, disobeying parents, and 20 other nasty character qualities. Anyone serious thinker knows that those things are false. On the other hand, if we assume that Paul is speaking of the Aphrodite-worshipping Corinthians, this passage makes perfect sense.

But one question still remains – despite the context of the passage not being about homosexuality, it seems that Paul goes on to condemn all homosexuality and same-sex activity in vv. 26-27. Perhaps it was not his intended target, but he does seemingly call same-sex lust “shameful,” “unnatural,” and “indecent.” Doesn’t this amount to a condemnation of homosexuality?

The question is, why are the activities and dispositions given in those verses wrong? Are they wrong because they are homosexual, or are they wrong because they are unnatural? This doesn’t seem like much of a difference perhaps, but it makes all the difference in the world. If we have read the passage thus far as if Paul intended to condemn all homosexuality, then vv. 26-27 seem to be merely more of the same. But if we think that the perverted Corinthian worshippers are the object of wrath here, then we must wonder what is being condemned. Could it not be that they are doing some actions which are against their own nature, and hence are indecent and shameful? These actions are indeed homosexual, but only incidentally so. That is, the homosexual aspect of them is not what is being condemned. The problem with that particular manifestation of homosexual activity, then, is not that it is homosexual activity, but that it is a violation of their own God-given nature. It is a true rebellion against God – the final rebellion which started with there worship of idols, despite their knowledge of the one true God.

So the homosexual activity of these people is condemned as “unnatural,” indecent”, and “shameful” because they all had heterosexual natures, and flipped genders only in order to engage is these orgy worship services. This condemnation then, says nothing about homosexuals who did not choose or create their own homosexual disposition.

A traditional objection to this analysis, recently articulated by Richard Hays in his book, The Moral Vision of the New Testament, is that Paul could not have been condemning these folks for rebelliously transgressing their God-given nature, because the Greeks – and therefore Paul – had no conception of a same-sex nature. Unfortunately for Hays, he had just finished insisting only two pages earlier that the proper translation for arsenokoitai was homosexual! So if Hays insists on retaining the translation of ‘homosexual’ for arsenokoitai, which he and those who want to find a condemnation do, then he has to withdraw his objection that the Greeks had no conception of a sexual nature.

Alright, I am seriously tired of talking about this issue. I'm going to start blogging about money next week.

Homosexuality, Part IX: Romans 1 continued

2009-04-27T08:38:00.002-06:00

Let’s take the conservative interpretation and assume that the referent of ‘they/them/their’ is ‘all homosexuals.’ Is this a good description of the origin of homosexuality, and of the behavior of all homosexuals? Well, first of all, if you hold to this interpretation you must believe that there is one and only one cause of homosexuality, and that is excessive idol worship. Remember, we aren’t talking about the metaphorical stuff here, but literally bowing down to statues. This contradicts what most conservatives say. I commonly hear from people like James Dobson that homosexuality is a result of suffering child abuse at an early age, overexposure to girl’s activities at a sensitive age, not having a strong father presence, or even overexposure to pornography. But if all homosexuality really is a punishment (“God gave them up”) for excessive idol worship, then people like Dobson flatly contradict their own interpretation of Romans 1. Whatever it is that is described in vv.26-27 is a clearly a punishment for too much idol worship. To diagnose someone as being homosexual because of sexual abuse as a child and then to say that Romans 1 is about them is absurd.

Then there is the issue of those nasty character qualities in vv. 28-32 that ‘they’ have as a further result of ‘their’ punishment. Tony Campolo sometimes tells a heart-wrenching story from his childhood of a gay kid named Roger. Roger was identified as gay because of some physical characteristics, and so he was relentlessly teased for his obvious “transgression” of “nature’s law.” One day, 5 boys ganged up on Roger and shoved him down in the shower room, and took turns holding him down and urinating on him. Roger went home that night, waited until his parents went to bed, and then hanged himself in his basement. Try reading through that list of adjectives again in vv.28-32, and then ask yourself who the unrighteous, evil, covetous, malicious, envious, murderous, strife-filled, deceitful, gossiping, slandering, God-hating, insolent, haughty, boastful, evil-inventing, parent-disobeying, foolish, faithless, heartless, and ruthless ones are in that story. Do you think it was Roger, or the boys who urinated on him? Do you honestly believe that this description fits all gay people? If you think the “they/them/their” in Romans 1 is the group of homosexuality, then you are committed to this absurd belief.

On the other hand, if we interpret the ‘they’ referent as the orgy-having, idolatry-loving Corinthians, this passage goes from making no sense to making perfect sense. Those people without a doubt deserved a condemnation, and although I don’t know much about these perverted worship services, I am sure that Paul accurately describes their crime, the punishment for their crime, and the result of the punishment. This condemnation, then, is no more a condemnation of all homosexuality than condemning heterosexual orgies is the same thing as condemning all heterosexuality.

One worry is still remaining. Perhaps you will ask, “Alright, I understand that Paul was primarily addressing those worshippers of Aphrodite. But still, can’t we read vv.26-27 as applying to all homosexuals? I mean, even though Paul’s rant wasn’t primarily about all homosexuals, he still calls all homosexual acts and passions “contrary to nature”? Perhaps it was incidental, but don’t we still get a condemnation of homosexuality in this text?” And that’s a good enough question to be the subject of the next blog.

Homosexuality, Part VIII: Romans 1

2009-04-19T14:50:00.005-06:00

Romans 1 is often taken as the clearest Biblical condemnation of homosexuality. But in my final three blogs on this subject, I will attempt to demonstrate that while Romans 1:18-32 is certainly condemning something, it is not at all a condemnation of homosexuality. Rather, only a certain kind of same-sex is condemned here. We can focus our question this way: what group of people is being referred to in this passage? By my count, there are 24 uses of a plural pronoun in verses 18-32: in the subjective case (they) it is used 12 times, in the objective case (them) it is used 6 times, and in the possessive case (their) it is used 6 times. So who does this they/their/them refer to? It turns out to be quite vague: the description is only “those who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth” (v.18). This ambiguity gives rise to two interpretations of the passage, one arguing that the referent of “they/them/their” is “all homosexuals,” the other arguing that the referent is a much smaller group: not all homosexuals, but a certain group of people who practice same-sex activity. Since Paul never specifies his referent, we will have to decide which interpretation is appropriate by looking at the rest of the passage.

I will first briefly explain the second interpretation. In Corinth, worship services sometimes took a sexual form. Worship services to the goddess Aphrodite, for instance, consisted of the worshippers “flipping” genders in order to experience the other side of sexuality. In their minds, this was probably something holistic and healthy. The claim, then, is that Paul is condemning this group in this passage, which is obviously quite different from the interpretation which says that the “they/them/their” are “all homosexuals.” So which interpretation is more likely?

The passage itself can be divided into three parts: the crime (vv.18-23), the primary punishment for the crime (vv.24-27), and the secondary punishment for the crime (vv.28-32). The crime that ‘they’ committed was clearly idolatry. And this is not some kind of metaphorical idolatry either. No, Paul says quite clearly that ‘they’ (remember, we don’t yet know who ‘they’ is) were bowing down before actual representations of human beings and reptiles and birds and fish, to the exclusion of the worship of God. In vv.24-27 we get a description of the punishment: same-sex desires and same-sex acts. Why does Paul talk about same-sex desire here? The answer is clear – because it is a punishment for the crime of idolatry. The transition is in the word “therefore” in v.24, or “for this reason” in v.26. As a result of the idol worship, God gave ‘them’ (again, we don’t know who ‘them’ is yet) over to these passions. Now we are ready for the third section: what else is true about 'them,' given 'their' punishment? Paul actually gives 22 different adjectives to describe the destiny of this lowly group of folks, including “faithless,” “murders,” “haters of God,” “disobedient to parents,” etc. Some group is clearly being condemned by Paul here, but we still do not know who. Is it likely that Paul meant to describe the condemnation all those who practiced same-sex activity, or is it more likely that his anger was being unleashed on the lecherous, idolatrous Corinthian worshipers? More on this next week.

Homosexuality, Part VII: “Arsenokoitai”

2009-04-06T08:35:00.003-06:00

Last time it was shown that there is absolutely no reason to assume that Paul’s use of the word “malakoi” has any apparent connection to homosexuality. A better possibility is the next word in the list in I Corinthians 9, “arsenokoitai”, which at least shows up also in I Timothy 1:10. Similar to malakoi, the translations of arsenokoitai are varied depending on the translation (although at least they not conflicting this time). The King James in both translations is “abusers of themselves with mankind”, while the New International Version is more specific than this with “homosexual offender” in Corinthians and “pervert” in Timothy, and the English Standard Version is still more specific by maintaining in the footnotes the arsenokoitai are the active males in gay sex.

So what does this word really mean? Unlike malakoi, which has no inherent connection to sexual activity, arsenokoitai does indicate something sexual since arsenokoitai is built from the words “male” and “sex.” However, Paul never explains what he has in mind, and so we are left to speculate.

If we know that some word that involves “male” and “sex” is condemned, can’t we assume that Paul is condemning homosexuality? Absolutely not! By far the most common form of male same-sex activity in Ancient Greece was pederasty. Pederasty was a disgusting practice in which an older man “partnered” with a younger man for a mutual exchange: the older man would get the delights of the younger’s body in exchange for being a tutor in whatever field of knowledge in which the disciple was interested. This practice was normal and not at all shameful. In fact, the men who participated were some of the most well-respected men in the community, and they had normal families. Today we would call this child abuse. This exploitive practice was very common in Paul’s day, and certainly deserved a rousing condemnation. Could it be that when Paul condemns arsenokoitai he is condemning adult males who exploit children sexually? If so, then we still don’t know Paul’s feelings about homosexuality. He simply does not tell us here. Further evidence for this interpretation is the remainder of the list in I Timothy, in which nearly all the practices condemned there are exploitive practices, and so it seems that a condemnation of pederasty fits in naturally.

And of course, condemning pederasty is no more to condemn homosexuality than condemning heterosexual sexual abuse of minors is to condemn heterosexuality. These translations are guilty of the same sloppy scholarship, hasty conclusions, and homophobia that I accused them of in their attempted translation of malakoi. For this reason, I have great respect for the translators of the King James Bible – they knew that malakoi and arsenokoitai are ambiguous, and they preserved this ambiguity in their English translation. If Paul were thinking about something specific, we simply don’t know because he never tell us. Of course, that doesn’t stop the translators of the ESV and NIV. They apparently have special knowledge about the meaning of malakoi and arsenokoitai that God never shares with us mere mortals.

Homosexuality, Part VI: Malakoi in I Corinthians 6:9

2009-03-23T09:14:00.004-06:00

We are in the midst of searching for the Bible’s attitude toward homosexuality. Last week, I finished talking about the Jewish Scriptures and found there to be no condemnation there. Now we will turn to the three passages in the New Testament that are used to condemn homosexuality. I Corinthians 6:9 is often used that way:

“Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders….” (NIV)

And what could be more clear than that? Well, the picture gets murky when we use the King James Version:

“…Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind…”

And the story takes yet another twist in the English Standard Version, where the last two groups on the list are combined into one:

“…Do not be deceived: neither the sexual immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality…”

Why is there such intense disagreement between the translations? It is clear that Paul means to condemn some group or groups, but it is not clear which ones. The two controversial Greek words which show up in that list are malakoi and arsenokoitai, respectively. The translation difficulty stems from the fact that neither Paul only uses the word this one time, so it impossible to know from other contexts if he thinks malakoi means ‘homosexual.’

Malakoi is variously translated above as “the effeminate”, “male prostitutes”, and one-half of “men who practice homosexuality.” If the Greeks were going to turn the masculine plural noun ‘malakoi’ into an adjective, they would be saying that the object was soft. So wax would be malakos when it was hot but the opposite of malakos when it was cold. Paul here applies it to people, and the masculine ending probably means he had men in mind. It is difficult to say what a “soft male” is or why such a person would be cast off from the kingdom, but it is certainly an enormous and unjustified jump for the NIV and ESV to assume a connection to homosexuality. The KJV is the most faithful to the Greek to simply translate the word as “effeminate.” Translated this way, we can see that there is no necessary connection between softness and sexuality, as the NIV and ESV have it. “Softness” could mean many things. For instance, there are two Christian books I read several years ago that both denounce “soft” males: The Silence of Adam by Larry Crab, and Wild at Heart by John Elderidge. The softness described in males in those two books has no necessary connection with sexuality. That is, they were writing books condemning soft, passive, heterosexual males. Furthermore, other ancient Greek texts speak of a ‘soft man’ as a man who is pampered or cowardly. But never until the ESV-translators got on their moral high-horse did the word mean ‘homosexual.’

The NIV is bad here, but even so, we get no condemnation of homosexuality: they translate malakoi as a 'male prostitute.' Condemning male prostitution is no more to condemn all homosexuality than condemning heterosexual prostitution is to condemn all heterosexuality. But they do make the mysterious jump from “soft male” to “soft male in the area of sexuality.” This is supposed to be God’s Word, and those who don’t know Greek take a translation at face value. So translating malakoi as male prostitutes without knowing what this word actually refers to is quite dangerous. I’m sure Paul would have condemned male prostitution if he had gotten around to it, but we just don’t know if he does so in this passage.

Much more dangerous is the English Standard Version, which claims to know definitively that malakoi are “men who practice homosexual acts”. The two words malakoi and arsenokoitai are combined by these translators as two halves of a pair, with the malakoi being the passive partner in the male sex act and arsenokoitai the active partner. It is first of all worth noting that the NIV and the ESV are in conflict on this point, because obviously the group that gets money for gay sex is not the same group as the group that plays the passive partner in the male sex act. So at least one of these translations is necessarily in error, and possibly both.

Certainly, the interpretation that the male sex act is described here is a possible interpretation. But an interpretation must be much more than just possible in order to condemn someone’s lifestyle. It must be definite! The question of whether malakoi are passively gay men or male prostitutes may be an interesting dissertation topic for someone in seminary, but it has no place masquerading as Divinely-inspired truth. The truth is that we just don’t know what malakoi means. Paul simply never tells us! “Softness” as applied to people could mean any number of things, including the passive heterosexual male in Wild at Heart. I can’t see any other conclusion than that the ESV translators are homophobic.

Homosexuality Part V: The Leviticus Condemnations

2009-03-16T15:08:00.006-06:00

The final two passages in the Jewish Scriptures which are sometimes used as arguments against homosexuality are from Leviticus 18:22 and Leviticus 20:13:

“You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination” (18:22)

“If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them” (20:13)

The oft-used phrase “homosexuality is an abomination” comes from these verses, and based on the wide usage of that phrase, it is obvious that these verses have an immediate intuitive appeal to many. Those are indeed harsh words.

We first must realize that there are many prohibitions given by Leviticus that are simply no longer taken as good advice, let alone divine law. For instance, the interceding chapter (19) gives a strange order in verse 27: “You shall not round off the hair on you temples or mar the edges of your beard.” And of course, your choice of facial hair is morally irrelevant. On the other hand, Leviticus gives certain prohibitions against murder. The problem, then, is whether the condemnations of homosexuality should be considered irrelevant today, like the facial hair requirement, or as still relevant, as the laws about murder. We can focus the issue with this question: why do we keep some prohibitions but not others?

There are three motivations for the laws in Leviticus: a law is either for the sake of cleanliness, religious symbolism, or morality. This gives us a strong justification for why we would keep some prohibitions and disregard others – we don’t sacrifice our children (20:4) because that is still morally wrong, but we don’t banish from our society two married people who have sex during the woman’s menstrual period (20:18). The first law is for the sake of morality, but the latter is clearly for the sake of cleanliness. Any law that concerns keeping clean, such as the famous prohibitions of mold growth, or about how to be a good Jew at the time, such as the facial hair requirements, we freely discard because we are much better at keeping clean than the Israelites were, who were at the time deprived of science.

