Sep 02 2009

Muslim denunciations of terrorism: how should we evaluate them?

Category: Islam,media,terrorism,theology — harmonicminer @ 9:02 am

It has become common for Muslim apologists, responding to the criticism that Muslims don’t condemn terrorism, to quote this imam or that, saying something that seems like a criticism.  Most of us in the west have little ability to determine the worth of these “criticisms.”  Is this something being said one way to the west, when the media are listening, and another way to the Muslim audience?  Is it a carefully worded “sympathy for the families of the dead” or is it a full-throated condemnation of the terrorist act as unIslamic and immoral, without equivocation or ambivalence?  After all, we give sympathy to the families of justly executed murderers.  Such sympathy hardly constitutes condemnation of the judge, the jury, the law or the executioners.

Another response is to say that the west is just as morally ambivalent about its own failings.  This article compares Muslim reluctance to condemn clear moral failure on the part of other Muslims to the tendency by modern Americans (including in the North) to whitewash the Confederate role in the Civil War, to call great generals of the South “heroes,” etc., when in fact they were fighting for a “state’s right” to protect the chattel ownership of human beings.  Of course, that war ended 145 years ago… there was less tendency in the North to be ambivalent about it at the time.  And this highlights another tendency of Muslim apologists, to point at western history, because there isn’t much they can point to now that compares to bombing African embassies, 9/11, the London Tube bombings, the Spanish train bombings,  the incredible carnage wrought in Iraq by Al Qaeda, the BATH killers, the Shia killers, the Indonesian Islamist killers, the Pakistani killers in Mumbai, etc., etc., etc., ad endless nauseam.

Occasionally something like this appears: Indian Muslims under pressure in Mumbai aftermath

“We strongly believe terrorists have no religion and they do not deserve a burial,” said Maulana Zaheer Abbas Rizvi of the All India Shia Personal Law Board, a body for framing Muslim laws.

This is good, but it’s in the same league as the pastor of a large church in Oklahoma condemning Timothy McVeigh, with perhaps tepid support from his denomination, but not much from a national umbrella church organization like the National Council of Churches or the National Association of Evangelicals, let alone wider Christendom.   The Shia are a distinct minority in India at about 10% of the approximately 100 million Muslims.

It’s tempting to put all Muslim denunciations of terrorism in the same category, but it’s a mistake.  It is not unusual for (especially) moderate Muslims to denounce the murder of other Muslims by Islamists.   How many of those same people say anything about rocketing Israeli civilians?

Even CAIR “denounces” terrorism, all the while it supports it via the Holy Land Foundation’s funneling of cash to Hamas.  Denunciations of terrorism, lacking specifics of who did what to whom, are cheap.  Ask CAIR to condemn a specific jihadi’s murder of innocents and all you usually get is, “We condemn all terrorism.”  And that’s code for, “We’re not going to name names.  And Israel is a terrorist nation.”   A ringing moral condemnation does not begin with, “Yes, but…”

So regarding Muslim denunciations of bad behavior by Muslims, some discernment is required.  Yes, you can find the occasional scholar or Imam who denounces it (though it often lacks those specifics).  But is it a scholar who is important in the Muslim world, or merely one who is popular with western elites as a “moderate spokesperson”?  It is well documented that many Muslim spokespeople say one thing in English to western media, and something else entirely to their own people, in their own language.  When a “Christian” murders an abortionist (which happens about once every ten years in the USA), virtually EVERY Christian leader speaks out against it instantly, in practical terms, including very conservative anti-abortion activists, both Protestant and Catholic.  You don’t need to look for “moderate Christians,” or “Christian scholars,” or something.  The Jerry Falwells, James Dobsons, Bishop Chaputs, the Popes, Pat Robertsons, Christian leaders of every stripe, Christian academics, the National Council of Churches, the National Association of Evangelicals, virtually every pro-life group and conservative talk-show host will condemn in unison the murder of the abortionist “in the name of Christ.”  And this is the response to only ONE person’s murder “in the name of Christ,” about every ten years.