So the question is whether 18:22 and 20:13 are for the sake of morality or for the sake of cleanliness. There are two good reasons for us to think that these condemnations are for the sake of cleanliness: 1) we know that that this particular act is indeed an act with the potential to spread disease, and 2) there are no prohibitions on other forms of male homosexual behavior or female same-sex behavior. It seems as though those activities would have been condemned as well if this were to be read as a moral condemnation. And Moses does in fact address female sexual relations elsewhere. For instance, 20:15 prohibits males from bestiality. But then females get their own verse forbidding bestiality in 16. Moses thought that for whatever reason there had to be separate prohibitions for males and females in that case. But two verses before, he only condemns one form of male homosexuality, and no forms of female same-sex activity. The asymmetry could very well be because the prohibition of ‘lying with a man as with a women’ is for the sake of cleanliness; it is not a moral law. As such, it is no longer relevant.

Hmosexuality, Part IV: Genesis 19

2009-03-10T10:06:00.003-06:00

Genesis 19 focuses on the city of Sodom, whose residents were of course Sodomities, which is where we get out word sodomy, which is a euphemism for homosexual male sex. So why exactly do we define sodomy as gay sex? Genesis 19 gives us the most detail we ever get about the city of Sodom. As the story goes, Lot takes in two visitors (angels). Upon learning that Lot had guests, the men of the city come to rape them. Later in the chapter Sodom was destroyed along with Gomorrah because God had heard “the outcry against its people” (v. 13). Over time, homosexual male sex was labeled as “sodomy,” apparently in order to serve as a reminder of the moral lesson we were supposed to draw from the judgment of that city.

But did we get the correct lesson? What was it exactly that angered God to the point of destroying the city? In Genesis 19, there is no description of the offending sin or sins (remember the text just describes an ‘outcry against its people’), so we had to wait for the prophet Ezekiel to name the sins in detail:

“Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. They were haughty and did an abomination before me. So I removed them, when I saw it” (Ez. 16:48-50).

The specific causes of Sodom’s condemnation mentioned are 1) pride, 2) excess of food and 3) prosperous ease, combined with 4) an unwillingness to aid the poor and needy. Whatever else was wrong with Sodom didn’t even specifically make the list. I don’t know if it’s possible to overstate the implications of this prophesy. Genesis 19 implies that gang rape was a normal, hoe-hum cultural activity for the Sodomites. But what really made God angry was that they would not spread the wealth. So we have missed spectacularly in defining sodomy as homosexual male sex. Here is my proposed amendment to the dictionary:

sod.om.y n. 1. Pride. 2. Excess of food, wealth. 3. Apathy, esp. in respect to the poor and needy. v. (to sodomize) 1. To pass over the poor in an unconcerned manner. 2. To have an excess. Antonyms – see “thanksgiving”

Homosexuality, Part III: Genesis 2

2009-03-02T09:23:00.002-06:00

Now that I’ve given a few introductory comments on the topic, I want to examine the Biblical passages one by one that supposedly condemn homosexuality. Upon closer inspection, I will show that those verses do not say what the conservative thinks they do. The passages in question are Genesis 2, Genesis 19, two verses from the Old Testament law, two verses from the Epistles, and of course Romans 1.

Many Christians feel that a sufficient condemnation of homosexuality already exists in Genesis 2, even though there is no explicit mention of homosexuality here. This is where God creates only two genders (“she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man” 2:23), and then ordains marriage by saying that “they shall become one flesh” (2:24). The idea that this passage delivers a knock-out blow to homosexuality and gay marriage is deep-rooted. In the eighties, conservative Christians were fond of the witty saying, “God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” Likewise, only two days before the referendum on the definition of marriage in 2004, my pastor suddenly deviated from his current series of sermons to talk about the “one man, one woman” marriage principle from Genesis 2. Although it was never said, the implicit message was clear: “Same-gendered marriage is morally wrong and should be voted against!”

The thinking here is that since God created only two genders and ordained marriage to be between one man and one woman, and since any deviation from God’s plan is sin, then homosexuality is sin. But is it true that any deviation from God’s plan is sin? It certainly is a widely held belief, even among great Christians. For example, in John 9 the disciples encountered a blind man and asked Jesus a question about him: “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus responded to their question by rejecting their implication altogether (as he often did) that blindness was a punishment for something.

Blindness is certainly a deviation from the purpose for eyes (what else are eyes for but to see?), and homosexuality is also a deviation from the purpose for gender (as a brief anatomical investigation will make clear). But no one thinks anymore (as the disciples did) that blindness is the result of a moral failure. What is true is that blindness is not God’s ideal for the eyes. Similarly, the only thing implied by Genesis 2 is that homosexuality is not God’s ideal for sexuality, but as the example of Jesus’ response to blindness makes clear, this does not at all make it sin. After all, we are also behaving as deviants when we step onto an airplane: “If God wanted people to fly, then God would have created people with wings!!!”

So there is no condemnation of homosexuality in Genesis 2. Maybe in Genesis 19, then, with those nasty Sodomites? Let’s look at that next week.

Homosexuality, Part II: Nature v. Nurture

2009-02-24T15:48:00.003-06:00

Before turning one-by-one to the Scriptures that supposedly condemn homosexuality, I want to examine a few prejudices that are always hanging around in the mind of the conservative. One theme of the Christian war against homosexuality is that God created each individual either male or female, and thus anyone that is gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered is rebelling against their own nature. So it is by nature that they were created, and only by some poor choices or circumstances that their natures were corrupted.

A full account of the phenomenon of homosexuality is probably impossible. In any event, it is unnecessary to do here. Instead, I want to focus on one piece of evidence that shows that the conservative is clearly mistaken in his belief that homosexuality is always a matter of personal or social conditioning.

The motive behind the idea that God would not make anyone homosexual in nature or in disposition is motivated by the desire to “rescue” God from wrong-doing. That is, being gay is just so horrible as it seems to the conservative, that God could not possibly be guilty of creating someone with this disposition. It must be that the individual chose his or her own fate. But that just doesn’t square with the facts. We know that there are “intersex” individuals, sometimes called “hermaphrodites,” born with both sets of genitalia. By some counts, there are 50,000 of these individuals in the U.S alone. Even though we can admit that it is not the ideal of nature to be born with both sets of genitalia, we must also acknowledge that it just happens, and that it is clearly “natural.”

So we must let go of this notion that nature only produces males with a masculine nature and desires and females with a feminine nature and desires, for it is demonstrably untrue. I don’t want to get into the business of making judgments about something that I know almost nothing about, and saying how nature and nurture contribute differently to homosexuality. But I certainly do know that those individuals who are born with both male and female genitalia certainly did not choose the genitalia they received, and they could not have been given one, fixed nature that corresponded with their gender.

Homosexuality, Part I: Introduction

2009-02-17T11:16:00.004-06:00

A couple of years ago, I did a blog series about homosexuality. I want to re-do that series, partly because I want a chance to re-write, re-think, re-order some of what I wrote, and partly because my blog audience (and those who read my blog on Facebook) has changed.

I am concerned that this single issue is fostering an unhealthy suspicion between the church and the world. Now, of course, we should desire that the church be different from the world. Jesus promised that the world would hate his followers, and he even went so far as to encourage us to rejoice when this hatred turned to persecution. But I think the divisions caused over the issue of homosexuality are quite different. Some divisions are healthy, but this is unhealthy.

I have heard the arguments against homosexuality, both ethical and Scriptural, and I have found them to be unconvincing. I just don’t think that passages such as Romans 1 say what Christians think they do. When I took the time to interpret ‘slam-dunk’ passages such a Romans 1 properly, it became quite embarrassing for me to think that for most of my life I read that passage as a condemnation of homosexuality.

Jesus said in the Sermon of Mount that we are blessed when we are persecuted for the sake of righteousness. But that does not mean that we should desire to be persecuted for the sake of sloppy Bible interpretation. I’m going into a line of work (philosophy professor) where I will have many colleagues who will think that I’m a nice enough person but a little crazy and perhaps a bit close-minded to believe that the universe is being controlled by God, and that we can be reconciled with God through Jesus. And unless you work in a church or in Texas, you are probably in the same boat.

So look, you and I have a limited amount of ‘capital,’ and we’ve got to spend it wisely. If we want to have influence in this world, we need to be careful to disagree with others only about things that are actually in the Bible. I want to convince you that homosexuality is not. And then, my hope is that we can move past this issue and get the real business of sticking out like sore thumbs in our world for all the right reasons.

"Is It Wrong to Eat Meat?," Part V: The Ick Factor

2009-02-02T15:23:00.004-06:00

I have been trying to prove that none of us has a logically rigorous reason for consuming what we consume. The only exception is the cannibal, who has decided to eat any living thing he chooses. But for those of us who find cannibalism immoral (that would be me and everyone I have ever met) draw a line in the sand: “I am comfortable eating X, but I am not comfortable eating Y.” And I have tried to show in the last blog that there is no logically rigorous way to discriminate between X and Y.

So let me end this blog series by stating my own conviction on the matter. I am a pescartarian (yes, that’s officially a word as of last year – apparently not yet in Microsoft Word, because my software underlines it!), which means that the only meat I eat is from fish. This suggests two questions: why I am uncomfortable eating mammals, and why am I comfortable eating seafood?

My reason for abstaining from mammals is straightforward: it seems to me as though cows, for instance, have at least one important in common with me. No, they don’t reason abstractly, but they can feel pain, and this is significant. I believe this because 1) they instinctively move away from the source of a pain, and 2) they make noises to show their dissatisfaction with the pain. So when I watch videos of a slaughter house, it is disturbing to see animals behave like I do in response to pain. That’s all there is to my reasoning there. Things are just the opposite in the case of fish and shrimp. I have seen shrimp and fish being caught and skinned, and they just don’t remind me of myself. Does this prove that ‘fish don’t have feelings?’ Of course not, but you have to draw the line somewhere, and that is where I have chosen. It doesn’t seem like fish feel pain, at least the way I do, but it does seem like cows feel pain exactly the way I do.

To the skeptic who believes that my reasoning here is absurd, let me say two things. First, I will remind you that your level of comfort (“I will eat X, but I will not eat Y”) is just as arbitrary as mine. The only exception is a cannibal – he has a logical consistent position: “I will eat anything that provides nourishment to me.” I will close with an analogy. Do you think that it is icky when two siblings get married? Yeah, me too. How about first cousins? Still pretty gross. Well, how about 16th cousins? That’s not so gross, is it? But where is the logical cut off point? Of course there isn’t one - we have to make one up. My personal statement is this: “I will eat fish, but I will not eat mammals.” My statement is not logically rigorous, but then again, neither is yours. The best we can do is to ask ourselves the tough questions, which is what I am trying to do.

"Is It Wrong to Eat Meat?," Part IV: Drawing the Line

2009-01-18T22:42:00.004-06:00

Which living things are we comfortable eating and which are we not? That’s the question that each human being must answer for herself. Carnivorous non-human animals never have the chance to ask themselves this question since they live and eat by instinct and necessity, and so we have no model to look to in the animal kingdom.

If human beings were forced to eat meat in order to survive, then there would be no moral question here. But in fact our species can survive and thrive by eating a variety of living things. We can consume and derive nourishment from living things as diverse as carrots, buffalo, wheat, chickens, or even other human beings. And since unlike other animals we are not forced by instinct or necessity to eat any of these particular things, we must choose what we feel comfortable putting into our body. Unless we are morally comfortable eating all living things, including other people (which some ancient societies were but no one that I know is), we must draw a line in the sand: “I will eat X, but I will not eat Y.” But where should we draw the line? And what will our criterion be?

The carnivore likes to accuse the vegetarian of a contradiction here: “You won’t eat chickens, but you will eat carrots. Aren’t carrots living too?” The major problem with the carnivore’s argument at this point is that he doesn’t realize that it is also directed back at himself. Yes, vegetarians have to ‘draw the line’ somewhere, and this is going to be fairly arbitrary. But the carnivore has the exact same duty to ‘draw the line!’ Most people in the West have no problem eating cows, but they refuse on moral grounds to eat dogs. They will eat pigs, but cats are strictly off limits. And of course it would be a grave injustice to eat another human being. But what do dogs, cats, and human beings have that cows, pigs, and chickens do not have?

Take for example a carnivore who draws the line this way: “I will eat any animal, but I will not eat other human beings.” OK, but why in the world did you draw the line right below humans? Because they are rational? Because they are self-conscious? Well, there are some monkeys that are more rational and self-conscious then some humans born with developmental disabilities or in a coma. Surely you don’t propose that it’s morally justifiable to eat someone just because their I.Q. is too low! Or perhaps you take a religious route and propose that humans are off-limits for food because humans, unlike other animals, were made in the image of God. OK, but is that the reason that you do not eat people – just because of that verse in Genesis? If you were not aware of that verse, you would happily slaughter and eat your neighbor? No, I think that there are some undiagnosed moral intuitions underneath the surface that the carnivore has not seriously addressed.

"Is It Wrong to Eat Meat?" Part III: The Argument from Evolution

2009-01-13T14:56:00.002-06:00

There are two basic arguments I hear for the carnivorous diet, the first of which is the mono-theistic one that I discussed last week. This is the basic line of thinking that God created animals for human consumption, which turns out to be false, according to the creation text for Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Instead, God actually gave humans a vegetarian diet, and only later permitted us to eat meat.

The other argument does not rely on any kind of religious belief at all, but a scientific one. The best summary comes from a former doctor of mine: “Well, humans didn’t fight their way to the top of the food chain only to eat vegetables!” The idea, of course, is that humans are the (current) end of a long line of organisms which evolved and survived at least in part by eating the species below it. From this perspective, it seems bizarre to turn from our habitual meat-eating ways for moral reasons.

But to argue that something is morally justified because it is ground into us by evolution doesn’t have much weight behind it. It doesn’t take a genius to make a long list of things that are natural but that we consider immoral. Remember, one of Darwin’s basic ideas was that the strong exploit the weak in order to survive, whether we are talking about genes, monkeys, or people. So unless you are ready to argue that murder is morally justified because it is natural, you shouldn’t say the same about eating meat.

From my experience, it seems that these are really the only two arguments for the carnivorous diet. I don’t think that either of them are compelling arguments, and although that does not yet mean that we should be vegetarians, I hope that this will make the future discussion more interesting.

"Is It Wrong to Eat Meat?," Part II

2009-01-04T20:47:00.003-06:00

Christians, Jews, and even Muslims in a limited way all accept the truth (whether literal or metaphorical) of Genesis, and therefore they are particularly scandalized by Christians like me who question meat-eating on moral grounds. “After all,” they say, “Genesis tells us that God created animals for food.” Well, that turns out to be false. God first created plants, then animals, and then people (at least in the Genesis 1 version). God then told Adam and Eve about the relationship of those three segments of the created order: “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of the earth…You shall have them for food” (v. 29). Notice that at this point humans were not permitted to eat animals – only plants. Surprisingly, God gave the same diet to land and air animals: “And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens…I have given every green plant for food” (v. 30).

So plants were to be eaten by humans and animals, and humans and animals were not supposed to eat each other. This means that the ideal Judeo-Islamic-Christian diet is vegetarian, since Genesis is thought to describe an ideal set of living conditions and God issued a strict vegetarian diet in the Garden. So it seems false that God’s original intention for animals was as sustenance for people. God seemed to think that people would do best by just sticking to plants.

Now, in Genesis 9:2-3, God finally permitted Noah and his family to eat animals. So it’s clear that killing animals is not wrong, at least not in the same way that killing people is wrong. But that does not imply that there are no moral considerations to make when considering diet. Remember, this change happened after the Fall – that is, after things got messed up. So it is clear to me that the carnivorous diet is still not the ideal; the ideal diet is given in the Garden. And of course, being permitted to do something is not the same as it being ideal, as Paul points out. Just because something is permitted does not mean that it is beneficial. There are plenty of good reasons for a Christian to make a moral decision about an issue that is permissible, but not ideal. This is called conviction.

Is It Wrong to Eat Meat?, Part I

2008-12-30T09:52:00.003-06:00

Blogger's Note: The Orthodox Heretic is going anonymous for a while as I begin the job-hunting process. As a result, I have removed my pic and profile info.

I blogged last year about how vegetarianism sustained the environment that we humans depend on for life, and is therefore the best diet. I still consider this a sufficient reason to be a vegetarian, but I also want to evaluate this issue from a moral perspective. It will take me several weeks to fully articulate my own position, but the short answer is that no, I do not think that killing an animal is wrong in the same way that killing a person is wrong, yet I also not think that animal consumption is free from ethical concerns.

I am apparently by myself on this one, as I have only ever met one other Christian who shared my belief that eating animals is morally problematic. I think that the best way to start arguing for my position is to turn the tables around and instead ask, what are the arguments for eating animals? There are two I hear more than any others, namely the mono-theistic argument (animals are God’s provision for human consumption) and the evolutionary argument (eating meat is ground into our nature). I think that both of these arguments fail in important ways, which will perhaps give my readers a reason to allow me to articulate my beliefs.

In my experience, that is the most difficult part of beginning this dialogue. People don’t want to engage me on this issue because they are sure that it will not be an interesting conversation and probably a little embarrassing for me. But perhaps if I am able to destabilize the two most common rationales for a carnivorous diet, I will gain a more sympathetic audience.

Abortion and the Election, Part V: FOCA

2008-12-01T11:01:00.003-06:00

Last time I said that I was finished blogging about this issue, which turns out not to be true, since I have noticed one more hot button issue associated with abortion that has picked up steam in the Evangelical community: opposition to the Freedom of Choice Act. There’s a petition circulating against FOCA that you may be interested in signing. This is a bad piece of legislation, I believe. I think the worst part is that it mandates (as far as I can tell – and I could be wrong) that even doctors with a moral opposition to abortion would be forced to perform the procedure. I can say with certainty that if I were a medical doctor, I would resign without hesitation before being forced to perform an abortion.

My prediction is that Barack, despite his campaign promise, will not sign FOCA. The reason is that it would ignite a culture war to end all culture wars. The Catholics, who own something like one in six of this nation’s hospitals, have talked about closing (not selling) their hospitals if the act goes through, which would probably finish tanking the economy. Barack wouldn’t want to jeopardize the economy and health care further, and he wouldn’t want to intensify the so-called culture war. He has much more important bipartisan things to accomplish, namely restoring the economy, working on energy policy, and reforming the health care system. One thing that we have learned about O’Bama is that he is a smart democratic politician, and I just can’t imagine him throwing away his presidency on this single issue.

But let me be clear: while I oppose FOCA, I have 100 times more disdain for the pro-life movement, since it is their social and economic policies that make it almost impossible for our country to achieve the low abortion rates enjoyed by Western Europe. So if you sign FOCA, I challenge you to examine another document, called the 95/10 initiative (related to the now-defunct Pregnant Women Support Act), being supported by the Democrats for Life and some pro-life democrats in Congress. This piece of legislation gets its name because it has the goal of reducing the abortion rate by 95% in the next 10 years (that was starting in 2005).

Will reducing abortions involve making contraception more available? Yes. Will reducing abortions involve ‘spreading the wealth’ to single mothers who need to finish high school? Yes. Will reducing abortions involve long, paid maternity leave so that women don’t have to sacrifice their careers? Probably. Will reducing abortions involve increasing special needs funding and children’s health care? Yes. Unfortunately the pro-lifers, fiscal conservatives, and laissez-faire Republicans will be the very same people who defeat these common-sense measures. They are too busy being concerned about Joe the Plumber and his fake bid to buy his company. But if you are really pro-life, you may want to rethink your staunch opposition to “spreading the wealth.”

Abortion and the Election, Part IV: Conclusions

2008-11-16T22:42:00.004-06:00

Do you agree with me that each abortion is a moral tragedy? Then let’s attack the conditions that lead to abortion, using all of our resources. The pro-life movement has thus far rejected this path, unfortunately. They are only consumed with one issue: making sure that someone else bears the moral weight. Because, after all, if abortion is made illegal, and a girl has an abortion, then she and her doctor are the guilty ones. For those of us who are truly want to decrease the abortion rate, we need to get busy figuring out how to do this. One way to proceed is to look at countries that have already been successful in lowering the abortion rate. Western Europe makes a good example, since almost all of its countries have the lowest abortion rates in the world, and much lower than in our own country.

What have they got that we haven’t? I mentioned one thing last week, and that is the generous maternity leave. Germany, for instance, has a national law that gives women over two years of paid leave. This is a fantastic way to respond to the fact that most women who have experienced abortion cite the need to continue work or school as their reason for having an abortion. It just can’t be a coincidence that women who live in countries that celebrate pregnancy by giving women special opportunities to continue their career and/or education after having a baby don’t get as many abortions.

Western European women also have a much easier time getting contraception, and it’s not weird for teenage girls to be on birth control. GASP - I know, I know, the most horrible word that evangelical Christians can think of is “condoms.” James Dobson, for instance, has decided that sex education in public schools is one of the three great moral evils of our time (with abortion and homosexuality, of course). The common line is that giving teenagers condoms send ‘mixed messages.’ But this is refuted by statistics published by the Center for Disease Control that show that there is a reliable year-to-year decline in the number of teens who are sexually active and a simultaneous rise in the rate of condom use. The moral of the story is that making contraception available does not sexually liberate teenagers.

If you care about abortion, you must seek practical solutions. If you don’t want to look at those solutions, well, I think that betrays that your concern about abortion is merely about the question of moral responsibility. The distinction between pro-life is pro-choice is not helpful. The morally significant distinction is between those who desire to stop abortions from happening and those who don’t really care, and there are plenty who care deeply from both sides of the pro-life/choice debate, and there are plenty who don’t really care on both sides.

Abortion and the Election: Part III: What Does it Mean to Be Pro-life?

2008-11-09T08:19:00.013-06:00

Here are the facts: 1) abortions happen in all countries; 2) the 19 countries with the lowest abortion rates have legalized abortion (although sometimes there are caveats); and therefore 3) the legality of abortion has no obvious causal connection with the number of abortions that actually take place.

So what does it mean to be ‘pro-life?’ I am becoming more and more convinced that ‘pro-life’ is one of the biggest misnomers in our society, since it is usually a code word for ‘anti Roe,’ and as I get to know the movement, I fear it is little else. Now, there is some genuine work being done in Crisis Pregnancy Centers, but besides this, I see little evidence that these folks actually desire to reduce abortions.

I suspect foul play because it is not just that the ‘pro-life’ movement fails to embrace policies that decrease the number of abortions; rather, the same people that belong to the pro-life movement fervently advocate against these common-sense measures. I want to give more examples next week, but I’ll limit myself to only one this week. Germany, a country with the second-lowest abortion rate in the world, has national legislation that mandates that women get more than 2 years of paid maternity leave. Bad for business? A strain on the GDP? Perhaps, but that is surely one factor in the low German abortion rate, especially considering that 75% of American women cite the need to stay in school or work as their motivating factor for getting an abortion. Germany, unlike America, gives women every reason in the world to become a mother! Talk about a pro-life country!

But the mandatory 3-year paid maternity leave will not happen in America anytime soon, mostly because of conservatives (you remember those people who are claim to be ‘pro-life’). You know what they would say: “That’s government interfering in business!,” or “Hey government, get the hell out of the private sector!” Or my favorite: “Women with children shouldn’t work!” (Although they mysteriously supported Sarah Palin in overwhelming numbers).

Pro-lifers, who condemn abortion in the strongest terms possible (murder), are unwilling to take measures to remove one of the major temptations for abortions. Instead, they simply want to make abortion illegal. What do they believe that making abortion illegal will accomplish? I am afraid I know: they don’t want to be responsible for abortions. Apparently then, their grief over abortions is not as important to them as the question of moral responsibility. If abortions were declared illegal, and therefore the pro-lifers themselves were not responsible for abortions, then you know that there would be an intense celebration within the pro-life community. ‘Hooray, abortions are illegal!’

Their celebration would mask the fact that the abortion rate would probably be unchanged, if statistics and surveys are any indication.

Abortion and the Election, Part II

2008-11-03T12:30:00.007-06:00

What I am trying to do in this blog series is separate the issue of whether Roe v. Wade should be overturned from the issue of whether abortion is morally acceptable. I believe strongly (although I will not argue in this blog series) that there is no moral justification for abortion (with all the usual caveat’s – mother’s health, rape, etc). I consider this to be an issue that Christians should be able to agree on. But the issue of overturning Roe v. Wade is a different issue entirely.

A country-by-country comparison turns up some astounding results about the relationship between access to legal abortions and the number of actual abortions, regardless of legality (I'm getting most of my statistics here). Europe is a good test case, since abortion is fully legal throughout the continent. But when you compare Western Europe to Eastern Europe, you will find an enormous disparity between the actual number of abortions. In most Western European nations, the number of actual abortions is 10 or less per 1000 women; in some Eastern European nations, the number goes to 50 or even 80 abortions per 1000 women (our country is somewhere in the middle, like 25/1000).

Now the real shocker for my anti-Roe friends: in countries where abortion is strictly illegal (a list is available here ), the abortion rates are sometimes very high. Look at Latin American countries, such as Brazil, Peru, or Chili. The number of abortions (all forbidden by law) performed there is often 40-50 per 1000 women. You have to go all the way to Israel or Japan to find examples of low abortion rates and no access to abortions on demand (although in both of these countries, abortion is legal for many other reasons, such as a potential defect in the fetus, or if the mother is poor).

Understanding these statistics can be complicated, but the simple point I want to make is that simply overturning Roe v. Wade will not be the ‘silver bullet’ that most Christians are hoping for. It will of course reduce the number of legal abortions, but it is not clear how it would affect the number of actual abortions. Since the abortion rate is tragically high in some areas of the world where abortion is legal (such as Eastern Europe), and also high in areas where abortion is illegal (Latin America), and low in some areas where it is legal (Western Europe), we have to conclude that there is no close correlation between the legality of abortions and how often they happen.

I am pro-life, and I am a liberal. Contradiction? No, because I do not see Roe v. Wade as my enemy. My enemies are those social conditions that lead to unwanted pregnancies and promt women to want an abortion. Those of us who are pro-life simply have to be more resourceful and thoughtful if we truly want to stand up and say “no” to abortion. Talk (and making abortion illegal) is cheap.

Abortion and the Election, Part I

2008-10-27T10:17:00.004-06:00

I want to spend the two weeks before the Presidential election addressing the topic of abortion as it relates to public policy. This is an important issue for the millions of Christians who feel trapped. On the one hand, many evangelical Christians, unlike any time in the past 30 years, identify more with the Democratic party than with the Republican party on most issues. But there are many people in this “conservative Christian yet Democrat” demographic whose conscience will not allow them to vote for Democrats in the end because of abortion.(For a clear example of this struggle, go here)

I believe that abortion is wrong in the moral sense. I have seen arguments that attempt to make abortion morally justifiable, but I remain unimpressed. So if my choice was between allowing millions of abortions to happen or not, I would probably be forced to vote for Republicans, despite the fact that I disagree with them on about every other issue. But this is not the choice. There are a few considerations which make this issue more complex, which I hope to cover this week and next. I hope that my “Christian yet Democrat” audience will consider the issue more deeply than they have before.

First, as a practical matter, let’s ask what would happen if Roe v. Wade were overturned tomorrow. Well, the number of legal abortions would certainly go down – to zero, actually. But the actual number of abortions would not go down much at all. It is well-documented that before Rove v. Wade, there were a lot of illegal abortions, which often times permanently maimed or even killed the confused teenage girl having the procedure done. There are of course no statistics on this (that’s why they called them ‘back-alley’ abortions), but we know that they were common. In fact, this was one of the liberal motivations for Roe. If you overturned Roe tomorrow, the number of back-alley abortions would be absolutely astounding, with the additional evil that a girl may be maimed. As Christians, we need to ask ourselves if we want to stop abortions, or stop legal abortions.

So for those of us who are deadly serious about keeping abortions from happening, whether they are legal or illegal, the act of making abortions illegal is only a small part of the solution. After all, a back-alley abortion is still an abortion, and declaring it to be illegal does not change the fact that it happened. The truly important thing is not to simply create laws, but to work for the kind of society in which young women do not want to have abortions. This is the only way to stop back-alley abortions. On this issue, I judge that the liberals are doing much better than the conservatives. I’ll give some specific examples next week.

America: The Best Greatest Country that God Has Ever Given Man On the Face of the Earth, Part I

2008-10-13T12:26:00.007-06:00

An extremely interesting thing happened on Friday at a McCain rally. He actually was forced to defend Obama’s character as a “decent, family man,” and was subsequently booed at his own rally (here) He was taking questions from the audience, when one person called him “dangerous,” and another said he was “an Arab.” McCain rejected those proposals by saying that while he has some fundamental policy differences with Obama, Obama is not actually seeking to destroy America (or whatever those people believe).

This incident was not isolated. In the past week, the following phrases have been yelled out at McCain or Palin rallies: “BOMB OBAMA!,” “HE’S A TERRORIST!,” and “KILL HIM!” So why all the hate-speech in the last week? Coincidence? No, of course not. It is because, for one, people have started introducing Palin at rallies by referring to her opponent, Barack “Hussein” Obama (which is officially condemned by the McCain campaign, but hmmm, it keeps happening). Also, Palin is traveling around the country talking about Obama’s secret terrorist connections (which is false), and McCain has been running ads to that effect. Officially the ads question his judgment, but of course the word that sticks in the mind of the intended audience is terrorist.

So the steep rise in hate-speech at the Republican rallies this week was no coincidence. The amazing thing is that McCain seemed to be surprised that his recent tactics have been working so well. Now, I don’t know why McCain reacted as he did, but I am more interested in why those crowds have been reacting so strongly to affirmations of Barack’s middle name. The Republican strategy here is to paint Barack as un-American, as not “one of us.” I believe that the reason that the “un-American” attacks are so effective (and they worked on Kerry, too: he’s French!), is because most Americans have a deep belief that Americans are just better people than are people of other countries.

This leads me to my topic for the next two weeks: the doctrine of American exceptionalism. For a primer, check out this video of Colbert making fun of Sean Hannity’s articulation of exceptionalism that America is “the best greatest country that God has ever given man on the face of the Earth (here). Next week, I want to try to make a connection between this doctrine and the recent death-threats that Obama has been receiving at Republican rallies.

How Bad Would a Second Great Depression Be?

2008-10-06T12:07:00.004-06:00

Let me answer this question from two perspectives – the perspectives of the ‘actual me’ and the ‘ideal me.’ The ‘actual me’ is quite afraid of a severe economic downturn. I have no idea how likely one is, but I am going to be looking for a full-time professorship in the next two years, and I really, really want there to be a job for me.

But it’s not very interesting what the ‘actual me’ believes. The ‘ideal me’ calls for a very different emotion than fear. This is because there is a fact, breathtakingly both in its simplicity and irrefutability, which we all learned in second grade: material possessions do not increase happiness. Of course, this excludes instances of extreme poverty. Someone lacking food, shelter, and basic health care is likely to be miserable, after all - especially if he or she is looking after children.