Is it possible to contend that there is anything even remotely close to this in the Muslim world?  Instead, we see people dancing in the street at the murder of thousands.  We see a “compassionately released” terrorist, reponsible for the deaths of hundreds, greeted as a conquering hero by national leaders and clerics (most recently in Lybia, but it’s a common pattern, isn’t it?).   Imagine if Timothy McVeigh had driven his diesel-laced fertilizer truck up to the Al-Hussein Mosque in Cairo, instead of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City, and said God told him to do it.  When the Egyptians released him on “compassionate parole” in 30 years (you’re laughing hysterically, right?), do you think his return would be celebrated by the President of the USA, national religious leaders, an adoring press, and public acclaim?

One “out” that is sometimes taken is to say that there is “no recognized single leader” in Islam.  But there isn’t in Christianity, either.  If you consulted with the Pope, the Archibishop of Canterbury, the National Council of Churches, the National Association of Evangelicals, maybe some worldwide Protestant denominations and a few national Orthodox churches, and they all agreed, you could reasonably say “Christianity has spoken.”  And they all condemn the murder of abortionists, even though most are pro-life (with the notable exception of the National Council of Churches organizations, of course, which mostly represent dying denominations).

As I understand it, there are four “schools” of Islamic jurisprudence in Sunni Islam, and two in Shia Islam.  Those schools have well-known leaders, perhaps two or three important ones in each case.  It would be most persuasive if THOSE leaders spoke in unison that the murder of non-Muslims by jihadis is immoral and unIslamic.  But people in the west don’t listen clearly.  Some of these guys have “expressed sympathy” for the families of the killed on 9/11.   That is not the same thing as a ringing condemnation of the acts of the terrorists, and the public assurance to their own people, in their own people’s native languages, that the acts were sin, were unIslamic, would have been condemned by Muhammed, and did not earn the perpetrators a place in paradise.  Has THAT happened?  Or should we accept the PR statements of “moderates” who know that they’re talking to the western media in English or French?  Does Islam even teach that it is a sin to lie to non-Muslims for the sake of protecting the reputation of Islam?   Google “Al-taqiyya.”  (Qur’an 3:28: “Let not the believers take for friends or helpers unbelievers rather than believers. If any do that, in nothing will there be help from Allah; except by way of precaution, that ye may guard yourselves from them”.  This verse has been used, it seems, to justify lying to infidels in the defense of Islam.)

Let’s be really clear.  Imagine that 20 “Christians” hijacked four airliners filled with people from Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt and Iran, and flew them into, say,

1) the Masjid al-Haram mosque in Mecca at full occupancy,

2) the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina during the hadj, and maybe

3) the Haghia Sophia in Istanbul during Friday prayers, along with aiming one at

4) the palace of the Saudi family in Riyadh.

The entire Christian world would rise up in breathless horror.  Can you imagine the SCOPE of the reaction, the revulsion, the utter shame, and the rejection by the Christian world that this had anything to do with Christ or Christianity?  Can you imagine the thousands of recriminations that Christians would direct at each other, the self-examination, the zillions of study sessions to reinforce traditional Christian teaching on murder that would result in churches, christian schools and colleges, etc.?

Would we be willing to settle for a nice statement from the pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dayton and an obscure professor of “Christian studies” somewhere that “we’re sorry for the victims’ families”?  Would we immediately put out PR statements hoping that this wouldn’t lead to “Christophobia” and “hate crimes” against innocent Christians?  Would we have to look for cherry picked Christian spokesmen to say “moderate” sounding things to the media?  And let’s be clear:  would Christians in ANY Muslim plurality nation be anywhere near as safe as Muslims have been in the USA after 9/11?

And would even the most conservative Bible Belt town in the South have a spontaneous dance of joy in the public square over the murder of those godless infidels, by right-thinking American boys with scout knives who hijacked airliners full of unbelievers?

I am waiting for an Islamic cleric in a prominent position in one of those six schools of Islamic jurisprudence to say that the killers of 9/11 are most likely in Hell, and belong there under Islamic teaching, as do those who are now emulating them.