But beyond extreme poverty, which is not a serious possibility for us Americans, it is undeniably true that money and possessions have little to do with happiness. If anything, happiness decreases as access to luxuries increases. I was reminded of this while reading the Ancient Greek philosopher, Epicurus, this weekend. One of his most interesting insights is that desires for possessions are inevitably mistaken attempts to fulfill basic psychological needs. For example, we might buy a particular car because we imagine the cluster of people that want to take a ride with us. An Epicurean analysis might be that we are not purchasing the car, but friendship. This is important because we can get friendship in many different ways – most of them free.

It is silly to believe that our generation is somehow “happier” than our parents’ or grandparents’generations. It is just that we have more stuff. This has been true even in my own life. Only two years ago, limited money forced me to ride a bike and take the bus all around town, and my travel budget was about $20 a month. Then when I got more money, I bought a car. I do not plan on going back to bike riding – that was hard work – but I can honestly say that on the whole, I have not been any more or less happy in the last two years. I can remember feeling quite satisfied with my life during my bike riding days – in fact, about as happy as I am now. The difference – a whole lotta money!

ID vs. Evolution: A Tie for Last Place (Conclusions)

2008-09-30T08:29:00.002-06:00

I have argued that if “evolution” means “evolutionary development” or “Darwinian evolution,” then the religious believer has no reason to feel threatened. This is my main criticism with the Intelligent Design movement, and the reason that I ultimately do not identify with it. However, I do think that something that might be called “intelligent design” should have some place in our society.

The problem is that certain propogandists for evolution (I mean those who attempt to teach evolution to non-scientists, such as Richard Dawkins) insist on that “fact” that the doctrine of evolution is an essentially atheistic doctrine. For instance, the first lines of his Dawkins’ book Blind Watchmaker are as follows:

“This book is written in the conviction that our own existence once presented the greatest of all mysteries, but that it is a mystery no longer because it has been solved. Darwin…solved it…” (ix)

He later spells this sentiment out a bit more – he does indeed mean that religious belief is completely undermined by a scientific discovery. Well, the fact is that this is just wrong. Not just arguably wrong, but thoroughly stupid. The idea that atheism is “proven” just because Darwin identified some important principles that explain biological diversity and development is very silly. But as is often the case, the facts are less important than perceptions. And the perception among religious believers and non-believers alike is that evolution does indeed imply atheism.

I won’t be able to present any sort of arguments here, but to state my support for Intelligent Design under these limited circumstance. If evolution is taken to mean the doctrine that the universe evolved by sheer chance, then we mono-theists must be involved in this fight. And I will add that the way we should fight is not by supporting out position with reasons (a task I believe to be impossible) but to produce arguments which disprove the belief that science undermines religion.

ID vs. Evolution: A Tie for Last Place, Part V

2008-09-22T10:28:00.003-06:00

So is a Christian obligated to take a side in the Intelligent Design debate? Many Christians heartily reject “evolution” because it contradicts their Creationist beliefs. I have tried to show in Parts III and IV of this series that Creationism is simply not supported by Genesis, and so the kind of Christian who feels threatened by the notion of evolutionary development just shouldn’t be. As further proof, the two main proponents of the ID movement, William Dembski and Micheal Behe, both reject Creationism.

There have been many, many theories of evolutionary development, and Darwin’s is just one particular theory. Scientists and historians seem to have forgotten this however, because people talk as if Darwin somehow invented evolution. The theory of evolution had a very long and rich history before Darwin was even born, making Darwin a relative newcomer on the evolutionary biological scene. What Dembski and Behe are attacking is not evolutionary development as such, but rather Darwin’s proposal of the mechanism of natural selection to explain this development.

At this point we can tighten our inquiry. I have tried to show that it is misguided for Christians to oppose evolution, if evolution is taken as meaning ‘evolutionary development.’ And quite obviously, Christians are obligated to reject the atheistic conclusions of certain evolutionists (more on that next week). So the issue is front of us now is whether a Christian should oppose Darwin’s conception of evolution.

My own thinking is that Darwin’s theory does not pose a problem for theism. What Darwin is concerned with is explaining the mechanism by which organisms evolve (natural selection). I can’t see how this provides a challenge to anything that is an important part of theistic belief. Indeed, I (perhaps surprisingly) share Michael Behe’s view on this. In a short essay published in Time magazine (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1090921-2,00.html) he affirms that he is quite comfortable with Darwin’s theory on theological grounds. His opposition, rather, is scientific. Whether his scientific objections hold weight is a matter I won’t be able to consider here. I am merely pointing out the weighty precedent in those Christians who feel unthreatened by Darwin’s theory.

Actually, I will do Behe one better. Not only do I have a half-hearted acceptance of Darwin’s theory, I actually like it quite a bit. Not for scientific reasons, either, but for theological reasons (check out my blog from February 18 of this year for more detail). You can go back and read the past blog if you want, where the explanation is better, but the basic point is this: in Darwin’s theory, all organisms are essentially egoistic – that is, we are all focused on propagating ourselves and our genes. The New Testament writers define a Christian as one who has apage love – that is, as one who has desires that are not rooted in self-preservation. If, then, there are some people with agape love (which is quite different than socialized sorts of ethical behaviors which sometimes look like love), then those people must be considered unnatural. This is why I titled a blog series at the beginning of the year, “Love is a Miracle.” So if Darwin’s theory is true – hooray!

Observations of the McCain/Palin Ticket

2008-09-08T10:35:00.002-06:00

I have decided to postpone my recent blog series “ID v. Evolution: A Tie for Last Place” to think about some recent Presidential politics. The phrase that I have heard more than any other in the past days in that Sarah Palin’s speech “electrified the Evangelical base.” I was fairly disgusted by the speech, which leads me to wonder what exactly it was in the speech that was electrifying. And since I call myself an Evangelical in the subtitle of this blog (although a bad one), I am wondering where that leaves me.

I’ll just mention two things of which I was suspicious. First was the general tone of the speech. Let’s just admit it: although my complaint here is not specific, there was indeed an unmistakable tone. That familiar, sickening tone of “Git off my property or I’ll git one of my semi-automatic weapons!” I wonder why this tone is so appealing to some Christians. Do they feel that it embodies a Scriptural attitude? What exactly is spiritually praiseworthy about it?

Secondly, and more specifically, I was shocked by her mockery of Barak’s role as a “community organizer.” This was no accidental comment, as it was a clear follow-up to Rudi’s comments. I’m not trying to argue that Obama is a saint or anything, but you can’t dispute the fact that he went to hang out with people in bad economic circumstances even though he easily could not have. Now, it’s one thing to avoid direct contact with poor people. We all know the Republican philosophy: “well, we give tax cuts to the wealthy, and the wealthy are the one who create jobs, so really, helping the rich is actually helping the poor after all.” That’s fine, whatever you have to tell yourself to get to sleep at night. It’s one thing to have this attitude, but it’s quite another to actually laugh at people who are trying to help. Seriously, read Matthew 25 and try to reconcile that with Palin’s attitude. She was not casually pocking fun at his service. She was actually mocking it.

I’ve retained my label as an Evangelical thus far because I thought that this “Git your gun!” attitude was starting to temper within the Evangelical community. But if it is not dying down, but rather coming to life again with Palin (who could be in the White House for 16 years!) perhaps I am living out my faith under the wrong label. I don’t know exactly what I would call myself. At this point I am not calling anyone out, or trying to pick a fight. I am just trying to figure out why things seem so different to me than to other Evangelicals.

ID v. Evolution: A Tie for Last Place, Part IV

2008-09-01T16:12:00.005-06:00

As promised, I will attempt to show that the Creation story in Genesis was intended as a metaphor, but I first want to say a few things about metaphor. I think that conservatives as so amped up about holding out Scripture as ‘literal’ due to their strange belief that if something is not literally true, it’s value-less.

I hope that my examples last week were sufficient to dispense with this line of thinking. For instance, Paul speaks of becoming a ‘new man,’ which is obviously not intended to be literal. But Christians are still able to agree that it means something important. If anything, the reverse is true: ideas with profound meaning can often only be communicated in non-literal terms. We have this great word in the English language: myth. To many, a myth is defined as a false or misleading story, but that is not what a myth is. A myth is simply a story crafted to communicate a truth so profound that it would be impossible or else dry to communicate it in literal terms. In this sense, I have no problem saying that Genesis is a myth.

But before I get to the textual evidence, it’s worth asking if we would really get any deep meaning from the first three chapters of Genesis if it were not literally true. This is a very important exercise, because the Creationists often say that if evolution is true, then the Genesis story is worth nothing. Well, let’s list the things we learn in those few verses: 1) the relationship of God to humans, 2) the relationship of humans to each other, 3) the relationship of humans to animals, 4) the relationship of humans to the environment, 5) the relationship of humans to sin, 6) the need for redemption, and 7) the relationship of humans to work. You know – just random theological tidbits like that. I’m sure there are many more things there, but this list is enough to prove my point that the first three chapters of Genesis are absolutely packed to the brim with meaning. And keep in mind, none of those truths depend on a literal reading.

In fact, the only thing that would be gained through a literal reading is a science lesson. YAWN. Why would God spend time teaching us science? The purpose of the Bible is not to give us irrelevant facts, but is “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (II Tim. 3:16). How would your spiritual and moral life be affected at all if you knew how much time it took for God to create the earth?

And here’s the proof that Genesis 1-3 is not literal. Read the first chapter of Genesis, and then read the second chapter. Then do it again more closely. Then do it a third time. Notice anything? That’s right: the timelines in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 are totally different! For instance, in Genesis 1 the creation order is plants, animals, and then humans. In Genesis 2, the order is humans, plants, and then animals. So the next time you meet a Creationist would insists that Genesis must be literal because God would never lie to us, ask him whether God was lying in Genesis 1 or Genesis 2! And then tell them not to worry, because there’s plenty of earth-shaking theology there in the text even without the science lesson.

ID vs. Evolution: A Tie for Last Place, Part III

2008-08-24T08:41:00.003-06:00

Last week I described three incompatible notions of the ID/evolution debate that various people have. If you think that evolution means “evolutionary development,” then you think that ID is challenging the “old earth” hypothesis. This, of course, is usually because this type of ID-supporter takes Genesis literally. Some people, like the leaders of ID, do not wish to challenge evolutionary development, but merely Darwin’s version of the evolutionary story. And finally, sometimes the ID movement is about opposing the atheistic conclusions of evolution.

So which, if any, of these three versions of evolution threaten mono-theism? Or I could ask more straightforwardly: do we have to believe in any version of Intelligent Design, merely because we are Christians? Over the next few weeks, I want to argue that Christians, even the most staunch, Bible-beating ones, should not feel threatened by the first two versions of evolution, but only the third. As I mentioned, Christian hostility to the notion of “evolutionary development” is caused by the belief that the first few chapters of Genesis are literal.

This doctrine of taking the entire Bible “literally” is the most shameful of all conservative Christian doctrines, if for no other reason than that there is no clear doctrine of ‘literal.’ If you hold this doctrine up to a microscope, you actually find the conservatives saying this: “We take the whole Bible literally, except for when we don’t.” Here are some examples of things that the conservatives (hopefully) don’t believe are literal: in John 3:3, Jesus tells Nicodemus that he must be born again. Nicodemus, being an overly-conservative Rabbi, says “Oh, that’s silly. You can’t crawl back into your mother’s womb.” Jesus must have been laughing (or crying) when he informed Nicodemus that this was a spiritual truth, not a literal truth. And hopefully when Paul discusses becoming a “new man,” he doesn’t mean that literally he will shed his skin and crawl into some different skin.

And my favorite of all, after people had decided to build the Tower of Babel: “And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower…And the Lord said…”Come, let us go down there and confuse their language…” (Gen 11:5-7). A literal reading of this passage would be very strange. God was literally sitting in the sky, and literally did not have a good view of things on earth with his literal eyes from where he was literally sitting and when God literally saw the Tower he was literally surprised at this development and literally formulated a strategy to ruin the Tower. And the more Bible you read, it starts to become apparent that God rarely speaks literally when communicating anything of importance to us.

So it comes down to this. It appears that much of the Bible is metaphorical (despite what the conservatives may or may not think), and it appears that much of the Bible is literal. Now the question is about the first three chapters of Genesis. Does it fall in the literal category, or in the metaphorical category? Next week I want to introduce some textual evidence that the Creation story was indeed intended as a metaphor all along.

ID vs. Evolution: A Tie For Last Place, Part II

2008-08-18T12:19:00.003-06:00

The most insidious problem with the debate between intelligent design and evolution is that “intelligent design” means different things to different people, as does “evolution.” To some people, the word “evolution” is short for “evolutionary development,” and so when intelligent design challenges evolution, it is challenging the notion that species A descended from species B over millions of years, and so on. Many ID advocates and opponents alike believe that this is the debate. As evidence of this, I hear evolutionists say things like, “But the fossil record indicates that species A is 56,000,000 years old…” This, however, is not what the two main proponents of the ID movement – Michael Behe and William Dembski – believe. I went to hear both of them speak, and they both started their lectures by saying, “I believe that all life descended from a one-celled organism over billions of years…” So it is both true and false that intelligent design is challenging the very notion of evolutionary development.

Second, “evolution” also means “Darwinian evolution” to some people. This is evident when the debate starts being directed toward natural selection, or another of Darwin’s doctrines. Third, some people, both atheists and theists, think that “evolution” is the doctrine that the world evolved by a series of accidents, and that any intentionality or purpose had nothing to do with our universe. Indeed, many of the top evolutionists believe this. Richard Dawkins and Gary Marcus, for instance, both believe that the scientific theory of evolution supports atheism.

So what is intelligent design, and what it evolution? Well, they are three things at once. Sometimes, evolution is the doctrine that the world evolved in a slow process over long periods of time; sometimes, it is specifically used as Darwin’s version of this doctrine (they are many besides his!), and sometimes it is an essentially atheistic account of the universe. Because both evolution and its ID are three things at once, the debate between them is hopelessly confused. It would be like if my word for a baseball bat was “house,” and your word for baseball bat was “car.” We could stand there for hours looking at a baseball bat arguing about whether it was a house or a car. It doesn’t matter how long we argue! The only two things that will happen as a result of our “debate” are 1) we will get angry at each other at a personal level, and 2) we will get further away from resolving our dispute. This silly picture is an accurate analogy of what is happening with the ID/evolution debate.

ID vs. Evolution: A Tie for Last Place, Part I

2008-08-11T08:56:00.002-06:00

It appears that the Intelligent Design movement has already had its 15 minutes of fame in the media, but the effects of the debate linger and continue to make people from both sides angry and frustrated. I am fascinated by this debate for several reasons, but most of all because both sides think that people on the other side must be complete morons. I really can’t think of another debate with this much hostility and sarcasm. The closest analog would be the abortion debate, but in that case, both sides think the other side is immoral. Here, both sides accuse the other of plain stupidity.

I think that this debate was a total waste of everyone’s time, and accomplished nothing. As indicated by the title of my new series, I characterize neither side as a winner: instead, they tie for last. By that I mean that if you started out believing in intelligent design when this debate began, you still do – and now you are even more angry at the evolutionists! And if you started out believing in evolution, you still do – and now you think that ID people are completely ridiculous! Now that is what I call a useless debate – nothing was accomplished except filling the world with more anger.

So where did this debate go wrong? Could it have been productive? And just what is a Christian, Jew, or Muslim supposed to believe? Are we obligated to be ID adherents, simply because we believe God is responsible for this universe? What about all those evolutionists who are Christians – are they being inconsistent? Does an evolutionary account of the world challenge religion?

I am optimistic that after we wade through some of the misunderstandings together, we can come up with some worthwhile thoughts, and answer some of these questions. This will be my theme for the next several blogs.

A Theology of Love, Part VIII: Conclusions

2008-07-27T09:54:00.006-06:00

I won't be able to defend my interpretation of what it means to be "born again" in a fully satisfactory way in the short space of this blog. But I hope that this last week I can at least address some obvious challenges.

First, my interpretation may be thought of as inherently anti-evangelical, since I am advocating for a richer understanding of Christianity than a simple adherence to a creed. But if a creed is not involved, someone might say, doesn't that discourage missions? I don’t see why that follows at all. The correct motive missions is an excitement to introduce people to the Judeo-Christian story, so that they may worship the author of their salvation. Since Christ is the only way to God, there may be many people like Abraham: they are born-again because of Christ’s redemptive work, but they just do not know the Gospel, or have heard of it, but do not understand it. It seems to me quite easy to make missions compatible with an affirmation of our ignorance about who can be born-again.

Second, I am not saying that a pure character is the cause of being born again. As if we could be 'good' enough to merit God's infinite mercy! No, my interpretation of the New Testament passages is that having a character of agape love is an indicator that someone already does know God in some deep way. I'll try to put this thought into a compound proposition: "If you love, then there is unmistakeable evidence that you are born again." Like the Scripture, I make no judgment as to why some hearts are hardened and others are not.

Third, I may be viewed as some kind of universalist, or as saying that every nice person or good parent is really a Christian. This is not my meaning at all, since people may treat each other well as a result of simply being socialized. I take being socialized and being an agape-lover as having nothing to do with each other. If anything, I would guess that a born-again person is rather rare. Jesus may help explain my point: “For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?...” (Matt. 5: 46-48). Nor do I believe that people who have a genuine attachment to their children or family are necessarily “born of God.” There is an evolutionary analysis that may be made here.

And finally, there is the issue that there are many passages, especially in Romans, that seem to contradict my interpretation. I will not be able to offer a lot here and now about this topic, but I will remind my skeptics of the story of Martin Luther. As the simplified story goes, Protestantism began when Luther had his perspective changed on Christianity by the Epistle to the Romans. Specifically, it was Paul’s provocative statements about faith that Luther was excited about. Although this event was historically important, for the Catholic church was corrupt in a lot of ways at the time, I regard Luther’s re-interpretation of the Christian religion as incomplete. What we have today, at least in conservative Protestant circles, is more like “Romans-ianity” than Christianity. Take a classic example: we find Luther saying things like “The Book of James should be thrown into the river,” since James says very plainly that faith is not enough. But this conflicted with Luther’s personal theology, and so he saw fit to remove James’ letter from the canon. While conservative Christians today are happy to include James in the canon, they do the same thing in effect, because they give Romans an unhealthy interpretative priority. For example, when a contemporary conservative Christian opens the book of James, she says something like, “Whatever James is talking about, it must not conflict with Romans, because we know for sure that Romans is true.” But this is to brandish Romans like a sword, slicing and dicing the rest of the Bible into pieces until it ‘fits.’ A Christian should try to synthesize all of the teachings of Scripture into one world-view.

What I have done the last eight blogs is more mature, I hope. I am trying to derive an interpretation of the phrase “born-again” that all of the New Testament writers are on board with. At least, no one can blame me for trying.

A Theology of Love, Part VII

2008-07-22T06:53:00.003-06:00

I have argued the last two weeks that there is significant Scriptural support for my claim that faith is not a sufficient condition for being born again, nor is it a necessary condition for being born again. So I’ve described what I don’t believe, although it is perhaps more interesting to talk about what I do believe. As always, my views about Christianity are formed by the New Testament writings themselves, and there is a really interesting unity shared by many New Testament writers: the analogy of people to trees, and our characters to fruit. This analogy is hammered home, first by Jesus, then James, John and finally Paul. With the exceptions of Peter and maybe Luke, that is a list of the most influential figures in Christianity.

Jesus talks about this in the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 7:15-20. The context is that he is giving his listeners a way to distinguish between real followers of Jesus and ‘false prophets.’ In vv. 21-23, Jesus says specifically that you will NOT be able to recognize them because of what they believe. Instead, vv. 15-20, he insists that you will only be able to recognize them by their fruits – that is, by what kind of people they are. His reasoning is in the form of a rhetorical question: “Are grapes gathered from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles?”

James clearly seconds this point, when he is insisting that faith is not sufficient for being born again: “Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives, or a grapevine produce figs? (Jms 3:12). This point is explored in more depth by Paul, with his listing of the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22, 23). Which brings us back to where we started, in I John 4:7-8, where the unmistakable mark of one who has been born of the Spirit is the presence of agape love. How do you spot someone who has been born again - born of the Spirit of God? As I have tried to show from Scripture, you can’t always tell by what a person believes, but by someone’s true character – as Paul, John, James, and Jesus believe. This criterion cuts across time/space, national boundaries, ethnic divisions, and yes, even religious creeds (check out what Jesus has to say in John 10:16 and Matt 7:15-23).

We are by nature creatures of survival, and thus thoroughly selfish. Whether you want to believe Darwin’s story, or whether you prefer Genesis 3 – the conclusion is the same – by nature we worship ourselves. Paul describes a natural person as endowed with “sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealously, fits of anger, rivalries, dissentions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these” (Gal 5: 19-21). So it is completely unnatural to possess, for example, agape love. That is why Jesus is so confident that we can “recognize [true Christians] by their fruits” (Matt 7:16).

I have more to say about some potential misunderstandings of my position, and so next week I will finish this series by taking up those topics.

A Theology of Love, Part VI

2008-07-07T11:52:00.006-06:00

Last week I pointed out some passages which indicated that it was possible to be born again with having some kind of cognitive grasp and confession of the Gospel – i.e., that faith is not a necessary condition of being born again. This week, I want to go one step further and point to some passages which indicate that faith is not sufficient for being born again either.

1) In Matthew 7:21, Jesus gives a provocative prophetic description: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” Verses 22 and 23 then further imply that these people knew who Jesus was, and therefore were quite surprised when Jesus did not know who they were!

2) This is also a theme of the passage that I discussed last week from Matthew 25. The sheep cried out “Lord, Lord” but Jesus sent them away. The reason? Their refusal to give economic aid to the vulnerable. These goats seemed to believe that they were sheep until Jesus gave them the bad news.

3) Probably the clearest declaration that faith is not sufficient comes from James: “What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him?...So faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by works, is dead” (James 2:14, 17). It’s hard to think of how a statement could be more clear that faith is simply not enough. I’ve heard many interpretations of this passage from the traditional born-again crowd who try to say that this passage does not say what it seems to say, and find all of them to be, well, embarrassing and silly.

4) A little known example from Acts 8 also illustrates this point well. Verse 12 describes a group of people who experienced a conversion after they came to believe in the Gospel. But they were not yet born-again: verse 16 continues “for [the Holy Spirit] had not yet fallen on any of them.” Here were some people who came to genuine faith in the Gospel, but they did not yet have the Holy Spirit and so were not yet born again (Rom 8:9).

Next week I will begin drawing my own positive conclusions. But for now it is enough to realize that there is significant textual evidence that faith is not necessary for being born again, nor is it sufficient. That is, faith is just not enough. And obviously, this idea is not my own. I was convinced by what Jesus, Luke (the author of Acts), and James had to say about the topic.

A Theology of Love, Part V

2008-06-30T15:31:00.004-06:00

We are now arriving at the real heart of my cognitive meanderings on this subject. My question is this: ‘what is the role of faith in the process of being ‘born-again?’ The conservative formula is something like this: “If you have faith in the Gospel, then you will be born-again.” In the next three weeks, I want to identify some passages which destabilize this interpretation of the New Testament, and perhaps lay a path for my own interpretation. I believe that a more coherent way to read New Testament texts yields a formula that is more like this: “If you are born-again, then it is likely that the Gospel will appeal to you.” I am aware that Romans and Acts have some passages which are considered “slam-dunk” passages (read: no interpretation required). But let’s hold off judgment for a couple of weeks so that we can approach this issue with an open mind. Here are three examples that I have in mind:

1) We get some straightforward theology from the mouth of Jesus from a much-quoted passage in John 10: “I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me” (v.14). What is not so well-known is verse 16: “And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.” Here Jesus characterizes a group of people who are unaware of who he is, since they are not of the fold that is marked out by their knowledge of him. But despite the ignorance of the second flock, they join the original flock, so that the flock is one. Apparently then, they did not know God, but God knew them.

2) And speaking of sheep, who can forget the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25:31-46? Why were some sheep, destined for eternal glory, and why were some goats? Jesus says that the reason for the declaration that some were sheep was their willingness to provide for the physical needs of the have-nots (vs. 35, 42). So according to Matthew 25, it seems that some are born-again without even being aware of this fact! The sheep actually seem to be surprised that they are the objects of God’s mercy (v. 37).

3) We know that Jesus says “I am the way, truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father except through me.” But we never stop hearing the conservative interpretation of the passage: only those who know and approve of the Gospel are “getting in.” (I heard this interpretation yesterday in church, in fact, with sarcasm that there could be any disagreement). However, what can be called “the Old Testament problem” poses a serious dilemma for this interpretation. We know that Abraham, for example, was justified by taking God at his word, but he certainly did not believe in Jesus, and thus not in the Gospel (the whole time-space continuum made sure of that). So Abraham was saved through Christ (we know this because he is part of “no man”), but he had no knowledge of this fact! All he knew was God’s voice. This same thinking applies to anyone that was saved before, say, A.D. 33. Conservatives seem to believe that God used to have this power to use Christ’s sacrifice on behalf of those who did not know, but now he has lost it.

In this vein, I will single out one of my favorite passages of Scripture, which is the extremely brief account of Zaccheus’ meeting with Jesus in Luke 19. Zaccheus, for some unknown reason, was intrigued by Jesus, and so Jesus invited himself over. This was all it took for Zaccheus to realize that his life of injustice was no good, and that it had to change fast: “if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold” (v. 8). What was Jesus’ response to this? Surely he laid out a theology lesson, or at least pulled out a four laws booklet? No need: “Today salvation has come to this house.” That day, Zaccheus was turned from a tax collector who inevitably defrauded the have-nots, into a lover (I John 4:7,8). What a salvation experience! Zaccheus was clearly born for the second time. He didn’t know about the Gospel, or about propitiation, or about redemption (time-space, remember?). But he was saved. I’m sure that once he learned some real theology in say, A.D. 34, he was much better off in his understanding of his own salvation. But that came after his real transformation.

A Theology of Love, Part IV

2008-06-25T22:47:00.004-06:00

Last week I suggested that faith is not the product of some kind of rational choice. The larger point I am trying to make is that the causal relationship between faith and the presence of the Holy Spirit has been thought of wrongly. People often believe that one’s faith decision is the cause of the presence of the Holy Spirit: “if you believe the right things, then you will receive the Holy Spirit.” But this is the height of arrogance. This is no better than those who believe that if they pull themselves up by their bootstraps and do enough “good works,” then they have earned the right to God's favor.

Instead, in Galatians 5, Paul describes faith as one manifestation of the fruit of the Spirit. That is to say, having the Spirit is the cause of one having faith, rather than the other way around. This seems odd, but think about what else is on that list: self-control! Yes, that means that Paul believes that the ability to control yourself is not the product of your own efforts.

This shows us that faith and love are have the same origins: they are both part of the fruit of the Spirit. This, however, does not imply that they are equally as valuable. In I Corinthians 13, Paul makes an astonishing comparison. He directly compares love, hope and faith and says very simply that “the greatest of these is love.”

We are perhaps starting to see a pattern, and some Pauline support for John’s radical claim that only those who love are born of God. Perhaps John’s claim isn’t as unusual as it first appeared. I want to give more support to this claim over the next two weeks by pulling out passages which state that either 1) that faith is not necessary part of the “born-again” process, or 2) that faith is not sufficient to account for being “born-again.”

A Theology of Love, Part III

2008-06-15T14:25:00.003-06:00

One initial worry that the conservative will have is that I John 4:7,8, which I have characterized as fundamental for understanding salvation, doesn’t mention “faith” or “belief” (although they are implied later on in the passage). We need to get clear on the relationship between faith and love. But before that, we should talk about one thing that faith is not.

The first important realization concerning faith is that we must admit that it is not the product of some kind of objective analysis that comes from our own thought process. This is a common misconception in the evangelical world, as evidenced by such apologetics book titles as The Case for Faith, or Evidence that Demands a Verdict. These books make it sound that all that is required to acquire Christian faith is an open, honest, and dispassionate examination of the evidence. But this is simply not how human reason works. Nietzsche, whom I consider backwards a lot of the time, does make an accurate analysis of reason. He says that objectivity is a myth. Instead, we acquire certain beliefs – be they religious, moral, or otherwise – and then use reason to make our beliefs seem appealing.

Those who believe that our beliefs are formed by our objective use of reason have the formula exactly backwards; it is rather that we brandish reason like a club in an effort to defend the beliefs that we already find ourselves with. If you have much contact with philosophy, you will see this point immediately. For example, if someone wants to prove the existence of God, or that people have a free will, etc., they will likely be able to do it! And if someone wants to disprove the existence of God, or that people are determined, etc., they can also always succeed! On issues such as these (we philosophers call them metaphysical issues) the person that wins the argument is the person who talks last.

This point is seconded all throughout the Scriptures, where we find constant examples of “God hardening” someone’s heart (Exodus 14:4), or Jesus speaking in parables with the intention of not being understood (because they wouldn’t understand anyway, he says; for another sort of example, see Luke 16:31). Why is the message of the cross foolishness to some, while it makes a lot of sense to others? Is it intelligence? No. There are geniuses on both sides of this debate, and we certainly know that both sides have their morons. The truth is that no one has any idea why some believe and some don’t. This is a difficult teaching – for my money, the most difficult for any Christian, but it doesn’t stop it from being right. The origins of religious faith are unexplained, and perhaps unexplainable.

A Theology of Love, Part II

2008-06-10T11:37:00.005-06:00

Last week I made the heretically orthodox claim that I John 4:7,8 was the key to understanding the whole New Testament. Before delving into a defense of my position, I’ll attempt to cut off a potential misunderstanding. Someone may think be tempted to think of this verse as meaningless, since everyone loves – even people who are often evil. So it is important to make some comments about the meaning of “love” itself. As one with a vague familiarity of Christianity might expect, John uses the Greek word “agape” in this passage. There are several common words that are used to grasp the meaning of agape-love, such as “unconditional” or “self-giving.” I don’t want to go so far as to say that these characterizations are misleading, but they are certainly not as helpful as they could be. What is more interesting is agape’s relationship to the other two main Greek words for love – “eros,” and “philia.”

Eros, of course, is where our word erotic comes from, which accurately indicates sexuality. Philia describes the kind of love in a friendship, or perhaps in some family relationships. These two loves are both based in desire. The lover desires the beloved in some way, because the lover lacks something that can be provided by the beloved. I get the feeling that we are expected to think of agape-love as essentially different from these first two forms of love, in that desire is not the central element in the agape-love relationship; the agape lover supposedly loves the beloved in a non-desiring way.

I don’t think that this is right. It seems to be that desire is the central feature in all kinds of love. The difference is merely in what is desired, and who benefits. The lover obviously benefits in some way in eros and philia love when the desire is fulfilled – be it sexually, or by acquiring a friend. And since the lover benefits (even if someone else does as well), these first two kinds of love are essentially selfish. Of course selfishness may be a bad thing, but it is certainly not bad all the time. We desire friends because we don’t want to be lonely, so in a sense we are using them for our own selfish purposes. We desire our mates erotically, as so we are using them to satisfy our selfish desires. But what’s wrong with that? Nothing at all!