And the notion that all six schools’ major representatives will make such a statement?  I suspect the Lord will return first.

Aug 30 2009

The Next Great Awakening, Part 8: Someone to watch over us?

Category: science,theology — harmonicminer @ 9:24 am

The previous post in this series is here.

IN a book review of Heaven’s Touch by James B. Kaler – the reviewer reports this point made in the book:

The real surprise of the past few decades must be the vulnerability of the Earth to truly cosmic events – not only supernovae, whose “killing zones” may extend within 30 light years of us, but also gamma ray bursters whose emissions, beamed like death rays, could scour life from planets 6000 light years away. I have a soft spot for magnetars, ultra-dense neutron stars with the strongest magnetic fields in the universe, and Kaler covers these in detail. In 1998, the eruption of one such star 20,000 light years away generated X-rays so powerful that anyone in Earth orbit would have had the equivalent of a dental X-ray. Six years later, the Earth was irradiated by a magnetar outburst 100 times more powerful.

The reviewer is referring to the fact that cosmologists and astrophysicists have begun wondering, of late, just why we’re still here.  They are beginning to understand that the universe is indeed a very dangerous place, and it seems less and less likely that life can begin on a planet and continue to grow and develop for nearly 4 billion years without simply being destroyed by stellar events in nearby star systems…  “nearby” meaning 6,000 light years or so.  Call it 36,000,000,000,000,000 miles or so.  Within that range certain kinds of supernovae, gamma ray bursts, and more exotic things have the capacity to threaten whatever life may exist.

Even a standard, every day supernova may be dangerous within a hundred light years or so, depending on the size of the supernova.  There may be three to five supernovae per century in Milky Way size galaxies.  Estimates vary, but that’s a typical current guess.  Modern astronomy hasn’t existed long enough to develop a baseline through direct observation of any single galaxy, but by observing 100 comparable galaxies for 10 years, astronomers can develop estimates that might be equivalent to watching one galaxy for 1000 years.  So if in that period, observers see 30 supernovae, they can guess that 3 per century might be a reasonable estimate.  But it’s early times yet.  We’ll know a lot more in the coming decades.

A few minutes with a calculator will suggest that there have been maybe 100 million supernovae in the Milky Way galaxy since there was life on Earth.  The galaxy is “only” about 100,000 light years in diameter.  Supernovae will certainly be more common where stars are more densely packed.  Even so, is it so unlikely that one of those supernovae could easily have exploded near enough to Earth to kill its lifeforms?  Maybe more than once?

4 billion years is a LONG time.  Remember when Carl Sagan soothed us with the naturalist fable about “billions and billions of years” and “primordial soup” as an explanation for life’s origin?  Of course, now we know that was just a comforting materialistic bedtime story so children would go to sleep knowing that they really were just statistical accidents in space-time, and dream nice dreams about quarks and unlikely DNA.  Now we know there was no “primordial soup.”   We know that life appeared on Earth almost immediately from the moment earth’s temperature dropped below something like the interior of a jet engine.

And now the shoe is on the other foot.  Instead of the huge length of time being an argument for the accidental, spontaneous origin of life in some kind of improbable tango dance of amino acids, that enormous timespan is getting very difficult to explain as even being possible for life to have continued without destruction by nearby stellar events.  Supernovae are rare.  But, as Carl Sagan would say, when you have billions and billions of years, anything can happen… and usually does.  So why hasn’t it happened to Earth?

Here’s a current candidate for the job of terrestrial hitman.  This sort of thing is probably very rare.  But in 4 billion years, how rare does something have to be to happen now and then?

Just as important as the question of how life arose in a geological eyeblink after the end of the Late Heavy Bombardment is this:  why hasn’t life on Earth been wiped out, over and over, in the 3.9 billion years since it began?

Maybe Someone is looking out for us?

Remember to say “thank You” during your bedtime prayers tonight.  I know I will.

The next post in this series is here.