But agape-love is rooted in a different sort of desiring. It is a desire, to be sure, but a desire to benefit someone else without concern about whether that kindness is ever reciprocated. This is quite different from friendship love. If I had a “friend” that never reciprocated my friendly actions, I would simply find a new friend.

John then is saying that “Everyone who agapes is born of God and knows God.” The truth is that eros-love and philia-love are natural, humanly ways to love. The presence of them in your life indicates nothing except perhaps that you are a normal, rational human being. But agape-love? That is divine, since it is unnatural.

And let’s not be confused – agape-love does exist, despite what the skeptics say. A skeptical argument runs like this: “But when you help someone, you feel better, and so you are benefited. Therefore even what the Christians call agape-love is selfish, in the end” (there actually was a pretty good Friends episode about this – Phoebe was unable to find any good works to do that did not make her feel good). To the skeptics, I point out that they are missing the point. What is interesting is not that someone feels good about being a Good Samaritan (for they do); what is interesting is that they desire to be a Good Samaritan in the first place! We are all satisfying our desires when we love. Its just that some have desires that are born of God. Those are the people that are born again.

A Theology of Love, Part I

2008-06-02T11:46:00.004-06:00

I was going to do one more blog about health care, but I was getting bored. Also, my mind keeps wondering off to I John 4, and so that what I want to talk about that for a while. Here are verses 7 & 8 in the English Standard Version:

“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

The question I want to pursue for the next several weeks is simple: “Could this verse mean what it seems to mean?” Because it seems to say that whoever loves is a born-again Christian. This brings some very difficult questions to mind, such as “What about faith?” Since the rest of the New Testament places so much emphasis on faith, and since this passage seems to foist love in the place of faith, aren't we obligated to reinterpret this passage so that what it seems to mean on the surface is not what it actually means? Another obvious issue: “Doesn’t everyone love?” I mean, after all, we can all think of evil people who love their mothers. So doesn’t that make this verse irrelevant at best, and absurd at worst?

I’ll say two things by way of introduction. First, I do believe that it does indeed mean exactly what it seems to mean: those who love are born again, and those who don’t love are not born again. One way I will try to establish this conviction is by showing that this is not some renegade verse in the context of the New Testament. Rather, it helps us make sense of every other statement in the New Testament – perhaps for the first time! I love verse 8 because I can picture John sitting there after writing verse 7: “whoever loves has been born of God…” He twirls his quill pen for a minute, and then realizes that his future commentators might screw up his meaning, so he adds verse 8: “Anyone who does not love does not know God…” By expressing this same idea in the negative, he has covered all his logical bases.

Second, I will admit that it is not immediately obvious how this verse is reconcilable with the “football game verses.” For instance, John 3:16 seems to say that belief or faith is fundamental to the “born again” formula. I, however, believe that John 3:16, among many other passages, has not been interpreted correctly by those who refer to themselves as “born-again Christians.” So in the next few weeks, I want to show how I John 4 is the key to opening up the New Testament, and why the New Testament as a whole supports the message that only lovers are born again. So get ready for plenty of heresy the next few weeks!

American Politics, Part XI

2008-05-28T00:54:00.003-06:00

Today I’m dealing with the fourth of five issues that I have identified as barriers to accepting ‘socialized medicine.’ One fear, perhaps the main one, is that if medicine is government-controlled, then doctors will lose their incentive to become excellent, and those who pioneer medical technology will lose their incentive to invent new medicines, etc. The capitalist idea (which I think is usually right) is that money motivates people. So the concern is if the free market is taken away, then the money will dry out, and thus, so will the motivation is taken away.

Suppose the government said things like this: “Each hospital will get the same level of funding, regardless of how well or how poorly you manage your facility,” or “Each doctor will be paid the same and keep your job, regardless of how well you do,” or “Each inventor of medical technology will receive the same compensation, whether you do a crappy job or whether you invent a cure for AIDS.” If this is socialized medicine, I agree with the conservative that this would be an unmitigated disaster.

Perhaps the easiest analogy is with public education. I almost regret mentioning public education, because of its well-documented problems and short-comings. Public education is perhaps the paradigmatic case of those who fear government control of institutions, so it is surprising that I am mentioning it. But I am not holding out public education as a shining example of how to do things right; rather, I am merely pointing out some features that a large institution that falls under government control might have. We simply can’t say, “Oh, public education failed in such-and-such a case, and so medicine probably will too.” This is because making sick people healthy who want to be healthy is much different than getting children to excel at math who hate mathematics. So I don’t think we can compare the two except to notice how the government runs large institutions that interface with the population at large.

So, let’s address some of the fears I mentioned in the second paragraph. Has the government abdicated its responsibility to provide enough money for education? No, I don’t think they have. There is plenty of money out there (is it $6000 per child per year now?). Do teachers get to keep teaching even if they perform poorly? No, teachers are fired all the time. Is there a lot of competition for good teaching jobs? Oh yeah, it’s hard to even get a substitute job in some districts. Have education think-tanks stopped trying because the government funds education and not the private marketplace? No, there is a lot of money flying around in research and development of new pedagogical tools. If you invent a new method to teach kids math, or a new science textbook, then you get rich! Just because the money comes from the government does not mean it will be distributed equally regardless of performance.

I will say one more time before I am accused of being insane, NO, I do not believe that public education is a perfect system, even though I like the idea. But I don’t think you can make the analogy between education and medicine, because government control is a much, much more difficult thing to implement at the level of education. Kids just do not want to be in school, and so a lot of the money ends up being wasted. The reason that kids from private schools do (only very slightly) better on their ACTs is probably because kids from wealthy families often have lots of other advantages (like hiring an ACT tutor – just ask me!). There is simply no reason to believe that the field of medicine will no longer be competitive if the government funds it.

American Politics Part X

2008-05-18T22:57:00.006-06:00

[The end of the “American Politics” blog series is in sight. I’m still working over the topic of ‘socialized medicine,’ which will take up three more blogs, and then I will move to a new topic.]

If you listen to conservative talk shows, you hear a deep disdain for the idea that medical care be controlled by the government. In an attempt to respond, I’ve tried to identify the different phobias that conservatives have, and I’ve come up with a list of five, organized into questions. I think that there are good responses to each of these conservative worries, and since this list of five questions is comprehensive as far as I can tell, I believe that an adequate response to each of these five concerns will show the fear of ‘socialized medicine’ to be unfounded. They are:

1) Isn’t competition between rival hospitals and health care providers necessary for the most effective medical care? (discussed in American Politics, Part VIII;
2) Won’t people become lazy if they get free health care, as is usually the case in a socialistic society? (discussed in American Politics, Part IX)
3) Doesn’t everyone need a personalized health plan? (discussed this week)
4) Won’t health providers lose their motivation to provide quality health care if everything is government sponsored? (to be discussed next week)
5) Hasn’t the government already shown its ineptitude in managing Medicare and medical care for the Armed Services? (to be discussed in two weeks).

But for now, we are treating the conservative worry that everyone needs to have a unique health care plan; just one ‘blanket plan’ will not do. When Bush restructured Medicare in his first term, he put this philosophy into practice by dramatically expanding the number of plan options that seniors had. I don’t have numbers on hand, but I seem to remember that the expansion went from something like four plan options to something like 80. His public defense was simple and straightforward. He said that the reason the system needed an overhaul was because different seniors needed different medicines and thus different plans. This would eventually (somehow – how?) lower the cost of drugs for everyone.

Well, the re-structured plan (like just about everything Mr. 28% Popularity has done) was unpopular. Seniors complained that there were so many options that they had no idea what plan was best for them. “Just go to the internet,” the Administration told the confused seniors. Unfortunately, not only do old people not know how to ‘surf’ the web, but they think a monitor is someone who stands in the hallway to make sure you don’t run or chew gum on school property. And even when they turned to their children for help, the younger generation was just as confused in some cases.

I have since developed an enormous amount of sympathy for this problem. When I was choosing between health plans before we had our second son, I really worked hard to figure out which of the two university plans would cost us less out of pocket. I settled on one, but once we had our child, I found out that the plan I didn’t choose would have saved us about $6,000 out-of-pocket. Why the difference? I have no earthly idea. The premiums were about the same, so why was the level of coverage so different?

There were many hidden technicalities. For example, under the plan that I choose, “circumcision” was listed as an optional procedure for a congenital condition, and thus was not paid for. Is an uncircumsized penis congenital? Yes, I suppose it is something about half of us are born with. But if Kerry would have won in 2004, he would have given everyone a chance to buy into the same insurance package as the Senators have. I would have done that, because I guaran-freaking-tee you that when a Senator has a boy, their insurance pays for the circumcision. I would also be willing to guess that Senator-insurance pays for more than one day in the hospital for those female Senators who arrive at the hospital slightly before midnight (Not a joke – if we would have checked in 10 minutes later, we somehow would have saved $3000).

My point is that there are two things that happen when a system gets complicated: 1) vulnerable people get taken advantage of (as I was when I was not able to properly understand the confusing (because intentionally deceptive) wording in the 30-page brochure for the medical plan I chose), and 2) wealthy people are able to manipulate the system more easily, since a complicated system always has loopholes, and money can always navigate loopholes. There is absolutely nothing good that can come from giving seniors 80+ options for health plans. When everyone has the same health plan, regulated by the federal government, there will be no Plan 36JB7 that pays for circumcisions, while Plan 36JB5 doesn’t. In the case of health insurance, simpler is better. I would be happy to pay the higher premiums of the Senator-insurance-plan just for some peace of mind. I feel like I’m playing Russian Roulette every time I or one of my children visit the hospital. It makes me mad to know that at some time there was a meeting where the insurance company said, "How can we word this in such a way as to make the customer think that we will pay for procedure X when we actually won't?" There will be far less of this kind of deception if everyone had the same policy,

American Politics, Part IX

2008-05-13T11:25:00.004-06:00

Last time I pointed to an important dissimilarity between health care and the rest of the marketplace, and this week I want to argue for another important difference. The concern of the capitalist, which I share, is that when people don’t own something, they tend to neglect it in a way that they would not if it were privately owned. Two cheesy, overused, and yet accurate examples: 1) we all know what happens when you get behind the wheel of a rental car. While you don’t trash it, you are harder on a rental car than your personal car, because you are not going to have to deal with the long term consequences of a rental car that needs repaired, and somewhere in the back of your mind, you know that. 2) If you are a homeowner, you know the amazing amount of work and care that you put into to getting your home to look nice and last as long as possible. When it’s your property, you know that its value will drop if not cared for properly, and so you go the ‘extra mile.’

Socialists, of course, advocate a society in which the government owns everything. In this ideal society, there would be no private property, which would mean that there would be complete equality. When Raul Castro took over for his brother recently, he lifted the long-standing ban on cell phones. Why did Fidel ban cell phones? Because if some people had cell phones and some did not, that would make society unequal. I hold the same line of reasoning that all people from capitalist societies hold: great idea, doesn’t seem very practical. I am a liberal, but I am not a socialist – I think private property, in most situations, is a good thing for the reasons that are underlying those two previous examples. Even the best of us just don’t treat things with the same level of care when we are not dealing with our own property.

So what about ‘socialized medicine?’ If we reject socialism, shouldn’t we also be opposed to socialized medicine, where health care and insurance is totally controlled and paid for by the government? Conservatives, it seems, make this association. After all, they may reason, if you are the one who has to pay for your broken foot, you will careful to put on work boots when you’re working with heavy machinery. But if the government pays for whatever maladies you develop, you will tend to be less careful with your own health. The government just “bails you out” of whatever situation you got yourself into. This, I think, is part of why conservatives get their pitchforks when they hear about government-sponsored health care.

But this reasoning doesn’t hold. I agree with the conservative that we should not let the government own, for example, houses. But I predict that the smoking rate, for example, will not go up if health care is free. Conservatives are afraid of a government bale out system, where people will just start lighting up and let the government pay for their lung surgery later on in life. My prediction is that something like this will not happen. Unlike a dilapidated house, which I can just walk away from and let it be the government’s problem, I cannot walk away from my body. My health is already something I care very much about (or else someone already doesn’t really care – like the chain smoker). Those of us who don’t think that socialism can be as effective as capitalism agree that people, because of their nature, need some kind of incentive to take care of something. That is true for my house, but I don’t need an extra incentive to take care of my health. This is yet another important dissimilarity between socialized medicine and anything else the government might control, and yet another reason to think more critically about how we could institute ‘socialized medicine’ in a healthy, creative way in our capitalistic society.

American Politics, Part VII

2008-04-21T15:34:00.005-06:00

I want to address the hostility to “socialized medicine.” Why does the word “socialized” work people up into a frenzy? I think it is because of our deeply-held belief in the basic features of capitalism, which I would agree is the best economic system (although it must be contained by the government, as I argued a few weeks ago). Capitalism works because it throws a harness around each person’s desire to better his own economic circumstances. Here’s an example of healthy capitalism: if there were only one, state-controlled computer manufacturer, then we could expect that computers would become sub-standard rather quickly. There have to be several computer manufacturers that are in competition for my business, because the result of the competition will cheaper and more powerful computers.

Conservatives argue that medical care should work essentially in the same way. Hospitals should remain privately-controlled because in an effort to get me to come to their hospital rather than the other guy’s hospital, each hospital will do its best to control costs, provide a clean environment, and offer effective care. Health insurance companies should work in the same way: there should be many private insurance companies competing for my business, because then those companies will work to offer the better and more affordable insurance than their competitor.

Next week I want to develop more of an argument for “socialized medicine.” But for now, I will simply point to a glaring dissimilarity between the case of say, computer manufacturing, and that of medical treatment. The conservative has made the same capitalist analysis in both cases, but the cases are not the same. Let’s say I am making a decision to purchase a new computer. So I look at the selection, read some consumer reviews, and discover that the computer market is not to my satisfaction. I have other options: I can decide to refurbish my current computer, to do all my work at a computer lab or at a work computer, to share a computer with my wife or roommate, etc, etc, etc. The point is, the consumer has options, and he can decide to leave the marketplace if he does not find current market conditions to his liking for whatever reason.

This is when capitalism is great. Computer company A notices that sales of new computers are down to people in my socioeconomic demographic, and so the board members at computer company A get together and figure out how to make their computers better, faster, cheaper, prettier, etc., so that I will change my mind about buying a new computer.

The situation with health care is quite different. If I become dissatisfied my insurance company, or that the cost of a check up is too high, then I can look around for a new provider or new doctor. But I cannot reasonably be expected to opt out of the marketplace entirely in most cases. I know and you know that it does not cost $16,000 to bring a healthy baby in this world with no complications. Somebody is getting rich at my expense. Now, if this were like the computer situation, I would just decide tosuch as that of giving birth, it is just not reasonable to ask someone to forgo treatment entirely until costs come down. The insurance companies have you, because I can’t leave the marketplace. The computer manufacturers have to get you, because I can leave the marketplace, and so they have to work hard for my business.

I understand that I have not yet argued for socialized medicine. But I hope I have shown one difference between a company a hospital.

American Politics, Part VI

2008-04-14T09:23:00.003-06:00

A helpful comment, followed by my clarification of my comments last week:

“The Indians dying out was not a "deliberate and systematic extermination of an entire race of people," which is what the word 'genocide' means. This is just another way that Leftists like to use guilt manipulation to make us feel bad about being Americans. Here is an article that does much more justice to the complex historical situation, which concludes that "To fling the charge of genocide at an entire society serves neither the interests of the Indians nor those of history" (http://hnn.us/articles/7302.html)

We can't punish your ancestors as much as some would like to, but we can and should do our best in our current political circumstances. I do believe that we should be hospitable to the 'sojourner', but how long would you let someone stay in your house without paying rent, especially if they added a new family member (thousands actually) every day?”