Aug 25 2009

Consoling the inconsolable

Category: church,ministry,religion,theology — harmonicminer @ 12:38 pm

I have a friend who is a chaplain for the local sheriff’s department.    We’ll call him Fred (not his real name).  He is a former Navy man, and he also served many years as police officer, I think mostly as a Deputy Sheriff, though I’m not entirely certain.  He’s a middle aged guy now, retired after some hard years of service, but on call when there is a need.  As you may expect, these things come in waves.  He may go a few weeks without a particular issue that requires his services..  and then an officer may be severely injured or killed on the job, or some young man commits suicide and the department calls my friend to be with the family, or a toddler falls in a pool and is in a permanent coma, or simply dies, or…..  you get the idea.

There are several aspects of this that come to mind.

It’s fairly common for a certain segment of Christendom to portray Jesus as being sort of an extra-spiritual community organizer who took care of the poor while sharing profound narratives with subtle meanings about the responsibilities of the rich and privileged.  People who are so inclined tend to downplay the aspects of His teaching that involved life after death, salvation of the soul, eternal destination, and so on.  But whether or not Jesus was an ancient socialist just doesn’t enter into the picture when you’re trying to minister to people in extremis.  They are struggling with the single most important issue of life, namely the certain death we all face.

What do you say to someone who is suddenly, shockingly bereaved, or so injured that life will never be the same?  Pastors deal with people dying all the time…  but, thankfully, there is usually some warning, some opportunity, however inadequate, to prepare for the inevitable.  But Fred has to walk into a context where the entire family is stunned, in shock, perhaps blaming God for the entire situation, and somehow he has to bring the peace and love of God with him.  I’m sure that sometimes all he can do is just be there with them, and share in their suffering.  Jesus wept.

And I expect that, sometimes, when people in great pain are asking where God is right now, it may only be later that they realize that He sent an emissary to them, in the form of a chaplain who didn’t have to be there, but felt sent by God.

Consider the task.  Some people in these situations will be believers, and the job is to comfort them, and reinforce their faith that God is God.  Others will be complete agnostics, perhaps only now confronting the bedrock issues of life and death, and this can be an opportunity to show, without preaching directly at them, that there is another reality worthy of their attention.  There may be people who are “nominally” Christian, but haven’t taken it at all seriously…. and oddly, these may be inclined to blame themselves, thinking if they’d been “better Christians” maybe it all wouldn’t have happened.  And on the other side of it, these “nominally Christian” folks may be the ones most likely to blame God for it all.

So what kind of person can DO this work?  To start with, you must be steady as a rock.  You have to be able to confront great pain, and not melt away, which means this work can mostly only be done by those who have suffered plenty already.  You have to be enormously grounded yourself.  And you have to know that no one is really prepared for this work, and so your only recourse is to trust God to speak and show His love through you.

It takes a lot of courage.  I have the feeling that, tough guy that I know him to be, Fred sometimes goes home and simply mourns for the loss and pain that people must endure.

And God prepares him for the next call.

UPDATE:  I happen to be in the hospital at this update, for what will probably not be a major matter, though it has caused some discomfort.   My friend “Fred” just came to visit with another friend from church.  After he left, another friend from church called, and asked how Fred was doing.  I asked what she meant, and she told me that Fred had just spent 30 minutes doing CPR on an accident victim he’d come across on the highway, in a remote area where services were slow to arrive.  The man had probably been dead before Fred started…  but Fred just did what needed to be done until emergency services arrived.  Typically, he didn’t mention it to me when he visited me.

Aug 16 2009

President Obama, meet Rev. J. Wright

Category: church,Democrat,government,Republican,theology — harmonicminer @ 9:11 am

No, no, no, I meant the OTHER Rev. J. Wright, Rev. Joe Wright, who prayed this prayer to open a session of the Kansas legislature in 1996. Wrongly attributed in a circulating email to Billy Graham, this appears to have been borrowed from a 1995 Kentucky Prayer Breakfast, where it was prayed by Bob Russell.