The Orthodox Heretic responds:

I’m not trying to make anyone feel bad about themselves, nor do I wish anyone to be punished. In fact, I have a lot of pride about what our country has been able to accomplish. I don’t feel guilty at all about living in America, and I don’t think you should either. After all, the ‘Native Americans’ were inevitably not truly ‘native,’ but probably won the use of this continent through bloodshed. That’s just kind of how nature works – “nature red in tooth and claw,” as they say.

But I insist on pointing to the moral inconsistency in saying that we, as legal residents, are morally justified in residing in America, while those who have recently come here are morally unjustified. My soul is disturbed by those who stand up in our country and argue that the Latin Americans broke the laws by sneaking over, and that therefore they should not be rewarded for their stealth with amnesty. Those sorts of conservatives look thoroughly ridiculous on their moral high-horse, because they also have no elevated moral status which would allow them to look down their noses at “illegals.”

I agree with you that there are some difficult practical issues that come with unrestricted immigration. That is why I mentioned that we, as the current legal residents of a country recognized by the United Nations, have the right to use our own cleverness to keep out illegal immigrants. In principle, I am not particularly disturbed by those efforts, although I have some concerns about the motivations of these patriots. Deep down, do they just want a “pure” society? How is such zeal, as demonstrated by the “Minute Men,” those self-appointed border-guards, in any way reconcilable with Christianity? But as I said last week, I don’t have any good answers of my own about how to deal with illegal immigration, except to insist that the “no-amnesty” folks either haven’t thought through this issue properly, or else are not much like Jesus.

American Politics, Part V

2008-04-07T00:35:00.003-06:00

The illegal immigration issue is a difficult one. This is clear simply by observing that Bush and Ted Kennedy have at times been on the same side of this debate, and that there is nothing recognizable as a standard ‘party line’ for either party, as there is for perhaps every single other issue. I have to confess, I don’t know exactly what kind of policies I would support if I were in the government.

But one part of the debate is clear to me, and that is that the “no amnesty” people are hypocrites of the worst kind. Liberals sometimes make the argument that “This is a country founded by immigrants.” That is partly right and partly wrong, for the full truth is that this is a county founded by illegal immigrants. In 1776, some Europeans, who were not invited to this continent, signed a piece of paper declaring that this country belonged to them. As far as I am aware, no Native Americans were invited to this ribbon-cutting ceremony, which declared that the land upon which those Englishman stood was the legal property of the United States. With one stroke of the pen, those men went from being English citizens to being citizens of the United States of America.

No, our ancestors did not break any actual laws by coming here and butchering the Native populations. There was no extant piece of paper that described the illegality of countinent-usurping. But I am sure that if the Native Americans would have gotten around to codifying some laws, one of them might have included a “no-genocide” clause. I don’t know any educated people who are proud of all the sordid details of how our founding fathers came to be the sole possessors of the United States of America. But I also don’t know any Americans, myself included, who are willing to move. The one and only reason for this is that moving now would be a pain; we are already settled and comfortable here. We have bestowed amnesty upon ourselves! So to deny amnesty to Latin Americans currently residing in our country only because they came into this country without our permission, and yet to extend amnesty to our founding fathers and thus to ourselves, seems altogether morally absurd.

If you don’t want anymore illegal immigrants in our country, then build a wall, fine employers, or increase border security. I personally feel that these measures are a little much, but I also believe that it is our right as current legal residents of the USA to stop illegal immigrants from coming. But to oppose a path to citizenship for those already living here on moral grounds is perfectly ridiculous. Surely certain Latin Americans got into this country by using deception and stealth; but now, here they are! At least they did not commit genocide against those of us legally residing in America, which is more than I can say for my ancestors.

American Politics, Part IV

2008-03-25T12:29:00.004-06:00

[In the two previous posts, I argued on moral grounds for the necessity of an economy that strives for equality. The Orthodox Heretic’s sister, who is getting a PhD on these sorts of issues, commented, and I wanted to post her comments and then respond to them.]

Anna says: “There is sociological literature regarding the benefits that socioeconomic equality bring to both governments and local and global societies. This literature argues that it is in governments' and societies' best interest to ensure productivity of the market SIMULTANEOUSLY WITH socioeconomic equality within the polity (and sustainability of the environment, too!). Oversimplified, the argument suggests that inequality and insecurity (inadequate food, water, disease, etc.) is directly related to conflict and war, the effects of which extend beyond national boundaries. As such, these interrelated components of poverty are a universal concern and require international attention.

Moreover, conflict and war threaten the stability of governments, societies, and consequently capitalist institutions. Therefore, it is not only right and just to ensure socioeconomic equality, it is also rational and self-interested! This argument, then, appeals to the religious and secular alike.”

The Orthodox Heretic says: “Thanks for your thoughtful comments. I happen to agree with every word of your response. Like you, I also believe that that there is often a happy coincidence between doing what’s right in the moral sense and doing what’s right in the business sense. However, I think we should be careful to keep the moral argument and prudential argument separate. I have always been a little uncomfortable with the “and besides” argument. For instance, people sometimes argue that torture is wrong in the moral sense because it causes harm to a defenseless person, and then quickly add something like, “and besides, the intelligence you get from torture is unreliable.” Those arguments need to be carefully pulled apart and evaluated separately, the first being a moral argument (it’s not right), the second being a prudential argument (it’s not smart).

We must recognize that there has always been and will always be controversy about whether it makes more economic sense to stimulate the economy by stimulating the lower class or by cutting taxes on the upper class. The world needs people like you and your colleagues who are able consistently to present us with compelling arguments that favor the democratic philosophy of economics on prudential grounds. But unfortunately, for every argument you present, there will always be an intelligent, well-worded, and persuasive argument from the other side (actually, there will probably be two, since those folks are better-funded).

As a professional philosopher, I happen to know that you can convince yourself and others of just about any position if you’re clever enough. I don’t mean to say that there are no right answers, but only that we have every reason to expect that this debate will go on until the end of society itself. So while this argument is busy going on forever, Christians need to stand up and remind ourselves and the world that equality is a moral issue of the most serious kind, whether you believe it to be a prudential issue or not, and that therefore economic equality needs to be on the front-burner for those of us who consider ourselves followers of Christ. I’m not willing to believe that I am wrong about that, although I’m willing to believe that I might be wrong about how the economy works (especially because people who are much smarter than I am can’t agree). But what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and yet forfeit his soul?

American Politics, Part III

2008-03-17T14:01:00.005-06:00

Last week I argued that we need a government that is willing to step in and regulate the market for the sake of economic equality. Of course most Republicans are willing to accept the idea of occasional government intervention in draconian cases, but their usual mantra is “Stay outta the marketplace!” I think this attitude is unacceptable, at least if you believe as I do that the main standard by which all societies will be judged is by how they protected the vulnerable. Those who are great capitalists are typically not bad people – they are simply being as selfish as possible because that is exactly what capitalism requires of them – capitalism is only successful if the business world is populated with people who are greedy! If all capitalists decided to practice the virtue of contentedness starting on Monday, then we would have the Great Depression Part II by Friday. But that is exactly why we must have a government that is willing to tell those successful and greedy capitalists, “This far ye shall come and no farther.”

Also, last week I promised to analyze another big reason why we need a government willing to legislate the marketplace: the protection of the environment. Capitalism by itself offers absolutely no incentive to maintain environmental standards. In fact, the situation is quite the opposite. The capitalist marketplace demands that the producers produce as much material for the lowest cost possible. And, since it costs a lot of money to dispose of waste properly, to forest responsibly, to harvest and plant in a way that will nourish the soil, etc., etc., these things are actually discouraged by the capitalist marketplace. Since the motivation to protect the environment does not come from the market itself, it must come from government regulations.

I have heard conservatives say of Al Gore that business would never survive his presidency, if he were to become President. I hope that this is not true. But I happen to know that it is true that if we continue to use our natural resources irresponsibly, then things will go badly for all of us and all of our decedents. Take the example of American automakers: they really hate it whenever the government increases the minimum fuel efficiency rating. Let the market decide, they say – let the people decide what they want to buy, and we will supply their demand. The problem is that it is quite rare that an individual will do what is in their own financial worst-interest in order to “help” with something as abstract as the environment. For example, if Company A and Company B produce the same product, but Company A’s version costs more because they spent a lot of money on proper disposal, then the usual person will buy the product from Company B. And if someone comes running up to them and says, “Don’t buy that! Company B disposes of their waste improperly,” the common person will just point out that Company B’s product costs less. The way to solve this problem is to actually make it illegal for Company B to dispose of their waste improperly, rather than to hope that Company B’s board of directors becomes populated by tree-huggers.

There are many situations in which the government must interfere for the sake of protecting the environment, because people will always do exactly what capitalism tells them to do: buy the product as cheaply as you can! The burden of making companies change their environmental policies is not the responsibility of the consumer, but of the government. In Bush’s first week, he repealed an astounding number of environmental regulations that were established by the Clinton administration, all in the name of “freeing the marketplace.” We need a government that, while sensible about protecting big business where they can (because we all need big business, even though we may not like to admit it), has the will and the courage to regulate the market by making certain practices illegal.

American Politics, Part II

2008-03-10T13:27:00.003-06:00

Out society is not primarily controlled by the government. Rather, our society marches to the beat of the drum of the capitalistic marketplace. I do not wish to say that this is good or bad, for there are many positive and negative features of capitalism. I just want to say that this is our reality, so instead of thinking of America as controlled by the government, it would be more accurate to think of America as being directed by business, and merely managed by the government.

By analogy, the market could be thought of as a fire. Fires are nearly miraculous in that they provide a natural source of heat and light. If you have trouble imagining how central this is to life, imagine how terrible a frontier lifestyle would be without a fire. But like most good things, a fire can quickly turn disastrous and deadly if it leaps out of its intended boundaries. Likewise, the market can provide untold good and prosperity, and in an instant can lift a family out of generational poverty. But it can also be quite disastrous, as a fire that jumps over its boundaries. So the analogical conclusion is that just as we need the fire controlled, so also we need tight reigns on the economy. There are two primary ways that the marketplace can cause mischief, although I will only address one this week.

First, the market itself provides no incentive whatsoever to help a person who is not yourself or not in your immediate family. The market, rather, by its very essence, actually encourages every person to look out only for her own interests. “Its just business,” they tell you after they announce a company restructure. There is no basis to complain about or criticize any single businessperson who triumphs over someone else over on the way to more money, provided he does it within the bounds of the law. Indeed, this is what is required of a successful capitalist society. I, for example, will enter the meager philosophy professor job market in a couple of years. My hope is that I will be better, more intelligent, etc., than the other PhD students entering the marketplace, and that I will get the job instead of them. Correspondingly, the institution will only higher the best candidate and turn the others away. That is not positive or negative, but merely a description of how a capitalistic society improves itself.

Given the harsh realities of competition within capitalism, it is quite easy to see how our society can quickly become a society of “haves” and “have-nots.” But no single person is to blame – every “have” is simply doing his job. Capitalism, then, unchecked, can bring absolutely wicked outcomes, from the perspective of the Christian. James nails down the whole point of religion in general: “to look after orphans and widows in their distress…” (James 1:27). If this is true, then we should be worries about creating as society of “haves” and “have-nots,” which means that we need a government that is willing to step in and disrupt the marketplace when the marketplace in creating too much inequality. The Republicans despise this kind of thinking as “big government” – capitalism needs to be free to play itself out. If the market operates without interference, they claim, then it will continue to grow. And after all, they add, “A rising tides raises all ships.”

But I have a question for my Republican friends: What if you are wrong about how the economy works? Even the top economists in the world have vast difference in the way they conceive of successful capitalism. I must confess, I have NO idea how the economy works, but even the most well-equipped economists have only possible theories. But if we are going to make an error, as we may be by interfering in the marketplace, we should be concerned to err on the side of making an economically equal society. If those republican economists are wrong, and the “trickle-down” economic system is not the right model for the economy, then we will hamper economic growth AND exacerbate economic inequality. So if I am right that no one really knows how the economy works, and we are concerned about creating a equal society (making sure the orphans and widows are economically secure, even though they are not economically viable), then we should favor a style of government which is willing to step in if conditions are becoming unequal. There is the possibility, I am willing to concede, that the Republican economic policies are better for everyone; after all, I nor anyone else who doesn’t have a Nobel Prize in economics really has any idea. But I do know, as a Christian, that it is not acceptable to have the kind of society that doesn’t do anything about the plight of the vulnerable. But the Republican says, again, “Yes, but a rising tide raises all ships,” which is true. But just in case the “trickle-down” system doesn’t work, I would rather lose the whole world while pursuing justice. I don’t think that losing the whole world for the right reasons would be such a bad thing.

American Politics, Part I

2008-02-28T11:22:00.004-06:00

[Note: This blog appeared last year. It was meant to be the first of several political blogs, but I stopped blogging altogether after the first one. I would like to follow through now, however, and on Sunday/Monday, I will post the part II in this series.]

Is there any philosophical difference between Republicans and Democrats? Sometimes, the positions these two sides take on various issues seem pretty arbitrary. There just doesn’t seem to be any consistent pattern underlying each political party, and so it becomes – well, politics. However, I believe that there are consistent philosophies to be discovered on each side, and I want to lay bare those differences, and also argue the liberal position on several of the specific issues.

A Liberal society (in the sense of Liberal v. Communist, Islamist, etc., not the small “l” liberal v. conservative) has three distinguishing values that make it different from all other societies: the value of private property, the value of equality, and the value of individual freedom (especially the freedom to make a choice in the form of voting). When it comes to individual freedom, both parties succeed and fail in various ways, and so it is difficult to develop a systematic understanding of the differences in this area. However, the conservative and liberal ideologies begin to contrast in terms of the first two values.

These differences first arise when private property and equality come into conflict. The conflict is actually fairly common because, as John Locke observed, money is the most common form of private property. And hence we get conservative Republicans always pushing tax cuts (because that means more private property), and the liberal Democrats working to repeal tax cuts on the wealthy (because that allows the government to afford various programs for the lower and middles classes, and so enhances the value of equality). So the conservative mantra is “Equality is important, but what really makes a Liberal society great is private property”, while the liberal motto is just the opposite: “Private property is important, but what really makes a Liberal society great is equality”. Sometimes this difference is expressed in terms of the size of government, where the conservatives promote more private property as so favor “small government”, and the liberals favor the government having a larger role to play is making society equal, and so is the party of “big government”. In the coming weeks, I wish to explain and argue for the various liberal positions on particular issues in contemporary American politics.

Love is a Miracle, Part VI: Conclusions

2008-02-18T14:11:00.003-06:00

Every rational person is socialized, meaning that they can be polite, help their friends when their friends need someone, etc. This, however, is not evidence of agape love. There is, of course, nothing wrong with being socialized, but all it means is that you are normal. Jesus drew this contrast: After the command to “Love your enemies,” he makes sure no one is confused: “…if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even tax collectors do the same?” (Matt 5). Loving your friends simply means you are good at being a reciprocal human being, because smart people know deep down that being there for a friend means that she will be there for you when you need a friend – this is completely normal. But since you are the one who benefits here, your love for your friends is, in the final analysis, egoistic. But as we defined agape love, it must be a desire for something that has nothing to do with your own survival, pleasure, or prosperity.