Heavenly Father,
We come before you today to ask your forgiveness and seek your direction and guidance.
We know your Word says, “Woe to those who call evil good,” but that’s exactly what we’ve done.
We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and inverted our values.
We confess that we have ridiculed the absolute truth of your Word and called it moral pluralism.
We have worshipped other gods and called it multi-culturalism.
We have endorsed perversion and called it an alternative lifestyle.
We have exploited the poor and called it the lottery.
We have neglected the needy and called it self-preservation.
We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare.
We have killed our unborn and called it choice.
We have shot abortionists and called it justifiable.
We have neglected to discipline our children and called it building esteem.
We have abused power and called it political savvy.
We have coveted our neighbors’ possessions and called it ambition.
We have polluted the air with profanity and pornography and called it freedom of expression.
We have ridiculed the time-honored values of our forefathers and called it enlightenment.
Search us O God and know our hearts today; try us and see if there be some wicked way in us; cleanse us from every sin and set us free.
Guide and bless these men and women who have been sent here by the people of Kansas, and who have been ordained by you, to govern this great state.
Grant them your wisdom to rule and may their decisions direct us to the center of your will.
I ask it in the name of your son, the living Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

It would, of course, be lovely to hope that such a prayer might ever have been prayed Rev. Jeremiah Wright, not just Rev. Joe Wright.

What’s sad is that this is not a partisan prayer.  Some of the items in it might easily be applied to the Right as well as the Left.  But in it’s Kansas legislature appearance, it was Democrats who got up and walked out.

Alas.

Aug 10 2009

Only evil speech permitted

Category: abortion,freedom,government,religion,theology — harmonicminer @ 8:55 am

CURE | Root of nation’s economic crisis is moral crisis (much more at the link, all worth reading)

A travesty of justice has occurred in Oakland, California. But realities surrounding this local issue point to how the economic crisis in our nation is symptomatic of and flows from a deeper fundamental moral crisis.

A black pastor awaits sentencing, which could amount to two years in prison and $4,000 in fines, for standing outside an inner city abortion clinic holding a sign saying “Jesus Loves You & Your Baby, Let Us Help You,” and offering pro-life literature.

Walter Hoye, founder and chairman of the Issues4Life Foundation, was found guilty of “unlawful approach” under the “Access to Reproductive Health Care Facilities Ordinance” enacted in Oakland in 2008.

Under the ordinance, it is prohibited, within 100 feet of the entrance to a “reproductive health facility,” to approach within eight feet of a client “for the purpose of counseling, harassing, or interfering” with that person.

Imagine if a black “minister” like Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton had been standing in the same place holding a sign that said, “Abortion is a civil right! God Bless you for having the courage to do it!” Does anyone reading this think they would have been arrested, detained, or even talked to by law enforcement? This is simply a case of law in the service of evil, and giving permission for evil speech (the real “hate speech”), while denying the gentle expression of simple truth.

We all need to pray for Walter Hoye, for him to have courage and the support he needs to pursue his appeals. A donation might be in order, too.

And we need to pray for America, which has simply lost its way.

Jul 17 2009

The Next Great Awakening, Part 8: Respecting our national origins

Category: church,constitution,freedom,government,history,legislation,liberty,religion,theology — harmonicminer @ 8:30 am

Is the USA a “Christian nation”? Depends on what you mean by that, I suppose. But its origin in Judeo-Christian principles is clear, based on founding documents, acts of congress and presidents, and the writings of the founders.  The recognition and celebration of that heritage has been nearly universal among US national leaders until very recent times.  You can decide if that was a good thing, or a bad thing, but you can’t pretend it is a non-thing.

Jun 23 2009

The Next Great Awakening, Part 7: Whither the primordial soup? I thought soup required a chef.

Category: science,theology — harmonicminer @ 9:17 am

The previous post in this series is here.

Long odds on space viruses seeding life

LIFE on Earth is unlikely to have come from space, says a new study on viruses. If life is ever found on another planet, however, the findings could help us judge whether it arrived from space or not.