In order to be an atheist, you must be committed to the idea that all love arises naturally through biological and/or sociological mechanisms, and I think it is reasonable to insist that most or even almost all love arises in this way. I like to think of myself as a nice person, but when I love my friends and colleagues, I am really wishing to avoid loneliness and to be successful – it is still all about me. Of course I don’t tell myself this often, but I think that these natural human drives really play a large role in our daily relationships with friends, colleagues, and family. While there is certainly nothing wrong with this, we must be very blunt with ourselves: does this explain all love?

The atheist is not inconsistent by answering “Yes.”; there is no logical contradiction here. But is seems plain to me that there are some who have a real lust for justice on behalf of others; they just get angry about the exploitation of other people (see Part III). Richard Dawkins (part IV) makes it very plain that evolutionary ethics cannot account for this. Darwin himself points out that we are ruthlessly selfish, right down to our genes, and that all apparent altruism can be accounted for as merely the protection of our own genes.

All love is desire for something. Usually, love is egoistic, meaning that it benefits me in some way. This is true both in our love for our friends, and in sexual love. This sort of love is normal, healthy, and human. But there is no good sociological or biological reason why love should be any more than that. If, then, we conclude that there is such as thing as desiring justice on behalf of someone from a different gene pool and/or race or society, then love is a miracle. The atheists keep looking for naturalistic explanations for this phenomenon, but those of us who are religious are not confused about how the natural order of things became ruptured: “God is love.” This also explains why some have both agape AND human love, while some love only humanly: “Everyone that loves has been born of God, and knows God. The one who does not love, does not know God, because God is love” (I John 4). And no, it doesn’t have anything to do with whether you believe that the proposition “God exists” is true or false. There are many who believe that it is true that are not really lovers, just as there are some, I believe, who really know God despite themselves.

I don’t take these last 6 weeks to add up to an argument for God’s existence. But everyone has many choices about how he or she will view the world, and as rational beings, we can’t help but have opinions about the ultimate nature of our universe. If you find yourself to be someone who lusts for justice on behalf of people you don’t really know, then I insist that for that sake of consistency, you should also believe that God exists and seek how you might worship God.

Love is a Miracle, Part V

2008-02-12T10:52:00.001-06:00

Another strategy to explain away agape love, as the atheist must do in order to be an actual atheist, is to argue that all ethics are socially constructed. This is sometimes called the argument from cultural relativism. The idea is that human beings consciously or unconsciously adopt (or reject) the values of the culture in which they live. So whether positively or negatively, cultural values determine what an individual values.

J.L. Mackie, a cultural relativist a professed atheist, expresses the point this way in his book Inventing Right and Wrong: “Disagreement about moral codes seems to reflect adherence to and participation in different ways of life” (94). That is to say, the mere existence of varying and/or conflicting ethical standards between cultures combined with the relatively high levels of agreement about ethical standards within cultures implies that an individual’s ethical standards are at least partly dependent upon the culture from which she comes. As Mackie puts it, this argument can be expressed in causal terms. He uses the example of the value of monogamy: “The casual connection seems to be mainly that way round: it is that people approve of monogamy because they participate in a monogamous way of life rather than that they participate in a monogamous way of life because they approve of monogamy” (94-5).

This causal connection indeed seems true, but only trivially so. Consider the example of certain Mormon values, such as disdain for caffeine, that are prevalent in Utah but in no other state. From a statistical standpoint, it would be utterly astounding if nearly all of Americans who disapproved of caffeine-drinking on moral grounds coincidently all lived in Utah, were Mormon values were laudable and practiced. It is not much to infer that people who morally disapprove of caffeine-drinking do so because their culture made it customary and hence ordinary.

Mackie has merely pushed back the question one level: now we want to know if any cultures are superior to any others with respect to the values they have. To many, it seems arrogant to talk about one cultural as superior to another, but I don’t have any problem with this. It seems intuitive that societies that had slaves or contemporary societies that don’t extend rights to women are culturally inferior to cultures that don’t have slaves or respect women as equals. So yes, I agree with Mackie that my values are relative in the sense that my moral education from my family and culture determines my own values. I can freely admit, although with some shame, that if I were born in certain places in the Middle East, I would think of women as second-class citizens. But I don’t see how that implies that values are relative – many of us still have the intuition that some practices really are unjust. We can simply still insist that some cultures are morally superior to other cultures. We still are waiting for an argument from the atheist to show that the phenomenon of love is reducible to sociology or biology.

Love is a Miracle, Part IV

2008-02-04T10:05:00.001-06:00

There are many apparent examples of what I called last week “altruistic indignation.” One experiences altruistic indignation if one becomes angry at the perceived unjust treatment of another person. Does this phenomenon really exist? Do we ever genuinely become grieved when someone who is not ourselves is being treated unjustly? The answer to this question is vital. If the answer is “Yes, there really is such a thing as altruistic indignation,” then this poses a problem for the atheist. This week, and the next two weeks, I want to examine typical attempted atheistic explanations for this.

The most common response is from evolutionary ethics. Take for example, the wolf who stays behind to fight the enemy, even though he knows that he will die, so that the rest of the pack can go free. This seems at first glance to be a strong example of altruism – the wolf lays down its own life for its pack. The wolf's altruism comes from its evolutionary instinct to keep its species alive, at all costs. The wolf has a deep instinct to lay down its life for its pack, just as the parent has a deep instinct to lay down her life for her children, if need be. For the evolutionary ethicist, these altruistic instincts are implanted in us by mother nature, for these instincts are what is necessary to keep our own species around.

Richard Dawkins is a fierce critic of the doctrine that mother nature has made us altruists for the sake of the propagation of life. Dawkins, along with Peter Singer, is one of the two living thinkers best known for being atheistic. In his famous book, The Selfish Gene (and specifically Chapter One – Why are People?), Dawkins calls this wishful, un-Darwinistic thinking. Many evolutionists falsely buy into the idea that we have altruistic instincts for the sake of the survival of our own species, but that is because they do not understand Darwinism properly. Dawkins defends Darwin’s idea that we are all “ruthlessly selfish,” right down to our genes. Therefore, the true Dawinistic explanation of the wolf laying down its life for the pack is that it is protecting its own genes: it is ultimately an egoistic action, even though it appears to be “altruistic” to some wishful thinkers.

So is there really such a thing as altruism (in our restricted sense of altruistic indignation)? The evolutionary ethicist says “Yes,” and the explanation is that mother nature has made us altruistic as a survival mechanism for our species. Unfortunately, as Dawkins points out, this is wildly un-Darwinistic. Even though some may find it odd because of my Christian world-view, I really like Darwinism. Although I am no scientist, I find Darwinism helpful to my cause, simply because of its thesis that we are all ruthlessly selfish in every way. Seeing the world this way makes the miracle of love all the more salient. If we are all ruthlessly selfish, and yet we can find examples of altruism, then the miracle of love is even more miraculous!

The evolutionary ethicist has proposed the theory that we are altruistic for the sake of the survival of our own species. Dawkins has pointed out that these evolutionists are “fairy tale” evolutionists, because Darwin’s theory of natural selection, properly understood, excludes this possibility. While I am happy to let Dawkins win that debate, I have tried to point out that while evolution, as Dawkins explains it, can explain (at least some) altruistic actions, it cannot explain altruistic indignation, at least when it is for the sake of someone on the other side of the world. Dawkins’ idea, which he lays out in Chapter Five of his book, is that altruism is decreased by a factor of two each successive generation, and is also decreased as one moves further from one’s immediate gene pool. So since my children carry half of my genes, I am very altruistic toward them. If I have grandchildren some day, they will carry one-fourth of my genes, and so I will be slightly less altruistic towards them (And why do some love their adopted children? Dawkins insists that this is a genetic malfunction!). And I will be even less altruistic toward my future nieces and nephews, since they have a few of my genes, but not a lot. This is a very brief summary Dawkins’ explanation of Darwinism, but it brings up a wonderful question: Why would I be angry about the unjust treatment of women on the other side of the globe? Darwin says I should not be. Halleluiah!

Love is a Miracle, Part III

2008-01-28T18:28:00.001-06:00

Is there such a thing as an action that I perform that does not benefit me in some way? Many people conclude that there is not. From this, it is a short leap to the idea that all “love” is ultimately egoistic, and therefore that no love is agape, which is love that is supposed to give without consideration of itself.

The idea that all of our actions benefit us in some way is partly right, but also misleading. Let’s take an extreme example. Say someone reads an article about the sex-slave trade, where young girls are kidnapped and forced to labor in the most disgusting ways possible. Perhaps he becomes angry about this injustice, and decides to give money to an organization that works to break up sex-slave trade rings. Initially, it seems that he has done an altruistic thing: after all, he has contributed in a small way to improve the lives of others. But the moral skeptic points out that he also “feels good” about giving that money. As such, that action is ultimately egoistic. This analysis can be made for any moral action I do – I always benefit in some way.

On these terms, I agree that there is no such thing as altruism. There is, however, more to the story. Let’s say that there are two friends who learn about the tragedy of the sex-slave trade at the same time. When the first friend hears this, he becomes angry because he perceives this to be an unjust state-of-affairs that should be set right, while the second friend is generally apathetic toward the plight of these girls. It seems that most would agree that the first friend responded more appropriately than the second one in a moral sense. That is to say, the first friend is morally attuned to something in a way that the second friend is not.

So the skeptic who insists (correctly) that there are no purely altruistic actions now has a bigger problem: why did the first friend become angry over someone else’s situation? So there may be no altruistic actions, but there may be such a thing as altruistic indignation, for it often happens that someone gets angry over the unjust treatment another. Why is this?

The wise, or those who insist that that agape love does not exist, must explain how altruistic indignation arises from strictly natural causes. After all, if we are purely selfish at base, as the scientists insist, then altruism should not be possible. In the next three weeks, I will look at (and argue against) three potential explanations by the atheist that what appears to be altruism is not altruism after all.

2008 Listening Guide

2008-01-21T00:52:00.000-06:00

[I'm taking a one-week respite from my probably-too-intense musings on the nature of love]

I know a lot of people struggle to find good music to listen to, so I’ve tried to simplify the process. All you have to do is diagnose your current mood through a little self-reflection, locate that mood in the left-hand column, and then look up the corresponding artist to the right. So, the following are meant to be plugged into the following formula:

“If you’re feeling _____, then listen to ______.”

Classy..................................................Elvis Costello
Transcendental.........................................Emmylou Harris
Like life is too complicated...........................Patti Griffin
Like you need to tell the world about something, but you don’t actually have anything to say.....................Rufus Wainwright
Residual Lower-Middle-Class suburban teen ang..........Nirvana
Optimistic about your chances of finding true love..........Sarah McLachlan
Pessimistic about your chances of finding true love.............Ryan Adams
Pessimistic about your chances of finding true love, but you insist on pretending you didn’t really care about that anyway................Lucinda Williams
Depressed, and you want to feel like that...............Elliot Smith
Depressed, but you want to feel better..................Sufjan Stevens
Like smoking at least three cigars by yourself in one evening.............Tom Waits
Like saving the fookin world...........................U2
Residual Upper-Middle-Class suburban teen angst.........Ben Folds
Better than everyone else, in an artsy way..............Radiohead
Better than everyone else, in a “Don Juan” way..........Damien Rice
Better than everyone who lives in the Midwest...........Bright Eyes
That life is too serious................................Fountains of Wayne
That life is too silly.................................Johnny Cash

Love is a Miracle, Part II

2008-01-14T00:39:00.001-06:00

I began an investigation last time into the existence of unconditional love. We decided that this inquiry is important for the Christian because if it turns out that such love does not exist, then Christianity is foolish; conversely, the atheistic world-view would be threatened if we could find instances of love that are not reducible to biological or social phenomena.

There is undoubtedly much love in the world in certain forms. There are at least three Greek words translated as “love”: agape, philos, and eros. The latter two are related in that they have to do with desire. When one has eros or philos, one has a lack of something, which results in the desire to fulfill that lack. Eros is of course where our word ‘erotic’ comes from, and indeed, eros usually indicates sensual desire. Philos is the other side of the coin: it is characterized by non-physical desire, as this love seeks fulfillment in some way that is not sensual. For example, a philosopher is supposed to love wisdom, and Philadelphia is the city of brotherly love.

To these two words for love, the New Testament adds a third: agape. It is much more difficult to define, but it forms a remarkable contrast with the former two words for love in at least one important aspect. With eros and philos, there is always a desirer fulfilling a desire. Therefore, in the end, these kinds of love are always egoistic, or selfish. I will use this contrast to characterize agape love as altruistic, or focused essentially on others. Many ethicists claim that all human actions are ultimately motivated by eros or philos, and that therefore there is no room for any other type of love. This claim has some initial appeal. Take the example of the kind shopkeeper: one might be tempted to say that his kindness toward the people that come into his store is motivated by agape love, but the skeptic could just say that his kindness really comes from his desire to retain his customers, whether he realizes it or not. Even most friendships can easily be described as motivated by philos, because we desire the company of other people: a person with no friends feels lonely. If we had no desire for fellowship, we would not seek out friends.

It gets worse for the person who wants to believe in agape love: even Jesus seems to praise selfish actions: “But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matt 5:3-4). Jesus here recommends going out of our way not to let our generosity be seen by people, because we will forfeit a greater heavenly reward. But if we seek a reward, even if it is eternal and not temporal, these kinds of actions are selfish.

These examples show that there is nothing wrong with selfishness in certain contexts. After all, it helps us become good friends, good neighbors, and good co-workers. But can I ever perform an action which doesn’t benefit myself in some way? And if I can’t, can I ever really say that I have purely unselfish or altruistic motivations? And if I never have altruistic motivations, can I insist that there is such a thing as agape love? And if there is no such thing as agape love, doesn’t this put Christianity in an awkward position?

Love is a Miracle, Part I

2008-01-06T20:26:00.001-06:00

Is there any such thing as love?

This is the sort of foolish and naïve question that children might ask. ‘The wise’ never worry about such things. By ‘the wise,’ I mean the anthropologists, the biologists, the geneticists, and above all the philosophers, who by definition make their living by loving wisdom. For the biologist and geneticist, love is merely a programmed survival instinct. For the anthropologist, love is the invented oil that lubricates social interactions and gives shape to traditions, while the philosophers are all too eager to agree with either or both of those diagnoses.

There are several different things I could mean by ‘love,’ and I will give some distinctions next time. But for now, it is enough to say that I am referring to the kind of love ‘without conditions’ that the New Testament writers can’t seem to stop talking about. John says that “love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love…” (I John 4:7,8). Paul, after saying that love is greater than faith (I Cor. 13), goes onto to anticipate John’s writings: for him, as for John, the unmistakable evidence of the presence of God in one’s life is the presence of love (Gal. 5:22). And conversely, a life without love always indicates the absence of God (Gal 5:19-20).

So it is that love is central for New Testament Christianity. Therefore, if the wise are successful in their attempts to reduce love to biological or social mechanisms, Christianity (along with many other religions) would be the most pervasive, extravagant, and scandalous deception in Western history. To appropriate Paul, we should be pitied in the worst way, perhaps the way a parent might pity a child who discovers that Santa Claus never leaves presents at his house. That child deserves pity because he must come to terms with the fact that something he has believed strongly his whole conscious life, even in the face of adversity, turns out to be wrong.

But we should also look at the issue the other way around. If there is such a thing as love after all, ‘the wise’ have an accounting problem on their hands. How can they account for the fact that love ended up in the world? When asked whether there is love, it is tempting to give an immediate and sharp “YES!” After all, we all love our children, spouses, and parents with unconditional love, right? Don’t we show love to the neighbor across the street when we invite her for parties even though she continues to be un-neighborly? Don’t we manifest true love when we are nice to our co-worker even while he is rude to us? I want to resist an easy answer, because this question, it turns out, is complicated. The wisdom of the world has given us an important challenge.