What’s funny here is that scientists have come so close to giving up on the “spontaneous origin of life on Earth” theory that anyone who challenges the notion of “panspermia” is actually seen as being adventurous and contrary to an emerging scientific orthodoxy.

meta-message: Scientists have no fuzzy clue where life came from, or WHEN life came from… except that it appears on earth in a geologic eye-blink after the “late heavy bombardment”, and there was no era of “billions and billions of years” in the primordial soup — which never existed, anyway — for some lucky amino acids to form a little DNA, or RNA, or protein, or much of anything except simple acids and bases.

What we know is that life on Earth appeared at least 3.8 billion years ago, maybe 3.9 or even sooner…. and the Earth had barely cooled enough not to kill anything that was alive.

“Aunt Matilda, I think you accidentally dropped some living proto-cells on Earth on that last fly-by. Do you want to go back and get them? Or just leave them there?  Won’t they rot?”

And atheists accuse theists of “god of the gaps” theories. As if “somehow life began, somewhere, somewhen” and “someday we’ll figure it out” is anything other than a “science-of-the-gaps” explanation, what Karl Popper called “promissory materialism.”

Personally, I think life was seeded on Earth, and maybe only on Earth, by an extra-dimensional, super-intelligent being, one not bound by local laws of time and space, one who knew just what amino acids to jiggle and juggle just so, for the purpose of spending 3.8 billion years creating a biosphere and resources for some relatively weak, big-brained primates.   I think this creative super-intelligent being continued to “stir the pot” now and then, and every now and then invented a new recipe just for the joy of it.   Why would this super-being do such a thing?   Maybe for the same reason the amino acids were made in the first place, as well as the conditions in which they stayed amino acids, instead of breaking down to simpler things.   Time doesn’t seem to mean much to this being, who was perfectly fine with waiting around for 9 billion years or so after starting the whole thing off, until it was time to start cooking up some life in the first place.   A brand new kitchen (solar powered) was designed for this particular production.

Does it make sense that after starting a recipe like this, the creative super-being would stop watching the pot and walk away and just let it happen?   Seems more likely to me that this is one of those recipes where ingredients have to be added at just the right times, temperature adjusted, some of the ingredients moved from the broiler, to the oven, to the stove top, and back, maybe even refrigerated over night and then mixed with something else and baked again…  sort of like twice-baked potatoes, if you’ve tried those.   Instead of running down to the corner supermarket, this particular super-intelligent being just creates what’s necessary, either out of stuff that was already there which had already been made, or completely out of “whole cloth,” or out of nothing…. as necessary.  We’re talking cooking from scratch.

It would have been possible, I suppose, to just open a can, or pull something out of the freezer and nuke it, but the joy of cooking is very, very old.   And for those of you who like simple answers, it might be wise not to insult the chef by comparing the outcome to fast food, after all this loving care was taken in preparation.

The piece de resistance seems to be….  us.

Perhaps some clues have been left here and there, clues which only people who look in the right way will see.

You can ask, if you ever meet (not that hard to do, surprisingly).  I have heard that this particular extra-dimensional, hyper-intelligent, hyper-powerful being is interested in being known, once visited here on an extended missions trip, still hangs out here a lot, and likes to talk, if you’re interested in listening.

That’s my experience, for what it’s worth.

The next post in this series is here.

Jun 13 2009

The Spiritual Poverty of Socialism? Part 3

Category: philosophy,socialism,theology,Uncategorized — harmonicminer @ 9:18 am

The previous post in this series is here.

Socialism, for its very existence, depends on powers of the state to make people do things they would not otherwise do (not merely to make them refrain from doing things that harm or threaten specific individuals), in order to achieve goals (outcomes) that seem good to the socialist.  In this sense, all socialists are statists.

I realize that the definition I gave of “socialism” in the previous post is not the textbook one.  That’s because it is not an ideological definition from the point of view of economic or political theory.  It is an operational one, since no significant strand of socialism avoids the attempt to disconnect outcomes for individuals from the efforts made BY those individuals, and to do so with money and other resources taken in the form of taxes, fees, restrictions, regulations, and sometimes outright confiscation, by the state.  Some will cavil that “socialism” requires “state ownership of the means of production.”  See the previous post in the series for discussion about why that is not a useful standard.

On the continuum of socialism (as operationally defined above), nearly every government/economic system has *some* element of socialism/statism.   The very nature of government involves some degree of collective action towards common goals, which will dilute the effect of any given individual’s participation on the outcome for that individual.  It is a matter of degree, and context.

Let’s start with the easy, noncontroversial stuff.  Public funding of roads is socialist.  So are government funded militaries, court systems, police and fire fighting agencies, schools, etc.   While extreme free market fans may theorize otherwise, these are things which are commonly conceived to be the province of government, even though government may execute them via private parties.  That is, governments usually hire private contractors to build roads (though cities often have a “roads department” for minor repairs).  On the other hand, judges, police, and fire fighters are usually government employees.  Oddly, K-12 teachers are either public employees in publicly funded schools, or private employees in privately funded schools, while college and university professors may be employed by private or public institutions, and the private ones often receive a good deal of government money, at least in the form of student financial aid.

What’s characteristic about all of these services (with the possible exception of schools) is that virtually everyone uses them at one time or another, in one way or another, and they are services that no individual COULD provide privately.  That is, no one could afford to build a road from New York to Los Angeles.  Who could afford to maintain their own private police force, court and prison system, just in case they needed it, or keep a fire department standing by locally, just in case?  Maybe Bill Gates or Warren Buffet, but that’s about it.  And, in any case, no one would want ANY private person to have judicial powers, the complete panoply of police powers, etc.  Nor would we want any private person, no matter how wealthy, to be able to decide just where roads would be built.

So, the defining characteristics of “socialist” policies and programs that virtually everyone will accept are:

1)  They provide services that virtually no person could supply for themselves.

And,

2)  They provide services that would require a person to have so much personal power that we would not trust anyone to possess it.

Note that libertarians, radical free market believers, etc., may even complain about these.  But in general, most people who are suspicious of “socialism” — being suspicious of the statism in requires — will not complain too much about about these kinds of things.  Call it “socialism lite.”

These are areas where reasonable people can disagree.  How much should the state be involved in providing utilities?  How much should the state be involved in determining which cars are safe to drive?  What levels of risk are acceptable?  Any brief review of history of such things will reveal that various attitudes have existed, though the trend towards more and more statism in these areas is clear.  In any case, these are essentially pragmatic matters.  What will work best?  What will cost the public least, for the most benefit?

It is certainly not a “spiritual challenge” to seek or accept clean water delivered by a publicly owned utility with state supervision and management.

But, as we will see, greater levels of socialism/statism are clearly dangerous to the spritual health of the person, particularly those that intrude into matters that individuals ARE competent to deal with themselves, and which do not require the exercise of great personal power on the part of the individual.

That will be the topic of the next post in this series.

May 12 2009

Deconstructing the Deconstructor

Category: church,religion,theology,Uncategorized — harmonicminer @ 9:44 am

Bart Ehrman’s “Jesus Interrupted” is another in the line of books attempting to challenge orthodox understandings of the nature of the Bible and the validity of faith, more or less on the line of the Jesus Seminar approach.

Ben Witherington has a multipart blog/essay essentially taking on Ehrman on his own ground, in his own terms.  It seems to this layman to be excellent reading, and so I link to it below.

Bart Interrupted: Part One

Bart Interrupted: Part Two

Bart Interrupted: Part Three

Bart Interrupted: Part Four

Bart Interrupted: Part Five

Bart Interrupted: Part Six

Tags: , ,

May 03 2009

Faith only in uncertainty

Category: philosophy,science,theology,Uncategorized — harmonicminer @ 4:48 pm

In this skeptical world, it seems everyone wants evidence of everything. Fortunately, there are two central facts that intrude:

1) Almost nothing really important can be proved in the way skeptics demand.  They can’t even prove that they exist, that there is such a thing as “thought,” or “personality,” or “identity,” or “love,” or even “memory.”  Radical skepticism allows only for electro-chemical states in the brain that don’t mean anything in particular except to other electro-chemical states in other brains…  if there are really other electro-chemical states.  What’s really funny is their touching faith that the universe can be apprehended by “logic” (who revealed THAT to them?), and that the universe somehow developed, all on it’s own, minor extrusions with electro-chemical brain states capable of acting as disinterested observers and evaluators of fact.  How did THAT work, again?

2)  Even radical skeptics believe that there is some level of evidence that a person should be willing to accept for the facts of history, human psychology, cultural development, scientific knowability of the universe, ethical presuppositions for humans, etc.  Without some willingness to accept different kinds of evidence for different kinds of propositions and assertions about the nature of reality, there is no hope of considering both science and history to be sources of “knowledge.”   And a corollary: nearly every kind of really important information or concept is “inferential,” meaning we can’t know everything about it, and we only know it because of a confluence of evidence that points to it, but doesn’t (and can’t) directly prove it in the deductive way that simple mathematical propositions can sometimes be proved (actually, less often than many people think —  ask a math geek to explain “decidability” to you sometime).

If a person is willing to accept the notion that we all make decisions based on incomplete information, that the most important decisions of our lives are based not on deductive calculation but on inferential response to incomplete evidence (what career to pursue, who to marry, who to trust, how to raise our kids, what matters more than what, what’s right and what’s wrong), then the grounds for radical skepticism are removed, about God, about a Creator who IS Intelligence and so made a Creation that includes the possibility (inevitability?) of it, and who might make provision for His creatures to know something about Him and His plans for them (special and general revelation).  If radical skepticism is no longer a rational response (and it isn’t to anything that really matters), then we’re left with sifting evidence, considering what we know and don’t know (or can‘t know), and casting our net very wide for many different kinds of information, to see if, taken together, they point to anything, if there is anything we can infer.

This is the point where just a tiny amount of faith is enough, enough to take that first step.  What is that first step?  Believing that there may be something to find, so that you don’t stop looking.  From that tiny opening, God works, in tiny steps, piece by piece, helping you build your faith a mite at a time, so that as you grow in faith and understanding (and make no mistake, genuine progress in either causes the other to grow), you find more and more ways that seemingly tiny bits of life and information fit together, and all reveal the glory of God.

There are, of course, secular zealots who hate the very idea of God. But the tide of history, contrary to their opinions, is against them, and the greatest minds of history have disagreed with them. What we need now is an infusion of courage in believers, so that they will not only stand their ground, but advance, the only rational response to the complexity of being a human being in this created order:

When that great saint Thomas More, Chancellor of England, was on trial for his life for daring to defy Henry VIII, one of his prosecutors asked him if it did not worry him that he was standing out against all the bishops of England.He replied: ‘My lord, for one bishop of your opinion, I have a hundred saints of mine.’

Now, I think of that exchange and of his bravery in proclaiming his faith. Our bishops and theologians, frightened as they have been by the pounding of secularist guns, need that kind of bravery more than ever.

Sadly, they have all but accepted that only stupid people actually believe in Christianity, and that the few intelligent people left in the churches are there only for the music or believe it all in some symbolic or contorted way which, when examined, turns out not to be belief after all.

As a matter of fact, I am sure the opposite is the case and that materialist atheism is not merely an arid creed, but totally irrational.

Materialist atheism says we are just a collection of chemicals. It has no answer whatsoever to the question of how we should be capable of love or heroism or poetry if we are simply animated pieces of meat.

The Resurrection, which proclaims that matter and spirit are mysteriously conjoined, is the ultimate key to who we are. It confronts us with an extraordinarily haunting story.

It takes faith to overcome doubt, do the right thing, and live the right way, but not blind faith.

The only blind faith on offer is the type it takes to believe in materialist atheism, which is not scientific in the slightest, since it takes a most unscientific position about where science came from.

« Previous Page — Next Page »